Tabernacle's Party
Short Fiction (A long one with some bonus distractions mixed in.)
*** Editor’s note: The following appears in its original form, as written by the late Joseph Mayhew and first published in the May 1978 edition of Rolling Stone Magazine. It was intended as a comprehensive profile of country/rock mega-star Tabernacle Jones written only shortly after his supposed death. It is now known and subject to significant public scrutiny that, not only was Jones not dead at that time, but much of what was considered true about him in 1978 is now known to be otherwise. Thus, the editors of this anthology are compelled by journalistic integrity to warn the reader that, in the original text, Mayhew implies or states as fact many claims that are now known to be misleading, obsolete, or simply inaccurate. That the writer died before many of the facts of Jones’ life came to light is the only reason no attempt to amend or redact the piece has been made. The editors of this anthology encourage readers concerned with an accurate depiction of the life of Tabernacle Jones to read any number of the many articles written on the subject in the nearly 50 years since this one was published. End note***
“Oh he ain’t dead,” asserts Rogers. It’s one of the first things he says to me on what will turn out to be one hell of an afternoon, conversation-wise. “I doubt very much that he’s dead.”
We’re on the front-most part of his sprawling, one-story, ranch-style home’s wrap-around porch, about 30 minutes outside of Chico, California. I don’t make a habit of conducting interviews on porches, wrap-around or otherwise, but I’d been tipped off ahead of time that Rogers calls the shots, when it comes to journalists. Other than the two of us, his nest is empty today, which I’ve heard is a once-in-a-damn-long-while type rarity, considering the crowd that usually hangs around chateau a la Rogers: his two ex-wives and innumerable children, various folks from every stratum of the music industry, as well as any old countrified post-beatnik lookaloo.
Rogers, for those of you who might have slept through the past 15-ought years without so much as tuning into an FM radio station or chancing a glance at a newspaper or T-V, refers to singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist L. Matthew Rogers, known personally as Matt Rogers and to the public only by the one name: Rogers. Small town Northern California native, lead man of the classic mid-60’s psychedelic-country 5-piece Ribeye Rogers & the Rowdy Frenchmen, artist behind a handful of ravenously acclaimed independent records and “avant-garde” films, B-list cultural icon. Oh, and the man many say squandered the best years of his creative prime playing second-fiddle (literally, on a couple occasions) to Tabernacle Jones, whose recent death was what prompted Rolling Stone Magazine to ring me up, get me off my ass, and ship me over to old 30-minutes-outside-Chico, California to interview the man who made 3 undeniably groundbreaking records with the dearly departed.
Who now sits opposite me (Rogers does) and postulates, with what I’d guess is about 70% certainty, that, in spite of all the reporting to the contrary, Jones lives on.
As we talk, he leans back real far in a wooden, 4-legged, non-reclinable chair and uses his mid-size paunch as a tray on which to roll a cigarette with various unidentified herbs from an unmarked mason jar. I don’t have the guts to ask him at first, but about 3 cigarettes in (on his part, not mine), I work up the courage and discover the jar contains mugwort, lavender, dried kratom leaf, and “a bunch of other stuff.” Just fine by me.
I ask Rogers to recount his idea of Jones’ biography. The Story of Tabernacle Jones endures in multiple versions in the minds of those of us who care. If you count yourself among that number, you probably have some rendition that you consider “factual” regardless of anything you might hear from folks like Rogers who actually knew him. I certainly did, in advance of this meeting. It isn’t always easy to discern fact from folklore, though. So I choose to suspend my disbelief and hear it straight from his bandmate of 6 anecdote-ridden years.
Jones was born in 1945, about that much there is little debate. As far as Rogers knows, “Tabernacle” was his given first name from the start. The part he deemed worthy of a revamp, as he sauntered his way into the public field of vision, was the last name. Born Tabernacle Johnson (allegedly), he released one album under the pseudonym Tabernacle Howard (you will be forgiven if it does not feature prominently in your carefully curated record collection) before settling on the eternally commonplace surname he was known by throughout his tenure as a well-known somebody.
