(Country Dick Montana is Dead)
Published in early December, 1995, just after Country Dick died.
Country Dick Montana, didn’t pass on, nor did he retire, expire, succumb, pass away or perish. There was nothing passive about the way he died, as there was nothing passive about the way he lived. Country Dick Montana, or Dan to his friends, BIT IT.
How incredibly poetic it was when he stood up in the middle of a song, fell backwards, and died right there on stage. Christ, I hope he found a way to enjoy that moment.
The last year wasn’t a good one. He was fighting the cancer in his throat that threatened to take his voice, his livelihood, his life.
I went to see him when he got out of the hospital. He looked awful. The staples that fastened the scar which ran on his neck from ear to ear, reflected the dining room light, beneath which we set up a game of chess. I brought him a small care package including a roast beef sandwich and a copy Of Brautigan’s ass kicking novel, “Willard and his Bowling Trophies,” ( subtitled “A Perverse Mystery.”
Dan said it was, “disturbed.”
We set up the Chess set. He threatened to beat on me again, like he did the last time, when I lost a bet with him. As the loser of the bet I had to get on stage during one of his shows and recite a speech we composed before the game. He had a recording of my recitation and played it for me. He was proud of that tape as much as it embarrassed me.
“Turn that shit off!” I demanded. (I secretly enjoyed the tape though).
The chess game was easy. I drew first blood when I rolled over him fluidly and took his rook with ease. I could tell the cancer drugs were handicapping his game. His moves were sluggish, his attacks one-sided and blatant. His attempts to fork my King and Queen with the Knight might as well have had sirens announcing it’s arrival.
The sad part was he knew it too.
After the first game, I stepped outside for a smoke. I sat on the curb and inhaled deeply. I did not like seeing him like this. Once a thick and majestic tower of a man, he was no thin and frail. I hit on the cigarette again. I wondered if the cancer would take me too. I looked at it. It was odious. I ground it with my foot and went inside. We listened to selections from Dick’s vinyl collection: crazy songs like William Shatner singing “Mr. Tambourine Man,” or Sammy Davis Jr. on “Shaft.”
He lost the second game.
I met Dick at The Bacchanal — where I bartended for 5 years — in 1985. The Beat Farmers were kicking everybody’s ass. They played there regularly.
The first time we ever spoke — not counting when he was simply ordering booze from me — was at an Ian Hunter show. Dick had come to the bar and I said, “How you doing Dick?”
“Great,” he answered, “now that the ‘shrooms kicked in.”
I told him I had never done mushrooms. He said nothing and walked away. A few minutes later he came back and handed me a baggy. It was, of course, filled with about four or five caps, and a couple of stems, and a lot of crumbs. I didn’t see him for the rest of the night and tripped — for the first time ever — all by myself, behind the bar.
You know, a week ago I heard Manifold, The Beat Farmer’s new CD. There’s a song on it called, “Texas Heat.” It’s a Duet with Joey Harris. I remember thinking how funereal it was, like a dark elegant cloud. Dick’s voice sounds as if he’s ready to cry. “I’m sending out my last farewell/sending my last goodbye/I hope this message finds you well/Texas Heat is high.”
He sings about being at death’s door: “Now I hear ‘em at the door telling me its time/To mingle with the twilight stars/and pay for all my crimes/I’ll sit down in their butchers chair and hold you one last time/I hope this message finds you well/Texas heat is high.”
Now that he’s dead I find myself playing it over and over again. It’s disabling how eerie it is.
So last night, two days after he died, I was at my bartending job, Winston’s In Ocean Beach. Goldfish was playing. Goldfish is a 70′s Disco-funk, cover band. I had brought in all my Beat farmer tapes and played them during the set breaks. The disco crowd was unimpressed. A lot of people asked me to take it off. I told them to go fuck themselves.
The Beat Farmers were often called dinosaurs. If, by “dinosaurs,” they meant that the Beat Farmers have been around a long time, clomping their rock and roll onto the heads of anyone in earshot like giant dinosaur footsetps, then yeah, they are dinosaurs. They played shitholes and they played arenas and they played everything in between and somewhere along the line one of them, probably Dick, sucked on your mama’s breasts.
Funny that these disco pigshits rage over a sound that fell extinct in the seventies and have the nerve to call the Farmers, “dinosaurs.” Ahh, I don’t hate them. I feel sad for them. Feel sad that they have never seen this band play live, feel sad that they will never see Dick pick some poor sot out of the crowd to carry him to the bar like a horse. Like that Halloween night, at The Bacchanal, 1988, during a Beat Farmer staple: The song is called, “California Kid,” and it’s about a hardcore badass who fucks some women and kills some people (“I’m the California Kid I hope ya, are prepared to die”). Dick was already trashed when he leaped onto some guy’s back and rode him like a horse, whipping him with the microphone like it was a switch.
