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Jay Meehan: Hardwood analysis

Core Samples

“With so many ways to communicate at our disposal, we must not forget the transformative power of a live music experience and genuine human exchange.”

~ Jon Batiste

Oftentimes, when partaking of the honky-tonk raptures, I sense the grain of the hardwood dance floor and the sound waves from the bandstand having their way with me. I become transfixed. It’s a healing process that, these days, I need more than ever.



It’s about self-medication, to be sure. Not to mention the coefficient of friction between leather soles and the hardwood in question. Fusion and infusion. It takes two to tango.

I’m just going to figuratively hit the ol’ musical analysis couch for a spell. You might want to try it yourself for a swing shift or two, maybe even a graveyard.

I bring this up due to the fact that I feel like I’m drowning in the current body politic and hangin’ with bar band friends from the other side of the philosophical fence has served previously as a lifeline.



We certainly don’t talk politics or personalities or attempt in any fashion to convert one another to our way of thinking but I’d be lying if I said beers and shots didn’t find a way to enter the discourse.

As I’ve mentioned in this space prior, these are longtime friends and the old dogs and new tricks adage bears bountiful fruit whenever we get together. For the most part, we leave it unpicked, dangling from the branch, as it were. And, of course, dancing the night away most always proves fruitful in itself.

I bring this up due to the fact that, of late, rather than hanging out and engaging in barroom banter, I’ve been spending far to much time paying attention to the impending apocalypse from the much-too-close-for-comfort vantage point of “my wit’s end.”

It’s not like I’m a stranger to these parts. I’ve been here before. I’ve even been known to lease space for extended periods of time at “the end of my rope,” a rather untidy and cachet-poor neighborhood down the next block.

So, that’s where it’s at. In order to even make it into next week with a semblance of sanity, I’ve prescribed myself a couple of sessions with that often-evolving renegade cowpoke pickin’ posse known as “The Glueboyz.” I know. I’ve got to be careful not to “OD” again.

Word has it they’ll be setting up their gear Friday night November 3 at “The Notch” up Mirror Lake Highway out of Kamas and, then again, on Saturday, Nov. 4 down in the Salt Lake valley at “A Bar Named Sue” on the 8100 block of South State Street.

I shouldn’t really be attempting to put all these boys in the same political corral. It’s just that there are times when it slips my mind that every living thing is different than every other living thing and it’s much simpler, if not wholly accurate, to just throw a loop around the bunch of ‘em.

We’ll nuzzle each other with a neigh and a whinny, toss back a couple, and be off in a trot or a lope or a canter. Nah, at best it’ll be a lope. There will be heavy hints of CowJazz, Block and Tackle, with a bit of Chris LeDoux percussion mixed in to keep track of the downbeat and such and before long I should be on my way to some semblance of recovery.

It’s not that I’m tossing in the towel. I’m just going to figuratively hit the ol’ musical analysis couch for a spell. You might want to try it yourself for a swing shift or two, maybe even a graveyard. No guarantees. It won’t do much to change the election results or its aftermath. But it should help your wiggle and your walk.

It’s not often an assembly of therapists the likes of Buffalo Joe, KW Turnbow, “Bummus” Bodily and Mark Viar make themselves collectively available to mad hatters of our persuasion. And, rumor has it, for the truly deranged in our midst, they just might be bring in Stevie “Thunder” Allred on steel guitar for the valley show.

And if they don’t like our off-key harmonizing, we’ll talk real slow and explain to them that we’re Whiffenpoofs: “Gentleman songsters off on a spree/Doomed from here to eternity/Lord have mercy on such as we/Baa, baa, baa.”

Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and has been an observer, participant and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social and political scenes for more than 40 years.

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