Gram Parsons experiences remembered, 35 years gone

[George_Savage]

Hi folks, I sent this to the Slobberbone and The Drams list about my love of Gram's music.   Here 'tis:

> The official date of death for Gram is 9/19/73, which will be 35 years ago
tomorrow. But he ingested the drugs that killed him on  this date, and I'd guess that he was a goner late on this date in '73. To quote G. Harrison, "isn't it a pity?" I'd send this
> one to Postcard, but I've been off of it for 3 years or so, so "you're gonna get it" (-T. Petty, '78) - I'd venture a guess that there are a few Gram fans here.   In the
great book of Gram fanhood, I was a late comer. My cousin made me a cassette tape in March or April of '92. Side  A was 'old' Willie, early '60s stuff, with songs like Crazy, Funny how Times Slips Away, etc. Side B just said "Gram  Parsons", and I knew nothing of Gram at that point. I listened to the tape and I immediately loved the songs. This was pre-internet, for me at least. I managed to find out some stuff about him, but I really don't remember how!  I do remember loving that cassette - she'd given me 'GP' and 'Grievous Angel', or at least 45 minutes of those two albums. I think that the tape ended in the middle of 'Brass Buttons'.   I learned about The Flying Burrito Brothers after that, and that he was also on Sweetheart of the Rodeo. I picked up the 'Sleepless
Nights' album on vinyl circa '95 somewhere in  Garland, Texas. I
was hooked by now, of course. I told a friend about my new musical obsession. She's about 10-12 years old than me, and it turns out that she'd ACTUALLY MET


(sorry for the mistakes, this is a long post, and I don't have time to proofread it! Please excuse the typos!)

