The Toubadour

The first time I walked in the door of The Troubadour Folk Music Club in Los Angeles, it was 1963.  My girl friend Diane and I had come up from San Diego to go to the UCLA Folk Music Festival.  We were big fans of Bob Dylan, John Hammond, Dave VanRonk, Mississippi John Hurt and any music that was folk/blues.  

One night we borrowed Diane's sister's car.  We were driving around and were, basically, lost.  We saw the sign that said "Doug Westons Troubadour--Folk Music Club" and boy howdy that was for us!

At that time the Troubadour entrance was directly into the main room without a bar or ticket booth out front.  When you walked in, the stage was at the opposite end of the room; there were theater seats down the middle and small rows of seats on either side.  That night I think we may have been the only people in a room that could have held 200 or more.  We sat down in the back and within a few seconds we were spell bound by what we heard on that stage.  I mean, we were from San Diego!  The music down there was good, but not on the same planet as what we heard that night.  It was Taj Mahal and Jesse Lee Kincaid.  Taj, of course, was a big, rural looking black guy. (In 63 we still said "colored" instead of black.)   If I remember right, he had on Levi overalls.  Jesse was a young, dark haired beauty.  The two of them singing and playing their own brand of folk/blues was almost more than us two emotionally excitable girls could handle. This was before the two of us, and two other girls, went all over the Orient on a USO Tour and saw the big world all by ourselves.  Diane and I also played guitars, but the music those two guys were playing was what we usually heard on albums we bought in record stores.  We were downright giddy.  With our chattering and swooning in the rear of the room they might have thought we didn't like what they were doing, but let me tell you, we loved it!!

The next time I was at The Troubadour I was fortunate enough to go on the stage.  Diane was there too, along with the two girls we went half way around the world with, Carolyn and Pam. We were dressed in our matching outfits of red, white and blue, ready for our USO Tour.  Our manager somehow got us on the famous Monday night "Troubadour Hootenanny", and the name of the USO Tour was, "Hollywood Hootenanny". (Yikes!).   I played banjo and guitar that night and Carolyn also played guitar. When I played the banjo Diane and Pam played the guitars.  I can remember being scared out of my wits when I walked on that stage.  I was barely in my body.

It was a long time before I walked in the door of The Troubadour again, maybe a year or more.  Diane and I were back from seeing the world.  We had sung for 5,000 people on the Fourth of July at March Air Force Base in Manila, Philippines.  I felt a little different from the last time I was there; since then we had been to strange foreign lands.  In South Korea we saw thousands of North Korean refugees in cardboard, makeshift shelters, or sleeping in gutters up against the street curbs. This was long before homeless people were a common sight on the streets of the United States.  In Viet Nam we watched bullet tracers flying towards our plane in the night and listened to machine gun fire while we were singin' for the boys; that'll bring a young girl up real fast.   But I still wasn't anything you could call mature, far from it. But I did seem to have a magnet inside that drew me to where ever good music was being made.  That's still true today, and The Troubadour itself was a huge magnet that drew anyone and everyone that made music or wished they could.

About this time at The Troubadour there was a group of young men that were regular performers on the Monday night "Hoot".  They would get together and sing and play songs they all knew.  Their group began to grow in size and they became known as "The Men".  How's that for an original title?  A few fellas from this group of "men" got together and decided to form a real band. They called themselves "The Association".  The main guys were old buddies of mine from San Diego.  They were all talented fellows who loved to sing.  They were very fortunate to have a string of "number one" hit songs on the radio: "Along Comes Mary", "Cherish", "Windy", "Never My Love"; their success trailed off from there, But, they were very successful in the 60's.

The Association had a manager who rented them a large house in East Hollywood. It was there that I met Ruthann Freidman, the girl who wrote "Windy".  She sang and played her song for me and said she wanted The Association to hear it.  I encouraged her to play it for them.  The rest is history on that song.  It made her a lot of money. She was also my Maid of Honor when I married one of the guys in that group, Jim Yester.           

Anyway, Ruthann and I started playing and singing together and one Monday night we went on down to the Troubadour "Hoot" and signed up.  We decided that we would try something new, new for back then, anyway; we put up two mic-stands next to each other instead of us both leaning into the same one.  We stood side by side and each had our own guitar mic.  Ruthann wrote the songs we sang, as I hadn't learned the craft yet. On one of those songs, "Looking For Your Soul Mate",  I added a Bo-Diddley beat on my guitar and we were off into Folk-Rock.  Look out world!  Then we got an encore!  There was one problem, however, we only knew those three songs together, so, we sang one of them again!  You can do that when you're 19yrs. old and don't know what you're NOT supposed to do

            It was a few more years before I came down to the Troub again.  That's what we called it, the Troub.  By then I was divorced from Jim Yester.   I was free, again, to follow my own inner compass and it led me right back there to the music and friendship.

