As SMILER continues to try and keep you entertained while we are all on lockdown, Charlie Shillibeer pointed us in the direction of this little gem first published in October 2010 by swineb4pearls it’s a great read plus click on this link to hear The music and the “Uncut” article can also be found
https://kidhugs.com/music/ronnie/
Ronnie Lane gets yer clothes clean
It was a strange thing really.. no matter how ya cook itā¦I took my clothes and my daughter and her friends to a Dallas laundromat on September 3, 1989 – stuck ’em in the various machines and wandered out back to the small beer garden for a cold one. I saw some long-haired youth setting up a band on the small stage over in the cornerā¦ (doesn’t EVERY laundromat have a beer garden with live entertainment??? why ever not?) Curiosity made me wander on over to ļ¬nd out what I was about to be doubtless deafened by. I knew it wouldn’t be great since the stage faced the back wall of the washateria and therefore the sound would just bounce around into a muddy quagmire. I felt sorry for whoever was gonna try to sing – or mix the vocals, for that matter. The kid with the long ponytail said – “It’s Ronnie Lane and some friends”.ā¦ real matter of fact, like Ronnie shows up to play in laundry beer gardens all the time. I knew he had moved to Austin to try to offset the effects of his MS, the disease that ļ¬nally took him almost a decade laterā¦ but I had heard that he wasn’t really in tiptop form, stage-wise, y’know? I found myself stupidly asking “THE Ronnie Lane?”ā¦ “yeah, that’s the oneā¦”
There was, it turned out, a small cover charge – I think ļ¬ve bucksā¦
A crowd was beginning to arrive and I was about to grab a seat when I remembered the little dictaphone/cassette thingy in the glove box. I was back and stage centre in a minute. I asked the kid if Ronnie would care if I taped the show and he, looking with disdain at the tiny Japanese recorder in my hand, said.. “naw, go for it”. Before long, Ronnie came slowly onto the low stage, helped by/with his bandmates (two guitars, bass, drum and electric violin) and they all sat, three feet in front of me, on chairsā¦. Ronnie introduced the band and, signiļ¬cantly, forgot to introduce the Bass Playerā¦.. “Everyone always forgets the bass player” he laughed, “I should know…. ” and he trailed off the statement with a wry grin.
It’s over twenty years since thenā¦ Ronnie is, by now, dragging/leading angelic pranksters and innocents around the forbidden sections of Heaven and grinning like the mischievous schoolboy that he always remained and I am still here, back in Northern England.
“Uncut” magazine has just done a sketchy retro-piece on Ronnie and it reminded me of this show. The bad news is that it took place in the Texas heat in the back of a laundromat with the sound bouncing and weaving and dropping in and out all around. It was recorded on a tiny, tinny machine held in a hand that it shared with my beer and cigarette since there was no real place to set it down. I was surrounded by cheering and whooping and silliness, which Ronnie actively encouraged. He was not in great shape. It misses the beginning of “Ooh La La” while I turned the tape over and recording on side two is slightly less clear than side one. If ya want clarity.. if you want to hear every note and word clearly, don’t bother with this tapeā¦ you won’t like it. I had to listen to the thing twice myself to get my ears accustomed to the “sound” of old time live tapes like they used to beā¦ but once they “remembered” how it’s supposed to sound “LIVE” rather than perfect.. my ears were overjoyed. Let’s remember also that I had to dig out my battery powered dictaphone thingy, just to replay the tape and get it into the computer.
The good news, however, is almost the same identical list, (except for the comment about the shape that he was in.. simply because it didn’t really matter) – it took place in the Texas heat in the back of a laundromat with the sound bouncing and weaving and dropping in and out all around. It was recorded on a tiny, tinny machine held in a hand that it shared with my beer and cigarette since there was no real place to set it down. I was surrounded by cheering and whooping and silliness, which Ronnie actively encouraged.
I only guessed then at what I now knowā¦ Ronnie Lane was not MEANT to be heard in some sanitised and clinical perfect audio environment.. it’s not who/what he and his music represented. He was RIGHT about the travelling circus, right about the vaudeville aspects of his music.. it’s good time music, in the strictest sense. And this particular environment was his chosen place to be and the spirit in his music was perfectly framed in the looseness of a laundromat beer garden in the Texas sunshine. He played for over an hour, gave two encores and would have done a third but the band was tiredā¦ go ļ¬gger, eh? In the intro to “Nowhere to run” Ronnie reminded us that his mate “Pete” was playing a BIG concert in Dallas that nightā¦ “wiv the ‘OO”. I don’t remember if he went to the BIG show, I know I didn’t. I hope that, wherever he is, Ronnie will smile at me bringing up his raucous past in this way to shareā¦and when you listen to it and realise just how much damned fun the boy hadā¦ and realise that you’re smiling without even trying – perhaps you’ll get a little something of the ambience of a sticky Texas afternoon in the back of a laundromat with a cold beer in your handā¦. and my work here will be worthwhile.
The set list includesā¦as well as some that I can’t catch the proper names ofā¦..
Nowhere to run, The Poacher, Renee, There ain’t no willin’ Women, Barcelona, Ooh la la, Itchycoo Park and You never can tell.
At the end of the show, just before the first encore (Itchycoo Park – REALLY!!), Ronnie thanks the audience and sez “this has been a rare tonic for meā¦”
and by god, it has been for me too.
Relax, and enjoy yourself.
Words The Lone Typist
Photo Josh Emmett