I flew in to Knoxville, walked off the plane, climbed into a Dodge Tradesman Van and immediately headed west with The Town Criers, a performing group based in Gatlinburg. I’d been working with them as musical director & general idea guy for several years. Now…I was one of the group.

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            After four days of driving we arrived in Portland, Oregon where we did two weeks at a Holiday Inn Lounge in south Portland, near the Willamete River. I must tell you the drive into eastern Oregon from Boise may have been one of the prettiest journeys I’ve ever taken. The drive off the mountains from Pendleton down to The Columbia River, and then straight into the sunset along that river all the way into Portland was cosmic.

           

           After Portland it was south to San Francisco. Another incredible drive. I rate drives, by the way. I’ve driven a lot of miles. This one was a ten. I had spent time over the years on the West Coast for maybe one or two days at a time but this was my first extended stay. The gig was a month at The Miyako Hotel in Japantown. We played every night and rehearsed the new act during the day, since this was the first time the group had ever had a keyboard player, and pretty soon we figured it out. It was however, my first time in San Francisco and I spent a lot of off hours up The Pacific coast north of the city. Stinson Beach, Bolinas, Pt. Reyes. Very cool places.

 
                        That’s another story…

 

            Albuquerque followed, two weeks at The Sundowner Motel Lounge. I like New Mexico. Santa Fe is very laid back and Taos Pueblo during Christmas is magical.  We had our Christmas dinner on Sandia Crest at 10,000 feet above sea level. The band had a couple drinks at that altitude and I had to pour them on to the Tramway Car. And then…on to St.Louis, The Chase Park Plaza Hotel for New Years. Not much to say about St. Louis. It’s St. Louis. Then home to The Mountains for some R&R.

 

            I worked with The Town Criers through 1972 when I gave up The Road. After eight years I realized I needed home and family and was fortunate because my then-wife and I built and opened a leather shop on Airport Road in the Spring of ’72, parlayed that through the winter with a shop in The Gatlinburg Ski Lodge, and then as The Leathersmiths, rented an alley next to Shoney’s on The Parkway, rehabbed it, and had us a family business.

                                      All that…to get to this:

            Back in the early Seventies, Johnny Walker & Jim Holt owned The Candelier Shop on The Parkway, catty-corner from The Rebel Corner. They also owned a small bar and night club on the lower Parkway called The Shed. Beer, corned beef sandwiches, big kosher pickles, gas lit chandeliers, and of course, Live Entertainment Nightly. The Shed was that rare combination of local hangout and tourist bar that hit all the high marks. It was a dark club with a long bar up front and a sit-down area in the back with a small corner stage and another, smaller bar. Porches over The Middle Prong of The Little Pigeon River were perfect for just about any purpose but One. There was also an upstairs with a couple rooms where – so I was told – The One from the previous sentence might have taken place. A time or two...

          
                                    Just a rumor, folks. Not mentioning any names….

            The nightly entertainment had been in the capable hands of Kate Skates, a young woman of ample size, loud voice, and a great laugh that kept The Shed rolling along until the Spring of 1973 when she joined the aforementioned Town Criers, the group I’d just left. Then off they went, back on The Road. Just like that The Shed had no entertainment.

 

                                   …and you might wonder who took that gig… Heh-Heh-Heh…
 

            So I started my 2nd ‘single’ career playing nightly at The Shed. I conned Johnny & Jim into buying a small piano and alternately played guitar and sang or played piano and sang and as I remember….we had a helluva run.

                                                           

                                                          Some Random Memories…...............

                       

                        One night Greg Allman came into the bar. Greg was said to have a small place outside Pigeon Forge and was seen around town from time to time. The night he came by  The Shed…no one noticed him. Nobody screamed ‘IT’S FREAKING GREG ALLMAN!!!!’. So Greg left. It was a tough crowd…

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                        Had a great drop-in one night by a rather obscure Traditional Folk group called The New Lost City Ramblers. They’d been traveling through Western Carolina and East Tennessee looking for old mountain folk songs. They had a few beers and we reminisced about the early Sixties Village Scene in New York, and they were just delightful folks. Mike Seeger, John Cohen & Tracy Schwartz. Great pickers and fun people…
                       

                        Spoke one night with an Army Ranger who’d come into Gatlinburg with some other Rangers and wound up at The Shed. The Rangers were parachuting into Cade’s Cove at the time and then doing full-pack forced hikes in the mountains so a cold beer was very much on their minds….we talked of Viet Nam that night and they told me the terrain in The Great Smokies had a lot in common with the Highlands in Nam. A dubious honor at best, considering the times…

                        Met a guy on break late one night on the porch who turned out to be one of the best friends I’ve ever had in my life. Chuck Edwards was a young lawyer from the beaches of New York and the minute I sat down we started talking about The City, and music, and politics, and Nixon….and we haven’t stopped since. Well…we don’t talk about Nixon anymore. Now it’s family and kids and grand-kids for him and cats for me. Chuck got me through some rough times and I’ll always be grateful…

            Gatlinburg in The Seventies was one of the wildest scenes I’d ever been into. The street was intense, fast moving, there were illegal substances on every corner, and since there was literally no television, it was crazy-isolated from The Known World. Everyone was A Star, everyone had Cash Money, everyone drove Porsches and big Kawasaki Z1’s and dark Mercedes Benz Sedans or if you were a gay guy, you drove a black, tricked-out Jeep Wrangler. I watched a local dude snort a motel up his nose one summer. It was that crazy. The borders of personal and public morality were constantly...how can I say...in-flux. And there was always a party goin’ on somewhere. All. The. Time.

            And then…it was over. In stories, as in ‘real’ life, all things must come to an end and so it was that during an off-season hiatus, maybe 1974 or ’75, The Shed morphed into Ruby Tuesday’s Restaurant. A rather trite ending, devoid of any originality or creativity save money for such a dazzling slice of Tourist Town Madness. One afternoon when a few of us hard-cores stood across the Parkway watching the end of The Era, I heard someone say… “These are dangerous times, man……wanna’ get pancakes?”


            If someone ever writes a book about Gatlinburg in The Seventies, I pray they leave me out of it.