041 Viva Bojangles transcript (Jerry Jeff Walker)

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Amit: This is Famous and Gravy, a conversation about quality of life as we see it one dead celebrity at a time. Now for the opening quiz to reveal today's dead celebrity.

Michael: This person died in 2020, age 78. He grew up in tta, New York, where he was a rebellious youth who excelled in athletics.

Friend: Dennis Hopper is the only person that's even remotely come into mind because I heard the word rebellious,

Michael: not Dennis Hopper, I believe he's been dead a while. He began his career in the 1960s, hitchhiking and busking around the country before establishing himself in Greenwich Village.

Friend: So he's artsy, , but athletic. So a good catch. I mean, Woody Guthrie been dead forever. I got nothing, man

Michael: in a career that spanned six decades. He never had a top 40 pop hit. Ooh, is it a beach boy?

No. They would've had pop hit, mainstream radio programmers didn't play his music. Perhaps because of his. Braying singing voice and his reputation for being intoxicated on stage or for failing to show up for performances altogether.

Friend: Oh my God. What's his last name? Jerry from the Grateful Dead. Was he dead before 2020?

Michael: Jerry Garcia?

Friend: Yeah.

Michael: Um, not Jerry Garcia. He became a mainstay of the Texas Outlaw Movement that catapulted Willie Nelson and Wayland Jennings to fame years after his best known composition, Mr. Bojangles.

Friend: Oh, j Jerry. Jeff Walker. You're Jeff Walker.

Michael: Today's dead celebrity is Jerry Jeff Walker.

Jerry: Oh, my favorite. We're gonna sit and BS a little bit and hope to have a lot of fun and, and played lots of songs. Have a good time tonight. Well,

great for us, this goes back to about, we're just saying downstairs about 20 years. We started on a stage somewhere in Mississippi with two guitars, Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Yep. We were playing over there and uh, Jerry, Jeff was my hero then.

That took about 24 hours to change that. Yeah, that, that changed real quick. I went, I'm not sure I want to be like this.

Michael: Welcome to Famous and Great. I'm Michael Osborne.

Amit: My name is Amit Kapoor

Michael: and on this show we choose a celebrity who died in the last 10 years and review their quality of life. We go through a series of categories to figure out the things in life that we would actually desire and ultimately answer a big question, would I want that life today?

Jerry, Jeff Walker died 2020, age 78.

This is our first one of the year. This is the first one of the year. Happy New. This is 2023. I know. Yeah. Happy New Year. So what this means is that someone who has died in 2012 is no longer eligible for our show. That's right. But we got one in with the last

one with we did.

Dick Clark just got Justin to the wire. Category one G grading the first line of their obituary. Jerry, Jeff Walker, the singer songwriter who wrote the much recorded standard, Mr. Bojangles, and later became a mainstay of the Texas Outlaw Movement that catapulted Willie Nelson and Wayland Jennings to fame.

Died on Friday at a hospital in intense. That was absolutely perfect. . Thank you. Kelly.

Amit: You

Michael: go. I'm glad I can.

Amit: The Yes,

Michael: yes. Thank you for You're very good at this. Sure. I'm gonna call, I gonna start with,

Amit: I, I love it was,

Michael: Kelly. This was so much fun to thank you. And I think it's gonna come out next Wednesday, so we we'll be in touch.

And, uh, one

Amit: of the things we've been Yeah, we've, and we had this discussion with

Michael: Muhammad Ali and Yeah. I, and many others. I mean, I think that the famous person who died in the newsworthy event is Jerry, Jeff Walker, but worth

Amit: noting, and this is part of the life tale that

Michael: we're gonna get into. Oh yeah.

Good call and we'll get more into it. All right. Singer songwriter had to use that phrase. Yep. Right, right. I, although I did think that you could perhaps say folk singer, let's say Bob Dylan. I think we're gonna, Dylan's gonna come up again in this conversation. Bob Dylan dies tomorrow. The New York Times has to write their o his obituary.

Did they say Bob Dylan, the singer songwriter? No, I think they're gonna throw in folk. Okay. What about Robert Earl Cain? Uh, Texas country. I mean, John Prine got singer songwriter, I think.

Amit: Yes. Which is appropriate. I think if

Michael: you're, I think it often means folk singer.

Amit: It does. No, no, no, no. Not going with that.

Michael: You're not with me on that. No. I think the way it's used in the obituaries, it's often, um, singer songwriters are like folk singer adjacent if they're not folk singers themselves. What do you think about

Amit: Jeff Tweedy? Is he folk singer to you?

Michael: Yeah. Okay. I mean, I guess I see your point. It's just that, um,

Amit: Ryan Adams, this is what comes to mind.

Why you think singer? Singer songwriters? Yeah. Of today, singer songwriters of today.

Michael: Okay. Well, I only bring this up because I do think. You could have used the word folk in here, or folk hero or folk star or folk country or folk something and that, that they didn't, right? Yes. So that, that's why I lingered on that.

Amit: Okay. Yeah. Country folk I think would've been the only other

Michael: choice. Yeah. Uh, much recorded standard. Mr. Bojangles. Let's come back to the Mr. Bojangles thing in a second mainstay of the Texas Outlaw movement that catapulted Willie Nelson and Wayland Jennings mainstay. This is a Yogi Bera term, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah. . Um, I think it's actually a great word to use for Jerry, Jeff Walker. He is a mainstay of this. You know, genre of music, Texas outlaw

Amit: movement. Correct. And then the way that they talked about it or that they wrote it in that way, the chronology is actually correct. Yes. And that's something I was not that familiar with me neither, that Jerry, Jeff preceded Willie and Wayland in kind of the ascension of Austin in the outlaw scene and

Michael: the outlaw music scene.

Yes. And he, I mean, he kind of laid the groundwork for it. And that's actually maybe my favorite thing about this, that this is accurate and novel and tells a story. And it's interesting that Jerry, Jeff Bega Willie Nelson and Wayland Jennings, and then died in the hospital in Austin. That makes sense. All right, so let's talk about the Mr.

Bojangles piece of this. Okay. I mean, here's the thing I, I'm coming at this particular famous en Gravy episode with a tremendous amount of bias because of proximity. I grew up in Austin, Jerry, Jeff was absolutely a mainstay. He was always there, and I knew about him and about his music. Really long before I knew about Mr.

Bojangles, and I wonder how much of the world sees him as a almost one hit wonder with Mr. Bojangles. A lot of it. Right. I guess I, that's my assumption too. But I, I learned that later. And so I think it's right that they referenced this sort of next level famous song. Yes. Um, but it's not my first association with him, even though I think it's most people's first

Amit: association with him, and that I think that is just our bias, meaning you and I.

Yeah. And that brings up a point I want to talk to you about is that we've gotta bring some self-awareness. Jerry. Jeff Walker is a bigger name to us than he is to the majority of our listeners. Yeah. This

Michael: is regional

Amit: fame in a lot of ways, right? Yeah. We need to be conscious of that, the way we talk about 'em, that a lot of the topics and names we go into are not as assumed as we think they are.

Michael: Yeah. Right. No, no, no. I've been given that a lot of thought lately. I mean, people didn't know. Larry Mc Marrie was who I think also kind of falls into this category. I mean, so, okay, let's get back to it. There's a lot that's working here. I like that they got Mr. Bojangles in there. I think they had to, if you know this man for anything, you probably know him about this.

But then they also got the com splice in here saying Mainstay of Texas Outlaw country and helped, you know, create Willie and Wayland as you know them. So there's a lot of like nod to his pioneering accomplishments or contribution to, you know, a genre of music. Yeah, I think they did injustice. I think so too.