...Sorry, I guess I somehow hit 'send' by accident - Dumbass strikes again! Anyway, DeLana met Gram in Winterhaven when he was playing with his band at "The Derrydown". I think that's the spelling, my friend Brad "Tarp" Tarrant has my book, entitled "20,000 Roads", or is it "Twenty Thousand Roads"? I think it's the latter.
Whatever the name of that place was, maybe it was the Derry Down or the Dairy Down, but I think it was the Derry Down. "Tarp" only got his latest nickname due to a drummer that the Burrito Bros. auditioned at one point - his last name was Tarrant and his nickname was "Tarp". Some people collect stamps or coins or diplomas or sea shells. Brad collects nicknames, but only in part because I bestow them upon him! I like to collect 'em, too. It's a sickness.
                 Anyway, DeLana told me that she'd met Gram, circa '65.  She was a
good-looking blonde Florida teenage girl, and of his Gram's bandmates had his eye on her. She isn't sure about the timing of the gift, but this guy sent her a single of Gram's next band, The International Submarine Band. As Gram's entire life and biographical events are often misremembered, she isn't sure what this guy's name is/was. But he sent her a 45 RPM record from the movie "The Russians are Coming, the Russians are coming", starring, among others, Carl Reiner and Alan Arkin. I've seen parts of it, but I never could get through all of it. I think that the band (ISB) was shown playing at a bar, possibly. I vaguely remember that, but it may have been cut. Some of you
diehards (Gram fans or film buffs) may possibly shine a light on that.
So DeLana told me about this gift she'd received. And she gave it to
me! Yes, it's true, I have Gram Parsons' autograph on the sleeve of the 45 RPM record, aka a '45' for your chillurn. I don't have a certificate of authenticity, but I do believe that Gram signed it and they sent out some of these records for posterity. Since my main heir, a daughter named Rebecca, couldn't care less about Gram, and she probably
hasn't ever heard one Gram song (I'm not much of an influence in her musical life, unfortunately, but I did encourage her to try to marry Brent, circa 1999 and 2000!), I hope that this Gram autograph will one day end up in a Gram museum of sorts.
                   Other than my family heirlooms, and my empty bottle of Fosters that belonged to Jay Farrar, superstar, my Gram autograph probably
ranks right up there with my Mad magazine collection.   And my collection of different versions of the song 'Moon River', of course! So anyway, what a rambler this one is!
I discovered Gram, and I remember hearing his voice on Sweetheart of the Rodeo
and realizing that he was a Byrd for one album.    In '96, I made my first visit to Joshua Tree for the First Annual GramFest. Ben Fong-Torres and Holly George-Warren, both of Rolling Stone magazine fame, were the 'keynote speakers' there. Ben showed some camcorder footage of his travels in Florida and Georgia and talked about his experiences while writing one of the best-known Gram biographies,
'Hickory Wind'. I wish that I had a tape of that presentation, but this was pre-taping days for Ol Lo. They put on a show the following night at the High Desert Playhouse, which is right beside the Joshua Tree Inn. It was mainly small bands from
L. A. and California. There were no Keith Richards and Dwight Yoakams and
Lucinda Williams performances. But it was still really cool. Part of the coolest stuff was
taking my camcorder around Joshua Tree and the desert and the National Monument for the first time. We had to stay in Twenty-Nine Palms, down the road about 10-15 miles to the East.
                 I did get to give Ben Fong Torres a cassette tape after he signed my book; that was cool. He thanked me and said "we'll listen to it on the way back to L. A." I'd
made a 'best of' Gram tape for the occasion; one of the joys in life is "giving tapes to strangers", as I called  it back in the mid-90's. Now we can 'give tapes to strangers' on the internet. Back in June of '96, my old friend Jimmy "Gum Wing Lee" Faires and I took a trip to Winterhaven, Florida. And we found Gram's old house!   It was awesome, at least in the freakish capacity of musical hero worship. We got excited when we spied the 'secret door' to Gram's room that we'd read about in Hickory Wind. Jimmy went back to the house in March of 2006 and gained entrance to the house! We were too
scared to knock on the door in '96, but he mustered the courage to try to talk to the owners. They'd just recently bought the house. The previous owners, the ones who sold
it to this guy, had bought it from Gram's family! They'd lived there 35 or so years, maybe 40.   This new owner told Jimmy that there would be some fans of Gram who would occasionally show up; I think he said that they'd encountered these fans 5-10 times a year.  
                  I'm rambling and getting ahead of myself, but during this trip we went
to a drug store there in Winterhaven to buy some toothpaste or a comb or some Visine. I can't remember what it was, but I was in this mode of "I'm going to give a tape to a stranger" that day. There was an older lady in line next to us. She was
either next to us, behind us, or in the other line. Jimmy will remember, because he
remembers Everything. Anyway, we bought whatever it was, and I asked the clerk, a gal about 20 years old, if she'd ever heard of Gram Parsons. She said
'no', but this older lady, probably 55-60, said "I've heard of Gram....they burned his body in the desert!" Jimmy and I were immediately fired up! This old world is crazy, but stuff like this happens every day. Call it fortuitous, just plain luck, or synchronicity for
you fans of The Police, but it's just one of those odd occasionsthat make you blurt
out either "There is a God", "Satan is real", "it's a small world", or none of the above.
        We walked out of the store, chatting with her about Gram, and I told Jimmy that I was going to the car.   He immediately knew what I was up to. To quote Seinfeld, "George likes his chicken spicy", and of course I also "like to give tapes to strangers". She was really happy to get it, mainly because her daughter and son-in-law were big Gram fans and she was going to see them that night or the next day. So you figure that at least someone got some pleasure out of it. We called DeLana's friend from high school. I can't remember her name, and I don't even know where she lived at the time. But she'd lived there longer than DeLana and she told us were the Derry Down was
located. By this point, in June 1996, it was a drug store, I think. We did go inside for a bit just to look around. It was a skating rink at one point.   Gram's stepdad, Bob Parsons, had bought it and opened it up just for a place for Gram's band to play. It's
mentiioned in 'Twenty Thousand Roads', for sure.
                 Well, if I don't get some grip on my brain, my mind and my fingers, I'll be up 'til 5 AM extolling the virtue of one Ingram Cecil Conner III aka Gram Parsons!
The years went by, and '01 came around. Mike Snider, Dallas concert promoter who's introduced Slobberbone and probably The Drams more than once (or 'oncest', as 46% of my coworkers say - trivial note, and I didn't plan on this - but I realized right after I typed in '46' that I am 46 years old and that Gram was born in '46 - to quote Letterman, "is this anything?" - I know that it's nothing but further proof that the universe was created on a mathematical formula - either that, or coincidence was meant to occur at the roughly the same rate of births and deaths - it happens constantly, all of the time!) - anyway, I heard about this thing that Mike Snider put together on Nov. 5, 2001.
                 It was called 'Gramfest' and I think that he'd already done it four years in a row by the time that I heard about it. Danny Balis, et al, formed 'Agregious Angels", which they later changed to 'Sham Parsons'. I think, in fact, that they changed it that night, after the poster was printed! They performed with other bands, notably Lucky Pierres. Lucky Pierres had also opened for Damnations TX and Kelly Willis in Feb of
'00 at Gypsy Tea Room, also promoted by Mike Snider. Other performers includ

