The fire that ate Rick’s house will have eaten his old Martin D28. Will have eaten his old Telecaster. May have left untouched the Graphite that George Coates talked Rick into buying, just like Rick should have left it on the music store wall, so Marty told him. The fire will have eaten his “Come on Down” CDs on life at Folly Beach. Rick had almost a whole album worth of new songs finished and last week was talking with Marty about running through them with him next time he came to Atlanta. All those songs will be gone. We never heard them.
If the fire had left Rick then he would have soon been singing the secrets of fire. We would all be talking about how terrible it was his house burnt, feeling fortunate and grateful our friend was all right. And I wish that’s what I was writing tonight. I wish I was writing, “Our friend’s house burnt, but he’s all right, thankfully.”
When hearing Rick had died in a fire, some people were compelled to call his house, unable to believe it, which must be a fairly normal reaction to fire, because when I was looking for Rick’s obit today, Google also brought up his residential phone number and street address, and at that point I diidn’t know others had been calling but it made me think to call. We have Rick’s phone and address in our contacts on the computer but the thought to call hadn’t occurred to me until Google brought up his phone unexpectedly…and I overrode the compulsion, not liking the idea of the call flying out iburned up phone lines into nothing. I had no doubt Rick was dead and didn’t want my call emptying silent into the cinders.
* * * * *
Fuzzy’s hasn’t changed much over the past 20 years (except now it has good food). To make sure of this I ask Marty, “Has Fuzzy’s changed much?” No, he answers. I didn’t think it had, though I haven’t been there in forever and hardly ever went there at all because I didn’t like Fuzzy’s.
But Fuzzy’s is a fact of music life here, though a bit less a fact than it once was.
Most reviews describe Fuzzy’s as a genuine dive with surprisingly sophisticated food and great bands. What’s not to like about a genuine dive with great food and great bands? After all, how many places have I been in that were genuine dives with really bad food? So what’s not to like about Fuzzy’s?
We’re talking many years ago, when Marty first met Rick and started playing in Rick’s Honey Canyon Yodelers, often times at Fuzzy’s, and I didn’t like the Fuzzy drunks who didn’t take no for an answer and Fuzzy’s bare ass, I didn’t like that either. Fuzzy’s happened at the wrong time in my life, and since that wrong time stretched on so long, perhaps there was never a right time for it.
I’ve a sense of humor but what I could see of Fuzzy at Fuzzy’s was too much for me at Fuzzy’s–such as a photo of Fuzzy’s bare ass at a Fuzzy golf tournament shining headlight bright on a wall along with gratuitous breasts of women frolicking the golf course and all of it right in your face because the room is packed and the only seat available is that one where Fuzzy’s ass and those breasts will be staring in your face all night long. I don’t know how I’d manage that now, but at that time I took it as an insult and felt rather traumatized by Fuzzy’s bare ass and had zero tolerance for some man sticking women’s breasts in my face. Plus, Fuzzy’s has (had) a strong business lunch and happy hour crowd of a certain type and though the late night crowd had a lot of musicians–Fuzzy’s being a place that was open after all the other places had closed which meant it was the place playing musicians went to visit with and hear other playing musicians after hours–anyway, despite that, I could still smell the heavy beer breath of the Happy Hour crowd because many of them would still be hanging noisily around, way past drunk, and the tattered late late night remains of the Happy Hour crowd at Fuzzy’s creeped me out. But what did it for me finally at Fuzzy’s was the guy who threatened me for telling him to leave me alone, who said he’d be outside somewhere watching for when I left, which is when I stopped going to Fuzzys completely. Despite the fact I’d been in some really seedy and mean clubs over the years (which Fuzzy’s isn’t) that was it for me and Fuzzy’s, the magic combination of photos of Fuzzy’s not quite hairless ass and nude women on the golf course and a crazy man threatening to get me in the parking lot. When Marty said he was going to play at Fuzzy’s or was going to Fuzzy’s to meet someone I’d say fine, you go, I’ll stay home, because Fuzzy’s lacked a certain something that would have made up for the negatives, that certain something being space. Fuzzy’s is a small club with minimal seating and I didn’t want to take up a table when I was just going to be drinking coffee all evening. Give the waitron a chance to make her tips. People drank there, a lot, and I was going to feel guilty taking up a table by myself, drinking coffee.
And then H.o.p. came along and that was that for me going out late at night anyway.
So many people play Fuzzy’s because it’s the kind of place that would let you play what you wanted to play. And, as I noted, it stays open late late and so was (is) a musician’s haunt. Was (is) a place to do business and make contacts. To see friends play when you were done playing and to be called up to sit in and jam. At least when it didn’t have a cover charge, which it now does, which has killed off a lot of the musician business, and in that way Fuzzy’s has changed.
Fuzzy’s felt like every day at about 11 AM it started out with high hopes of becoming a beach oyster bar but it was sitting on the edge of an annex of old Buckhead and was all too aware of this fact by 11:05 AM.
The reviews are right about it having good bands. Everyone we know plays at Fuzzy’s on a fairly regular basis, or has played at Fuzzy’s. And Marty vouches for the great chef now running the kitchen who cooks cajun/creole.
Rick at one point told Marty he was going to swear off going to Fuzzy’s when he was in town. He said, “It’s the kind of place you can procure illegal substances, find loose women and get a loan at exorbitant rates without ever leaving your table.”
I imagine Rick continued going to Fuzzy’s for at least two of the three reasons above. And maybe the music too.
* * * * *
But how Marty met Rick and how they came to be friends.
