|
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituar
ies/la-me-gaffney18apr18,1,4527969.
story
Comment by
Brian
4/18/2008 @ 7:49 am
thanks reno- link didnt work but i
got it here:
Chris Gaffney, 57; witty
songwriter, Southern California bar
musician
By Mike Boehm, Los Angeles
Times Staff Writer
April 18, 2008
Chris Gaffney, a roots-music
omnivore whose earthy aplomb and
offhand mastery of many styles made
him a quintessential Southern
California bar musician -- but who
also earned international regard
for his heartfelt and witty
songwriting -- has died. He was 57.
Gaffney had been getting
treatment for liver cancer that was
diagnosed in February. His brother
Greg said he died Thursday morning
at Hoag Memorial Hospital
Presbyterian in Newport Beach,
where family members rushed him
after a fall in his Costa Mesa
home.
Gaffney toured extensively
over the last nine years as a
member of Dave Alvin's backing
band, the Guilty Men, playing
accordion and guitar and adding
vocals, and as lead singer of the
Hacienda Brothers, in which he
teamed with veteran San Diego
guitarist Dave Gonzalez.
But Gaffney had been a
presence on the regional bar scene
since the 1970s, playing multiple
sets each night in small clubs such
as the Upbeat in Garden Grove and
the Swallows Inn in San Juan
Capistrano. It was a hard-won
musician's existence that he and
Alvin captured in their easygoing
honky-tonk number "Six Nights
a Week."
"One of the things that
may have hindered him commercially
was that he couldn't turn it on; he
was a hundred percent honest,"
recalled Alvin, who considered
Gaffney his best friend. "If
Chris is in a good mood, you get an
amazing show; if he was in a bad
mood, he wouldn't hide it."
As a songwriter, Gaffney was
a peer of Alvin, Los Lobos, X and
the Red Hot Chili Peppers in
chronicling the life of Southern
California. In "Artesia,"
from the 1990 "Chris Gaffney
and the Cold Hard Facts"
album, he evoked memories of his
teenage years cruising through the
San Gabriel Valley -- remembrances
stirred by the scent of cow manure
carried on the wind from inland
dairy farms.
"The Gardens," from
the same album, and later recorded
by Freddy Fender with the Texas
Tornados, was an aching assessment
of the void that gang violence
leaves in a community's heart -- in
this case, Hawaiian Gardens.
But many Gaffney songs
reflect the dry, sometimes
absurdist, sense of humor that
stayed with him in his day-to-day
life: "They made a mistake and
they called it me," he sang in
one jaunty tune; in another lyrical
self-description he pegs himself as
"a dancing cretin with faraway
eyes."
Gaffney sang in a tuneful yet
conversational voice that was both
sandpapery and sweet. He had no
pretentiousness about his music. In
a 1992 Times interview, he
described taking part in a
songwriters panel at a folk
festival: "The kids were
asking, 'How do you write songs?' I
said, 'I'm sitting in front of the
TV, having a beer, and something
comes to my mind, and I go 'what
the hell' and write it down."
Born in 1950 in Vienna,
Austria, he grew up mainly in
Cypress, the son of a telephone
company executive. Tall and solidly
built, Gaffney excelled at track
and cross country at Western High
School in Anaheim and took his
licks as a Golden Gloves boxer.
"I always ascribed his
cockeyed view of the world to being
beat around the head a few too many
times," Alvin said.
As he built a critically
acclaimed recorded repertoire
during the 1990s with three studio
albums, including "Mi Vida
Loca" and "Loser's
Paradise" for Hightone
Records, Gaffney was unable to
capitalize on it with touring --
tied instead to his bar hero
regimen on top of days spent
scraping hulls at a Newport Beach
boatyard.
Gaffney accepted the
bar-musician's lot with equanimity:
"I was a working guy before
becoming an unheralded roots-music
recording eminence, and I continue
to do that. If they don't want to
put out an album, I'll go and do my
day job," he told The Times in
1999. What sustained him, he said,
was "the music, and I love the
people. You surround yourself with
good friends, and you're good to
go."
Starting in 1999, though,
Gaffney got to live the life of a
musical road warrior, with Alvin
and then the Hacienda Brothers,
touring extensively through the
United States and Europe. Alvin
said he soon learned not to give
Gaffney a weekly advance on his
meal money: "He'd give it to
some homeless guy or a guy standing
at a rest stop begging for
change."
With the Hacienda Brothers,
who blended classic country and
rhythm and blues styles, Gaffney
recorded two studio albums and a
live release. In December, he and
Alvin recorded the song "Two
Lucky Bums," a mellow duet to
friendship:
Let's make a toast to the
times we've had
The good, the crazy, the
rough and the bad.
We've survived every one, a
couple of losers who won,
And when it's all said and
done, we're two lucky bums.
"He might have gone out
early, but he did everything he
wanted to do," said Greg
Gaffney, who played bass beside his
brother through many of the bar
years. "He loved being on the
road, happy in a van with a bunch
of buffoons."
In addition to his brother
Greg of Costa Mesa, survivors
include his wife, Julie, of Costa
Mesa; daughter Erika of Houston;
sister Helen of Oakland; and
brother Robert of Vancouver,
Canada.
Services are pending.
Comment by
ZOGTONE
4/18/2008 @ 1:40 pm
Two lucky bums indeed.
Good-bye to a friend I never
met.
Comment by
BurningSand
4/20/2008 @ 10:17 pm
http://www.austin360.com/music/cont
ent/music/stories/2008/04/0424xlgaf
fney.html
follow the link (cut and
paste to read a great trubute
story.
Comment by
davo
4/23/2008 @ 6:59 pm
thanx davo-
a friend sent me this one
yesterday and i wanted to post it
but i thought i was ramming the
subject down the throats of the
brink-folk. chris, jeb, dave and
all had pretty much made tucson
their base for a few years...ans if
you go on the hacienda brothers
website gallery, you will see chris
with the tattoo that my ex wouldnt
let me get!
the man was indeed a quiet
charmer. i have a few funny
personal stories that i will share
at a later date. the good news is-
WEDNESDAY APRIL 30- the the cellar
in long beach, ca. "a tribute
to the gaffney family" with
dave alvin & the guilty men,
the hacienda brothers and the cold
hard facts...with "special
guests". i plan on doing a
behind the scenes pictorial for
brink. taking a few days off to
partake in the occasion. im also
doing a slew of "gaff- vaya
con dios" trucker caps to do
with whatever they deem worthy. it
should be a moving afternoon...
Comment by
ZOGTONE
4/23/2008 @ 8:40 pm
|