And I feel like the author knew what the fuck they were talking about when they wrote it. Yeah. Okay. I'm going nine. Yeah.

Amit: Where are you? I hate it when we match. . . Uh, yeah. I'm also a nine. Are

Michael: you? Yeah, I think that's, I think we should feel good about

Amit: that. I'm not really pointing out any flaws that you didn't, but I gotta have some socks blown off for a 10.

Michael: Okay. Category two. Yep. Category two. Five things I love about you here. Amit and I work together. Come up with five things we love about this person, five reasons we ought to be talking about them in the first place.

Amit: I think

Michael: you go first. Can I say something first before we get into it? You mentioned proximity a second ago, so there's actually a few firsts on this.

So first of all, this is the first time that I have met somebody who is being featured on Famous and Gravy. I met Jerry, Jeff on at least two occasions that I remember. Okay. And I think it might have been more, those others were when I was drunk. Um, which makes sense, right? So there's that, the last thing to get off, but, and then we'll get, I promise we'll get to category two here in a second.

Is that I met Jengo in the lead up to this episode because the family made available a documentary. They actually helped us with some of the source data. They helped us with some of the source data. Hey, famous and Gravy listeners, Michael Osborne here. I wanna step outside the episode for just a second because as am and I were working on this episode, we discovered a documentary called Okay Buckaroos.

It was directed by a guy named Patrick Tourville, and both Patrick and Jerry, Jeff's family, including his son Jengo, were incredibly helpful for helping us get a hold of a copy of the documentary. The documentary itself is called Okay Buckaroos, and it is awesome. I really recommend it. If you like this episode, you should absolutely check out the D V D, which can be purchased@jerryjeff.com.

We will also link to jerry jeff.com in the show notes. All right. Back to the episode. And you know, Django said, I, I hope you do 'em right. You know? Yeah. So one of the premises of our show was like, celebrities live in this whole other category. And you know, I think you and I do the work of trying to humanize them, but most of the time we don't really know them or knew the people who did know them.

Not true here,

Amit: which I think is gonna make it more interesting. I hope so. That's my hope for it. I

Michael: hope so. There's other deeper stuff going on in terms of proximity, but we'll save it. And actually, let me lead off with this. This is not a bad segue. Okay. The first thing I have here is . This is a little generic, but overall, really good life plan and kind of perfect story for a folk singer.

So, okay, let me lay this out.

I

Amit: think, but you just take away all other possibilities of . I don't think so. I

Michael: think that like, or here's, here's what I think, I think that there are stages in life. Ideally you have a kind of innocent, carefree childhood, and then you might have a rebellious sort of adolescence, and then you have a free spirited, you know, early adulthood and emerging adulthood.

And then you grow into an a adult and you assume certain responsibilities, and then maybe you even become a kind of mentor and father figure or mother figure or whatever. And yeah, I, I dropped off your scale of few. I dropped off this a long time ago too. Most people do, but I feel like overall that's like the stages I want to have in life.

That's the staircase, that's the blueprint, that's the life plan. And he was very vital in each of those life plans. Especially like the folk singer thing, I mean, Goes out in his twenties, there's a lot of partying run-ins with the cops, with ever getting too crazy and outta control. And by his, you know, forties and into his fifties, he's making a decent living and he remains relevant and becomes a mentor to several important people.

I think just the overall plan, that's just like, I want that. In terms of desirability, I kind of feel like there's a natural evolution to the next stage that I want to be on pace with, and I feel like he's signposting that with his story. Maybe the most important piece of that too is I think the sense of freedom he experiences from an adolescent to his forties, like his twenties and thirties are.

Great. Yeah, they're wild. They're free. They're adventurous. I don't know. They're beautiful. When I finally got out of one and got rolling, I said, oh, I'm free. I'm not gonna get guard here. I want to keep moving till I've seen everything I can see and experience a bunch of stuff as I can experience. Put that on the street Corners, passed the hat.

Occasionally a bar about one or two o'clock in the morning will let us come in and catch some of the people drifting back out of the quarter. At the end of the night, we could put a hat over and play music. Put your money in the hat. I'm Gypsy song man. Yes sir. You'd like to hear my

Amit: song. You did gloss over some things.

I mean, the man did go broke. Oh yeah. In the late seventies. Got sober almost out of necessity. I don't

Michael: think it was totally sober, but I think quit the heavy drinking and the drugs. So not as, as don't misunderstand Muhammad. I'm not saying like. Look at all these rosy chapters of his life and there was no pain or difficulty.

Sure. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that the response to each life stage and into the evolution of the next thing is kind of the pacing of it is a, is a great full, rich, overall good life plan. Yeah. I'm not describing

Amit: timing is good. No. It's gonna make a good biopic. You think so? I think is what you're saying is that just like it follows this character like an updyke novel?

Yeah, sort of of that. You just go small town, live carefree, create this new home, find your love, still stay crazy, bring it down a little bit, have kids become an icon, become a mentor, become a grandparent, and live it out a little easier despite some disease and health difficulties you're fighting later in life.

It's a pretty good

Michael: blueprint. It's that it's actually that simple. You know, this is part of the reason we mythologize folk singers, right? Is that that's kind of what they're doing. Well, he did it. And I think it's beautiful. That's my number one. I'll sign off on it. All right. What do you got for number two?

Number two, immigrant .

Amit: Uh, and this is not about the United States of America. This is about the state of Texas. Yeah. So not a native Texan, but came to define so much of the Texas music scene. Yeah, right. Born in New York. Lived in New York through high school and beyond. Really? Didn't land in Texas until what, the late sixties, early seventies.

Yeah. So we're talking to mans about 30 years old. Yeah. Right before he finds Texas. Yeah. Then not only like defines. Sort of this aspect of Tex music almost comes to define two cities in Texas. Mm-hmm. Sort of is the definition of Austin in the seventies. Yeah. And Leach, yeah. Uh, would not have near the cachet it would right now if it were not for Jerry, Jeff Walker.

This is true. So that's remarkable. And here's what I like about it, is you can do that. Yeah. You know, especially this fucking state as uh, stubborn as we can be. You know, one of our heroes here that we're talking about came from the state of New York. Yeah. Well, great. I mean that as American of a story as it comes, is go manifest destiny, go somewhere and conquer.

And you can still do that in the 20th century. And I, at first didn't like that. I remember one of the first things I heard about Jerry, Jeff Walker, um, was he's not from

Michael: Texas. This is the same with. It was interesting how people like in Austin and people I grew up with, like were quick to point that out.

Yeah.

Amit: Yeah. I mean, Lila Lovett has a song like, you're Not From Texas. Yeah. You know? Um, but it's okay. And we seem to, to welcome him. I mean, I'm not from Texas. I was born in Detroit by way of India. Is that right? Before. I was that I'm Indian .

Michael: That you were born in Detroit. I move.

Amit: Yeah. We moved here when I was three.

Is that right? But I'm as Texan as anybody else. I agree. I liked that he was able

Michael: to do it. But isn't that interesting that both you and I had the experience growing up of people being quick to point out, you know, Jerry Jeff's from New York. Yes. Like, I, what, what is that all about?

Amit: It's sort of calling him out.

I think it was his detractors that wanted to point that out. And I think I bought on the wagon at first. Yeah, I did too. I think, I think it was this idea that he's addressed up Cowboy. Yeah. The idea that he is just playing a Texan. I

Michael: gotta say though, I had to really, like in the past few weeks and days getting ready for this episode, I realized how much of, like I had to fight against that message.