You know as much about his upbringing as I or Rogers or anyone does: starting out in Tucson, Arizona, estrangement from family and all things conventional, subsequent teenage zig-zagging of the American Frontier via freight-train or whatever he claimed it was, landing in rural Louisiana and extended stay there as part of a low- if not no-income community who provided his early artistic tutelage, participation throughout his early 20’s in a traveling freak-show, the notorious interview in which he said, “I was raised by wolves” and chose to elaborate no further. I can’t tell you whether the picture you have of the 24 years of his life prior to Steadyboy Gulch is close to true. Rogers says: “this man speaks, truth, lies, fairytales, parables, all as if they meant as much as the Sunday morning cartoons. I do know he traveled for a time with a large snake. He’s got photographs with it.”
Anyway, Jones ended up in Los Angeles in late 1969. It is then and there that Rogers discovered him.
“The Frenchmen were playing all sorts of places then. Mostly up and down California. We’d have real shows of our own in cities, each about a week apart. In between, our only real necessity was to make it to that next show. And to stay alive and not lose our minds or anything like that, you know.
“Meantime, we’d usually play for free when we could in towns we’d never dreamed they’d let us play in: Red Bluff, Long Beach, Port Orford. We’d go onstage with musical friends of ours and back them up and hang around their tours. You understand what I mean by that, don’t you? Credence, Graham and Emmylou, Country Joe, Moby Grape, Alexander Stonebrook, Tiny Tree Island, The Privates. Zappa, even. Zappa, man.”
The venue du mois at one point that year was The Head Start, a Santa Monica joint off Lincoln that Jefferson Airplane had played unannounced one night, which inspired all sorts of opportunists to come in and pay the $5 cover charge night after night, in hopes of it becoming a pattern.
The night of Tabernacle’s arrival, Rogers showed up with 2 Frenchmen and Gene Clark, just in time for the bar’s Whirlpool Wednesday special, a 10 minute interval in which participating patrons were entitled to all-you-can-chug conch shells of Coors Banquet for a flat rate of $2.50. Some claimed the key was to keep a finger at the shell’s pointy end as a stopper in the interest of retaining every last drop of golden lager. Others pointed out that the more spillage you have, the quicker you’re entitled to another conch-full and thus the more beer you have access to.
That night, Whirlpool Wednesday was cut short, as it was more often than not, by a critical mass of bodies strewn out among the bar stools: victims of slippery floors, mostly uninjured, but necessarily prohibiting any participants lucky enough to remain on their feet from reaching the bar for another fill-up.
Right around the moment when everyone came to terms with the 10 minutes’ premature end, the sounds of limbs flailing around on the ground and liquid sloshing around inside conch shells (held up to folks’ ears as they tried to discern the difference between a couple drops of leftover beer and the echoes of the ocean) were interrupted by steel-string finger-picking Rogers remembers as, “surprisingly amplified.”
Those who could, turned to see. Those who remained tied up, contrived to free at least one ear to listen. And from the stage, from the now no-longer undiscovered songster’s mouth, came the lyrics to “Willie”:
Silly Willie Nillie and his candy court of kings Accompany my dancing with a little bit of sing. Feel our funny rumbling commotion in the ground And hear our call for prophecy and consequential sound. Willie gets a little overzealous, jealous too And jitters down the rivers in his bumblebee canoe. His favorite thing to say is, “I feel splendid, how bout you?” Whenever someone asks him why he doesn’t tie his shoe.
And, as legend has it (a legend Rogers swears heartily is based in fact), Tabernacle played a third verse that night, one with lyrics more elegant and harrowing than either of the first two. When it came time to record the song for Steadyboy Gulch’s eponymous debut record, however, neither Jones nor Rogers could recall any of the lyrics to that third verse. Which is why the recording closes with the word “Willie” sung over and over to the tune of the other verses. Both men figured that to write any other third verse would be an insult to all those present to hear the only performance of the original one.
Still largely splayed in front of the bar, these witnesses were really quite taken, pretty much unanimously, by the slightly chubby and scrappy young man who had drawn their attention. Once the song ended, the crowd made him play it twice more, then allowed Rogers and his entourage to take the stage and accompany Jones for a lengthy jam, followed by two more renditions of “Willie” with the band and an encore performance after everyone but Tabernacle had cleared the stage.
By the end of the night, the Head Start had signed off on a three week nightly residency for the new star, given away all remaining Coors and conch shells out of goodwill to man, and changed their name to the Tabernacle. Over the next few weeks, patronage tripled that of the Jefferson Airplane speculation days, Tabernacle Jones became a household name throughout the state of California without having released so much as a single under that moniker, and Ribeye Rogers & the Rowdy Frenchmen’s records shot up the charts just because they had Been There.
