The Tufa was a great place to learn how to work a crowd. We'd get cowboys, rednecks, bikers, old farts, an occasional yuppie or two…a little bit of everything. Every one basically got along, though they could be a little hard on strangers at first. And Californians were usually treated to some pretty crappy service. Something tells me Michael Moore wouldn't have won any popularity contests in Kirkland Junction.
On Friday nights that little bar out in the middle of nowhere would fill up with a crowd that was ready to dance to classic country (we just called it country) and rock and roll. Sometimes I was joined by another area entertainer, Jake Lucero, who'd come over all the way from the mining town of Bagdad about an hour away. We did a few shows together 'til he got home late one night and his girlfriend/wife/whatever she was met him at the door with a shotgun. She missed, and Jake took off that night for Nevada. I never saw him again. There was another guy named Chuckles, who had no fingers but somehow played guitar. Cowboy singer Frank Rodriguez would pop in from time to time. Same with Jim Clayborn, who pulled a couple all nighters with me singing to the gang in the Tufa parking lot over cold beers and Captain Morgan.
The place was owned by a guy named Mike Roberts, every commuter's nightmare: a truck driver with a liquor license. Mike was basically deaf, which eventually cost him his trucker's license and is probably the reason he hired me in the first place. We were amigos, me and Mike. Even after I'd moved to Mexico he'd still hire me any time I had a free night, and he always made sure to stock up on the Captain and carry Mexican beer whenever I was in town. (Kirkland Junction was not an imported beer kind of town….and I doubt they ever mixed a single pina colada in the years I played there.)
The only time Mike and I ever had our friendship tested was when he booked me for a New Year's Eve gig. He advertised the heck out of it, even ran radio ads in Prescott (the nearest "big city"). By the time I hopped on stage that night the crowd was warmed up and ready to rock. About four songs into my first set, suddenly the lights dimmed and I lost my sound. The lights came back on a few seconds later but my sound never did. I later found out there had been a brownout in the area and it blew my only fuse in my amp. I took a break and desperately called a few buddies in the area who had amplifiers, but being New Year's Eve nothing was available. Meanwhile the crowd was screaming for beer and music. Mike, deaf as a doorknob, was apparently unaware that I wasn't singing when I walked up to him and tapped him on the shoulder.
"Mike, we have a small problem", I said. "Something blew when the lights dimmed and we have no amplification".
Mike slugged down a swig of beer and eloquently responded, "Fix it". That's the problem, I explained. No more fuses means no amplification. No amplification means people can't hear. Etc, etc. Mike slowly grasped the enormity of the situation, looked me in the eye and summed up his building frustration with one word:
"Outside!"
I was being challenged to a fight. By the owner of the bar. In a dirt parking lot thirty five miles away from the nearest hospital. The crowd went nuts and followed us out the door. Mike was one pissed off redneck and I knew I was a dead man. As the crowd circled , I desperately resorted to a strategy that had saved my life once before back in high school.
"Mike, tell you what. Hit me as hard as you want. I won't even hit you back", I told him.
Caught slightly off guard, he asked "Why the hell not?"
"Cause you're my friend and I don't hit my friends." (Side note to reader: although the previous statement sounds admirable, it was made with the full knowledge that I didn't stand a chance in this brawl anyway…so how about diplomacy?) I continued. "At least you got your power back and you have a bar full of customers. I lost my amp AND my best paying gig of the year" (What, a hundred bucks?) "But if you want I'll go back in and sing on a bar stool til I lose my voice and I'll do it for free just to keep my end of the deal, OK?"
There was an awkward silence as Mike pondered his options between leniency and personally administering the death penalty. In a move that probably destroyed his reputation among fellow truck drivers to this day, he chose the former.
"Aw, sh#t!, Mark , you know I'd never hit you". My life had been spared, to the visiting crowd's disappointment I might add. I'd like to say that I went back in and sang for a packed house and that we all made money hand over fist, but after the debacle in the parking lot, the crowd Mike had worked so hard to attract headed for their cars and deserted us for the next place up the highway. Mike and I spent that New Year's Eve alone at the bar with my guitar. He got so smashed he fell off his bar stool twice. We shared a few laughs and never talked about that night again.