Uh, that somehow he's not authentic, that I learned at an early age because he is authentic. Yeah. And the more I read his story, the, you know, he, he choose. Austin in the late sixties and early seventies, in part because he has experimented with a lot of the rest of America and is feeling a kind of cultural pole to plant his flag here.

And it's like this is the place where I can express who I am and what I'm all about and what kind of music I have in me, which is, there's nothing more authentic than that. So it, it bothers me that I grew up with this bias. Yes.

Amit: I think he shattered this wall that we, as Texans put up. Yeah. So I love that.

It's the all American

Michael: story. I love it too. And I think it's a great number two. I am kind of building off of that with my number three. It's not just that he sort of claimed taxes. I think he's as much a progenitor of the Austin music scene in the 1970s as anybody. Again, Willie and Whelan credit him with paving the way.

Also, I think you could throw David Enco guy, Clark Towns Van San and even Jimmy Buffett as people who pointed to like major influence from Jerry, Jeff Walker. Yeah. So I think that I, I'm trying to say something about like the music scene he helped create separate and apart from the identity of the state.

Amit: Yeah. Austin as a countercultural place, as a place where rednecks and hippies merge. Right. Is exactly that like 1970 scene that Jerry, Jeff could maybe be credited almost exclusively towards starting. Yeah.

Michael: I mean, I think most people would wanna point to will.

Amit: Yeah, but the thing is, I think Willie arrived a little bit after Jerry.

Jeff. Yeah. There's no question He returned from Nashville a little bit after Jerry. Jeff, that's the thing. Even though Willie's roots in Texas, despite my last point or deeper, yeah. I think he arrived a

Michael: little bit later. Oh no, I, I think that that's absolutely a chronology. I think Willie had written songs like crazy and um, you know, every, whatever else he'd done in Nashville was struggling.

And then, I mean, this is the way William Wayland talked about it. They see Jerry, Jeff in Austin, they're like, I want to go home and do that every Sunday. What we do is we'd go up to a guys, uh, had a little ranch out by the lake and uh, we would everybody chip in by three or four halves of beer and all the bands would meet and jam.

Oh wow. And the girls all showed up to hang out. So it was just dancing and dogs and chicks and booze. And we started calling it the Austin Interchangeable Dance Man, because everybody knew everybody. Right. And if you were going on the road, you grabbed this league guitar player, that drummer, and go and, and, uh, we just had a lot of fun.

Was just a great time to, to be doing it. I think.

Amit: Let's narrow it down and be specific. I mean, I think it created the Austin movement of the 1970s, which is still reverberating into what everybody fantasizes about in Austin, that that's true. People in, when these Facebook employees in San Francisco think about the next place they're gonna move, they get this image of, you know, peace signs and cowboy boots.

And that is very much can be drawn. A direct back, straight line to this, to Jerry, Jeff to this moment. Yeah. Yeah. To Jerry, Jeff cutting an album there in the early seventies.

Michael: Yeah. Okay. That's my number three for generator of the Austin music scene. Uh,

Amit: number four, healthy form of masculinity.

Michael: Oh, say

Amit: more what you just talked about to him, like pioneering this, this cowboy scene.

Yeah. Right. Lot of masculinity in that lot of talks about Yeah. Testosterone, you know, bar fights, hard drinking. Yeah. But I think what distinguishes Jerry, Jeff from some of his peers, and maybe not from Willy so much, but certainly Wayland, Merle Johnny Cash is, he had a different type of softness to it.

Hmm. And one thing that tipped me off to this is I was listening to an interview with him that was recorded in 2006 and Key West, and he was talking about, you know, how he's had to slow down. Uh, the guy's like, well, what do you do? And he is like, well, I do

Michael: yoga. I'm ready to be where I am right now. I've got two lovely kids, a girl and little boy.

And, uh, I'm enjoying feeling good and I've got lots of things that I've experienced and written about. Now it's a nice time to be able to perform them well. , those more chicken fried steaks and uh, you know, I thought that was good eating. . Yeah. I was doing myself good. Pretty much just basically watching, eating lighter and leaner and doing little running and playing lots of golf.

Everybody needs a little golf zen in their life. .

Amit: Yeah. You know, and I just, I liked that, you know, that you could have a guy who's one of his most famous lyrics is, you know, que alone star beer and wild Turkey liquor. And then, you know, a couple decades later he is like, I'm doing yoga. Yeah. And he also just, you know, he lived a good portion of his life in the last few decades in Belize, you know?

Mm-hmm. . A real softie. Yeah. A real romantic. Yeah. I think. But he's still a hard fight and old school cowboy, and he's kind of both, but it looks like he's had the self-awareness, the bodily awareness, the romance, the emotional freedom. Yeah. That I think is really needed in healthy masculinity.

Michael: That's a really interesting one, AMED, because I, I do think that there's a man's man quality to Jerry, Jeff Walker.

Oh, hugely. Yeah. But I also agree, I see a, a, I don't know if sensitive is the right word, but I do see like an evolving definition of masculinity. So whenever you see anybody kind of like maintaining a, a rootedness in his masculinity, but pushing the boundaries a little bit, I think it deserves to be applauded.

So I actually

Amit: really like that one. Yeah. More than applauded. I mean, the, the more men that you have that are comfortable and you know, still calling themselves a man by the fact that they're belting out songs, wearing boots and cowboy hats, but are also doing yoga, wearing their emotions Yeah. On their sleeves and showing their soft sides, uh, that's gonna unfold in, in terrific ways.

Michael: All right. Should I take number five? Yes. I'm gonna go very simple here. Chose his. Okay, so I did read his autobiography and there's a backstory to how he got the name Gypsy song man was autobiography Gypsy song man. Yes. So he first gets the name Jerry because when he is still in New York, after he is graduated high school, he is not going to college.

He's not really got a plan. His family encourages him to go into the National Guard. He is on leave and this is in New York, but he's on leave and at the time the drinking age in New Jersey was 21 and he was 20 and somebody gave him a fake id and the name on it was Jerry Davis. So for a while he called himself Jerry Davis.

Then he goes AWOL from the National Guard and he's hitchhiking around the country. He goes to New Orleans and around Texas and he leaves home and you know, has a guitar and kind of living the folks in your life. At some point in New Orleans, he runs into somebody who was in the company at the National Guard and said, you know, they're looking for you.

And he is like, okay, I'm gonna go home and deal with this. So he's gone awol, right? He could go to jail. So he goes back home and faces the music and there'd been a change of command there. And they basically said, we won't tell anybody if you won't tell anybody and you're not gonna go to jail. And he goes, okay.

So he walks out of there and he is, and as he is walking out, he's feeling this rush of freedom. He's like, from now on I'm gonna call myself Jeff Walker because I'm walking freely. But then he goes back to New Orleans as Jeff Walker and everybody there is like, everybody here knows you as Jerry. And he is like, but, but I'm Jeff Walker now I've walked free from jail.

And then he has the idea, you know what Jerry? Jeff Walker and that's how he gets the name.

Amit: So Walker actually has a literal meaning to it. That's correct.

Michael: Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah. And he only went with the Jerry part of it cuz he liked Jeff, but he only went the jerry part of it because of a fake id.

Amit: Yeah, isn't that great? But then Jerry, Jeff combined just ends up being such a, oh, it's perfect Texas

Michael: Country song game. Yeah, it's perfect. You know how many the of the Outlaw country, you know, musicians have a three name names, right? Robert Earl Kane and Dave Delco. Yeah, David Elanco, Ray Wiley, Hubbard Downs, van Santon Away.