Each night was similar in structure; Jones would take the stage alone and sing a couple originals, move into a free form monologue on the topics preoccupying his mind that evening interspersed with poetry or lyric recitation, go backstage and “drink a cup of black coffee,” invite Rogers and any other musicians he admired among the crowd to join him onstage for his second set, which was completely improvised and rarely coherent, kick them off, and close by letting the ladies of the audience know where they’d be able to find him after the show.
Early the next year, Rogers purchased his ranch and built a state-of-the-art home studio under the direction of Frenchmen engineer Marks Wallingham. Shortly, Tabernacle absconded to the property and the two began writing.
The early sessions featured a lot of capitulating to the mysterious young man’s demands. Tabernacle asks for a band; the Frenchmen arrive. He asks for a different band; Rogers’ comrades of 7 years are fired and replaced, ruthlessly. Over the next months, the new band was whittled down one member at a time until only the two remained.
“We were on to something important,” Rogers says. “I would have gone as far as he asked me to.”
In November, 1970, sandwiched between American Beauty and Loaded, Steadyboy Gulch was released, to critical fascination.
Let’s be manic! Let’s take action and laugh at our antics Let’s scream from the tops of the attics Let’s play in it, maniacs, frantic When there’s music let’s dance till we can’t And then after let’s get right back at it Let’s prance in a trance till our paintings organic It’s gigantic, but come on let’s enhance it Oh brother, please, let’s be manic
It may seem an odd pairing, Rogers’ laid-back, jazz-influenced country sensibility and Tabernacle’s motoring rock-and-roll libido. Some say Steadyboy Gulch was Jones’ record, and should have stayed that way. But Rogers maintains it needed his touch.
“There was no structure. Just look at [Jones’ 1973 solo effort] Balaklava Maestro.”
Jones had written exactly one of the songs that made Steadyboy’s final tracklist before coming to Tehama County. In fact, he later claimed to have never written a lyric on paper. It’s fair to assume Rogers was, among other things, Tabernacle’s scribe.
“In me, I believe he saw a refinery, a one-man mechanism to funnel his raw genius into something resembling a profitable record,” Rogers explains. “In him, I saw a one way ticket.”
“A ticket to where?” I ask.
“Destination unknown.”
Jones returned from his second European tour with a bourgeois mustache and a conviction that he would never work with Rogers again. The tour was in support of Tabernacle’s Party (1974), which had been Steadyboy Gulch’s most profitable, acclaimed, and experimental album yet.
It was recorded in 6 weeks at Rogers’ ranch and featured no electric instruments. In fact, Jones famously cut the power lines at the ranch and encouraged Rogers to record the whole thing acoustically. After a week of recording on an Edisonian hand-wound phonograph (hear: the uncommonly tinny “Why Don’t You Help Me Break My Saddle In?”), Rogers' arm was too sore to play any instruments (behold: the a capella triumph “Oh, She Saw Me”). He rewired the electricity, acquired new equipment, and explained to Jones that the outlets in his studio had been converted to new-age telephone jacks; the sound their completely anti-electric equipment recorded, he said, would be transmitted directly to the studio executives.
“Better make it count the first time, then,” Tabernacle said.
Whether he bought the tale or not, what he delivered was undoubtedly a masterwork. Though the band was dubious of categorization, Rogers admits that Steadyboy Gulch’s third album created two important genres: pre-emo prog folk and acoustic hardcore.
Critic Charlotte Laemmle wrote, “Tabernacle’s Party captures the pastoral, pacific calamity of existence like no album has or should. Journeyman L.M. Rogers delivers passable production and fluent instrumentation. But it is Jones’ writing and performances that endow the record with the purgative rapture of a wet dream. His lyrics invoke not only the undeciphered, but undecipherable. They are a revelation, announcing uncharted continents of the human psyche. The duo’s new album is nothing less than the auditory hallucination of Jesus of Nazareth.”
The tour was a massive hit; foreign audiences adored the duo. They released Europe ‘75: Rusty Nails and Stinky Trash, their first and only live album. If this collection was any indication, the band was headed in a more mainstream direction; in contrast to their previous studio recordings, much of their tour featured a conventional backing band and palatable arrangements.
By any measurable standard, Jones and Rogers were at the mountaintop. So, it would be fair to say fans did not relish the idea of a Steadyboy Gulch split.
