One of the prime pleasures accompanying last summer’s Braun Brothers Reunion music festival up in Challis, Idaho, came out of nowhere to blindside the old pilgrim as he busied himself setting up chair and cooler while a voice from the stage made those sort of announcements to which festival goers have long grown accustomed.
No, not “beware of the brown acid.” These days it’s more like, “Verizon users who don’t possess the secret code that allows them service in Challis will be gathering at the summit of Mt. Borah early Sunday morning to check their messages. Warm clothes, crampons, and a thermos of Bloody Marys are recommended.”
Something about the voice of the stage announcer triggered memories of past mischief. Couldn’t really place him, though. But then came the knockout punch. “Howdy folks, I’m Dallas Dobro and I’d like to thank my old friend Muzzie (Braun) for inviting me back again this year to handle the emcee chores.”
The reason you could have knocked me over with a crepe paper wrapper from a jug of Patron was that, although we hadn’t been in touch for a spell, Dallas and I had history. Plenty of it! Enough, you might say, to give us our own book in the Old Testament.
We had hung out together with Dan Wilcox around turntables at KMOR back in the day while plotting various and nefarious inroads into AM country radio as it had then come to be programmed.
We were all about the newer stuff like Prine and Willie and Kristofferson and the older gods like Hank and Lefty and Jimmie Rodgers. Then, as now, what constituted Top-40 country radio just didn’t turn our collective crank.
Dallas’ quite improvisational contributions to what would later evolve into the “Americana” music format took him to KFAT and KPIG in California. And, later, as a matter of course, to festival stages as the emcee of choice “way out West where the states are square,” as Utah Phillips was wont to say.
Did I mention that he also once held forth as the Mayor of Keetley, that still-drowned-after-all-these-years burg beneath Jordanelle Reservoir? It was more of an honorary title given to him by friends who benefited not only from his encyclopedic musical knowledge but also from the fruits, or vegetables, of his somewhat sporadic import business.
Well, last year up in the Salmon River valley, Wilcox and I quickly reestablished relations with Dallas backstage between sets at the Reunion. I don’t believe any of us actually stopped jabbering until enough lies had been swapped to fill the now-empty nine duffel bags that once roamed through Park City full of indigenous southwestern sacramental cacti. Suffice to say, we caught up!
So this year, as the 2009 edition of the Braun Brothers Reunion approached, I sent an email to the celebrated Mr. Dobro himself inquiring as to where he might be bunkin’ down around Challis during the festival. The response came that, although his knees were “shot” and due for replacement next month at Stanford, he would be in town but not onstage.
But we could certainly get together and do lunch and discuss the ends of his tibia and femur, not to mention the underside of his patella and his cartilage and ligament issues, if I so wished. He sent the phone number of his brother’s spread outside town.
Sounded good to me! But how are we to hook up when Verizon types were still being punished for our own particular strain of original sin. So, as proper pilgrims oftentimes do once upon the landscape in question, my co-conspirator and I consulted the spiritual guru of the region, the Salmon River.
From the headwaters on the backside of Galena Summit to well past Shoup, where, for the most part, only oar-rafts venture forth, we listened to the wisdom of the water. We even sought counsel up the Yankee Fork and the Lemhi. “Anyone seen Dallas?” we asked.
We then adjourned to a barstool at Bux’s Place back on Main Street in Challis. And, lo and behold, who walked, or limped actually, through the door but Dallas Dobro himself. The River had spoken and we had heard.
Ol’ Dallas, also known in blues circles as “Tiny Red Johnson,” remains one of the truly singular vagabonds of the musical seas and, if the truth be known, was sorely missed on stage at this year’s Braun Brothers Reunion. Nothing personal, Muzzie, but you know as well as I that nobody is quicker on the draw than the Dobroman.
Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and a free-lance writer with a background in commercial and community radio, among other pursuits. He has been a columnist and feature writer for various Park City publications going back to 1973.