I remember Jess Espina well.
He was the greatest mimic I have ever seen.
He could credibly pull off songs from all sorts of diverse
idoms.

Buegrass, traditional folk, latin songs (of course)
as well as delta blues, etc. He played a good
blues harp, cross blowing and bending notes,
with the best.

he mimicked Bob Dylan like no other, and
was a natural musician.
I rememebr He played a clarinet one
night at party over on lafayette way, in at the
apartment of a guy named
Marty who had a Vincent motorcycle.

I first met Jeff through Jeannine and Mike Briles
at a party at artist Stefan Thomas's house, that night he introduced me to the open c tuning, which is still onbe of the most effective open tunings there is. He had just retruned from Minnesita where he had spent some time with John Koerner, one of his idols, who also played at the Barrel.

Jeff and I along with Alex Salowich, Ellen McIlwaine, Eleanor (Walden) Hoffman, Ernie Marrs, Bud Foote, Daniel Smith, Buddy Moss, Deeanne Wiggins, Kay Cothrin, Pat Sky, Chip Baker, Brooksie Hunnicutt and many others spent countless nites picking and singin to the wee hours of the morning.

I'll never forget those days on the Peacthree strip from 14th to tenth where anything and everything thing went down.

Funny thing, I dont rememeber Jeff owning a guitar in Atlanta- he always seemed to borrow one when he played at the barrel or Rucilios. He definitely broke in my my old Gibson S-J...

last I heard Jeff was living in the Tampa area where he grew up and working on a shrimp boat. Sadly, I hear his wife, Dickie, the mother of his children passed away just a couple of years ago.

Jeff was not the settling down type, and was totaly wild.
I could go on and on about some of the stuff we got into...

Anybody remember Sandy Rainey, who was a figure model at the Atlanta College of Art with Jeff?

She was one wild woman..

Oh yeah, Barbara Carnes passed away-one heck of a folk singer she was...

Dan Cucich