The Los Angeles Times announced the news on the front page of their “Entertainment and Arts” section. Jones had sent a handwritten letter to (my friend and former colleague at The Hollywood Reporter) Jane Wilkes.
“I have discovered the music I make is not art. It is tiresome, consumer-oriented smarm. As of today, Rogers is no longer in the band. I might not be either. Do with this information what you will. - Tabernacle.”
Wilkes reprinted the note in its brief entirety along with a short blurb about the bands’ history. She chose not to do any editorializing. To her credit, it was a tough spot for a journalist, like printing the cyphers of the zodiac killer.
On his porch, now back in the States three years since Europe, Rogers says, “Surprised me as much as anyone to hear I was out of the band.”
“Did anything happen in Europe?” I ask, dutiful reporter that I am. “Anything to give any indication of Tabernacle’s mindset?”
At first Rogers doesn’t seem to understand my meaning. He makes a few unhelpful comments, such as, “What didn’t happen?” or “You writing a music profile or a psychiatric assessment?”
Eventually, he gets around to telling a few tales. Mostly conventional rock star stuff: cocaine, women, swimming pools, shirts off, rocks off, underwater, “whose toes are these anyways?” But one set of events stands out as a possible turning point.
In Sweden, Tabernacle became friendly with Hungarian conceptual and performance artist Miya Spondeka. Steadyboy Gulch canceled the final 6 shows on their tour.
According to Rogers, “It was no big deal. Finland, Denmark, Netherlands, Flanders. If you’ve played one, you’ve played ‘em all. Tabernacle had a reason to stay with the artist and I had some tourism to do myself, so we called it off.”
Jones became entrenched in Spondeka’s grimey Nordic scene of pretentious pushers and anti-social radicals. At the center of the action: art collective Kueschin.
Spondeka and her fellow unsavory Kueschiners thought Tabernacle was just the cutest thing. They viewed him as indelibly and adorably American; he was Butch Cassidy or Teddy Roosevelt to them, but in the 1970’s. Post-modernism came and went. Famous American “artist” Tabernacle Jones remained oblivious to how pre-tread the trails he thought he was blazing were. He wore jeans and smoked Marlboros.
They worshiped him.
The Kueschin collective existed in both service and protest of the notion that purity was dead. According to their founding convictions, every work/production/idea in 1975 was a comment on a comment on something that had been taken out of context years before. But not Tabernacle Jones and his silly honky-tonk band, Steadyboy Gulch. With his utter lack of culture or creativity, he had what they were striving after. He had it precisely because he didn’t know it. Or, more to the point, he was innocent because he couldn’t conceive of what made him so innocent. He had taken Culture full circle and was now the tail being eaten by the snake. He was a chimp.
For 3 months, he was Miya Spondeka’s muse. She recorded hours of conversation between the two of them, her speaking languages he didn’t understand and him responding in English to what he thought she might be getting after. She released a series of photographs of her own face the moment of tasting various meals he’d prepared. Their most famous collaboration was her painting Domestik?, which debuted at the Kunsthallen Nikolaj in Copenhagen on December 1st, 1975.
“Domestik? (1975)
M. Spondeka (Hung., 1937-)
Oil, tar, and Blood on Canvas.
Created over the course of 4 vicious days and nights, Domestik? is not, as many suspect upon first viewing, an abstract splatter painting devoid of form. Rather, it is an anatomically exaggerated but nonetheless meticulously detailed mapping of a series of bruises, lacerations, scratch marks, and abrasions the artist inflicted on American musician Tabernacle Jones’ body. To obtain the desired effect, she made use of hammers, large beams of lumber, eggshells, a broken lightbulb, her own fists and fingernails, and everyday kitchen cutlery. The striking piece and its provocative origin force critic and viewer to reexamine much of what they hold true about gender, colonialism, the paradoxical coexistence of violence and art, and the modern world itself.”
“I don’t know if their relationship was romantic, but I know she left her mark on him,” says Rogers. “He wrote ‘Ammonite’ about her.”
I’d like to be as the birds of the sea Or the fish who float upon the air. I’d like to meet a little boy with a necklace Or a woman with an auburn mane of hair. August sun, you’re viewed as a menace To the many Turkish almond farms Remember me to a woman among them, And see that she still has long flowing arms. Best friends and distant relations Can gather up and tell you what there is to know But don’t you be fooled by the paupers in the stations Who say she is as innocent as snow. Simplicity is just another word for stupid As evening too is the dawning of the night You never stood a chance, I hate to have to break it to ya So say goodbye to her precious bones of ammonite.
