This Train Is Bound for Heaven
Bourbon Jones on that train, on that train, that glory train
Long Beach, The Day: It used to be every Sunday. Every single one. You couldn’t see the filthy ocean from the wide patio of the Blue Cafe, just a blue, blue sky that never betrayed the cancer corridor right along the 710 coming up from the port. Long Beach seemed clean, drunk, and peopled with the best and funnest homeless. One old black cat – in a Zoot suit, for real – would do a little Moonwalk, a little Cab Calloway shuffle, tip his hat, and make his way to his next pressing piece of business.
There were girls dancing too, right at the front, right in the sunshine, though some of the more acrobatic – Joy, for instance – chose to dance out on the promenade instead, where there was more room for their balletic arabesques and grand jattes, stripper-style. Oh, my dad loved Joy.
There were bikers, supermodel waitresses, dudes in wheelchairs who wanted to fight, tiny children who were indulgently allowed to play the drums during the set breaks, and a slew of topnotch musicians from all over waiting to get called to sit in with Bourbon Jones.
Jake LaBotz would show up to harmonize; Fiona Apple’s keys guy would show up to sit down at the Hammond B-3; Tom Waits’s drummer was only too happy to take a turn at the skins.
And we would drink splits of Champagne and eat potato skins and dance until Monday.
There really ought to be more Sunday afternoons that way.
Bourbon Jones was a white-boy four piece blues and roots band (well, drummer Anthony Arvizu’s Latino, I guess, and God only knows what bassist Mario Barmosca is, besides pure evil). And they were amazing. Each set would open with Chris Hanlin solo, accompanying himself on sexy gospel God-and-fuck music, his Indiana-raised yowl not a counterfeit but the true thing. Then the boys would come back, Barmosca mugging for the ladies and saying awful things like, “The hand goes up, the mouth goes shut,” and Mikey Meyer sitting cool on harmonica, his wifebeater exposing the Metallica logo he’d carved into his forearm with a razor. One night (not at a Jones show), Meyer got electrocuted by an ungrounded wire. Twice.
Arvizu was respectable; Hanlin was just sort of an arrogant dick; and Meyer and Barmosca were piles of very charming psycho. So much fun!
It was 1992, and Hanlin was riding his bike down Broadway in Long Beach when he saw Barmosca playing his standup bass. He rode his bike right up the steps and into his apartment and said (like a giant dick!), “You wanna play, let’s play!” A few days later, he turned up again. “Learn these 40 songs,” he told Barmosca. “I’ve got a gig.” Later, Hanlin got Barmosca kicked out of his apartment. “It was like three in the morning and I was really drunk and sitting on his step playing guitar and throwing bottles out into the street.”
After nine years together, in 2001, Hanlin left the band, focusing his efforts on Long Beach supergroup the Dibs. (And when I say Long Beach supergroup, I mean it; the city then was a preposterous melange of crazy talent.) It was for the best: Meyer and Barmosca had a mean boys club and hated him by that point, and he reacted to their incessant needling about as well as an arrogant dick could. They played on without him for about another year, before Barmosca took off to Phoenix, where he owns a house, has a son (with the most supermodel of the Blue’s fine waitstaff), and in 2005 or so restarted Bourbon Jones with himself as the sole original member. Douche. Meyer married a stunning bartender who was a real-life witch, and then got divorced. He has a terrifying Rick Danko beard and works at his dad’s tile company or something. Arvizu runs the Compound studio, is playing a lot with Marc Ford (occasional guitar player for the Black Crowes), and is still, as far as I know, respectable.
And Hanlin married one of my very best friends, and from that day forward was no longer a dick. For reals! Today they live on 80 acres in Santa Rosa; she teaches high school art; he fixes mandolins. When life is that good, you have to just be nice.
For one night only, Bourbon Jones is coming back. Sadly, it won’t be afternoon outside in the sunshine at the Blue, but it will be in the Cellar right next door. They’ll probably start with “Glory Train.” (This train is bound for heaven.) I hope Joy is there. Everyone else will be.
Halleluja.
Bourbon Jones play the Cellar, 201 E. Broadway, Long Beach, (562) 495-9000. Sat., Aug. 16, 9 p.m.
Published: 08/13/2008
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