Some encounters with Lupe DeLearyum.
by
Johndavid Bartlett
For a short time, at the beginning of the second decade of the twentieth century, I had the good fortune of befriending an ambiguously mystic musical madman. I know alliteration is not in vogue these days, but that is exactly what Lupe was in my mind. I am not in a position to 2
say whether or not he had a firm hold on the terrestrial world, but he certainly could deal effectively with the ethereal. In a very short time, Lupe gave me a new understanding of what music is and where it comes from. There really is no system that can fully explain the mysterious interaction of meter and scale. Lupe had a way and very cool equipment that made the sounds inside my head emerge into the physical world. For a couple of years, he was a constant companion. Then, one day, disappeared into the distance saying, “I’m going now, but I’ll be back.” But we’ve got a ways to go and some ‘splainin to do before we get to that particular goodbye.
That night I first met Lupe DeLearyum, I was headed back toward Jacob's Well from Canyon Lake. It had started raining a couple of miles before Devil's Backbone and by the time I reached the top, it was like trying to drive upriver on the Guadalupe. I figured to wait it out with a Real Ale, so I pulled into the parking lot at The Tavern, close to the door, but by the time I got inside I looked like someone had pushed me into the River. Just inside the door, I was shaking rainwater like a yard dog. A guy at the bar turned and watched me for a moment then said, "To swim, you must first get wet. Hey Bulldog, get this guy a couple bar towels.” This guy spoke with just a hint of an accent, Colonial Spanish? Dark haired, not red headed. He had a noble air, like a vaquero. I went and sat a couple stools down and Bulldog handed the towels across the bar. As I wiped off my face he stuck out his hand and said "Lupe...Lupe DeLearyum. I play a 1966 Thunderbird." 3
I thought, "Wow" and said, "You mean you play it like an instrument?" "That’s right...I am a Musician. My instrument is a 1966 Thunderbird." I thought, "Wow" and said, "You want to jam?” When I’d pulled into the Tavern's lot I'd only seen Artly's pickup and Bulldog's Jeep, but it had been raining hard. I hadn’t seen a T-bird, so I asked him, "Did you bring it with you?" He said, "It is just outside the door, you must have missed it in the rain." I told Lupe that my love and I lived on a ranch a couple miles on down the road and I'd love to see him play that Thunderbird, so let's go. By the time we had downed our ale and gotten outside, the clouds had cleared away and there, parked right next to me, was this pristine 1966 cobalt blue Thunderbird convertible, top down and dry. I said, "Follow me.”
4
Lupe tailed me to Las Piedras, the ranch where Scotty and I lived in the small stone cabin that was the first house built on the property. I opened the gate and pulled on through with Lupe on my tail. We drove on down the winging dirt road and pulled up to the cabin. Scotty was sitting out under the biggest live oak in the yard. When Lupe pulled that Thunderbird up by the front door. Scotty got up and came over, looked over that T-Bird and said, "That is a mighty machine." In one fluid motion, Lupe jumped the driver's side door, stood with his hand on the hood, looked out over the river valley and said, "I bet the stars at night are big and bright." We all looked down toward the Blanco with wistful eyes. So I asked Lupe, "How does this work?" He asked if I had a laptop or something we could record on. I went and got my MacBook Pro, my guitar and brought them out. Lupe dug around in the trunk and came out with a handful of very eclectic cables. He said, "Get out your guitar and sit in the front passenger seat. Play me the song you want to jam on. I played the Elevator's song "Living On". Lupe sighed, "Elevated, that could fly," He climbed into the driver's seat, reached over and opened the glove compartment, got out some kind of interface and what looked like a crystal clear 8 track tape. That's when I noticed, under a strange looking radio was an ancient 8 track player.
