Catfish Stevens

His black leather hat, his black leather pants, and his black leather boots curved up to mid calf, almost matched his leathery face and black mustache that curled round his face. He had sunglasses that helped him see, but all of this shielded him from being seen himself. It didn’t matter though, his personality was so strongly portrayed in his demeanor,  you didn’t need to look in his eyes. 

Catfish walked over to us sitting in that tiny bar and pulled up a chair. I had never met him before, but my upstairs neighbor, Rob, was friends with him. Rob looked like he could be Catfish Stevens about forty years younger. Rob’s girlfriend Jessica, aka HoneyBee, was there also. She had a sweet heart-shaped face that would keep her eternally young, with large-rimmed round glasses and a long side pony tail. The small group could be described as down-and-out-and-proud, a few degrees contrast to my Batman hoody and jeans. It’s the first time that hoody has failed to be cool. 

Catfish talked to Rob genially, I only dropped in on hearing the conversation after taking in his appearance; he was talking about getting his driver’s license picture taken - his fingers rolled a cigarette with methodic rhythm, as he never looked down from conversation to oversee this ritual. 

“You can’t have glasses on, or my hat. I always wear my hat! The only time I don’t wear my hat is when I’m at home!” he laughed. 

I suddenly imagined a police officer pulling him over on his motorcycle Catfish said he rode from Wyoming to northern Wisconsin and not being able to recognize his photo ID. 

“You could always wear a bandana,” Rob suggested.

In response, Catfish suspended his hat above his head to reveal a purple bandana tied comfortably around it. It looked like it lived there. 

I was getting up the nerve to ask if I could film their performance, but didn’t get around to it until Rob stepped out for a smoke, and Catfish later walked past me before their set began. 

“Oh yeah!” He said, almost excitedly, “I welcome all free media, you know! Totally,” he added, “and even if you wanted to post it on facebook, or something, you know, go ahead.” He was so generous, I was immediately at ease. 

The set began. Old-time country with a lick of American folk. The lyrics were usually about some woman who was either mighty fine, or equally as mean. 

My camera sat upon my lap, taping. I practiced zooming slowly, and panning from one solo to the other. There were five musicians in all, including Rob, who sat in to play the harmonica. The bass player (not the base guitar, mind you, but the jumbo violin looking thing) looked either he was made for the instrument, or the instrument was made for him. Everything about him belonged in a sea-side saloon, from his thick leathery skin, to his thick prematurely grey hair that was held in unmoved waves upon his forehead. He had a small trimmed goatee above a neck to rival the thickness of a giant oak. Something about him was entirely endearing. Maybe the few lines of tattooed sheet music, displayed on the forearm raised to fret the strings. Or the skull and cross bone emblem stuck right in the middle between fingerboard and bridge underneath the strings. My camera had to pan up when I shot over to him, giving a classic “larger than life” angle; he didn’t need it. I had heard him plucking the strings of his boatlike instrument as a warm up. I realized a few seconds after he walked away from it toward the bar, that it was the baseline to the song booming in muffled toxins throughout the bar. 

Rob sat in to his left as they played, between him and Catfish. Rob knew what to play and when to play it, and when he did it was with soul. It was a Mary Poppins moment as I watched slack-jawed as he pulled out nine harmonicas from his bag while we were still sitting at the table, and they now lay on the musician’s sound box within easy reach. 

Catfish had two main guitars. One was a shiny metallic, with moons encircling stars around the center. He had a glass finger case, that Rob had once shown me how to use to give it that distinct oldtimey twang. Catfish sang also, his voice comparable to Johnny Cash only of a less heavy timbre. He moved his boots slightly, and hung back in the shadows of his coverings letting the soul pore out into the microphone, the bassist and the second guitarist bookended the group, their voices complimenting his. 

The drummer can only be described as a balding leprechaun. Long hair pulled back behind his head, his beard long with a reddish tint. He had a rounded V-necked T-shirt and almost seemed to mouth the words as he kept the beat that embodied him. I don’t mean Leprechaun as any sort of heedless insult. It was the mischievous glint he held from behind the drum set that made the mental connection more than anything. 

The second guitarists name is Boo. Hearing Rob talk about them before that night, I had thought that Catfish and Boo were just the same person with two nicknames. I was more or less correct, although Boo had less leather on. At one time he was playing a sort of a miniature zither. His solos matched the center guitarist’s in skill. 

They announced their intermission as a “quick smoke” at which time I made my hoodied exit, needing to get some sleep so I’d be awake enough to edit my filming in class. 

I stood in awe of these men. They knew who they were, and their music settled itself into the very grain of the wooden fibers decorating that interior. My head was filled with it, and it’s an easy thing to let take you.