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Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Marley and me...

...Bob Marley that is.  Not the movie...but, Bobs trips to Madison.  Back in one of those prior lives I mentioned...I met Bob Marley.  It was '81 I believe...and, his second concert at the Orpheum theater.  I had been to Jamaica in '75...and seen Toots and the Maytals in Boulder at the Boulder Hotel.  What a great show...I came back the second night it was so good.  And I had seen Bobs first concert in the late '70's in Madison, too.  Bob was getting treatment at UW Madison for his foot cancer and living at the Edgewater Hotel on Lake Mendota.  And, one of my old college room mates was the promoter who brought him to town.  here is a link to the first concert at the Orpheum...

http://www.panicstream.net/vault/bob-marley-and-the-wailers-5251978-madison-wi/

At the second show my friends and I had the first two rows in the theater...many shots from the Bob Marley documentary are from this Madison show including the one where he thanks the people of Wisconsin.  It was one of the best shows ever and the I three backup singers were outstanding but you could see the worry on their faces at such close range.  Bob came out for the second set in a crouch and blew a cloud of smoke that engulfed him and then jumped up out of the cloud and started singing.  Jammin...

After the concert my old bud the promoter came up to me and asked me and a couple of friends to Bobs hotel suite for a little after show party.  Well...of course we'd be there.  I'd hung out at the Edgewater many times so knew my way around but was surprised to see a small get together when we got there.  Seeing an old friend on the couch with the I three was stunning when I walked in.  Somehow the bass player and I ended up in a hallway with a hawaiian I had left over from the concert.  Strangely it came from my guide friends from Bozeman.  Those Bozeman boys could party back before it became bozangeles.  We were talking about the concert and Wisconsin when Bob came up to us with a skinner in his mouth.  The hawaiian fattie was slow burning and he never lit the one in his mouth.  I'm sure Bob came into the hallway because he could smell the pineapple...

His stage presence was amazing...he seemed huge and powerful on stage.  The show was real and heartfelt...you could see it on his face.  My promoter friend said Bob asked to do the show to thank everyone in Madison who had supported him.  The smell of Bob 'cooking' had wafted up and down the halls the the Edge for months and was no secret.  But, back at the hotel his size was diminutive and frail...but, his presence in person was larger than his stage presence.  It was impossible to not be in awe of the, at the time, most famous man in the world.  The party was a respectable get together and we left after an appropriate time.  Bob was still fighting and we knew he had just given his all to the people of Madison.

Well...I have no pictures of Bob and like when I was in Jamaica...my camera was my minds eye.  But, the early '80's were a fast moving time for me.  Many fishing trips to bozeman and canada...including an invitation to fish Montana's opening day with the Governor and Jack Hemingway arranged by on of my fishing friends.  Mount St Helens blew the day we were to fly out and we never made it farther than the twin cities.  A few days later my cousin and I went out anyways to fish the spring creeks of the paradise valley and in an earlier picture here you can see dust from the volcano over the brush on the banks of Armstrongs srping creek 800 miles away.  We clicked up a cloud of it as we walked.  Still Jammin'...

...and, flyfishing.  My western trips had done wonders for my spring creek fishing here.  Nelsons, Dupuys, and Armstrongs are not a lot different from our driftless spring creeks and most flies and techniques worked as well here as there.  It wasn't long before driftless days were equal to those Madison nights.  Flyfishing the driftless was long forgotten by most anglers who were pillaging the larger trout here with spinners, rapalas, and bait.  As if catch and release was a crime...the same way many catch and release anglers think keeping a trout now is.  Only a few old  time flyfishers remained and those numbers were dwindling faster than new flyfishers were being enlisted.  Imagine that today...but, as for a dyed in the wool yuppie bmw driving flyfisher...I was the first and felt I had the entire driftless to myself.  And, I did...

So, I was hanging out in the only flyshop around...telling lies of the west and my driftless exploits when the shop owner recognized such talent and hired me to teach flyfishing classes and guide for him.  I had been guided for free many times by the half dozen guide friends from Bozeman and knew the routine.  The only difference was we caught more fish in the driftless...and, the farm I now live in was the farm I guided folks on at least a decade before I bought it.  Provenance is the best guide...

As, was the chance meeting at a collectible flyfishing show in Mt Horeb in the same year Bob Marley was in town.  I think...another Bob.  I remember the event and meeting Bob but not the pictures taken.  It was decades later that I saw them.  On another flyfishing website someone posted them and asked if anyone knew who they were...besides Bob.  The synapses were a little slow to grasp what I was seeing but I finally recognized the guy who helped me teach flyfishing classes.  The tall guy threw me...too much hair.  I finally recognized the flannel shirts...two of them.  It was me.  Imagine my surprise to see me talking to Bob Summers.  I barely remembered and it came back slow.  Maybe  the same rod I fished for a season and let Kevin Searock fish on my homestream 20 years after meeting Bob Summers is the same one I'm holding at the show.  Provenance.  A picture of me and Bob...followed by one of Roger who helped me teach flyfishing classes, an unidentified angler, and Kevin Searock fishing the Bob Summers rod.  I still kick myself for not buying one on the spot that day in Mt Horeb.  Or for not telling Bob Marley how great he was.  But, the greats never want to hear that, anyways...






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