5
Lupe turned to me and said, “I was born in Vera Cruz the day John Lennon died, December 8, 1980. My father was a mysterious Frenchman, who was rumored to be an ancient seaman stranded in Vera Cruz, waiting for his ship to return. My mother was the singer in the band. As a child, I used to entertain my parents with recreations of the sounds the sea makes at night. Then one day when I was a teenager, I was hiking in the Yucatan near Uxmal and I came upon the overgrown ruins of a Mayan pyramid. I decided I needed to climb to the top and when I reached the summit, I looked out over the top of the jungle towards the sea. That’s when I heard a low deep humming sound. It seemed to be coming from a hole that opened to the platform just at the Eastern edge. As I approached the hole, the sound grew louder. I knew I had to find out what was making the sound and so, I climbed down the hole into a large room near the base of the pyramid. The sound was everywhere in the room, not only low and deep but high and sweet. I shown my flashlight around the room until the light found a dais against the wall and on that dais was an 8 track tape, a glowing crystal 8 track tape. This is the 8 track tape that never ends that I use to make classy compositions today. The sounds from the 8 track tape that never ends are recorded directly from this T-Bird and then digitally layered until the desired effect is achieved.” Lupe plugged the interface into the cigarette lighter and pushed the crystal 8 track into it's slot. He started the car and turned on the radio. It was tuned to a station that was broadcasting old Wolfman Jack Shows from the X. Lupe hit the power button on the 8 track and started twisting the tuner till he came to a station that was sending out this deep, very organic hum. Using "forward and reverse" buttons on the 8 track he searched around until he found this tabla sound. He turned to me and said "rolling”. I was taken by surprise. It seemed that I was surrounded by rhythms. I was some how able to overdub my own guitar playing in real time. A time and temporal warp thing. It was like I had slipped into my own parallel existence. The whole thing threw me and I kind of skipped and jived into the vocal. So I told Lupe, ”let’s do it again.” Lupe said, “We only get one take per song.” http://lupesear.com/track/784393/living-on?autostart=true 6
Myself, I always thought I had some kind of musical soul working. I was born in October 8, 1950, nine months after my parents and couple of other couples went to Brownwood to see The Texas Playboys on New Years Eve. All three couples had babies over a one-week period. My Dad was Billy Bartlett, a wildcatter and infamous on the Jacksboro Highway. He brought home a stereo record player in 1958. The only stereo records we had, at first, either played a train moving rapidly from left to right or Mahalia Jackson. I went with Lady Jackson. Growing up, I was a passable front porch picker. But when I was 15, my Dad bought me a Gibson “Everly Brothers” J200. We were living in Houston and I was playing folkish music with a High School buddy of mine. We played songs like “Abilene”, “This Land” and got good enough that we started to get to play early sets at the Sand Mountain. That summer my Dad had the bright idea of giving myself and some buddies (including my picking friend) a summer job. He had purchased an abandoned cotton mill in Kaufman, Texas. We were going to camp out in the old tower office and break cast iron off the abandoned machinery for scrap. We packed up our T-shirts and jeans, grabbed our guitars and headed off to hard labor. Slinging sledges. The train tracks through Kaufman ran right along the dock at the back of the old mill. Literally across the tracks was the entirety of the town’s small black community. The guys and I could look out across the tracks from our camp in the top room of the old office tower. 7
As old world as this sounds, the first weekend we were there, we met the Mayor’s daughter and two of her friends at the soda fountain in the drug store on the square. We were the exotic “Boys From Houston” and we had two weeks of soda fountain, Help Me Rhonda, hot rods and barbequed cabrito in the Mayor’s back yard. The Beatles had “I Want To Hold Your Hand” and Dean Martin had “Everybody Loves Somebody”. Happy Days. But the second Saturday we were there, things changed. People from across the tracks started to gather down by old mill’s dock. It was a late afternoon. Summer going strong. They set up some tables, fired up a smoker and started passing, what I assumed was, ‘Shine. Guitars, harmonicas and fiddles came out and the Strutter’s Ball began. It took us a while to get it up and go get our guitars. The players were encouraging as we tried to join in. As it grew dark, fires were lit and music got real bluesy. An old guy, Dave I think, kinda took us under his wing and showed us some slick licks. Lightnin’, Muddy, Mance, Robert Johnson every Saturday for the rest of that summer. This all became one of my life’s most persistent muses. We tried to get the girls to come listen, but they weren’t allowed that close to the tracks. We had started classes at the Mystery School.
8