Eureka Springs, AK -“The Mayor Got Us Stoned”- The Ozark Folk Festival, Day 1 – October 8 & 9, 1999

Wrapped in a green flannel Patagonia jacket, I futilely clenched my abdominal muscles against the cold. My front porch was quiet in the dark, chilly morning. To distract myself from the chattering of my teeth, I played a game, counting down how many seconds it would take Delucchi and Soucy to turn onto my street. Each of my prediction was wrong. I left my guitar on the porch and went inside to top off my coffee. Chris Soucy and I were booked to fly east alone to play the Ozark Folk Festival. No rhythm section, no Delucchi, and no clear idea of what to expect from Arkansas, aside from southern heat and fields of blond wheat. Our 6 a.m. flight out of Denver meant a 4 a.m. wake-up call. By the grace of God, Delucchi, the angel he is, volunteered to drive us to the airport Just as I was sure Delucchi had overslept and was dialing his number, I heard his voice call from outside, “Sally Taylor, Paging Sally Taylor, Please come to the white courtesy van.”

When we arrived in Arkansas, a skinny cat with a cardboard sign and a dirty chauffeur’s cap was waiting for us. He said his name was Fuzzy and he’d be our driver this week. Fuzzy was aptly named. His hair bunched and bucked like a rearing bronco trying to separate itself from his scalp. He wore blue jeans and a blue shirt and walked with bowed legs that looked like parentheses attached by a belt. I liked him immediately.

American Airlines had given me a hard time about carrying on my guitar and, as I’d feared, sent my poor instrument on a wild ride. The brown leather case was stripped like it had a run-in with a bear and the “fragile” sticker they assured me would protect my precious cargo, was mangled like something someone tried, unsuccessfully, to remove from the bottom of their shoe. Luckily, upon examination, the instrument itself was unharmed. Sarcastically, I peeled the fragile sticker off my guitar case and pasted it on my chest with a frown before jumping into Fuzzy’s rusty van.

We were booked at the Land-o-nod Inn and scheduled for a sound check at five but first, Fuzzy wanted to give us a tour of his town. Our first stop was The Shoe Tree on Highway 187. “Once a woman threw her husband out of the house and in a fit of anger he threw one of his shoes in the air and got it caught up in that tree.” Fuzzy had no doubt told the story a hundred times and gave it to us as though it was his first, “As time went on, more and more shoes showed up in the tree until it became a thing of pride for the town of Eureka Springs. Now, local kids take their old sneakers, draw their initials on them, tie the laces together, and try to heave them onto the highest branch for posterity.” But as often as shoes fall up, they fall down. “People, fallen on hard times, come to The Shoe Tree for their sneakers. They fall like ripe fruit from the branches and I do mean ripe!” He laughed.

He drove us through winding mountainous green roads into sunny Eureka Springs. The town was a color explosion. Rainbow murals met every view. Artists in tie-dyed shirts worked on tie-dyed easels off Main Street. “This town used to hold 20,000 people in the late 1800s. Now there’s only 1,900 folks living here,” he said, waving out the window to one of the 1,900. “People moved here around the turn of the century because the water was said to have magical healing properties, and there were all sorts of miraculous recoveries documented by those who bathed here. Turns out, the water they were soaking in was radioactive; still is today. But people with cancer and some other diseases were benefiting from the radiation,” he laughed. “After a fire burned the town down, most people left. Now it’s mostly a tourist town. A hippie tourist town,” he added, pointing and waving to the mayor, a man in his 40s ‘Beau,’ with a long mane of black hair tied back in an elastic who’d later insist on getting us stoned after the show.

I had no idea we were one of only three headlining acts for the festival until I was backstage checking out the merch. I was looking at the back of a shirt, squinting at the artists’ names in the fine print. “I guess we didn’t make the schwag,” I announced to Soucy, who in turn said, “What are you talking about? You’re the third name down there in huge bold print underneath Leon Russell and John McEuen from the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.” “What?!?!?!” I felt honored and humbled.

That night we opened for Leon, who put on a great and soulful show. He looked like a miniature snow-capped mountain. I must admit I felt a little nervous about playing by myself before the sold-out audience. But, as they say, “What doesn’t kill you”… and actually, once I got out there, the butterflies tucked themselves into cocoons and went to sleep. Soucy and I had a blast. The night was wet but it didn’t rain. Mist flies bounced off tin awnings and into the oncoming car headlights. After getting stoned with the town mayor, Fuzzy drove us back to the Land-o-nod.