Roadhouse blues...

...are long gone now.  So far gone the memories only come in flashbacks of instances.  Some more instant than others and it seems I've been having the long version lately.  Its the music.  It sometimes leaves me...but, has been a major part of my life in one way or another.  I suppose it was my two older sisters and their infatuation with Elvis.  For me it was Elvis and Marilyn...until Elvis sold out to las vegas.  A little of me died with Marilyn...I had grown up with her and only saw innocence.  But innocence died on November 22 1963...ironic.  I had seen Jack Kennedy in Madison in 1960 when my father took me to see him at the UW fieldhouse just a few blocks from my school...there was so much hope for us young kids.  It was like Buddy Holly...and the day the music died.

I can't say I am particularily musically inclined.  Other than enjoying it immensely...My guitar skills have taken 40 years and are severely held back for that many years.  I am envious of naturals like Dan Hicks or Elvis Costello...Toots Hibbard of the Maytals.  Bob Marley...I've told that story.  But, this is a different one.  About Bunkys and the Cactus Rose...the club and the roadhouse I owned with partners.  In another life...

Bunkys is a trilogy in itself so I can only say it was the first bar I went into when I was 18.  An Italian restaurant of the old school with checkered table cloths and $3.50 spaghetti and an old wooden backbar...it was classic in Madisons Bush neighborhood.  The only unusual part to my 18th birthday was I would later become an honorary Italian...playing basketball for the Italian Workmans Club and becoming president of a pizza company.  And owning part of the club upstairs of the pizza biz...Bunkys.  We were infamous on the Madison music scene.

My partners father owned the building on a busy corner and could no longer run the business...so he advised me on the pizza biz and we cleared out the restaurant upstairs for a New York style club complete with rafters and pipes showing.  All black...with a great sound system.  we needed space for more bodies with the bands we planned on bringing in so small tables and lots of chairs.  It was a slow start...we knew lots of local musicians.  The owner of the club where I saw Dan Hicks called my house one afternoon looking for a band to open for Johnny Winter...there just happened to be enough guys to form one on the spot.  They were awful...

Cheap Trick was a local band...I had seen them so many times they were one of my favorites but not who they are now.  We hired them for new years eve and 20 people showed up...it was really cold but we had a great night with staff and the band...and the 20 people.  Our reputation grew...A booking agent really scored for us though.  I almost couldn't believe it...bands that were on Saturday Night Live were playing in our club the following saturday night.  Elvis Costello, Eddy Money, Robert Palmer...I can't remember them all.  It was like work...and how I got invited to Bob Marleys Hotel suite.  That promoter was an old friend and our competition but we all moved into his old farmhouse and between our club and his promotions and restaurant on State street...we almost owned Madisons music scene.  But, the pizza biz was paying for it all...

My friend and partner was the business manager and when we found out third partner was selling us all short by taking on new partners for personal money we closed the pizza biz and went on a fishing trip to canada for 10 days.  Did I mention the pizza business paid the bills...well the third partner said he'd be broke when we got back and he was.  Other than having to duke it out with him at a Huey Lewis concert I never saw him again.  Its a tough business that music business...

Well...I moved to Austin only to find out I was supposed to get married in Madison.  I did the right thing...I guess.  That didn't work out very well and took 18 years of my life.  Another another life...I won't dwell there so anyways...I discovered this farm.  I found it two days after my fathers funeral.  The very same farm that I loved and guided sports on for a decade at the time.  After burying my father I needed an escape and it was only a few days and I was driving out of my way to show the valley I now live in to some friends.  There was a for sale sign in front and I stopped the car and said I was buying it.  I did...

Now, My business in my other life...a recycling center, was doing well but 85 miles to my farm was getting old and I needed a business in the area.  Low and behold there was another for sale sign...on a roadhouse.  The Cactus Rose...legend in this dry county.  Alcohol was limited to specific towns and the county seat was dry.  The rose was the closest bar to the largest town in the county.  And a happening place the first times I stopped in to check it out.  The fire chief owned it and had it running smooth.  All I should have to do is plug my name into it...and it did for a while.  A true roadhouse with a dj and dancing...mostly younger crowd but locals called it home.  And, dropped their underage kids off for me to babysit...a nightmare with the police.

The highlight for me was a wednesday jam night...local oldsters came in and got on stage.  Many professional musicians from bands came to have a sophisticated night out.  Sophisticated for the small town we were just outside of...I have many fine memories of friends and family.  And, some really good music.  Then the laws in the county changed and flooded the dry town I was close to...first the bowling alley and then restauarants and the final straw to us...Barry Alverez of the UW Badgers Barry Alverez opened a bar right in the center of town.  And, for some reason I had a sudden surge of police watching my customers as they drove the three miles to town.  Barry would stop in our place on the way back to Madison and we'd buy him and his friends drinks...insult to injury.  I don't think his sports bar did any better in the long run.  Its still a dry town.  In its mood and thinking and personality...I seldom go there preferring the equal distance to Viroqua.  A very hip town.  With a flyshop...

The music never died, though...its still here in the valley.  Everybody plays or sings or something. When I first moved out here by myself...for three years after the divorce, I met some local musicians and we jammed until the floor of this old farmhouse shook the cans off the pantry shelves.  Pro's too...I was really the only amateur and finally learned to play my 1968 candy apple red Gibson ES330 I had since college.  We had some great parties...wholesome.  Like I always tell my young kids from my second family...you can be a good person and still be hip.  They don't know hip so I have to repeat it as cool.  They understand that...

A shot of the Cactus Rose and that 10 day trip to Canada...