Chris James Martinez, a.k.a. Jethro, Santiago, Jim, et al., gave us the slip one year ago today.
You left us way too soon, homes. Some of us never got the chance to say “Adios” until you were dust in the wind.
Well, dust in a Chock full o’ Nuts coffee can, anyway.
After you hit the door running for the final time Larry, Kelly, and William got the old band back together and then some, first at the Bull & Bush in Glendale, and again in Alamosa, trying to sing you back home.
Sorry if it sounded more like the howling at the moon that was No. 1 on our El Rancho Delux hit parade Back in the Day™. Weren’t none of us exactly Jimmy Ibbotson, even then. More like Jimmy Beam, and near the bottom of the bottle, too. Talk about your long, hard roads.
Anyway, our serenades kept going to voice mail, or maybe to that answering machine I bought you way back when. It’s probably under those Glendale mondo-condos next to the Bull, with the rest of El Rancho. There’s an artillery piece at the Alamosa boneyard in case you want to call us back.
Thinking of you today, my brother. And of Lucy and Lawrence, too. Give them un abrazo for me.
Mad Blog Media 
Hey, why is the room so empty?? Where did everybody go?
Sigh.
For reals. I recall the Jim Harrison line, from “Warlock”: “Every time I pass the cemetery on the way to work I get the feeling we don’t live forever.”
One is blessed to have such have such a panegyric
The trick — which I am still trying to learn — is to say nice things about (and to) people while they’re still around to hear them.
I remember my best buddy, and our best man, Hank Nowak. He worked as a jazz drummer while a college student in accounting. Hank returned to the source in 1991, and when we used to drive to Tucson for his chemo treatments, we always listened to George Benson’s version of “Stella By Starlight.” Every time I listen to that song, Hank is there.
Ah, “Stella.” Funny you mention it. In “The Dharma Bums,” the book I “borrowed” from my bro’ Jim, Ray Smith and Japhy Ryder are walking along a beach and Ray is whistling that very tune. A cute young girl takes note and says, “Swing.”
That picture could easily have been a classic album cover. Love the sunglass boyz lurching (not lurking) in the background. Chris looks like he’s removing ear wax with his necktie. Jim looks like he’s drank some outhouse squeezins by accident. And you…you look like a windswept prairie preacher just arrived from some crossroads town in Kansas. The stone wall really ties the scene together. Don’t know what the bands name should be but the album could be titled “We Did the Best We Could with What Little Brains We Have”
Really, Herb. Shades of that Crosby, Stills, and Nash album cover.
I think the band’s name is The Rev. Broke Dick O’Dawg & The Gnawin’ Prophets.
The Rev’s signature tune was “Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up.” Period. Sort of an alt-country-punk/death metal/Satanic-gospel kind of number.
I thought you already had a name for the band. The album’s title track was “You Won’t Feel A Thing.”
Hank said his jazz group got a lot of tips in the jar when they played that song.