I'm not a musician, but I love music and the people who make it. I especially like the little dive bar clubs--those tiny rock 'n roll dungeons where the genuine, real-life jams happen late at night after the paying crowd has left the building. Paul Metsa in "Blue Guitar Highway" takes you into these clubs and navigates through the ups and downs of a working musician's life. It is a mesmerizing journey in a real page-turner.
What's unique is Paul Metsa is not a household name. He's not a "famous" musician living a privileged "rock star" life. Yet, as you learn as the story unfolds, he has played with and for a virtual who's who of musicians at some of the top venues in the nation.
This is a guy who loves music and often lives gig to gig on minuscule paychecks, yet has a life that is rich with friendships, music, travel and remarkably colorful stories. His encounters with Minnesota's more famous song-writing wizard--Bob Dylan--are scattered throughout the book and many are hilarious. He's also a musician with balls, something that is illustrated clearly when he calls and goes to the hotel room of the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia after a gig to hand him a demo tape.
One of the things that kept me glued to Metsa's masterfully written narrative were the names of musicians he has played or worked with. So many--from Hubert Sumlin, Eric Weissberg and Scarlet Rivera to Louisiana Red, Honeyboy Edwards and Nappy Brown--I have known or had personal encounters with myself. As I read on, I was amazed by the constant connections Metsa makes with these familiar characters.
Paul Metsa nails the music scene with crisp, knowing prose. "American rock and roll started around a campfire in a dark and howling wind," he wrote. "It was blues, country and hillbilly music then. Once it was moved into four walls--juke joint or gin joint, rent party apartment, greased alley garage, or some full-moon Ozark barn dance--it became rock and roll.
"First, gut-bucket whiskey passed around in coffee cans, then ordered over the bar, smoke from hand-rolled cigarettes misting blue windows, both inviting the night and keeping it at bay, beautiful women writhing with imaginary lovers on sawdust dance floors, young men on a weekend pass from some hell-forbidden job doing the Hucklebuck and the Chicken Strut, these sons and daughters then joining in this Church of Saturday night together, while the band in the corner jacks it up, like drill hammers toward heaven, until the sweaty crowd tumbles out sanctified and satisfied."
As much as I like Metsa's writing about his life in music, his colorful family--and his super dog, Blackie--are also important elements to this story. Blackie, one of those instant attractions who senses his future owner at an animal shelter, started as a "problem dog" and managed to max out Metsa's new $5,000 credit limit card when he was hit by a car. From there, the story of Blackie is beautifully told as Metsa nurses him through surgery while tending to his own father, who was also healing from a serious illness.
When Blackie finally stood on all fours, unbowed by his trauma "like a canine Phoenix," Metsa wrote "a water pail couldn't have held my tears."
Then he continues: "Blackie's first paw-penned Christmas card described the whole story: price of adoption: $65. Price of emergency vet in Golden Valley: $1,400. Price of intensive care and surgery at the U of M vet hospital: $3,600. Price of having Minnesota's second best folksinger take me out at 6 a.m. and hold me up while I poop: priceless."
Metsa taps into one of the key reasons I like and respect musicians. These are people who--against all odds--create music out of thin air in a cruel world where "success" is normally measured by how much money a person makes. Anyone can learn to juggle financial deals in banks and on Wall Street, but it takes a special breed to survive and constantly make works of art in an environment where their talent is not celebrated or even recognized.
"The older I get, the more I am drawn to these kinds of men and women, tried-and-true American musicians, artists each and every one," Metsa wrote. "From the heartbeat in their mother's wombs, into a world that bounces us all around like pinballs, they became musicians because it was in their blood. They survived and prospered, not necessarily in terms of money but as beacons to guide the rest of us in troubled waters to that shore that we all call home."
Amen, brother!
