If that was all I had to say for him, it should be enough to earn your respect. Playing drums behind Little Joe Washington means doing the impossible. Means being ready for a start or a stop where there shouldn't normally be one. Recognizing a tune from the way Little Joe's counting it off. Understanding his hollers from underneath that grinding, picking, screaming noise he's making up in the front of the stage. Or off the stage. Watching Little Joe talk, or dance, or pass the hat, or play the guitar with his feet, or flirt, or cuss, or drink, and all that in a single verse... and still the drummer's got to be ready to head off in another direction, on another beat, in another tempo, at a moment's notice.
And that's when Little Joe's not too drunk: what you call your “best case scenario.” But I've seen Kevin hold his own in less than best case scenarios too. Plenty of times.
Sometimes I would go see Kevin up in his place out in the woods. We would drink and smoke up there, and walk around out in the pines and the gullies that ran through his property. Kevin would point out where the wild pigs came through and trampled out clearings in the underbrush. He was always camping or traveling to Louisiana to see bands play. Doing things that other people I knew, myself included, didn't seem to make quite as much time for.
Kevin's been playing guitar, and piano, and drums, and the marimba, for a really long time, and he knows how to do it. He's been writing songs, and playing music in this town since he was a kid. Kevin told me that when he was a kid, he got to see his Houston heroes play, guys like Lightnin' Hopkins. Now he's older, he says he gets to play with his Houston heroes too, meaning guys like Little Joe. But Kevin seems to me every bit as precious a piece of the Houston scene as those heroes of his. He's playing guitar and piano in Apocalypse Town. I look back there and see him playing, and I feel really lucky.
- t
p.s. I love you, Kosovo music. Here's another Hosenfefer classic, straight out of Mitrovica, Kosovo.
p.p.s. I love you too, Houston.