            By now they had remodeled the entire showroom;  Instead of theater seats there were now tables and chairs, with benches along the back wall.  They put a bar at the entrance and a ticket booth out front. Upstairs where the huge warm-up room used to be, there was now a balcony with long benches, and Doug Weston's private office.  They also created dressing rooms!  The stage was on the right side of the room now, facing West and looking up to the balcony.  The kitchen served great hamburgers and a colorful guy named Gat ran the kitchen.  Gat wore his hair in a long ponytail and had an earring in one of his earlobes.  Back then people just didn't look like that!  He looked like a Pirate who just got off of his ship.

           Larry Murray and Rick Cunha ran the Monday night "Hoots" and once in awhile I would get the courage to go on down and ask if I could do a few tunes.  The Troubadour stage is the absolute best for hearing yourself sing and for seeing the entire room.  It could also be very intimidating.  You could see anyone who entered the room on the left and just wondered on by you to go to the bathroom at the right.  The lighting was also excellent, thanks to the creative and flamboyant Michael Shears, who always wore a long black cape.  Rick would let you know if you could sing 2 or 3 songs, depending on how many people had signed up that night.  A lot of great people would drop by and do a couple of tunes on the "Hoot";  Jackson Browne, Glen Frey, J.D. Souther, a few of the guys who later wrote all The Eagles tunes.

            More than once a week, but at least on those Monday nights, Rick Cunha would invite us all over to his apartment after the Troub closed.  The singing and guitar playing would continue on through the night and sometimes till dawn.  In Nashville they call these get togethers a "song pull".  We would all take turns sharing a favorite song or a newly written one; Or Doug Dillard would lead us into one bluegrass song after another.  I learned to play pretty good Flat-pickin' guitar on those nights, tryin' to keep up with Doug's blazing banjo. For Rick Cunhas birthday I bought him a five-gallon can of coffee. I wanted to thank him for the bottomless pot of coffee on those wonderful nights filled with music.

            Running down the middle of Santa Monica Blvd. in front of the Troub there are railroad tracks.  Yes, REAL railroad tracks.   They're still there under the lawn. Back then, once in awhile a real train would come by.  From inside the bar you could hear the rumble of the train and the whistle would blow to alert any cars at the Doheny Blvd. intersection.  Well, that was like a call to arms for all good folk singers!  In a flash we would all run out to the tracks and cheer on a few guys who would run and catch the train and hang on for a short ride. The fellas would get a big round of laughter and applause.  The way we carried on!  But, it wasn't just the act of jumping on the train, it was because it WAS a train.....You know!  A real train, in the city!  We were city folk singers who only sang about trains and hobos and here was one we could actually see, touch, jump on and ride!  After our big adventure we'd all pile back into the bar and sing a few rounds of "I'll Fly Away" with Doug Dillard leading us on.  Those times felt more like home to me than anywhere I'd ever been. The singing and the harmonies in that corner, gathered around those small, round tables brought a feeling I will never forget.  It brought me back to a time when I was a kid and we'd have family music gatherings on Sundays after church.   We each left our empty, lonely apartments and wandered on down to the Troub every night for those two to three years of our young lives. Companionship is the most basic reason people around the world gather in bars. This was our living room, our community campfire.

Sitting at the bar you could hear conversations ranging from boring and mundane to deep and philosophical.  I spent an entire night at that bar sharing deep thoughts with Tom Waits.  I also spent a crazy night with Glen Frey teaching me the ritual of Tequila shots, Lime and Salt.

In the showroom, the wide steps up to the balcony were my favorite place to stand. Resting my arms and setting a drink on the ledge in front of me, I had the best view in the room.  From my "spot" there on the steps I saw a young Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, Elton John, Tim Hardin, Buffalo Springfield, Sir Douglas Quintet, Jackson Browne, War, Longbranch Penny Whistle (Glen Frey & J.D. Souther), Delaney and Bonnie, Ian and Sylvia, Linda Ronstadt, Sammy Kershaw, Bette Midler, The Staple Singers, Judy Henske, Hoyt Axton, Dillard and Clark, Gordon Lightfoot, Rick Cunha, Hearts & Flowers, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Earl Scruggs Family Band, Jim Croce, Steve Martin, Gene Clark, Bernie Leadon; on and on and on!