The guy carried Dick to the bar, which was in the back of the room, as far as you could get from the stage. Dick climbed onto the bartop and steadied himself.
“Gimme a tequila dirt-ball,” he said to me and the into the mike. He swiped his arm across the bar to make room for his shenanigans, knocking the drinks onto the floor and/or the customers who they belonged to. They just smiled and laughed.
He was clearly soused, but it was Halloween and we were all feeling good. He bottomed up the tequila and immediately fell to the inside of the bar. Broken glass was everywhere, drinks and beers doused him. He lay on the floor groaning into the microphone.
It was Halloween and everybody was dressed up, so I had a camera behind the bar. I picked it up and shot some photos.
He lay on the floor amidst the debris and seemed unconscious. At the very least I figured the show was over. He looked like a train wreck. It seemed inconceivable that he could stand again, much less get back on stage and perform for another hour.
But — as if someone had simply replaced his batteries –Country Dick Montana stood up, flaked off the glass, grabbed somebody’s beer and rode his “horse” back to the stage.
That was the thing about Dick. He pushed his body further than anyone I’ve ever known. He would fall on his head, or his back and bound up like a puppet. He would stand on tables and sing, dance, and barely balance himself, and often in danger of decapitation from ceiling fans.
Dick and I shared three passions: Ray Davies. Charles Bukowski. Booze. We sat up for hours talking about Kinks’ songs. I read aloud poems from Bukowski’s, Play the Piano Drunk, like a Percussion Instrument Until Your fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit. We played chess and we drank.
As for the night of the Chess Bet, it was after he played Winston’s with The Incredible Hayseeds one night. I was bartending. After closing we went back to my place. Dick was in a sad phase. Sooty left him. We listened to Roger Miller and Tom Waits while playing Chess and it was funny how, even though he was sad, it was he was doing all the entertaining.
As for the Chess Bet itself, it was decided that whomever lost the game had to recite — on stage — a speech the two of us composed. It was terribly, overstated, with phrases like, “I bow to thee O conquistador of chess” and other such nonsense. We wanted to be sure that it was as embarrassing as possible since we were both so sure we were going to win.
As for the Chess game, Dick played black. It was hardly a ferocious battle. The fact of the matter was I was kicking his ass. Really. I had a Bishop and a Pawn advantage, and his Rook was in my sights. What I didn’t understand was that the Rook was bait and that he had drawn me in. By taking his Rook, I cleared the way for that fugger’s other Rook to attack my back file and checkmate was won as he stymied my King behind three so-called protective pawns.
At the next gig (The Incredible Hayseeds), before the second set, with the band on stage, and the crowd whipped into a Dick frenzy, there I was, clammy from sweat, in front of a shit-ton of confused fans, preparing to deliver the speech. I began reading, “Country Dick is my conquistador. I bow to him in all things. He is The King of my Chess Kingdom…” and so on.
I could hear his thick, unrestricted guffaw behind me, towering like the black rook he used as bait. I could hear the band cackling, and I asked myself, “How did I get here? I was winning that game. I had it in the bag.”
Fucking Dick though. He was eating it up. He kept sticking this micro-cassette recorder into my face (he had brought it for just this occasion) and laughing that big, thick, smoky laugh of his. God I miss him so much.
Dick and Ed, Sooty's house, Xmas circa 1992
POST SCRIPT
It was grim tonight, at Dick’s memorial service out in Winston’s East in San Tee. Faces, I remember from the old days at the Bacchanal, were red from crying, or just blank. The room was full of Dick-like desperadoes in a black or white cowboy hats. And each time one stepped by I waited for that booming voice.
“Are you drinking with me Jesus
I can’t see you very clear
If you’re drinking with me Jesus
won’t you buy a friend a beer.”
The Off Brothers - featuring Dick, Joey, and Farage Bros.
Tags: bachannal, beat farmers, chess, country dick
Great story! Dick embarassed me one time in front of a packed house. They were playing as the hayseeds at the Pomerado Club in Poway. There was this guy going around asking people for any requests (other than “Beat Farmers” songs, since they weren’t allowed to play those).
I had heard Dick do this funny, but sleazy song on KGB’s homegrown show with Jim McGinness, called “Ball of Yarn”. The guy came back and told me Dick said I would have to come to the stage and ask him personally to play it, which I did. He then proceeded to tell everyone “that is a dirty song” “what kind of girl was I” etc. They played the song, it was great, worth my embarassment.