Happy Heavenly Birthday to the legendary Texas blues guitarist, Clarence Gatemouth Brown.

A few adventures I had with "Gate" from my forth-coming memoir Something Happened to Me Yesterday.

Happy Heavenly Birthday to the legendary Texas blues guitarist, Clarence Gatemouth Brown! One Thursday night I got a call to open for him at a little joint on the South-Side of Milwaukee called the Odd Rock Café. The place was empty but Gatemouth didn’t seem to mind. He strode through the door tall and skinny as a rail, in his black cowboy hat and boots. Gate was a good-natured dude who perpetually puffed on a carved briar pipe filled with his special blend of tobacco, hashish and pot. After exchanging pleasantries, he immediately got down to business.

“You know where a fella can find some weed in this town?” he asked.

“How much do you want?” I said.

“Much as you can get,” he grinned.

I was hoping to jam with the man rather than score for him, but any acolyte of T-Bone Walker’s was a master of mine. It was a lineage I was thrilled to be connect to, whether by picking the “Okie Dokie Stomp” or delivering a pound of skunkweed in a suitcase.

There were no more than a dozen people in the joint that night, even though Brown had been on the comeback trail after a pair of great albums, Pressure Cooker and Standing My Ground put him back in the game.

Check This Out! - Too Much Presshaah!

That night after the gig we all hung out in his tour bus, passing the pipe around, sipping cheap burgundy and sharing stories. On my way out, Gate told me that I was welcome to sit in with him anytime, which I soon did, in Madison, Chicago and New York, but best of all in Austin, at the legendary Antones, before it became a CVS. Brown and his band, the Express, were laying down a tasty gumbo of blues, Cajun and swing numbers when I sidled up to the stage with my mandolin.

“Pick that tater-bug, son!” Brown hollered as I played my ass off. Just then, in through the door walked “The Iceman” with his Telecaster in tow, ready to cut Gatemouth where he stood. Albert Collins was one strange looking cat, bordering on feral. His eyes were wild. There always seemed to be a small tornado twisting up his hair, even when he was indoors. He plugged in his old Telly and proceeded to scorch the room. I couldn’t even hear Gatemouth, let alone the rest of the band.

Albert “The Ice Man” Collins

Backstage, after the set, Collins was surrounded by a throng of beguiling ladies. “The Master of the Telecaster,” was hardly what you’d call handsome, but he clearly had something that drove the women wild.

“Hey Albert,” I said reaching through the wall of adoring gals. “I just wanted to tell you what an honor it was to play with you.” His hand found mine, fingers long, black and rough, knotty as a shillelagh.

“That was some fine pickin’ you did up there,” he said.

“Real fine,” Gatemouth agreed. “But kinda nutty though…”

“Yeah, kinda nutty alright,” Collins laughed.

And that’s how I got the nickname, “Nutty.” I don’t think Gate ever remembered my “real” name. He just always called me “Nutty.” I’d been called a lot of things, mostly “witty” and “whimsical” in the press for my offbeat songwriting. But “Nutty” was also Thelonious Monk’s nickname too. If it worked for the great iconoclast of bebop, it was cool with me.

Did I happen to mention Frank Zappa once called Gate his favorite guitarist? He also played a wicked fiddle too!