Late one night J.D. Souther and I were sitting downstairs on the back bench when we witnessed Bonnie Raitt's audition set!  Doug Weston would have an unknown act do a short show late on a weeknight.  J.D. and I were blown away! We sat there with our mouths open. Here was this fine lookin' chic, playin' slide blues guitar and singin' like a bird!  I was sold then and I've been a big fan ever since.  On another night I walked through to go to the restroom and there was a willowy blonde on stage; her long hair hanging down covering her face, swaying as she moved to her guitar playing.  I sat down and listened to Joni Mitchell's audition set. What a place!  What an opportunity!  What music I heard there! The Bitter End in Greenwich Village was probably the only other place that could compare to The Troub during that time. On another night I sat in morbid fascination watching Tim Hardin mumble and stumble around the stage in doped up delirium.

I was also very fortunate to have had my own name on that marquee. Doug Weston booked me as opening act with a performer that was new to the West Coast; His name was James Taylor and he had a new album called, "Sweet Baby James."  By the middle of the week I had a bad cold and had to sleep between the first and second shows. But, what a week! James Taylor!  Did I even know where I was and the road that he was already on?  Carol King was his piano player, Russ Kunkel on drums, I think it was Lee Sklar on bass, but I'm not sure. How did I do? I don't know; Eric Burden from The Animals told me he was impressed that I could play those guitar rhythms and sing at the same time. I got a good review in the L.A. Times.  After I played on that stage, from then on I could watch the show without having to buy a ticket.  I still feel like that was and is an honor.  From then on I was given free passage through those hallowed doors.

There is one other honor that was bestowed upon me there.  I don't know about the men's bathroom, but in the ladies bathroom, the walls were covered with a zillion quotes, statements, proclamations, artwork, poems, and many other expressions of creativity.  These were part of the decor and were never disturbed or washed off.  One night I went into the ladies room, sat down on the toilet, looked to my left and .... there on the wall...... written in pencil ....... just above the toilet paper roll....was the chorus to one of my songs!!...Who put it there?...It had to be a girl, but...then, it didn't necessarily....it could have been a guy....during the day....When did she or he hear that song?...I don't remember singing it on that stage....it had to be someone who knew me......Who?......I never did find out.  But those penciled words on that wall are still precious in my memory.  To me it was as if they had been written on the marquee out front.           

I wrote those words for my father who used to play guitar and sing to me when I was a little girl.

            "Come sing away my blues,

             Sing any song you choose;

             But, sing it, soft and low,

             Like you used to do.

             Come sing away my tears,

             Bring life back to the years,

             That I missed you,

             And waited for you."

There are times that I'll have a dream with The Troub in it and I'll know that a part of me is feeling like I did back then, which was mostly scared and insecure. Or, I'm trying to re-capture a part of my youth; perhaps I'm feeling old and tired and need a shot of those vibrant memories.

Many of the other musicians that came through those doors during that time went on to become world famous. Some of the biggest names in modern music history of the United States were born there.  That can provoke interesting thoughts in someone who didn't travel down the same road of "world fame".  In one line from the song written about The Troubadour, called "The Sad Cafe", The Eagles wrote:  "Why does fate take some, and leave the others to go free?"  Am I one of those who was left "free"?  That subject is always a good ol' bone to drag out and chew on once in awhile.

The people, the music and art that came through those doors, during that period of the late 1960's and early 1970's, is possibly comprobable to the Impressionist Painters movement in France in the late 1800's; or the creation of Jazz in New Orleans and Chicago in the beginning of the 20th Century. Also, Greenwich Village at that same time was home to many of the musicians that came West to Los Angeles and performed on that stage at The Troubadour.

The Troub was a fertile breeding ground for more than just music, ideas and friendship. A lot of lies also flourished there.  Lies like: love was free, without attachments; women were equal, that drugs and alcohol were harmless, that blacks were equal and that we all had no hang-ups.  The birth of popular music as a huge business commodity was also born there. For a very long time playing music would have that underlying feeling of it being worth something that could be bought or sold; and if someone didn't buy it the feeling of failure would creep in.

I feel very blessed to have been at The Troubadour during those incredible years, and it would take many years before I was able to just sit, again, in someone's living room and share a few tunes, or sing just for the sheer joy of it.  It would also take a lot of years and therapy to find the initial impulse that brought me there in the first place. I'm very pleased to say that my connection to that impulse is strong and clear again and has been, now, for quite awhile.

The Troub has a life of its own in my fertile sub-conscious; it's one of several important cornerstones around which other events have gathered and formed the structures of my life. The Troub was and still is a foundation from which I grew and continue to grow today.