a few years back i was in Coco Beach, FL w/ my girl... we were hungry and driving around trying to find somewhere to eat after 10pm... finding a Margaritaville beach bar open and serving bar food, we went inside and ate chicken quesidillas and burgers while listening to a band pump out Bob Marley covers... walking back to the car, I noticed a bar next door, a roadhouse looking dive... i can't remember if they had a small marquee or if there was just a sign, but somehow i noticed Eddie Kirkland was playing that night... i ran over like a spazz and talked to the doorguy and i realized it was THAT Eddie Kirkland... (this sounds really shitty in a RIP thread, but i think i had assumed he had already passed and this was some guy w/ the same name) it was either no cover or maybe 5 bucks... florida dive bar... pool table, cigarette smoke, and 1.50 bud drafts... full of local beach trash, coors drinkers and hillbillies...
anyways, the band was set up in a corner and Eddie was great... he was just playing bar blues (i got drunk on those 1.50 drafts and was yelling for "The Hawg", but it didn't happen), but it was done REALLY WELL (you don't last as John Lee Hooker's sideman for the amount of time EK did if you can't pay bar blues!)... people were dancing and digging it... it was sorta in a Buddy Guy vibe, which is to say OG bluesman steez filtered thru BLOOZ cliches on some "give the people what they want" style,,, it sounds weird to say, but stuff almost sounded like the MC5...(the rest of the band was young white dudes).. i was sitting at a table about 6 feet from Eddie and, as a guitar player, was just watching his hands... very tasteful and understated,,, i remember me and my girl talking to his vageuly FL skinhead-ish drummer on some "you got to come to NY!" type shit (after he sat down at our table and bummed a smoke off us during the band's break), as from what i could grasp, most of his gigs were at little roadhouses and dives around the south... there was a big ol' station wagon parked outside the place, which i guess was the EK road machine... sure enough, maybe last year, Eddie Kirkland played NYC at the Ponderosa Stomp at Lincoln Center... anyways, RIP to a talented, working musician who kept at it, entertained people, and didn't see himself as some museum piece...
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my Eddie Kirkland story...
a few years back i was in Coco Beach, FL w/ my girl... we were hungry and driving around trying to find somewhere to eat after 10pm... finding a Margaritaville beach bar open and serving bar food, we went inside and ate chicken quesidillas and burgers while listening to a band pump out Bob Marley covers... walking back to the car, I noticed a bar next door, a roadhouse looking dive... i can't remember if they had a small marquee or if there was just a sign, but somehow i noticed Eddie Kirkland was playing that night... i ran over like a spazz and talked to the doorguy and i realized it was THAT Eddie Kirkland... (this sounds really shitty in a RIP thread, but i think i had assumed he had already passed and this was some guy w/ the same name) it was either no cover or maybe 5 bucks... florida dive bar... pool table, cigarette smoke, and 1.50 bud drafts... full of local beach trash, coors drinkers and hillbillies...
anyways, the band was set up in a corner and Eddie was great... he was just playing bar blues (i got drunk on those 1.50 drafts and was yelling for "The Hawg", but it didn't happen), but it was done REALLY WELL (you don't last as John Lee Hooker's sideman for the amount of time EK did if you can't pay bar blues!)... people were dancing and digging it... it was sorta in a Buddy Guy vibe, which is to say OG bluesman steez filtered thru BLOOZ cliches on some "give the people what they want" style,,, it sounds weird to say, but stuff almost sounded like the MC5...(the rest of the band was young white dudes).. i was sitting at a table about 6 feet from Eddie and, as a guitar player, was just watching his hands... very tasteful and understated,,, i remember me and my girl talking to his vageuly FL skinhead-ish drummer on some "you got to come to NY!" type shit (after he sat down at our table and bummed a smoke off us during the band's break), as from what i could grasp, most of his gigs were at little roadhouses and dives around the south... there was a big ol' station wagon parked outside the place, which i guess was the EK road machine... sure enough, maybe last year, Eddie Kirkland played NYC at the Ponderosa Stomp at Lincoln Center... anyways, RIP to a talented, working musician who kept at it, entertained people, and didn't see himself as some museum piece...