This past weekend found me working at the Temecula Valley Film and Music Festival with my oldest kid. When you live in a small town where the horses and cows graze next to the subdivisions left empty by greed and failed economic policies, and where culture is defined in the space between Costco and the multiplex sitting across the mall parking lot...anyway, you get the idea that this is something we look forward to every year because sometimes its not so easy to fight the traffic and pay the emotional toll to drive the ninety-odd miles to Hollywood. And so the film people come to us.
If you were born sometime prior to 1956 or so, you probably know what most folks don't. Lots of what we think or remember that happened in the Sixties really took place in that ten year period after the Summer of Love and before Saturday Night Fever. While we think of the Seventies as happy faces and cocaine, velvet ropes and disco...it was really a special time where music was experienced and enjoyed outside of a strict business-first paradigm, and where the notes, beats and lyrics served as a moving aural wall against the political and cultural-social shifts that were occurring at lightning speed.
Cowtown Ballroom...Sweet Jesus! is billed as a documentary by Joe Heyen and Anthony Ladesich about the legendary concert venue in Kansas City, Missouri that opened in the summer of 1971, and over the next thirty-eight months it established an incredible musical heritage. That's more or less the official description you'll find on the website and in the festival program but it doesn't come close to being accurate so here's my attempt: Cowtown Ballroom...Sweet Jesus! is probably one of the finest oral histories of my generation that has ever been produced. The stories told here by the people who owned, managed, worked, performed, experienced and patronized the Ballroom are our stories. The visual and audio components are a bonus to the words they speak and the memories they share which are less about the venue and more about the life and times and the coming of age of the post-WW2 generation.
The Cowtown Ballroom was one of many music venues that sprang up around the country in the wake of the Avalon Ballroom, Family Dog concerts, the Trips Festival and Fillmore in San Francisco. Where I grew up in Philadelphia, it was the Trauma and Electric Factory. In your hometown it was probably something similar with just a different name. When the bands came to town it wasn't a calculated pre-planned business transaction to secure a ticket and buy a t-shirt...it was a gathering of the tribes to experience the unplanned, unexpected and uncharted. As someone who ambled occasionally both in front of and behind the stage, sometimes the musicians were just as surprised at what occurred each night as the audience was.
While most outside Kansas City won't necessarily know many of the folks in the movie, you're apt to recall or know the musicians who are interviewed. John McEun, Jeff Hanna and Jimmy Fadden from the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Brewer and Shipley, Jim Dandy of Black Oak Arkansas, B.B. King, Charlie Daniels, the guy from Foghat (whose name I just forgot), Steve Miller, the Ozark Mountain Daredevils and a few more that escape me. If you're like me and wake up some days feeling a little old, trust me that watching some of these interviews will make you feel that your sixties survival outcome may have been better than most.
As I always note when I write something that some might look upon as a review, I'm not a very good reviewer. I don't follow the format, I forget stuff and couldn't get a job as a writer if there were still ones to get. But you can trust my instincts that if you're of a certain age, enjoy tripping back to a simpler time in popular culture, come from Kansas City or nearby, or you're a musicologist in search of the lost chord...track this one down.
By the way, when the lights came on after the screening I turned to my fifteen year old kid and said “You just saw my life...you just heard my story”. Thanks to Joe and Anthony and all the other folks who took the time and effort to contribute to this. And since this isn't a magazine where I have to worry about space or the lack of it, I thought it might be interesting for you to take a look at the list of who performed at the Cowtown...or at least the best that they were able to recall or recreate.
1971
The Flying Burrito Brothers w White Eyes 7/16 and 7/17
Ewing Street, Chet Nichols, Sound Farm 7/23 and 7/24
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band w Ted Anderson 8/1 and 8/2
It's A Beautiful Day & Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee 9/26
Leo Kottke w Joy of Cooking w Joyful Noise 10/10
Steve Miller Blues Band w Grits 10/8
Frank Zappa (Flo and Eddie) w Rich Hill (2 Shows) 10/23
Brewer and Shipley w Tide 11/13
Savoy Brown w Pot Liquour w Chicken Shack 11/24
Poco w Jerry Riopelle 12/4
Alice Cooper w P G & E 12/16 two shows
Freddie King 12/31
In addition, the following bands played Cowtown in the first year, but we don't have the dates at this time:
Wilderness Road
Catfish
Clyde N'Em & Her
If any of you can help out on these dates, it would be greatly appreciated.