I mean, a little bit different. But anyway, the freedom to choose your. . Okay. I think that's a great thing. I think we need that as humans. I think we need to be able to drift in the wind and be anonymous and try on different hats and try on different boots and try on different climates and adventures and be somebody new.

Uh, and nothing captures that more than, I'm going by a new name here. I mean,

Amit: I think what we're saying is the summary of almost all of these things is you can be born Ronald Crosby in New York and by the age of 35 be Jerry Jeff

Michael: Walker, a Texan. That's exactly right. So I don't know if we even need to recap with that, but let's do it anyway.

Okay. Uh, so to recap, I said overall good life plan number two, immigrant Texan. Number three, progenitor of the Austin music scene. Uh, number four,

Amit: healthy masculinity.

Michael: And number five, chose his. All right. Category three, Malkovich Malkovich. This category is named after the movie being John Malkovich, in which people can take a little portal into John Malkovich ISS mind, and they can have a front row seat to his experiences.

All right, you go

Amit: first. Okay, so we talked about this. He is not from Texas, was not born in Texas. He's from ota, New York. So shortly after high school, he tells this story about he's working different jobs, he's dabbled in some music, been in some bands, but he's kind of got that itch that something big is happening.

And you know where we are now? We're like early sixties. There is something big happening, right? So he's in a bar drinking beer, and he meets a man named Howie Clark. And the way that he says this, and

Michael: I'm talking to this guy who been some places, Howie Clark, he's pretty famous. Sonian affair, assuming identities and bouncing chicks.

So I said to him, I said, how do you get outta here? He said, Route seven South. And I said, no. I mean like, how do you get going? He said, well, let me finish our beer and I'll, I'll show you . So we both drank our beers. We put 'em down. He said, let's go. So we walk over somewhere. Somebody says, where are you going?

He said, we're gonna head for Florida .

Amit: This is as Kerouac of a story as it gets. Yeah. Like, you know, one of the most famous dialogues in Kerouac on the road is where Neil Cassidy says to to Jack Kerouac and says, Hey man, we gotta, we gotta go. And Jack Kerouac says, yeah, yeah, yeah, we gotta go. Where are we going?

And Neil, Cassie says, I don't know man, but we gotta get there. Yeah. . And this is, this is that story. It, it encapsulates everything about what is out there in America. And it is that release and is that freedom of spirit. And it's that saying yes. And all you gotta do is go, and all you gotta do is ride down that highway.

Whatever was freed and released from Jerry Jeff's body in that time, I guarantee you was like no other satisfaction. Any other human being can achieve. So that very moment as well as a road trip that ensued. Cause I'm a big road trip guy. I love the road trip freedom story. Me too. That is my

Michael: malkovich. In his autobiography, he talks about how if you live in a small town and if you're not careful, decisions will just be made for you.

You will wind up in the National Guard and then you'll wind up in the factory. And then so to just leave town is to break free of that.

Amit: Yeah. Right. Yeah. And I just love the simplicity in the answer. Yeah. Because I think there's so much to that. Yeah. In life that you just gotta go. And I'm not romanticizing youth and I'm not even necessarily overly romanticizing in the early 1960s.

I'm saying sometimes the answer. You just gotta fucking go. Yeah, just go do it. A hundred percent agree. Just go make

Michael: the choice. A hundred percent agree. You are absolutely right that there is more agency and potential in where we can go and who we can be and what we can do than we ever give ourselves credit for.

And there is nothing more symbolic of that than I just met a guy at the bar and next thing you know, I'm hitchhiking with him to Florida. Yeah.

Amit: How'd he get out of this? You

Michael: just go. You just go. It's a beautiful man. All right. My malkovich. Mm-hmm. . Okay. So Todd Snyder is maybe the world's biggest Jerry, Jeff Walker fan.

And maybe people don't know who Todd Snyder is, but he's a folk singer. He's, you know, active today and if you don't know whose music he is, great. He's one of my favorites. Um, but Jerry, Jeff was a very active mentor to Todd Snyder. I mean, he really took him under his wing and so they get to be friends and, you know, Todd Snyder opens for Jerry, Jeff, and there's this one story of them both playing in Santa Fe one night and they played, and then they closed out the bars and they're walking home and the streets are deserted.

It's just the two of them. And they hear around the corner, somebody. Mr. Bojangles going, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And I said, man, is somebody playing Bojangles? And we walked around the corner and some old street dude for no one is singing Bojangles got a hat out, no

Amit: one's on the street.

Coincidentally, coincidentally, come

Michael: on. No, I can't. I couldn't believe it. And we were like, we gotta go over there. So we walk over there and I'm, I'm thinking, I gotta tell this guy that this, and you're right. And then I thought, no, I'm gonna sit here and see if Jerry, Jeff says who he is. Yeah, he didn't, I think he cried even a little bit.

He's 70 something. And, and so we sat there and we listened to him. And when it got over, Jerry, Jeff went, well, it was great son. That was great. And put a few bucks in his thing and we walked on back to the hotel. What is that gonna feel like, right? To be wandering the street of some town after you've been playing and you hear your song?

being played into the darkness. There's nobody even around that your song is like playing in the darkness because they connect with it so deeply and that he also, you know, he had to be asking himself the same question that Todd Snyder was thinking, do I tell this guy I wrote that song? Mm-hmm. or not? I don't know what was going through his mind then, but I, it's my malkovich moment cuz I'd, I'd like to be behind the eyes of hearing a song.

Being played empty streets in the middle of the night.

Okay, let's pause for a word from our.

Amit: Michael, do you know one of the ways in which I'm cool? ,

Michael: what did you have in mind?

Amit: I have

Michael: vinyl records. Oh, that is cool. Vinyl records are a lot of fun. I love studying the old covers, and I love that the music is actually on the record. Right? It's like been engraved.

Amit: Totally. And you will never guess where I buy my vinyl records from.

Michael: I would assume that you are going to

Amit: garage sales. That is incorrect. I exclusively get my vinyl records at Half Price

Michael: Books. I'm sorry, you said Half Price Books. You're talking about Vinyl records?

Amit: Yes. Half Price Books is more than books, board games, vinyl records, CDs, movies, puzzles, and even brand new

Michael: bestsellers.

My goodness. It's so much more than just books. Yes, but when it comes to books, I do know that Half Price Books is The Nation's largest new and used bookseller with 120 stores in 19 states, and Half Price Books is also online. At H P b.com,

category four, love and marriage. How many marriages? Also how many kids? And is there anything public about these relationships? Okay, you may not have known this. There was a first wife. Did you realize this? I didn't realize this. Now that's because it's very hard to find on the internet, although it is in his autobiography.

So I'm glad I read the damn thing. He married a woman named Janet Forbes around 1967 to 69. It's actually kind of hard to pinpoint. He's kind of floating between DC and New York at the time. And it's not even clear how the marriage completely dissolved, but it did. Uh, so there was a first marriage, um, and boy, I couldn't find anything anywhere about this lady other than he mentions it in his book.

The much more important marriage is to Susan in 1974. Jerry, Jeff was 32 when they got married, and they were married until his death age 78. So married 46 years. Two kids, Jesse and Jengo, and. By all accounts. I mean, Susan becomes this major force behind the scenes by the late seventies. And to hear Jerry, Jeff talk about it, I mean, it, it sounds like there were some rocky years because of the party and because of the drugs, because of the scene, because of, you know, him being just sort of a mischief, the scam or whatever you want to call it, where it does sound like she laid down the law, but then when he decides to settle down and, and.

