Dan Hicks

Subject: Dan Hicks
From: GUEST,John Clark
Date: 07 May 24 - 04:41 AM

My stint with Dan started with a phone call. "This is Dan Hicks. I'm on a talent search." If you've been to one of Dan's shows you’ll recognize the tone, laconic, with an edge that might be self-mocking or might be sarcastic. He said he was looking for a bass player and that I'd been recommended. I knew his music from his early days as a minor sensation, an acoustic anomaly in the crowd of psychedelic San Francisco rock bands. I first heard Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks at a club called Major Ponds at California and Divisadero, now an overpriced tavern catering to the tech bro crowd. The band was a quintet, Dan singing and playing guitar, a guitarist playing solo lines, a violinist, an upright bass player and two singers, the “Lickettes.” I was impressed. The tunes were clever, cynical and very funny and the band's musicianship was excellent. I had seen him more recently with a smaller band, the Acoustic Warriors, at a club on Clement Street, where he was working with a bass player friend.

Dan had a notorious reputation among local musicians. Stories of his drinking days were legend. He once made Herb Caen's column in the Chronicle. Caen had it that Dan reached down from the stage at a gig and punched the fellow in the face. Dan told me that wasn't exactly the case. He said he was annoyed because some guy wouldn't stop requesting "I Scare Myself" and that he didn't hit him but simply reached down from the stage, grabbed him by the collar and told him to shut the fuck up. The guy pressed charges and Dan was arrested and handcuffed on the stage of the Venetian Room at the Fairmont. He had been sober for years by the time I got his phone call and antics like that were long past but by all accounts he could still be a difficult sort. Nevertheless, I was interested in what he had to say. He asked if I'd drive up to his place in Mill Valley to play a few tunes. He was friendly and cordial when we met. We played several of his songs, which he recorded, and that was that. I didn't think much about it until a few weeks later when I got another call from Dan asking if I was available for a tour that was coming up fast. I asked whether we got our own rooms on the road. He said we did. I asked about pay. It wasn't a lot but it was enough and I told him I was on board. He sent me some charts of the songs and a tape of a recent gig. That was it. No rehearsal and no information about destination, just an instruction to meet at the United counter at SFO at 10 on a Tuesday morning and advice to bring a warm coat since the East Coast would be cold in February.

I arrived at the airport at the appointed time, noticed a guy carrying a violin case and figured he was with the Hot Licks. I quizzed him about the touring protocol. He said "We get lost a lot." We met up with Dan, who gave us a mimeographed sheet of the itinerary illustrated with droll graphics, caught a flight to Virginia, piled into a rented van, set out for the motel and immediately got lost, resulting in a very late arrival. The next day we were off to the Birchmere, a club in Alexandria where we were to meet up with the other band members at the gig. One of the singers flying in from Los Angeles had broken her foot a week prior to the tour. Her doctor advised against traveling but she did the tour anyway. Her flight had been delayed and she didn't show by the 9 pm downbeat. We started the set to a packed house without her. Dan did quite a bit of patter between tunes, more than usual that night since we were short a singer. He told a long story about working in a sock factory as a "sock tucker." Maybe it was one of those you-had-to-be-there situations but it cracked everybody up. I later learned that he didn't tell jokes but just riffed, never the same story, but always the same wry tone. Halfway through the set the singer arrived, hobbling out on crutches, at which point we played in earnest, Dan's songs that the band had been playing on tour every night. I spent enough time practicing the tunes the prior week to feel comfortable with the material and things fell into place just fine.

After the Birchmere we went back to the hotel, got a night's sleep and in the morning drove to the next gig, a day's drive distant. This was the routine. Drive during the day, arrive at the venue for a sound check, break for dinner, play the gig, drive back to the motel and repeat the procedure the next day. After each gig we made a stop at a 7-11, referred to as the "victory pop," nomenclature I gathered was left over from post-gig imbibing of various substances in prior band incarnations. Fortunately, that ceremony had long since been replaced by late night snack stops but the name stuck. We were out a week and a half on that first tour. I enjoyed it. I liked the music and the schedule was forgiving. We didn't start driving until 11 or 12 so the mornings were relaxed and the tours lasted two weeks at the most. On most tours one of the bookings was so distant that the drive took the whole day, leaving no time for an evening gig. When that happened I’d ask someone in the band to meet me at the venue with my bass the next day and I'd spend the day walking whatever city we were playing. I saw a lot of the country that I wouldn't have seen on my own as well as return trips to cities where I had lived like Chicago and New York. The gigs were either clubs where the we headlined or festivals with huge audiences.

The guitarist, violin player and singers were good musicians, interesting people and I liked them all, a good thing since the job was as much about riding in a van as it was about playing. Dan's dry tone was a constant, a wise guy more than a comedian. As well as a wit, Dan was a handful. You've met people who give you shit just to see if you'll come back at them. If you buckle they'll ride you mercilessly but if you toss off a good humored "fuck you," you'll both have a good laugh. Dan was like that. I could handle him just fine but it got to be tiring. Once in a while his temper would get out of hand at someone or something, and it'd be a drag on everyone. After a year, I realized that while I enjoyed the gig it was starting to wear. All that travel time and playing the same tunes every night made a difference. I gave notice, recommended someone to fill the bass chair and continued to play dates with the band until my replacement could settle in. I left on good terms. After that Dan continued to call once in a while for local gigs with "Bayside Jazz," the band he cooked up to back him singing jazz standards.

Herb Gold, writing about aging, observed that you may grieve not only for the loss of friends who are gone, but adversaries, people who call forth a kind of energy not present in relationships that run a smooth course. I wouldn’t put Dan in that category, but he could be an irascible cuss. Still, I liked him and agreed with his assessment that we were "fellow bopsters," as he put it.

He produced a substantial body of work, writing tunes that drew on bebop, swing, country, close harmony vocal groups, Django Reinhardt, Bob Wills and any number of other influences, but all his songs sound uniquely his own, sly tunes written from a peculiar viewpoint that seemed straightforward at first but was deceptively savvy. He was on the road from the time he was 20 right up until the time he couldn't tour anymore and then he did local shows until he couldn't do that anymore. You wouldn't know it from the patter but he was serious about putting on a good show every time out. I was sad to hear it when I got the news that he was gone.

Subject: RE: Dan Hicks
From: gillymor
Date: 07 May 24 - 10:20 AM

Thanks for sharing your story. I loved the playing of the Hot Licks.