When I raise the point that “Ammonite” was released a whole year before Jones and Spondeka met, Rogers just says, “Not much of a songwriter, are you, Mr. Mayhew?”
In 1976, Jones made an appearance on the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. You may know the rest. In fact, Rolling Stone reader, I’m sure you do; it was the most viewed episode of NBC’s flagship talk show until Georgian farmer Jimmy Carter announced his bid for the Democratic nomination on the show a year later.
Though you may know it well, even have the transcript memorized, allow Rogers and me to recreate the scene here.
“After Europe, Tabernacle went to Berkeley for three weeks and stayed with chemist Sasha Shulgin,” Rogers says. “Sasha dosed him heavily with an experimental phenethylamine called 4C-P. He told me Tabernacle was the only person he ever gave it to who liked the way it felt.” This would have been January, ‘76.
“He was getting ready for another album.” One he intended to make without Rogers. After Berkeley, Jones attended a number of sessions at Peanut Tree Studios in San Francisco with Saxophonist Baba Abernagee. Baba has never spoken publicly about those sessions and refused to be interviewed for this piece. It is unclear if any of the Peanut Tree material will appear on any future releases. Jones spent about a month in San Francisco. Little is known about his activity or mindset during this time.
By March 12th, he had made it to Burbank in one piece. Johnny Carson brought him out.
“Joining us tonight is one of the last holdouts of 60’s psychedelic culture. The man Patti Smith labeled ‘a prophet’ and Jerry Garcia called ‘the baby from 2001: A Space Odyssey.’ Ladies and Gentlemen,”
Tabernacle Jones stumbled onto Stage 1 at NBC studios, wearing a white California Angels t-shirt and bleach blue Wranglers.
“So Mr. Jones… is it alright if I call you Mr. Jones? I’ve got a thing about people with 4 syllable first names,” Carson begins, to a smattering of laughter from his audience. Some sort of inside joke with the fans, presumably. “So Mr. Jones, you recently got back from many months abroad. What was your favorite city to visit?”
“Eh, Berlin, I’d say.”
“Wow! Berlin! East Berlin? Hahaha just kidding. Why Berlin? Got any stories for us?”
“I don’t wanna talk about Berlin, man.”
Big “oooo” from the crowd.
“Well, alright then, Mr. Jones. We won’t talk about Berlin.”
“Thank you.”
“You know, a lot of people have mentioned the similarities between you and Bob Dylan. Are you a fan of Bob Dylan, Mr. Jones?”
“Not really.”
“Well my apologies, then. It’s just, to listen to your music, one can’t help but draw some parallels…”
I was able to acquire a tape of the interview from NBC for purposes of this profile. Rogers can’t help but squirm reviewing it.
“This makes me nervous for him,” he says. I do not point out that there’s no reason to be nervous for a dead man in a 2 year old interview. “Tabernacle doesn’t like when people talk like this.”
Apparently, even during the era when Rogers was his closest known confidant, the bandmates never discussed such topics as musical influences, ambitions for the band, motivation, desires, other people, politics, religion, their relationship.
Rogers is a pretty down-to-earth guy, so one could imagine it would have been difficult for him to have to avoid so many imposed taboos.
“I was fine with it. I figured he liked to play music, not talk about it.”
But Johnny Carson had no reason to tip-toe around anything. Whether he knew it or not, he was hitting the nail right on the head, deconstructing Tabernacle’s facade simply by naming it.
“Listen, Johnny,” Tabernacle says, in the interview. “Do you have anything real to ask me about? I don’t care about no Bob Dylan. I don’t care about Berlin.”
“Alright, alright, keep your pants on, Mr. Jones. We’re just talking, here.”
“Sure. I mean, I’m just not here to talk about Bob Dylan.”
“I’ve heard a bit of your music.”
“I’m surprised.” Tabernacle gets a couple laughs from the corners of the room. Apparently some present are sympathetic to the singer.
“Can I be honest?”
“Hard to tell, so far.”
“I found some of your lyrics… well, interesting. Is that fair to say?” A few chuckles bounce around the studio.
“I guess it depends what you mean.”
“Well, I’ll give an example. You have a song, here, I’ve got it written down so I don’t mess it up. You’ve got this song, it’s called ‘Pear Trees’. This is one of the songs on your new album, correct?”
“That’s right.”