Around eighteen years ago there were the Pad Brothers. Jimmy O’Neill and Marty, both on keyboard. “Twenty fingers on the keyboard at all times, leave no notes unplayed,” was the Pad Brothers’ motto. (I remember nothing about the Pad Brothers, which is probably for the best.) The Pad Brothers were a subdivision of the Honey Canyon Yodelers, which was Rick’s band. And Marty got into it through O’Neill and thus the Pad Brothers and thus then the Honey Canyon Yodelers. And he loved playing with Rick who he says was one of the best rhythm guitarists he ever played with. The Honey Canyon Yodelers was a hobby band for some great players who liked to play with Rick not because he was anythiing like a great player or singer, but because he somehow set the musical stage for others to play their best. Which is what some people do. And in this way he was like Bruce Hampton, Marty says, and that’s true, it’s what Bruce does, he pulls the best out of you.
There aren’t many laymen stories to tell about a musician’s hobby band, because the stories will be all about what happened on stage musically during a pariticular song on a pariticular night…at Fuzzy’s. Where I hardly ever went. So I can’t tell you a thing about it. And for a while, at the beginning, I didn’t think much of Rick Huff because when I thought of Rick Huff I thought of Fuzzy’s, because that’s where Marty played with him and the Honey Canyon Yodelers, and I didn’t like Fuzzy’s.
The original line-up was Brian Cole on drums, George Coates on guitar, Jim Greene on bass, Jimmy O’Neill and Marty on keys and Rick Huff on guitar and vocals. Jimmy left after a couple of years and Doug Morton joined and played guitar. Then after Brian lost a leg to illness the line-up included two drummers so they’d have someone who could play the kick drum.
And, as noted, it was a hobby band. Rick was in Folly Beach. Everyone else had their own things they were doing. When they were booked they would aim for two nights so that the first night they could spend remembering the songs and the seconed night they could actually play them.
How slack is that.
So Marty says he’s going to give me a story that’s true but not factual. They had a bass player for a short while who suggested they rehearse. They fired him because they felt his attitude didn’t fit in with the band, the motto of which was, “If you’ve been playing Chuck Berry songs for twenty years and don’t have ‘em right yet, practice won’t help.”
Marty thinks a minute more and adds that someone actually did suggest rehearsing and was never hired again.
Their history thus was kind of like Marty’s story, one-half bullshit. Which made them the perfect musician’s hobby band.
Rick listened to everything that went on on stage. If it sucked he said afterwards, “We sucked,” and if it was good he would go around praising everyone individually for their playing. He never took the credit for it being good.
Rick was a fan of the Honey Canyon Yodelers. He loved listening to people play good music.
And he was a supportive and positive friend of Marty’s.
I do a Google blog search for “Rick Huff” figuring by now someone probably has something up on his death, and wouldn’t you know it, a musician in Charleston has now a post up on Rick, talking about what an amazingly supportive person Rick was to him and his band.
There aren’t a whole hell of a lot of supportive people in this world. Most are too busy or don’t care about much outside their own sphere, or are just plain scared of being supportive.
The Charleston musician writes of a friend of his crediting Rick with being the reason he is still playing, because of Rick’s encouragement, his support.
No, there aren’t very many supportive people in this world.
The Charleston musician, writing on Rick, says, “his passing signals the end of an era for Folly Beach. He was on the front line, fighting the encroaching madness with laughter and song.”
Rick wasn’t scared to voice his opinion or involve himself.
His Folly Beach friends are calling him the poet laureate of Folly Beach.
* * * * * *
Rick was a cameraman, ad copywriter, did voiceover work for radio and television, and was a good songwriter. He liked playing music and talking. It’s no wonder he ended up sitting by the ocean at Folly Beach, where time moved slow. Because he liked to talk.
He liked people.
When he was recording “Come on Down,” the joke around the studio was Rick had redefined the term “work ethic.” A typical day was Rick showing up, put on a pot of coffee, go sit on someone’s car outside and drink coffee and smoke some and talk, go in and listen to a song, then Rick would say he needed lunch and so you’d go get lunch and talk and then come back and listen to a song and maybe do something, drink some more coffee, smoke some more cigarettes, then go get supper, then head back to the studio and work for another hour or so. I remember those days well because Marty’s work ethic is, “What? Lunch? Dinner?” He’s like me, he forgets anything exists outside of work. And it’s nice to have someone around who insists on doing some living as well. Yet they managed to do the album and Marty ate well at the same time, and when it came out it was with Rick’s dedication to Jimmy O’Neill , who had died of brain cancer in 2001.
Marty says some records you make for the musiic and some for the money and some for the joy of working with the person and Rick’s was mostly the latter of the three.
Rick saved for years then moved to Folly Beach, bought two houses, fixed them up, rented one out and lived in the other, and though he hated being a landlord it was his way of being able to live the way he wanted to, which was to have the time to talk to everyone he wanted to talk to.
When “Come on Down” was done, Rick got Marty to do a remix of one of the songs, saying he’d pay him for that one with a lunch at the Silver Grill. The Silver Grill lunch never happened. Marty says Rick still owes him a lunch.
And that he’ll miss the man.
I will as well. Miss hearing that deep, distinctive, boomy, magnanimous southern drawl that was Rick’s, Some people you don’t know until they’re gone how special they are, for some reason it doesn’t occur to you, maybe because they’re so quiet about it and don’t act like they’re special and that you need to be aware of this at all times, you take them for granted, and then they’re gone and it hits you, and in this case hits that they were leading a rather deceptive double life of ulterior motives, because part of what Rick was up to, his ulterior motive, was building community and making space for people to live and play their part. He took his time talking people into finding a place.
Fits with his philosophy he sings of in his “Folks Behind the Faces”:
But for all my traveling round
Everything that I have seen
The only sure thing that I found
is that people, not places, the folks behind the faces
Determine what life means
* * * * *
Rick Huff had a generous soul. And so when you were around him, you felt it a generous life.
