Sitting at my patio table with espresso roast coffee reminiscing about Jeff Dahl’s Desert Trash Blast on November 15, 1997 at Nita’s Hideaway. The Golden Arms. Trash Brats. Kevin K Band. Jeff Dahl. US Bombs. 

Buckshot George makes a pot of cowboy beans with Distillery Dogs drummer Dead End Dave Wathen. While the beans simmer, they swap band stories, talk about and debate whether going on tour would be a great adventure or a terrible mistake. It’s part interview, part band meeting, and part kitchen-table bullshit session.

I decided to record another podcast.

This time I sat around the fire with my girlfriend, Nikki. We cooked potatoes and onions in a cast-iron skillet and turned on the recorder.

At some point I accidentally turned off the recorder without realizing it.

So much for becoming a professional podcaster.

We eventually figured it out and started recording again.

Here’s the result.

I finally did it. I recorded a podcast.

For the first episode, I figured I’d start with the obvious question: Who the hell is Buckshot George?

I talk about where the name came from, some of the bands and people who got me here, and how Buckshot George eventually became more than just a goofy nickname.

This isn’t intended to be a slick, heavily produced podcast. It’s just me telling stories about music, gigs, bands, and whatever else seems worth talking about.

Episode One runs about 23 minutes.

Give it a listen. 

Busking is an antidepressant for me.

I saw my first busker in the French Quarter of New Orleans in the summer of 1987. He was shirtless and long-haired, sweating under a fancy Western hat. He was singing some song about Montreal.

That’s all I remember about the tune, but I made a mental note to myself:

I’d like to do that someday.

Someday was over 30 years later.

In between, I spent a lot of years playing in bands. Quite frankly, I finally became exhausted by all the compromises and drama of being in bands. I reached a breaking point and decided to quit playing.

I essentially took my toys and went home.

Quitting music took away my sense of purpose, and I became really depressed.

The problem remained: I still wanted to play.

My first busking experience was during a Kentucky Bourbon Festival in Bardstown several years ago. I found a spot on the corner and set up with my Epiphone J-45 copy and brand-new Roland Cube Street battery-powered amp.

I was nervous as hell.

My kids were there.

It wasn’t a great performance, and I only made $3, but it got busking in my blood.

I can’t get arrested in Bardstown.

Well, as far as gigging goes.

That’s an important distinction because I’ve actually been arrested in Bardstown.

What I love most about busking, and by now I’ve done it in many cities in the U.S., is the connection with pedestrians.

Whether they want to hear me perform or not, they have to.

Which amuses me a little.

I don’t have to schedule it. I just pack up the car and drive to the center of town. No dealing with booking, schedules, or fee negotiations.

On a good day, I reach people who wouldn’t run into me in a bar. Runners and joggers. Small children. The elderly. Hot chicks out walking their dogs. Other colorful characters like eccentrics and the homeless.

So far, the police have left me alone everywhere. Except for one.

He helped me land a paid gig in a restaurant that his buddy owned.

The dancing children. The singalongs. The tips. Sometimes people drop prayer cards.

You can’t beat a good day busking.

Weather permitting, of course.

I used to think playing for old folks meant I had to tone it down.

I’ve played gigs for older crowds where I was asked to turn it down, dress a little more conservatively, and lose some of the rock & roll flair. Apparently, there are situations where there can be a little too much Buckshot George.

I did my first assisted living facility gig in my usual attire, as if I’d be fronting a punk rock band.

To my amazement, the residents had seen me listed on the calendar. Some had viewed my YouTube videos and were eagerly awaiting my arrival. I even signed an autograph after the show.

I started to think I had read this audience wrong.

I’ve played quite a few of these gigs now.

Some old folks like to rock.

I walked into the dining room Friday afternoon while everyone was finishing lunch. The room was packed. I’d guess there were more than 40 people.

I brought in my guitar and Bose S1, set up, and opened with Elvis Presley’s “That’s All Right.”

A few people cheered. Others started clapping along.

My big observation is that nursing home residents actually watch the entire show. In contrast to a bar gig, where you are playing to people’s backs—just background noise to people drinking, talking, flirting, watching sports on TVs, and generally not paying attention.

At an assisted living facility, you are the event.

I played some ’60s pop, classic country, Skynyrd, movie soundtrack tunes, and even a Ramones song!

There was a birthday in the house. Debbie. I called her out, and we all sang “Happy Birthday” together.

The finale was “Free Bird.”

No one requested it. It wasn’t a bad joke or a meme.

They went nuts during the fast ending.

Clapping. Yeehaw. Banging along on tables. Loud applause when I finished.

There was a pretty good casual meet-and-greet after the show.

Then the crowd dispersed and went to bingo.

The activities director told me later that quite a few musicians who come in are not as animated and just sit there singing.

“They feed off your energy,” she explained. “I even tell my bingo hosts to be lively and fun. It’s important.”