The viewer gets the sense Tabernacle knows he’s falling into a trap but isn’t sure how to back out.
“Congratulations on the album, by the way. I hear it’s very popular among… a certain population in this country.” The audience loves it. Everyone’s in on the joke. Finally, someone’s saying what we’ve all been thinking. “This song, would you mind if I read a few of the lyrics?”
“Listen, man. I think if people want to hear the lyrics, they can buy the record.”
“Fair point, but I’d like to read some anyway. To give the audience a preview. Would you folks be interested in a preview?”
Applause.
“See, they love your stuff.”
“Alright, go ahead.”
“You say:
"Lightning bolts and pear trees Are the only things that scare me Little dancing fairies Always stealing people’s spare keys And apologizing barely Lightning bolts and pear trees And the letters A through P. Tightly bolted padlocks All keeping time to bad clocks While wishing that he had socks Is Jimmie Evan Maddox But the tightly bolted padlocks All open up for me. Right turn only highways Are only good on Fridays For, if I had it my way, I’d hop aboard the I-train And park it in my driveway Right turn only highways And pumpkin pie for free.
“Now. I’m not a poet, but if you ask me, that sounds like nonsense.”
Another massive laugh.
“How am I to know the difference between this so-called poetry and any Tom, Dick or Harry flipping through the dictionary and picking out a few words he likes the sound of?” Carson continues, to his audience’s delight. “To me, it seems like a farce. Are you pulling my leg with these lyrics Mr. Jones?”
Tabernacle Jones does not seem to find any of it very funny. He just sits there and growls at Johnny Carson until the host puts up a hand to calm the crowd.
“Don’t have much to say, huh?”
For a moment, the interaction becomes oddly serious, as if it just dawned on Johnny Carson and his adoring fans that celebrities have feelings, too.
“Let’s do it this way then, why don’t you tell us what you’d like to talk about. Does that fit your idea of a talk show appearance?”
“What do you know about D.T. Suzuki, Mr. Carson?”
“I’m ashamed to say I don’t know much about him at all. Is he a fan of Bob Dylan?”
Fuck You, Johnny Carson, Tabernacle’s second album without Rogers, was released 9 months later. The lead single became his biggest radio hit to date.
Put away your niceties, I’ve had enough of that Tell the man I was to be his tambourine is flat We’re running out of punishments, my mother told me once It was then I knew I was but one of many other sons But now I’m here with time to spare and collarbone tattoos I was never taught the proper way to effortlessly lose Five years after I left the house, I saw my friend Malone He’s the only man on planet Earth I’ve ever really known He told me that his cousin, Hank, he had a job for me It had to do with laying bricks across the salton sea By that time I’d been a part of fifty wrecking crews They weren’t enough to wipe away my collarbone tattoos I met a girl who roundly mocked the chairmen of the boards Of any company with lousy customer rewards In time I came to know her, for better or for worse And convinced her there was no use always getting reimbursed She said she liked my collarbone tattoos best of all If anything, she said, she wished they weren’t so goddamn small Enfeebled to the point of losing visitation rights I hobbled home alone abandoned by my acolytes They left me out to dry for doing things I hadn’t done And teased the uniform I wore before the hit-and-run Well, for now, instead of sporting Carolina Blue I’ll wear a shirt that covers up my collarbone tattoos.
Although the lyrics remained as confounding as ever, some of the companion literature lent insight into the often tight-lipped artist’s mindest. In the liner notes for Johnny Carson, Tabernacle takes a cudgel to a motley selection of individuals, institutions, and ideas. Few are spared. So doing, he produces a manifesto of discontent, suggesting undelved depths most audiences assumed he didn’t have. It reads, in part:
“I can’t be expected to play domesticated house pet for these parasites and wannabes. I need purity. I don’t write songs for your entertainment. Releasing music is the way I stay alive. I am not in search of fame or adoration. Forget your fame. I’m chasing a dragon. Others might be on the same quest, but they have not yet shown themselves. Those I’ve met who claim to know the path betray themselves with cowardice and duplicity. Peasants. It took me 7 years to realize I was making music with one of them. I can’t afford to waste no 7 years. My mission is urgent and critical. From now on, I will work alone. Steadyboy Gulch is dead.”
Tabernacle did not tour in support of Fuck You, Johnny Carson. His team (which at this point might not have been anything more than 2 or 3 people) made no effort to promote the record. The only press he did, he did begrudgingly. I was among the few permitted to speak to him.