I think it's around the time Jengo goes to preschool, she's ready to go back to work and he is like, well, you should come work for me. Mm-hmm. . And what she says to him is like, no way. Yeah. Uh, and she's like, if I'm gonna work for you, I'm gonna be firing everybody who is currently, you know, all these hangar ons.

Yes. And that's actually what happens. And he never records with another major rec record label again. And they kind of start a kind of DIY operation for the Jerry Jeff business essentially. Um, so he publishes all his music independently from there on, and she is booking guests and she is really watching the books.

And reaching out and connecting with the fans. Computers

Amit: had just come out

Michael: when we started Tried and True. So, you know, we were just excited. Could actually have a database, you know, of your own. We printed up these little, uh, tent cards basically, that they put on the table, sign up, postcard on the other side, send it in, and we put all those names and addresses in computers on all the quarterly newsletters.

We put Jerry Jeff's touring schedule. And so, you know, if, if Jerry, Jeff was within 150 or 200 miles of any place he played, these fans would come. It looks like an absolutely wonderful marriage. Not that it doesn't have problems, but, uh, or, or that it, there weren't these rocky moments, but. , there's some stuff in the autobiography that really won me over.

I'll, I'll give you my favorite thing just to get it off my chest. Okay. Somewhere in the nineties, he's at a party at their house and he's checking out a woman from across the party. And, uh, and then it turns out it's his wife, . And he, and like he didn't realize it was her, and he said in that moment, I fell in love with her all over again.

And it's those words actually that really, really melted me because I do think that the trick to marriage is falling in love more than once. That what happens in a marriage is that, uh, they drive you crazy. Your spouse drives you crazy, it piss you off sometimes. And, and you sometimes just wanna scream and hop in the car and drive to Florida or, or anywhere.

Mm-hmm. . But what makes a marriage great when it works is that you fall in love again. And that, and that there's a, it's not just a recycling of emotion, it's more like, Fall in love for the first time again. Um, if that makes any sense. And so to hear him use those exact words when describing his wife told me that this is, from what I can tell a great marriage

I've, I wish I could of the craziest dream.

Amit: Yeah. I mean the fast living that Jerry Jeff did and the road life, the fact that it was genuinely successful and believable to seemingly all those around them Yeah. Is.

Michael: Heartwarming it is. We gotta dedicate a little bit of time to the fast living thing. I mean, Jerry, Jeff was known as like a partier.

Amit: His songs were

Michael: about drinking a lot were about drinking and like the, you know, the vibe of the albums. Viv Terlingua is, you know, come party with us in Luke vk. Right? Yes. I mean, and everything about his persona and his sort of folk hero ness is about getting drunk and having a good time. I mean, he's often called the Jimmy Buffett of Texas.

He was the first one to took Jimmy Buffett to Key West.

Amit: Yeah. Did you see that? He basically showed Jimmy Buffett. Yeah. This is how you party, like, you know, south of

Michael: Miami to be I'll take Texas, you take Florida, I'll drive you there. Right? Yeah. I mean, that's how the state, and you hear Buffett talking about like, Jerry, Jeff was my hero for a while.

So

Amit: it's actually, I mean, this, this comes to a serious point. It's that counterweight that I think, uh, is really interesting. Mm. Because Susan was, um, I mean, I, I don't think she was a teetotaler at all, but she was a managerial badass. Yeah. Right. Like, she worked for, she was an aide to Charlie Wilson, the famous Charlie Wilson.

So she brings some tough chief of staff type of experience into managing him. Yes. And an article I read from the Austin American Statesman says she's widely credited with pulling walker through his toughest times, both personally and financially. Yeah. So without a Susan Walker, we may just have had like a really sad demise of a Jerry Jeff Walker in, you know, the eighties, the early eighties

Michael: even.

Yeah. So I think you have to give this one very high marks and, and you know, the marriage stays intact and they are together until his death and what I know of the kids they're doing well. Yeah. You know, I mean, , who knows what you can tell from Facebook, but John Go's career is doing pretty well. And from what I can see, it looks good.

Yeah. Category fives. Yep. Net worth. I saw 3

Amit: million. Yeah, I think that's where he ended.

Michael: What'd you think about that number? Seemingly a little low. I mean, he's got a house by the end. He's got a house in Belize and uh, a property in New Orleans in the French Quarter. Yes. Um, and he's living the life.

Amit: Yeah.

And good property in Austin and essentially the last, you know, 15 years or so, just picking and choosing the gigs. He

Michael: does, it really seems like, like he's got a lot of freedom of choice for when and how and where he is gonna play. Right? Yeah. He

Amit: wasn't cashing out like till the end, you know? Had he have continued a rigorous road schedule, perhaps he could have ended up with more, but he didn't.

This is a man of leisure. Yeah. Like Blaze was very purposeful and intentional as where they spent a lot of their time because it was pure leisure, it was pure blue waters and sunsets

Michael: and local people. Yeah, it was island life. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. The thing about getting older is you start realize you can live on less and less.

We've kind of sorted through life and we have certain things we pick out we like, and I think at that point it's gonna be down to clean water and some warm sand and uh, and uh, my wife, which contrasts with the seventies where, I mean to hear him describe his lifestyle, we stayed in better hotels, we flew on planes, we partied, I kept charging and then paid and I put 'em all on a management.

We'd run up a hundred thousand dollars. It was crazy. Churn of parties and rental cars and hotel rooms getting trashed and, you know, picking up the tab for everybody. And just as soon as you get home, And the check clears, like you're back out on the road to cover the next set of costs. I mean, it sounds chaotic

Yeah, sounds fun. But it sounds absolutely chaotic and like sort of, I don't know, the drunken beer or haze, not to mention it sounds like you, there was definitely some harder drugs there for a while. I mean, it's the seven, it's cocaine thing. Yeah, it's the seventies. What are you gonna do? Yeah, but let ask this question.

This is something that's really on my mind. The folk hero or the folk singer is a kind of, you know, American archetype in a way. The, the idea of somebody who's bus gang, who's just here for the music and is kind of drifting from town to town. I mean, this is like a cowboy and at some point it's gotta be also a burden when you're successful at it.

We used to say that anything worth doing is worth overdoing, . And then how far do you go over until you, that's too much and you have to come. Wouldn't it be hard to be Jerry Jeff at some point, right? Yeah. And okay, so when does that happen? When does it become hard to be Jerry? Jeff? Is it somewhere in the seventies after, you know, there's like this surge of interest in this music and in this scene it so much is built around, you know, partying out in the Texas Hill country.

Like when does that weigh heavy on

Amit: you? Seems like it's the nineties. It kind of seems like when he started to leave Texas as just part of his life and take up this Belize Island time. Hmm. To me that's the signal of when it was a little too hard to just be Jerry Jeff. Interesting. Because he cut those albums in the late nineties and all.

Like these Belizean Yeah. Albums island that are music cowboy boots and bikinis or something. Yeah. And I think that's when he said like, I'm just not gonna. All Jerry, Jeff all the time.

Michael: Yeah. By the beach.

Amit: And it's very different. Yeah. Like it's

Michael: not good . I agree. This is, I guess, a recurring theme of our show. When are you trapped by fame and trapped by your reputation? Like when does it become really, really hard to reinvent yourself? And this is a man who changed his name and who chose a whole new identity, you know, down the road.

It became hard to not be that. Yeah, but he,

Amit: he actively chose to not be that. Yeah. By being this part-time island guy, even island singer, he played his gigs. He played some gigs and BLEs. So I think he actually consciously avoided too many of the trappings of fame and maybe that's why he only landed up with 3 million.