[TheBigChicken]

Gram Parsons spent time in Waycross,Ga as well . Huge Parsons fan here. Have you seen the documentary?

[George_Savage]

Gram Parsons spent time in Waycross,Ga as well . Huge Parsons fan here. Have you seen the documentary?

          Yeh, Billy Ray Herrin took us all around Waycross and we saw where Gram lived, where he went to school, where his dad worked, etc.   Billy Ray's in the documentary talking about Gram's time in Waycross.  And his wife cooked steaks for us!   And she made the best-ever potato salad that I've eaten!   I keep thinking that I will go back and document some of this on camcorder.   Mine was broken last time.  I also never mentioned either time that I found Gram's grave in New Orleans, or I didn't get into much detail, at least.   I listened to a lot of Gram over the weekend, and I wish that Jim would do a whole album of nothing but Gram songs!

Low Dog

[TheBigChicken]

Gram Parsons spent time in Waycross,Ga as well . Huge Parsons fan here. Have you seen the documentary?

          Yeh, Billy Ray Herrin took us all around Waycross and we saw where Gram lived, where he went to school, where his dad worked, etc.   Billy Ray's in the documentary talking about Gram's time in Waycross.  And his wife cooked steaks for us!   And she made the best-ever potato salad that I've eaten!   I keep thinking that I will go back and document some of this on camcorder.   Mine was broken last time.  I also never mentioned either time that I found Gram's grave in New Orleans, or I didn't get into much detail, at least.   I listened to a lot of Gram over the weekend, and I wish that Jim would do a whole album of nothing but Gram songs!

Low Dog

If JJ did an all GP cover album life would then be complete.  :o

[aMillionDreams]

Gram Parsons spent time in Waycross,Ga as well . Huge Parsons fan here. Have you seen the documentary?

          Yeh, Billy Ray Herrin took us all around Waycross and we saw where Gram lived, where he went to school, where his dad worked, etc.   Billy Ray's in the documentary talking about Gram's time in Waycross.  And his wife cooked steaks for us!   And she made the best-ever potato salad that I've eaten!   I keep thinking that I will go back and document some of this on camcorder.   Mine was broken last time.  I also never mentioned either time that I found Gram's grave in New Orleans, or I didn't get into much detail, at least.   I listened to a lot of Gram over the weekend, and I wish that Jim would do a whole album of nothing but Gram songs!

Low Dog

If JJ did an all GP cover album life would then be complete.  :o

He was working on one at one point.  I don't know how far along he is.  We do have Hot Burrito #1, Still Feeling Blue, and Dark Side of the Street (even though that not an original of his) to keep us happy and hoping.

[TheBigChicken]

Jim if you read this would you consider doing Sleepless Nights?
                                                              Thanks,
                                                                           RC 8-)

[Jbones72]

BIG GP fan...actually when I saw Jim do 'Still Feeling Blue" on the Return To Sin City Tribute Dvd I knew I'd be into MMJ . If you haven't read the book 20.000 Roads yet pick it up, it has EVERYTHING you will ever want to know about GP.