It was the second time we’d met. In 1972, when I was at the San Francisco Chronicle, I reviewed Steadyboy Gulch’s album Three Chords and a Lie, the most overlooked, subdued element in the duo’s discography.
At the time, I was a fan of what they were doing. I did not share any of the perceptions that were brewing even then and would come to dominate the Tabernacle Jones image by the time of his death: Charlotte Laemmle’s unquestioned adoration, Johnny Carson’s teasing dismissal, or Kueshin’s fascination with him as something of a zoo animal.
To me, at that time, he was none of the three. Frankly, I suspected that what he was was a diligent student of folk and rock and roll history. Based on his talent and clear ambition, I believed his whole project was to wedge his way into that lineage, by any means necessary. But he knew that, in the 1970’s, his music alone wouldn’t get him where he was trying to go.
So, he adopted all the accouterments, went out, and made a name for himself. He told a story about a singer’s rise, and appealed to a certain audience, as Carson had said. He was not oblivious to the comparisons and criticisms. It was all on purpose. He outright stole a few aspects of other people’s plights. One would have to, to fit the mold. But, he did it in service of his songs. Disguised as a rockstar, he was still a musician. And he made some damned good music, at that.
Or at least this was my stance upon the release of Three Chords. I was a young journalist who believed in music as an end unto itself, rather than a vehicle for gossip and idolization. I might have been a fool, but I thought I saw through his crap.
So, I reviewed the record. It was nothing too glowing, but I admitted to finding some merit in his songwriting and Rogers’ accompaniment.
The next month, Steadyboy Gulch played The Fillmore. I got in as a member of the media and was milling about backstage with others of my type when the band came out to speak to us, begrudgingly, before their set. Folks played it pretty cool, but still, as it is with journalists, they had an agenda, a couple questions to work in. I’d already released my piece, though; I was there as a fan.
All the mongers in the room glommed onto Rogers and Jones as they entered, but Jones cut through and made his way towards me. He must have recognized me from my photo in the Chronicle.
“Thank you for the review,” he said.
I found it surprising that he had singled me out for my middling review in a non-national publication.
“Stick to the path,” I said.
That was it.
I was never sure why I said that. I guess something about him inspired in me the desire to speak in vagaries with implications of grandeur.
Maybe Tabernacle appreciated that I had looked him in the eyes, back in 1972, and given his band a pragmatic appraisal. Whatever the reason, he acquiesced to my request for an interview in the aftermath of Johnny Carson, and asked me to meet him at Rincon Beach in Ventura County.
By 1977, though, my belief in his integrity as a man who wished to let the music stand alone had shaken.
I don’t wish to get into any slander. But I will point out that Tabernacle Jones, the man, had become a topic of remarkable public scrutiny. I’m sure most readers will remember the climate (this was no more than 14 months ago, after all). At the time, he was not the most popular cat on the music scene, to put it one way. In addition to the Johnny Carson appearance and the potentially obscene (or, at the very least, aggressive) album title, there was the Major League Baseball affair and the Jerry Brown incident, neither of which I care to belabor. From all outside indications, Tabernacle was a loaded cannon, with every public action an occasion for another potential scandal. To some degree, I expected to meet a man unhinged.
For my working theory of his psychology, these new developments muddled things. If the whole persona was still an act, it was hard to see any coherency to the plot or benefit he was deriving from this scene of the play. Either I had been wrong about him, or he’d lost his self-awareness sometime in the past 5 years. Maybe his exposure to the Europeans had done it, maybe Johnny Carson really touched a nerve. Or (I doubted it) this was all still part of the plan.
He was late, or maybe I was early. He rolled up, eventually, in a taupe-beige Volkswagen 411. He introduced a woman he was with, name of Aquilegia. She stuck around for a few minutes and eyed me with good-natured curiosity, then made herself scarce.
Tabernacle Jones turned and looked me over with bags under his eyes, but a soft smile, like he knew something I didn’t, which I’m sure he did. His shirt said, “Brian Wilson was right.” I didn’t ask what about. Atop his car, he had a surfboard, and looked like he meant to use it.
It was February, but I got the sense he was there, mostly, to get out on the water. Our conversation would take place if and when he had space in between the things he actually valued. My intentions were secondary.
“Do you surf?” I asked, stupidly.
“Today’s my first day,” he replied, earnestly.
“Good luck out there.”