Uh, one little story on money as about about 1978, a lot of it had dried up. Yeah. Jerry, Jeff is still kind of doing his thing, but he did a lot of fast living for about nine years. So he says at one point he owed American Express $95,000. Yeah. And so he called him up and he was like, can I just do a commercial for you,

Michael: Yeah. I saw that . And they were like, no, it's not gonna work. , I got, I got an offer for you. What do you want me to sell? That's great. Shall we move on? Yes. All right. Category six, Simpson Sarah, night Live or Hall of Fame. This category is a measure of how famous a person is. We include both guest appearances on SNL or the Simpsons, as well as impersonations.

Almost nothing here. No snl, no Arsenio Hall, no Halls of Fame. The one, uh, think you knew about this. The one nod to Jerry, Jeff is there is a Simpsons where Homer sings Mr. Bojangles, Mr. Bojangles, we're all Bojangles who killed Bojangles.

Amit: That's fantastic. And that's it. So no halls of fame. Not that I saw. Uh,

Michael: one thing I uncovered that I, this tracks though.

This tracks, he's not that famous. Absolutely.

Amit: Right? Absolutely. One thing I uncovered that I really like is in October if they unveiled a statue of him in Luen Bach. Really? Yeah.

Michael: Oh, I didn't see that. Oh, I need to get out there. Yeah. I think this is good. I think this is good. Fa Yeah,

Amit: I think it's good. I think level of

Michael: fame is enviable between John Prine, Larry McMurtry, and Jerry, Jeff Walker.

I like the idea of being an important figure behind the scenes, but also not necessarily being a household name. Like there's something desirable about that and, and is, it's hugely desirable. Is it? As simple as the loss of privacy looks like it sucks. If you're accosted on the street,

Amit: you don't want the very pinnacle because there's just too much burden and stress that comes with it.

It's the whole like third most expensive bottle of wine on the menu is the one you want. , you don't want the, the top of the access. Yeah. And that's where I see in this

Michael: type of fame. Okay, let's move on. Category seven. Over under, in this category, we look at the life expectancy over the years somebody was born to see that they beat the house odds and as a measure of grace.

So life expectancy for a man born in 1942 is 71.4. Jerry, Jeff lived to 78. So about seven years, uh, over, I mean, that's

Amit: right where we were with Bob Einstein. Yeah,

Michael: it's a full life. One of the things I loved was a, was the blueprint. I wish he'd had a few more years.

Amit: Yeah. Cause it seems like he was getting into to just comfort in full retirement.

Yeah. Uh, which I, I guess he did have Yeah. For several years. But, um, you know, a few of those just purely golden

Michael: off the map years. Well, and I mean, he was, I think, diagnosed with throat cancer in 2017, so there's a few years of struggle there. Yeah.

Amit: And emo I mean, emotionally or mentally a singer to get throat cancer

Michael: is Yeah.

Is miserable. I, yeah. So even if had, had he beat the throat cancer, we still have been able to sing and play music. I don't know. He can't even

Amit: sing it to himself as, as smoothly. Yeah. And

Michael: that's gotta hurt. So what about grace? . I

Amit: kinda like it. Yeah. I sort of like the, the danamo of Jerry, Jeff Walker. The fact that like, you know, when I first heard about him, it was late nineties and not too long after that is when he is, his shows became more sparse.

Yeah. And he would just play them selectively. He didn't do a ton, he didn't have a rigorous touring act. Uh, he released a few albums. I don't remember exactly when the last one was. I wanna say like 2007, 2008. So I like it. I like the fading, but not absent entirely.

Michael: Yeah. He also has a thing in his, which I, I love this about him, this very Austin.

He has a thing in his autobiography of, uh, falling in Love with Barton Springs. There's a story in his autobiography about how. After he has back surgery for the first time, he swims a lap and his whole family is there cheering him because, you know, he's back cuz it's major back surgery. I mean, it sounds like he's completely laid out.

Um, and he, you know, loved to run and he would run to auditorium shores. I mean I saw pictures of that. So yeah, overall pretty graceful. You know, for a guy who partied really fucking hard, you know? Exactly.

Amit: Yeah. Yeah. I would say so. So I think we're both wanting a few more years for his sake. Yeah. For him to have that.

Just pure peace and tranquility, but it's not overly tragic.

Michael: Let's take a break. Famous and Gravy listeners. Every now and then we come on to recommend a podcast that we like and are excited to tell you about. Vanishing Postcards is a show that invites listeners on a road trip exploring the hidden dives and histories found by exiting the interstates, hosted by Texas native Evan Stern.

The latest season invites you to write shotgun as he motors West Cross Country on Route 66. From a dance in Tulsa to an Amarillo eating contest, vanishing postcards explores how the past, present, and future of this most iconic of roads is revealed through the stories of people and places found driving it today.

Perfect for when you need a breather but don't have the luxury of hitting the open road. You can join this trip by following vanishing postcards wherever you get your podcasts. And tell Evan we said, Hey.

Amit: Danielle Steele. Oh, Alive. The rules are simple.

Michael: Dead are alive. Danielle Steele is still with us at 74 years old.

Dick Cavitt, I think Dick Cavt is dead, uh, incorrect. Dick Cavitt is still with us at 85 years old. Wow.

Test your knowledge. Dead or alive? app.com.

Category eight Man in the mirror. What did this person think about their own reflection? I think we gotta talk more about his heavy drinking. If you look at his face, it's, he's got both a broad smile but also a kind of heaviness to him, you know, and it's just not hard to picture him stumbling out of bed in the morning.

To the bathroom mirror and taking a look and going, oh, has like an old Nick Nty to grunt . Yeah, totally. But also that being kind of routine and normal. You know, I struggled to answer this question, man on the mirror because I think the party and lifestyle takes a toll and has an impact on how you view the mirror when you size yourself up and you know whenever you do.

Yes. I leaned. Yes. Despite all that, I think he does have a confident quality to him, but it, I'm on the fence here, so I'm, I'm leaning. Yes, but I struggled with this one.

Amit: I think the literal answers to these questions, like he was handsome. He was well liked. I, I think he had a beautiful family. Like all of those secure signs are checked.

But these other things about identity and, uh, and your habits,

Michael: because that's

Amit: what man in the mirror about. That's what's really about. I mean, it's about a few things, but that's, that's what

Michael: it's really, really about. The man in the mirror is about sizing yourself up a little bit. Right? What does my reflection

Amit: show me?

Yeah. So I'm gonna go a lean, no.

Michael: Okay. Yeah, I see the case for that. I'm not changing my answer. Good for you. , category nine, outgoing message, like Man in the mirror. How do we think they felt about the sound of their own voice when they heard it on the answering machine or outgoing voicemail? Also, would they have used the default setting or would they record it themselves in terms of the outgoing message?

So I went a resounding, he liked his voice. I also think he would have proudly said, you've reached the voicemail of Jerry, Jeff Walker. I agree. Yeah. Okay. Category 10 regrets. Public or private. What we really wanna know is what, if anything, kept this person awake at night? I got a couple things here. Yeah, me too.

Let me get out with mine first. Okay. Okay. Public. I think how he handled his money in business in the seventies, I think that he allowed a lot of people to like free riders. It's gotta be something that's maybe on his mind, private one. This is something I don't love about him. He kind of had a reputation for missing gigs.

Amit: Yeah. Or just being so blasted at them that like he was

Michael: barely performing. Right. That to me, communicates in untrustworthiness. You know, like, you know, you say you're gonna be there, be there, and to have a reputation is like, well, maybe Jerry Jeff's gonna show up, or maybe he's not. Has me wondering a little bit.

