Quiet talent of Chris Gaffney will be missed

By Parry Gettelman
SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Thursday, April 24, 2008

Psychologists have identified seven stages of grief, but when Chris Gaffney died of liver cancer April 17, I realized there are actually eight; they forgot to count righteous indignation. That's where I'm stuck, because an unnecessarily cruel fate took one of the finest musicians on the planet at age 57, just when he was finally starting to enjoy some of the success he'd long deserved.

A scandalously small number of people got to hear the four terrific solo records Gaffney released in the late '80s and early '90s, including the critically lauded Hightone albums "Mi Vida Loca" and "Loser's Paradise." After disappearing from the national scene for awhile, he resurfaced playing guitar and accordion in his best friend Dave Alvin's band, the Guilty Men. Gaffney also sang harmony, which was sort of the Americana equivalent of Luther Vandross singing backup for David Bowie.

Some voices just belong front and center, and Gaffney's, equally remarkable for its range and smoky sweetness, found its ideal setting in the Hacienda Brothers, a brilliant country-soul collaboration with former Paladins guitar slinger-vocalist Dave Gonzalez, plus pedal steel guitarist David Berzansky, bassist Hank Maninger and drummer Dale Daniel. Muscle Shoals legend Dan Penn ("Cry Like a Baby," "Dark End of the Street") produced the band's self-titled 2004 debut and the follow-up, 2006's stunning "What's Wrong With Right."

Acclaim was translating into a growing audience, both in the United States and Europe, but Gaffney passed away after recording the Hacienda Brothers' third studio album, due out this summer. The Los Angeles Times headline for his obituary read "witty songwriter, Southern California bar musician," which is a little like describing Frank Sinatra as "wiseacre, saloon singer."

But one of Gaffney's longtime friends, Rod Hodges of the Iguanas, said Gaffney was not bitter about the lack of recognition; he really didn't care about the music business.

"He was all about people, playing music, and the star thing, that wasn't him, man," Hodges said from New Orleans. "He could look like a star, and sing like a star, but he did not act like a star, in any way, shape or form."

Hodges said Gaffney's genre-blending albums were a big influence on the Iguanas, who used to cover his "Psychotic Girlfriend." They got him to play on their first self-produced album, 1996's "Super Ball," and Hodges and Gaffney crossed paths on the road a fair bit because the Iguanas shared a booking agent with Alvin.

"Even before he was in the Guilty Men, he was on the road with Dave as a T-shirt guy, and then he was out with the Blasters, because they needed somebody to stand between Dave and Phil so they wouldn't kill each other," Hodges said with a laugh.

Gaffney became a welcome houseguest of Hodges, whose family lives across the Mississippi from New Orleans on the mellower West Bank.

"There's nothing going on, and that was just his style," Hodges said. "He loved the little gas station right by our house; there's always a bunch of loserlike guys hanging out, and he always talked about that. It's just a local thing, people buy a beer and hang out there and drink it.

"And then when me and (partner) Marisa would go out to L.A., we had to experience the Gaffney cool, which was, he had a kid's pool set up in the backyard, and me, Marisa, Chris, and Julie (Gaffney) would get those little short lawn chairs and sit in the pool and drink margaritas. . . . He called not too long ago, just before he got sick, and said 'I got a new pool.' It had built-in seats so you didn't have to use lawnchairs. But alas, I didn't get to see the new pool."

Gaffney also had a home-away-from-home in South Austin, where Kellye and Mike Rila have a room they named "Gaffney's Room" when they bought the house.

"It has all the Gaffney essentials — a recliner, ESPN and a telephone," said Kellye Rila, who got to know Gaffney when she worked as a DJ at a Dallas community radio station in the '90s.

Rila recalled how she came to bestow on Gaffney a nickname he loved, "The Great Indoorsman." The Hacienda Brothers were visiting friends out in the country, sitting around a campfire, and Gonzalez enthused "Gaff, Gaff — isn't this great??!"

"Gaffney looks at him, takes a drag on his cigarette, and says 'You know what's nice? Inside,' " Rila said.

Gaffney, of course, had a host of friends in Austin, including Dianne Scott, the beloved "door goddess" at the Continental Club. She said some of her strongest memories of Gaffney involve his generous friendship with Alvin. Particularly vivid is her recollection of the Saturday night last December when Alvin played the Continental with the Knitters and hung out to watch the Hacienda Brothers play the next set. To his surprise, they launched into his song "Fourth of July."

"You could see by Dave's face, he was first stunned, and then just excited, like a little kid on Christmas morning, and when they called him up on stage, the grin just couldn't stop," she said.

It was fitting that Gaffney helped create that moment. "Let people in Austin know, that was one of his favorite places to play," Hacienda Brother Daniel said.

Long before the Hacienda Brothers formed, Daniel was a Gaffney fan. He used to see his band the Cold Hard facts play a weekly four-hour Sunday afternoon gig at the Blue Cafe in Long Beach. Sometimes, if the next band canceled, Gaffney would play all evening, too.

"I stayed a couple of times, and I know once, they didn't repeat a song in like seven hours," Daniel said.

Daniel hired Gaffney to play his wedding, and then was dismayed when Gaffney called to ask "The wedding's still on, right?" Gaffney told him that another guy had offered him three times as much to play his wedding at the same time, to which Daniel replied "Well, if what you're asking me is can I pay you that much money, the answer is no."

"He said 'No, that's not what I'm asking you — I'm asking you if the date is on. I'm not going to cancel on you for money. A man's got his word, and if a man doesn't have his word? What does he have?' That was Gaff."

The day after the wedding was Gaffney's birthday, so Daniel asked him how he planned to celebrate.

"He said 'I think I'm gonna get Homeless James a new pair of jeans.' He was a homeless guy that hung out around the Blue Cafe. I said 'Wow, that's cool.' And he said 'Yeah, Homeless James, he's putting the "P" back in "Pants.' He had so many of those things — it was like breathing to him. I could have walked around and written that kind of stuff down all day long."

But although Gaffney was a constant source of entertainment to his friends, he wasn't an entertainer. The band would try to keep it a secret from him if they were scheduled to do a radio appearance. Gaffney liked to joke that what he was going to say in his interview was "Metallica ... purple ... later."

"That's 'what's your favorite band — Metallica — what's your favorite color — purple — later," Daniel said. "That's the interview he always wanted to do, and sometimes he came pretty close to giving that interview."

"Something Dave Alvin said is totally true," Daniel said. "He was 100 percent Gaff all the time, to his positive or sometimes to his detriment. If he didn't want to do it, he didn't want to do it, and you knew. In the music industry, they talk about the total package, the person who can do anything — give the great interview, on and off stage and all that stuff. I think Gaff's honesty, in an industry that does not thrive on honesty, kind of makes him like the anti-total package. If you signed on with him, you were getting what he was giving."

Daniel said he asked Gaffney once how he managed to hit the supernaturally high opening note to "Walkin' On a Dream' night after night, and Gaffney replied: "I just set it up there and go for it. That's all I do."

"He was a special guy, and gifted with that voice for sure," Daniel said. "I'm not sure that ever got captured on record — probably nobody wants to hear me say that since we went to the trouble of making this record! But when you saw him live, you are always just stunned. It was just a blast every night to be up there playing with him."