“Thanks, man. Hey, what’d you think of the album?”
We spoke for about an hour. I decided immediately not to take notes; it felt inappropriate to bring our conversation anywhere else. He spoke casually about ordinary topics, but had a weight behind his words. Eventually, we hit a lull. He unstrapped his board and went down to the water, without much of a farewell. I stayed to watch him surf for a couple hours. I don’t think he minded. Of course, he caught most waves he tried for. He’d been surfing for years, I’m sure.
I never wrote the piece I thought I would; instead I’m writing his obituary for a magazine whose readership largely detests him. I came into this project neutral. But as I write, I find myself wanting to argue you folks had him all wrong. Do I have any insight into his mindset at any point in his career? No more than anyone else. Still, I got a certain sense about him.
But the more compelling question, as I examine my own intentions, is: Why would I defend a man who never cared to defend himself?
Whatever ultimate verdict he receives in the court of public opinion, I’m glad I got to spend half a morning with him.
Meanwhile, Rogers had returned to the Frenchmen like a prodigal father. They eloped to Tehama County and recorded a good old fashioned record of rollicking country blues, like they always used to. Rogers remembers those sessions as the most liberating of his career.
“I spazzed out, man. At first I thought it was the freedom of being in charge again. But I’d never been this stoked in the studio even before Steadyboy Gulch. I needed that time with Tabernacle to be able to do what I did in the Frenchmen reunion. I was released.”
Rogers and company produced over 70 hours of recorded material.
“We had dozens of buddies coming in to lay down tracks with us. We had people running in and out of this house, kids hollering in the background, chickens cawing. No matter what sort of distraction we were hit with, it ended up becoming a part of the music. It all made it sound better, man. I shit you not.”
This was last summer. Ribeye Rogers and the Rowdy Frenchmen released their 10th studio album on Rogers’ 40th birthday.
“It’s a trip. 40 years old and I think I’m starting to figure it out,” he says.
“Does it make you sad to think Tabernacle will never get the chance to feel that sort of acceptance about his life?” I ask.
“He’s still got time.”
But he doesn’t. Last month, en route to reconnect with his pregnant young fiance, Marcella, in Guatemala, Jones’ plane went down in the Pacific off the coast of Mexico, with no survivors. He was 32 years old.
Blistery asshole, false prophet, misunderstood genius, frightened child, fish food.
Rogers might not be willing to accept his bandmate’s death, but he can’t go back and stop that plane from taking off. No matter how untouchable we might imagine our heroes to be, no matter if they’ve spent time with the likes of David Bowie and John Lennon or had their photograph on the cover of Time magazine, no one can say, with certainty, when the end will come.
When I heard the news, I, too, thought it couldn’t be true. Sudden death did not fit into the narrative of the legend of Tabernacle Jones. But there is no narrative. Tabernacle is dead. In the real world, people don’t fake their own death.
The members of Steadyboy Gulch never reconciled, but Rogers believes they were on the path towards peace and amicability, if not a full return to friendship. They spoke regularly between 1976 and Jones’ death, but obligatorily, as a divorced couple does, in order to establish and refresh the details of their child’s custody. According to Rogers, the last time they spoke was 3 days before his friend died.
“I’d love to get back on the ranch at some point, if you’ll have me,” Jones said, on the call.
Rogers was caught off guard. He said, “I’d have you anytime.”
In the weeks leading up to his death, Tabernacle Jones was writing and recording. From what I’ve been told, his new album was to feature some of his finest work yet. He had kicked drinking and reconnected with his estranged father. Last year, he began collaborating with and mentoring young musicians at a performing arts academy in the San Fernando Valley. All indications suggest the most prolific and rewarding years of his life and career were in front of him.
The latest recordings are being assembled and mixed by Rogers and longtime friend Harry Nilsson. Rogers shared a few of the lyrics with me. What I found was a set of candid, thoughtful compositions about regret, morality, and solitude. Like nothing he’d written before, they read like an entry in a child’s journal. An uncommonly somber and articulate child.
Furry, scurrying, in a hurry; I feel that way sometimes I feel like burning my list of worries, hesitations, and crimes I feel like forgetting all the beheadings I’ve imposed on myself over time And getting to boasting of all of the roses I’ll grow to make toasty red wine
Roll Me Off the Levee When I Die: Bootlegs and Rarities will be released on Columbia Records in the Fall. All proceeds will go to Marcella and the couple’s newborn child.