My ex brother-in-law succumbed last night after a long battle with cancer. Joe Ballay is not a name you’ve seen on the music charts or heard in contention for the rock and roll hall of fame.  In fact if you have never lived in southwest Michigan, the area around Carthage, TN, or Houston, TX, you’ve probably never heard of him. 

Joe is the guy who first let me pick up his drum sticks and hit his drums.  In 1978 or so he was also the coolest human being I’d ever come close to meeting.  Very Michigan Redneck/Rocker, drummer for the legendary Stone Mountain Band who provided, in at least this important way and certainly many others, the shoulders upon which I and, through association with me and with others, much of what became the world’s third-greatest music scene stood.

It’s safe to say that I would be a completely different person today if not for him.

Of course over time it became apparent that he was human, just like the rest of us.  I haven’t talked to him much since he and my sister divorced, but in a lot of very real ways everything I am, I owe to him.  If you were of drinking age in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s in Kalamazoo or Plainwell – if you ever set foot inside the Front and Back Doors in Kalamazoo before they were destroyed by the 1980 tornado – chances are you’ve heard Joe.

He never gave me any lessons.  He didn’t even correct my hand posture, which remains horrible to this day.  But he’s the man who put the sticks in my hand and said “Let’s see what you can do, boy.”

And I did.

RIP bro.  I wish I’d had a chance to tell you face to face that you’re one of my first and biggest heroes.  The personal stuff, including the strife that eventually led to divorce, doesn’t matter.  That’s between him and my sister – the dude never did anything wrong to me, and beyond being the magic genie who handed me drumsticks, he was also the earliest prototype I had as a little Animal for what a laid-back, cool, rock and roll dude is supposed to look and act like.  I’ve since met others who were, I suppose, cooler or more laid back. 

Then again I’ve had better lays than the first girl I was with, too…that doesn’t make her any less special…but Joe was First.  I find it impossible to imagine any other circumstance in which I’d say this without a touch of irony or snark, but:  Fly high, free bird.  You won’t be forgotten.

Another dead legend, or at least one that’s on life support:  the aforementioned music scene.  This is a travesty.  In a town where, for about ten years, you couldn’t walk down the street three blocks without tripping over a talented and unique original band, there is next to nothing right now.  Club Soda, Missias’, Rick’s, Boogie Records, the Skate Zoo, even the old Four Peace house are all gone.  There are apparently still a couple of places booking local talent, but it’s mostly the same catch-22 we were fighting twenty-five years ago – the people running the clubs are convinced that nobody wants to see local music, and they prove themselves right by refusing to book local bands, so nobody hears them, and therefore ‘nobody wants to see’ them.

Of course, a one-off show by Rollinghead at Bell’s last night had every other bar in town wondering where the hell their Saturday Night crowd went.

I’m not quite the same opinionated little musical snob that I was when I was 15, or 20, or even 25.  I don’t cringe at the idea of a piano bar or a top-40 cover band.  Heck, one of my oldest musical friends now sings for one of the most popular local cover bar bands in the area.  He’s a good guy.  I’m sure the guys at Monaco Bay are good guys, too, and the duelling piano bar thing is a nifty idea.  I might even go in there some day and have a beer.

But the idea that a cover bar with middle-aged white guys hacking their way through Yet Another Cover Of Play That Funky Music White Boy, and a gimmick bar that features two pianos and a REALLY badly-played drum set constitute the crown jewel of Kalamazoo’s “entertainment district” is….well, it’s a bad f’n joke is what it is.  These are secondary, tertiary, or even lower versions of ‘music scenes.’  The change-the-world, I’m going to play what makes me happy because it makes me happy, holy-crap-where-did-this-little-town-get-this-big-old-gang-of-musicians music scene is all but collapsed right now in Kalamazoo.

And that, my friends, is a state of affairs worth every bit as much mourning as my brother-in-law, the recently deceased one-father-of-many to that music scene.

That said:  there are….rumblings.  I sat last night and watched so many people go in and out of Bell’s I was working.  Hundreds of them, many of whom I’ve known.  Not to mention the ghosts of everyone from Matt R to Robin Rugburn.  I didn’t say hi to anyone, even though a few folks walked by looking at me like…do I know that guy?  Yeah, you know that guy, but that guy doesn’t want to be known right now.  That guy is keeping a low profile right now, just trying to make his daily bread and get his feet under him.

But you know that guy.  Everyone knows that guy.  For the last few weeks I’ve been assaulted by memories and memories of memories…it surprises, pleases, and kind of disconcerts me that twenty-five years later, people still remember that I used to be able to walk into the local teen ‘club’, crook my finger at any given female, and have her naked ten minutes later.  It shocks me that people still remember the 1987 state theater gig (which was partially responsible for breaking down the venue barriers we were all pushing against at the time).  The realization that I made a bigger mark than I’d ever understood still hits me on a daily basis when I see an old friend or fan and they play the meatspace version of “post this in your profile and tell me something you remember about me.”

And there are…rumblings.  I’d be willing to bet good money that at least one other ‘legendary’ Kalamazoo band is thinking very hard and very wistfully about that crowd at Bell’s last night.  I’m not the only person who has recently returned to the Hotel Kalamazoo, where you can “check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”  Some of us are thinking; some of us are wondering….do we still have what it takes to get out there and remind people what a truly kick-ass music scene looks and sounds like?

Who knows?

But I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person who would like to find out.

There are…rumblings.  More later.