1972
Kansas City Philharmonic Jorge Mester cond. w Chet Nichols 1/9
Westport Free Clinic Benefit 1/30
KC Philharmonic w Mike Quatro and the Jam Band 2/13
Poco w John David Souther 2/11
Brewer and Shipley w Danny Cox w White Eyes 2/15
Detroit with Mitch Ryder w Tide 2/18 & 2/19
Five Man Electrical Band w Tide 2/26
Mason Proffit w Morningstar w Commonground 3/12
KC Philharmonic w Ted Anderson 3/19
Badfinger w Ashton, Gardner and Dyke 4/7
Ravi Shankar 4/8
Up Against The Wall Ball w Pilgrimage, Nation w J. C. Storyteller 4/18
Linda Ronstadt (Backup band Glenn Frey, Bernie Leadon, Randy Meisner, Don Henley) w The Raspberries w Danny Cox 4/22
Savoy Brown w Malo w Long John Baldry 4/26
Benefit Westport Free Clinic KC Grits, Nation, Bulbous Creation,
and Shock 4/30
Hot Tuna (Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady, Papa John Creach,
Sam Piazza) w Chet Nichols (2 shows) 5/6
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band w Hope 5/21
The Peter Yarrow Band w Lazarus 5/20
It’s A Beautiful Day w Stoneface 6/1 & 6/2 & 6/3
Black Oak Arkansas w White Eyes 6/9
Dan Hicks 9/21
Poco w Chet Nichols w Danny Cox w Chet Nichols 9/29
Benefit for Westport Free Health Clinic KC Grits, Morningstar,
Chessman Square 10/8
Steve Miller w Wishbone Ash 10/31
Robin Trower w White Eyes 11/10
Hot Tuna w Ozark Mt. Daredevils 11/22
Jorge Mester and KC Philharmonic w Danny Cox 11/26
Seals and Croft w Lawrence and Roselle 12/1
Frank Zappa (Petit Wazoo) w Steely Dan Two Shows 12/2
Black Oak Arkansas w Tranquility 12/15
Brewer and Shipley w Ozark Mt. Daredevils w Chet Nichols
w Ted Anderson w KC Grits 12/31
1973
The Byrds w Flash 1/21
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band w Danny Cox w Steve Martin 2/2 & 2/3
Ozark Mountain Daredevils 2/8
Logins and Messina w Leo Kottke w Casey Kelly (2 Shows) 2/10
B. B. King w Chet Nichols w KC Grits (2 shows) 2/19
Brewer and Shipley w Louden Wainwright III w
Ozark Mountain Daredevils 3/9 and 3/10
Paul Butterfield w Foghat w Ted Anderson w Mark Almond 3/15
B. B. King w Malo 3/19
Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show w Hookfat w Tide 3/31
It’s A Beautiful Day w Bloodrock w Sylvester and the Hot Band 4/7
Wishbone Ash w Finnegan and Wood w Vinegar Joe 4/13
King Crimson w Gentle Giant w Charles Lloyd 4/22
Fanny w Sanctuary w Backwods Memory 4/27
Poco w John David Souther 5/11
Canned Heat w Hookfoot 5/13
Commander Cody w Earl Scruggs 5/26
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band w Steve Martin 6/16 & 6/17
Charlie Daniels w Garland Jeffries w Hot Ice 7/3
Dan Hicks &the Hot Licks w Billy Spears Band 9/21
John Mayall w the Ozark Mountain Daredevils 9/29
Arlo Guthrie 10/21
Mike Quatro Jam Band w Bryan Bowers 10/31
Mott The Hoople w Kinky Friedman & His Texas Jewboys 11/2
Robin Trower 11/10
Ozark Mt. Daredevils w Danny Cox 11/16
Foghat w John Martyn 12/5
Jesse Colin Young w Leo Kottke 12/9
Blue Oyster Cult w Charlie Daniels 12/28
Sugarloaf w Pilgrimage w Stone Wall w One Thing At A Time 12/31
1974
Climax Blues Band w Speakeasy 1/9
Van Morrison*& Caledonia Soul Orchestra 1/17
*Crazy Little Thing, Ballerina, Friday’s Child, It’s All Over Now Baby Blue, Don’t Look Back, These Dreams of You, Heathrow Shuffle, Into the Mystic, Ain’t Nothing You Can Do, I’ve Been Working, Take Your Hand Out Of My Pocket, Warm Love, Mystic Eyes, Brown Eyed Girl, Domino, Gloria, Cyprus Avenue, Caravan
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band w Steve Martin 2/2 & 2/3
Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen
w Ozark Mt. Daredevils 2/8
The Strawbs 2/23
Bachman-Turner Overdrive w Pilgrimage w NRBQ 2/27
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band w Steve Martin 3/1
Harry Chapin 3/11
Redbone w Pilgrimage 3/16
Rory Gallagher w Tide 3/24
Bill Quateman w Hoyt Axton 4/6
Fanny 4/11
Captain Beefheart w Kansas 4/22
Firesign Theater 4/25
The Electric Light Orchestra w Suzi Quatro Band 4/26
Climax Blues Band w Black Sheep 5/10
Jesse Colin Young w Royal Scanlon 5/29
Golden Earring 6/13
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band w Brewer and Shipley w Larry Knight and
Friends (Steve Baker, Steve Starr, Gary Signor) w Country Heir 9/16
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