There was also Texas Monthly when he died, had a sort of rolling tribute of people writing things in about him. Robert Earl Keen wrote in and said, from a young age, he was somebody who was very important to me and very inspirational. However, we never became friends, which is kind of funny because we ran into each other a lot.

I wondered about that because I feel like Robert Ro King and Jerry, Jeff should be friends, and I don't have a theory of why that didn't happen, but the way Robert Earl wrote about it, Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it was this like trustworthiness

Amit: quality. This came up in my research too. There was a passage I copied from the New Yorker that said, Walker developed an unparalleled reputation for carousing and occasional surliness.

At one point in his daily regimen included a fifth of whiskey, a quarter ounce of cocaine, and a bit of speed. He once told a reporter, there are those who will never perform with me again. Another writer noted in Walker's heyday, there are those who will never talk to him again, and there are those who will never pay to see one of his concerts again.

So he was a pain the ass and untrustworthy at times when he fell a little. Two at the

Michael: behest of these substances. I mean, he was also friends with Hunter s Thompson. In fact, the the term Gonzo is used. The

Amit: Enviva Turling, the Great Gonzo Band.

Michael: Yes. The Lost Gonzo bag. Right. I mean there is a Gonzo quality to his lifestyle for a period of times.

And you know what you just read. I mean that there are people he hurt. Yeah. Whether he meant to or not, maybe it's just drunken rambunctiousness. But that has an impact on people that can hurt people. And I said earlier, I do think that he gets his shit together in the eighties. You know, I think he gets his affairs in order.

And to be able to do that means that he had the power of choice to be able to do that. So I don't think he's a degenerate necessarily, but I do think it took a lot of support. And I think that there's like problematic behavior in here that, does he have regrets about any of that? I wonder. I don't see any signs of it.

Me neither. That's what I wrote. I said overall, very hard to say on the regrets category. He looks free, but maybe that's also about the image at some point. That's about the image too. You have something else you wanna say? Yeah, yeah. I wanna bring out some

Amit: stuff and regrets. Okay. So he talked about in an interview, you know the song Pissing in the Wind?

Oh yeah. It became a bit of like a frat anthem. Yeah, a little bit. He came to resent that, that like so many frat boys, as he said, would show up to his shows and just sing along to Piss In the Wind, and he came to sort of dread that arrival and that song, nothing he can do about it, but he sort of regrets that it had that appeal.

The

Michael: University of Texas is after all in Austin. Awesome. This is. And we're just piss big

the same mistakes. We swear we'll never.

Amit: So this is why I wanna bring some personal stuff. Okay. Never in my life in 18 years did I really feel unwelcome as an Asian American Texan as I did until my freshman year at the University of Texas. Yeah, you've told me

Michael: that

Amit: before. Yeah. And it was largely because of these sub sex Yeah. Of uh, you know, I'm grouping it into the fraternity culture and that's maybe not entirely fair cause it's not just

Michael: them.

No, but I know what you mean and it's, it's a fair enough shorthand for what you're talking about. And Jerry, Jeff

Amit: Walker was the logo, you know, on the shirt of these guys that essentially built up what I experienced as a non-integrated university. Yeah. One of my neighbors freshman year, who I was very close with was in like one of these very large fraternities and they had a rule that essentially said only white people in fraternities.

And my god, when he told me that I was crushed, I thought college was progress after high school. I just didn't feel like you could just make friends with anybody or walk up to a party and join a party. There was no place for a racial minority at that school because of this culture in which he seemed to be a hero to the people that perpetuated that culture.

Yeah. Only later did I learn he had nothing to do with it. Like I, my early images of Jerry, Jeff Walker were, you know, okay, so he's the king of the frat guys. He must be an overgrown frack guy himself. Yeah. Uh, and I thought the same kind of a Robert o Keyan. It wasn't until, uh, you know, a couple of people that I trusted introduced me to the music that I came to eventually love it and see it for what it was, which was the bridge between rednecks and hippies.

You know, walled off white people and free thinkers. But man, I wonder what he thinks about his following at that time. That's interesting. ,

Michael: there is a, Hey, let's all get drunk and sing along quality to his music that is very easily co-opted and it doesn't have a lot of depth. And I think that this happens.

I think, you know, you create art and music and it gets appropriated, it gets misappropriated, you know, by subcultures. And I think that he wasn't in on that. Is it a. It may be a question of what you think music can do. Part of what Jerry Jeff is all about is creating an atmosphere, but also a, you know, comes out of the folk scene and it was in Grinch Village in the sixties and you know, comes to Austin and plants a flag in the early seventies, which leads to the, at law, you know, music movement.

That, that you don't do that just because you like the tunes. I think you do on some level, believe that music can transform people. Yeah. Music can reach people and hit a deep inside. I mean, even your thing about masculinity, right? I mean, I feel like Jerry, Jeff does have a kind of soulfulness and sensitivity that maybe the idea is, let me bring you in with pissing in the wind, but then listen to Mr.

Bojangles and let me show you beauty and art on a deeper level if you're not successful in that entire journey as an artist. Are, are you regretful that you brought somebody in for the stupid reasons and didn't get to show 'em the meaningful reasons? I don't know if it's actually a regret or not, but I, I think it also could play into a legacy question that he should be more remembered for what he helped create.

Amit: He shouldn't be remembered for who chose him. Right. But that, I mean, that frankly was my

Michael: experience. Yeah. And that makes sense. I remember that uniform, I remember that subculture.

Amit: And once I knew, I mean, I always loved Willie, but guys like Jerry, Jeff and Robert o Keen and all, it took me a while to learn.

Yeah. Once I learned them, learn their stories, actually listened to the lyrics. Yeah. I really, really loved them. Yeah. And maybe there's no regret to be had at all in Jerry. Jeff. No. But it's a ghost. But those, those who chose him at that time, it said something about who you were. Yeah. Which was completely fucking opposite from the Austin in the seventies that everyone glorified.

You're

Michael: right. And to this day, glorifies. Yeah. Yeah. Category 12. Okay. Yes. Category 12, cocktail coffee, cannabis. This is where we ask which one would we most want to do with our dead celebrity. This may be a question of what drug sounds like the most fun to partake with this person or another philosophy is that a particular kind of drug might allow access to a part of him we're most curious about.

He is like the quintessential, have a beer with him type. Totally. But to me this is a wavelength question because I don't think it's actually easy to get on his wavelength. So I think I want Valium. That's not one of the options here. This is, here we are. Where's Xanax ,

Amit: uh, episode 41

Michael: and volume is enjoyed person.

I think he and I would enjoy pills together to get on the right, uh, wavelength. Absent that, I'm gonna go cannabis. Okay. And I don't really think I'd enjoy the drunk version of Jerry, Jeff all that much. I bet it was fun if you're in on the end crowd at the time. But I think I actually want to enjoy the music.

And I wanna swim in the soulfulness and the music. And I think his best vehicle for getting you there is probably the cannabis. So I learned guitar late in life. My goal is to be campfire competent. That's as high as I want to get through it. I like that. Yes. Thank you. I came up with that term and it's funny with the guitar, if you pick it up, you know, some days you have rhythm and some days you don't and you kind of can't predict it.

But there really is nothing in the world like being with friends and jamming and like it all kind of flowing together. There is a whole second language being expressed that I didn't even know existed. And I do feel like that level of connectivity is the connectivity I would enjoy through with Jerry.

Jeff. I think I'd really love to be part of a jam with him and I think that that's probably good enough for me. Yep. What do you got?

Amit: I got cocktail. Uh, there's a couple of just phrases that keep jumping outta my head. You know, when he talks about a case of Lone star beer and a fifth wild Turkey lier.

