I kept looking over my shoulder during the opening act of the Garfield County Fair’s Saturday night concert. Between songs by musician David Nail, I’d give a glance to the northwest to check on the smoke plume from the state’s largest wildfire this season: at the time a 100,000-acre behemoth called the Lee Fire. Red flag weather had blown this beast northeast towards Meeker for a few days, panicking the settlers there, then turned it in the opposite direction towards Garfield County and the City of Rifle, where the County Fair was in full swing.
Nashville star Nail and his band opened for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (NGDB). Jeff Hanna and Jimmie Fadden are the two original band members with four other guys, including Hanna’s son, Jaime, playing a mean lead guitar and singing alongside his dad. It was the Garfield County Fair stop on the band’s farewell tour, which may have made the rounds more than once. I seem to remember they came through here a few years back on a farewell tour but, I’m almost as old as they are so I could be getting my farewell tours mixed up.
I chatted up a few concert-goers, all under the age of 40, about their favorite Dirt Band song. “Fishin’ in the Dark,” said Lila, who may have been 20 and was there with her mom. “I grew up listening to that.”
“Fishin’ in the Dark,” said Levi, who sat next to me in the premier seats. But I was there to hear Jeff Hanna’s sweet voice ringing out over the decades — a time portal to my younger days.
NGDB opened with “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” a Dylan tune. I swooned when I heard the loping rhythm of the song. One thing though, the words about flying “down in the easy chair” never made sense to me, conjuring images of a winged La-Z-Boy. But those are the real lyrics; I had them right all along. It’s a great chorus to belt out, which I did during the show.
Oo-ee ride me high
Tomorrow’s the day my bride is gonna come
Oh lord are we gonna fly
Down in the easy chair
I still don’t understand the flying easy chair part, but it’s Bob Dylan, so who’s to say? Someone I knew long ago had a similar problem with
Creedence’s “Bad Moon Rising.” She would sing, albeit slightly off-key:
Don’t go around tonight
Well, it’s bound to take your life
“There’s a bathroom on the right”
Then there was that Jimi Hendrix Purple Haze thing — “scuse me while I kiss this guy” — much more risque back then than it is now, and a mix-up with a Beatles’ lyric. Another long-ago person thought the girl McCartney saw standing there was “wavy on the hair” instead of “way beyond compare.” And she swore Sam Cooke twisted the night away wearing “chicken slacks” instead of dancing with a “chick in slacks.”
Meanwhile, back at the fair, the Lee Fire’s pyrocumulus formation cast the scene in surrealistic gloom; a giant muscular cloud looming in the background while “locals were up kickin’ and shakin’ on the floor,” as Joni Mitchell once wrote.
“Ripplin’ Waters” got me up and out of my seat. “It’s my favorite song!” I shouted at Levi as I hurtled past him toward the stage. Then the time travel really kicked in. That song, written by Jimmy Ibbotson when they all hung out in Woody Creek and Aspen, will always remind me of Colorado when I first arrived.
I-70 was a two-lane road through Glenwood Canyon. Feet of snow blanketed the mountains from Hallowe’en to Easter and Aspen was still a locals’ town. Carbondale’s Main Street might not have been paved and drunk cowboys rode their horses into the Black Nugget saloon. At least one did. He wasn’t really a cowboy but he was drunk and spurred his horse right through the front door, whooping and yee-hawing his way into the bar.
I remember the bar itself was on the east wall. Pool tables were arranged in the center of the room and booths were shoved against the west wall. This guy (name withheld) trotted his steed around the pool tables, still whooping and yee-hawing, and left the same way he came in. It was just a regular summer afternoon in Carbondale, while waiting for the laundry to finish.
Ibbotson’s Colorado is hard to find now — a cabin among tall pine trees, lace covering a frayed spot on a red, second-hand chair.
And you make me feel fine
Warm as the mountain sunshine
On the edge of the snowline
In a meadow of columbine
I remember those days. No crowds, no roundabouts. More cattle drives than cars. And no wildfire smoke.
The Lee Fire’s smoke plume had disappeared under cover of darkness. A full Sturgeon Moon was on the rise. “Buy for Me the Rain,” NGDB’s first hit single, would have been an appropriate tune for this particular night at the fair. But, no luck.
“Fishin’ in the Dark” brought the younger crowd, including Levi, to its collective feet. Some were swinging their partners and everybody sang along to Jim Photoglo and Wendy Waldman’s honky-tonk love song.
Down by the river in the full moonlight
We’ll be fallin’ in love in the middle of the night
So many songs, so little time. But there was time for the encore version of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” The music was all I could hope for until it got even better, when Hanna and the boys slid right into “The Weight.”
Take a load off, Fanny
Take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny
And (and) (and) … you can put the load (put the load) right on me
Tears sprang to my eyes as NGDB channeled The Band — Levon, Garth, Richard, Robbie and Danko, all gone now. They would have been proud.