Dear Lord, please protect us from music!

Walked past a restaurant the other night – one of those with sidewalk dinning– and a young man was sitting out front in a chair by the sidewalk playing a guitar. As I approached my reaction was, oh no another street musician playing for quarters.

But there was no open guitar case or hat turned upside down to collect alms for the player. And then I listened. Oh my goodness.  Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughn would be put to shame. Otis Taylor, Ry Cooter and Michael Hedges, too. On an old, beat-up acoustic guitar with a slide and his five fingers acting as orchestra members, this guy was playing the most incredible blues and jazz I have ever heard.

Soon, his girlfriend sat next to him, pulled out a tarnished silver flute and they were off and doing number after number of old jazz standards and Jethro Tull favorites. To say these two kids were good is a gross understatement I have been listening and playing guitar all my life and I never heard anything like this.

 Before long, a small crowd surrounded the duo and they kept right on grooving. The manager of the restaurant sent a waitress outside to take drink and hors d’ oeuvre orders and the crowd grew even more. Most of us sat at the empty tables nearby. Fine food, drink and wonderful music. If I hadn’t been sure where I parked my car, I would have sworn I was in Austin. But no…this was stodgy old Dallas. And in a few minutes, it proved itself as two of Dallas’ finest came driving up. One officer got out and said there had been a complaint and wanted everyone to disperse.

“What complaint?” Someone from the audience who sounded a lot like me asked.

“Just move on. Let’s break all this up.  You too. Mr. Guitar man.”

We all protested and he got his ass puckered a bit and threw his badge wearing bull shirt around and the crowd began to thin. I did not.

He turned to me and said, ”I said clear out.” I returned, “Where in the constitution does it say it is illegal to stand on a public sidewalk and listen to good music.”  He snorted something about having sex with my mother and got back into the car, which now had its lights flashing, as if that shakedown made the whole thing legal.  They drove off.

Your tax dollars at work. 

Heaven forbid we have real crime in Dallas...but some twit got her panties in a knot because people were sitting on a sidewalk listening to two wonderful musicians share a little music. Now I know why SXSW would never work in Big D. (Now I must say, I have quite a few friends on the Dallas Police force...and most of them are okay types, who would have stood by and grooved to the tunes, just as we did. But these two wanted to throw their weight around and protect Dallas from itself.

Within ten minutes the crowd had returned, sat on the curb and in available chairs and listened to these two kids play. (I think people had called friends on cell phones, because the actual number of people grew radically after the cops left.) We had drinks, and snacks and the evening was fun and there wasn’t a single incident after the People’s Republic of Dallas Army left us alone.

If you get a chance the couple’s name is Willis.  He is Charlie and she is Nancy. Great, great music. And they never took a dime from a soul…even those of us who tried to force money on them. “No, we aren’t buskin’ just playin’,” said Nancy.  Catch them. They are very good. Charlie told me they had worked their way down from Toronto, Canada and were going west after hitting Austin. “We’d like to end up on the Promenade in Santa Monica.”

I wish they had taken some money. But they shrugged, “Don’t need it. Give it to someone who does.”