Yeah. You know, I kind of want all of that. And, you know, he was pals with Jimmy Buffett and you know that Jimmy Buffett line that says, I ran into a chum with the bottle of rum and we wound up drinking all night. Yeah. I used to fantasize about like doing that at being like a Jimmy Buffett 50 something age.

That was the highest form of pleasure I could ever imagine. It just sounded so much fun. Yeah. And Jerry, Jeff being often called the Jimmy Buffett of Texas, I, I think that's what I wanted, even though he sunset his hard drinking days per se. But I, I want to run into Jerry, Jeff Walker and him bring me back and we wound up drinking all night.

But I do want to go there to that question with him and say, Hey man, this is my own personal experience. This may not matter to a single other person, but what your. Shield and your shirt symbolized to me in the mid to late nineties was the first time I have ever felt severe disappointment I've ever felt unwelcome.

Yeah. I've ever felt biased against. And I felt like my heart was fucking broken. Period. And you know, then he can even think that my music actually is about the harmony of it all, but I gotta air it off my chest with him.

Michael: There's an interesting question here about the culture that an artist attracts intentionally, unintentionally, right?

I'd like to think that. Or Jerry, Jeff confronted with that truth. He might have responded and reacted. Mm-hmm. , but who knows? But who knows. All right. Final category. The VanDerBeek named after James VanDerBeek, who famously said in varsity Blues, I don't want your life. Ah, you want Jerry Jeff's life. I never say it right off

Amit: the bat.

Yeah. But I build a case. I think the case is all in our five things. Yeah. Right. So pretty good blueprint, as you said, from age zero to 78 in terms of like following this non-traditional, traditional path. Yeah. I love the opportunity and the Americanness of the reinvention and choosing your geography and perhaps choosing your name.

I mean, there's nothing greater than a sense of place. And this man came to define what Austin, Texas was in the 1970s. He did not buy Lukin, Bach, Texas like uh, Honda did, but he certainly made Luen Bach. Yeah. What it is today and have two cities attach. Your name is huge. It's cool. In terms of legacy, I think he did have a message of live for this moment and not.

10 years ago was better, or 20 years ago was better. Yeah. He definitely said, we are here in the present right now and we are having the time of our fucking lives. And that is a great way to live. I mean, he may have, he may have been arrested 11 times in New Orleans and spent however many times in jail cells and been completely as broke.

And the fact that he even had a career at all was by the sheer pure luck of the fact that he went to jail on that certain night and met that dancer. But my God, is that not a beautiful story? Yeah, it's good. Right? Meeting this woman who still, I mean, you see Stu now, she is still gorgeous. She's this incredible woman.

She's got a lot of vitality

Michael: and a lot

Amit: of like, yeah, I mean, badass, incredible woman who was his tethering and who through this rough and rocky. Country music and rock and roll touring lifestyle had a stable marriage. And one of the last scenes you see of them is holding hands in the sunset on Aus Key in Belize.

That's fucking beautiful. Yeah. So I see a man who was incredibly important to those who loved him. Yeah. I mean, he was not best friends with Robert Joaquin and there was some asish behind that. Yeah, right. But he did have, you know, those friends in Jimmy Buffett, you did see it the way Ray Wiley Hubbard or Charlie

Michael: Robinson.

I mean, even Garth Brook, even Pat Green, I mean the, the, the name, the list goes on and on with people who, who thank him. Yeah. So the

Amit: case for is pretty strong. I mean, the case against, I listed my personal issues, but I don't think that's a Jerry Jeff issue. I agree. So what is the case

Michael: against, I'll give you my thought on that.

He caused some pain in some places, he hurt some people. Did he ever really make amends to that? Was this a little hedonistic? Is this

Amit: a little selfish? The selfishness and the shows

Michael: that he did that he didn't, yeah, unru afforded the quality of it. I mean, I think he righted the ship and he grew into a certain level of responsibility, but I've been doing this thing maybe a little too much on our show about.

I don't know, spirituality, right? And connecting with something more than yourself and like a certain amount of selflessness. I, I see love, but love and selflessness are not exactly the same thing. But I also do see it in places. I think the mentoring of Todd Snyder among others, you know, I think that there was a real effort to give himself over in as much as he could.

I, I see an evolution of a human, and maybe it's a sufficient evolution. There's a part of me that wants Jerry, Jeff to go further because I also intuit a certain kind of, I don't know, wisdom to the man. And so my expectations of him are kind of high because of his God-given talents. I don't know that's the case against, did, did he go far enough?

Did he grow enough? Did he evolve enough? Right. Did he give over enough? Yeah. It's hard to say. I don't know. Maybe I, I, yes, I think so, but I don't, I'm not, something about me isn't a hundred percent convinced that it's, it's like

Amit: there's not a mountain of evidence that it wasn't entirely just about

Michael: him.

Right. And that's, I think, maybe partly the burden of being a folk hero and of having a cult following. But is it being given over for the greater. , you know? Yeah, that's a good point. It's my only hesitation with the yes here and I think it probably is. So I'll go ahead and give you my answer. I'm gonna go Yes.

It's not a resounding yes. Cause I still have questions about the man's legacy and his activities later in life and how much he does hand over his archives or his contributions or, or gives over of himself to some greater cause. But like Jesus, he did a lot to create a cultural substrate in central Texas where people would come.

And to this day, it's an attractive force for people from all over the country. He helped create this place as the live music capital of the world. And that's not something that's a fucking slogan or a branding strategy that's lived. That's something you do through your art. And that, that to me is.

Amit: Yeah.

So that is a demarcation I think is, is sort of the absence of an obvious spiritual growth or obvious giving it away. There's the mentoring. Yeah. Uh, so I agree with you there.

Michael: So where are you?

Amit: I think it's the guy that lived his songs, did all those other things that I talked about and it seems like a pretty damn good life.

I think those that were left in his wake, there were some disappointed people and some broken hearts and I don't think he could have done too much more. Mostly I like the level that he reached of, of regional hero, you know, living in three different places, good lifestyle, but still a father. Some of it's admirable.

So I'm a yes.

Michael: Good enough. Let's go with good enough. Okay. , I think you should take us out. Okay. Ah, You are Jerry, Jeff Walker. You've died. You've gone to the part of the gates, the Unitarian proxy for the afterlife, and you are here to meet St. Peter. The floor is yours to make your pitch.

Amit: St. Peter when you're stuck and you're asking how to get outta here.

Somebody gave me some advice about 60 years ago and he said, just go. And I did that and I just went and went and went, and I lived big. I lived hard. I lived fast. Most importantly, I lived in the present and every time I got on stage, I helped other people live in the present. There was nowhere else they wanted to be, whether that was in a street corner in New Orleans in 1960s, or a dance hall in Leach in the seventies, or even in a backyard somewhere in the whole country in the late nineties.

You. Ever wanted to be anywhere else but having fun with your friends. On a Saturday night, whenever I was singing and at the microphone, I brought people together, I showed that the time is not later. The time is on the past. The time is right now to have the time. Of your fucking life. So St. Peter, raise your fucking glass.

Tip it towards me and let me in.

Michael: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Famous and Gravy. If you're enjoying this show, please share it with your friends. We're trying to get the word out. You can find us on Twitter. Our Twitter handle is at Famous and Gravy. We also have a newsletter, which you can sign up for on our website, famous en gravy.com.

Famous en Gravy was created by Amit Kapoor and me, Michael Osborne. This episode was produced by Jacob Weiss, original theme music by Kevin Strang. Thank you again for listening. Tell your friends, see you next time.