So much for toning it down.

We met him at the Hampton Inn on a rainy Saturday in July.

Kevin “Hotwheels” McGregor. Frontman of The Earps in Phoenix, Arizona. In town on a business trip for his day job.

He came out the back entrance, running through the rain to hop into the back of my girlfriend Nikki’s Nissan Pathfinder. It was my first time seeing him since Nashville a few years ago.

We headed off to meet Marvin Goldstein, aka “Jewey Ramone,” and his wife, Char Goldstein.

Marvin, along with Bill Levin, was among the first people to establish the punk rock scene in Indianapolis in the 1970s.

We missed an exit and had to double back.

“I love you, honey, but you’re not a very good driver,” Nikki said.

Kevin agreed.

We arrived at the Goldstein home, where Char had prepared a spread of cheese and crackers, chips and dip. Kevin admired the design of the home and the decorations.

With Kevin and Char in the same room, there was never much danger of an awkward silence. Both are high-energy people. The conversation moved fast, bounced from subject to subject, and occasionally had several subjects going at once.

We saw Marvin’s “Ramones Man Cave,” a small room with mostly, but not completely, Ramones-related memorabilia.

We left after a while to attend Punk Rock Night at the Melody Inn.

I hadn’t been there since I played bass for Ricky Rat, the guitarist of Detroit’s Trash Brats gone solo.

A $10 cover and a bill of mostly younger punk rock bands.

We ordered some drinks, and Kevin went to the men’s room to add to the decor of the sticker-bombed dive bar restroom with a vinyl Earps decal.

We went to the beer garden out back, and McGregor got us up to speed on the latest adventures of The Earps, a band that was founded in 2003 and continues to this day, with many lineup changes along the way.

The original drummer, Matt Maverick, has returned. A woman named Darcy is on bass now. They’re still seeking a permanent guitar player. An album is in the works—being written, anyway.

The band too tough to die.

I joined The Earps shortly before Halloween 2005, replacing original bass player Leif L’Amour, who I still bullshit with on Facebook once in a while.

My nickname in Phoenix was “Georgie,” based on an early glam rock pseudonym I used in a glam/drag band called Perfume Bomb: Georgie Glitterbrat.

(We were young.)

Kevin had decided that Jason Smith was not a usable stage name, so Buckshot George was born.

It was a Young Guns II reference. The Earps were really big on ’80s movie references.

I went to Kentucky in 2010.

The Earps moved on.

Buckshot George moved on.

Anyway, like Jeff Dahl, Kevin insisted that we watch a little of each band instead of hanging out back for the entire show. It’s respectful, plus you might miss a really great band.

We caught the first band, a pop-punk group, and then Alex K & The Board of Directors from Cincinnati.

We watched The Board of Directors and agreed they had a great show. Gimmicks, kitsch, and theatrics are well appreciated by The Earps, and The Board of Directors had all that.

After a couple of bands, we called it a night. We climbed back into Nikki’s Pathfinder and returned Kevin to the Hampton Inn.

An Earp had come to Indianapolis.

We sent him back with another punk-rock bathroom properly stickered. 

Last Friday’s singing telegram gig was rough.

The air conditioning went out in my car, which is not ideal in August. I drove to Harrodsburg with the windows down and a birthday balloon bouncing around inside the car.

Somewhere along the way, the Hershey bar I was supposed to deliver melted.

The data stopped working on my phone Wednesday night. I spent hours on the phone with Verizon tech support, which took away from practice time. It still wasn’t fixed.

No data meant no navigation, and I didn’t know my way around Harrodsburg well enough to wing it. Dad saved my ass by letting me use his old Garmin GPS.

Remember those?

With the Garmin leading the way, I made an emergency stop at Dollar General to replace the melted Hershey bar and continued on to the gig.

The assignment included “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley.

I had learned it the day before.

This seemed perfectly reasonable because my runthroughs at home had been legendary performances.

Then I played it in front of actual people.

I absolutely butchered it.

There’s a strange phenomenon that occurs in music where you can play something perfectly fifteen times in your living room and then suddenly lose all understanding of the guitar the moment another human being is watching.

I played the chorus of “We Are the Champions” by Queen, fulfilling the song requests.

Elvis to the rescue.

I launched into “That’s All Right,” a song I know quite well, just to prove that I didn’t suck.

Fortunately, nobody seemed to care.

The family was happy. The birthday boy was sufficiently embarrassed, which was the whole point. His little sister was rocking out.

So maybe I didn’t butcher the gig after all.

That day, rock & roll meant driving through Kentucky with no air conditioning, following an old Garmin GPS, carrying a Dollar General Hershey bar, and Rickrolling a stranger on his birthday.

And you know what?

They laughed. The kid rocked out. I got paid to play guitar.

Then I put everything back in the car, rolled down the windows, and started the hot drive home.

It’s a mighty long way down rock & roll.