I have a rule that I have to do some art daily. Doing something is more important than the subject. Whereas I used to spend hours or days looking for the perfect subject I now just look around wherever I’m at for something to sketch. I prefer to draw from life and my animal friends are always handy models. I have dozens of drawings and paintings that I have done of them over the last couple of years.
While sorting out my old and eclectic album collection I decided to keep an obscure Bluegrass album strictly for its cover. A banjo player in a cowboy hat and boots sitting on a bale of hay, picking a banjo. I did a quick sketch of it in ink and it didn’t give the appearance of the guy on the cover but it was likable enough for me to paint over it in watercolor. I am thinking I will make another sketch of it. Valuable training…and fun.
I met Kris Kristofferson along with Johnny Cash when I was an extra in their 1984 film The Last Days of Jesse James. I responded to an article in the Tennessean requesting extras for the film for a scene in Edwin Warner Park. It said to dress like cowboys with little color. I showed up wearing my faded green Joe Cartwright shirt and cowboy hat with my dog Roscoe. I was told to join the crowd scene at the horse race track. I stood in front row by the rope and I could see Kris and Cash in the dirt track being directed by someone. While talking to them the director led them over to crowd close to me and left them there. I noticed that Cash was very aware of the crowd and took time to shake hands with the people close to him. Kris was more aloof. They walked off and prepared for the scene. It was a horse race and they filmed us extras as the horses flew by. Then they had us all go to the other side and they re-ran the horse race and shot us from the other side giving the appearance that there was twice as many people at the race. Then they told all of us extras to go home. As I turned to go I saw Kris and Cash standing in the middle of the dirt track talking. I figured if I was standing with them I wouldn’t have to leave with the extras. So Roscoe and I walked over to them and said hello. We exchanged greetings and I just stood there listening to them talking about the early days when they first met. The whole time Kris was looking down appreciatively at Roscoe who calming sat there thoroughly unimpressed with them. I was standing there with Kris, Cash and Roscoe who was the only one not dress as a cowboy. David Allen Coe who was also dressed like a cowboy walked up to us. He gave me the stink eye with a scowl but joined the brief conversation before we all went out ways. I hung around a bit and struck up a conversation with a friendly crew member who gave me his number and told me to come to the shoot the next day which was also in the park. I showed up the next day wearing the same clothes. My new friend got me up close for the scene which was a barn scene and involved Kris shooting at a bottles on a fence. It was late and got dark. I got to watch him act close up. He was in command of himself, loose and confident as he shot his pistol. I learned a lot watching him act and the whole process of filming. My buddy told me to call him the next morning and he would tell me where the next shooting would be. It turned out to be an isolated farmhouse out in the country. The scene involved Cash and Kris standing on the front porch. In one scene Cash read a poem out of a book about a man who went to heaven and was surprised at seeing people who he didn’t expect to be there. Then he noticed that everyone was looking at him. For no one expected him to be there. I planned to memorize it when the film came out but it didn’t make the cut along with any scenes with me in it. The director complained about too many people being there and people started to disperse. Then I got the idea to go behind the house and enter it from the back where I would wait and see who came to me. At first it was empty. I stood in the kitchen and waited. After a bit I realized I had to pee and the bathroom was sealed off. So I went out back and noticed there was a big, sharp drop off in the yard. I figured If a jumped down there I could pee and no one could see me. So I jumped straight down only to come face to face with Kris who was peeing. His back was to me but he looked at me like I was going to ask him for his autograph. I said “Hi” shyly and turned my back to him and we both peed in awkward silence and then went on our separate ways. I went back into the kitchen and waited. Sure enough…there was a break in shooting and both Kris and Cash walked into the kitchen. We exchange friendly greetings again and when the time was right I approached Cash and asked him if he would like to see my art. I handed him the small book I had with photos of my night scenes. He graciously took the book and looked intently at every page and asked me questions about them. I then asked Kris if he was an art lover. He paused for a second like he didn’t want to be labeled and said, “well, I love art.” he said cautiously. “Would you like to see my art?” I asked and I handed him my book. He too looked at every page with interest. He complimented my work and we talked about self publishing and he mentioned John Prine starting up his own record label and suggested that maybe I had the right idea of going my own way. Then Cash walked up to us and asked me to see my book again. He took it over to the window for better lighting and looked at every page and asked me questions. When he paused at a pastel I had done of a railroad track I offered it to him as a gift. He looked me in the eye and said, “I would be honored,” He asked if I had something to write on and I looked through my wallet and found a business card that was blank on the back. He wrote his name and address on it and handed to me. “Send it here,” he said and then they both took of for the next scene. I never saw Kris after that but I still hung around a bit. Then Cash approached me again and asked, “Can I see that book again? I want to show it to June.” I gave him the book and he climbed into a bus with June who was dressed as the mother of the James boys. When he got off the bus he handed me the book and offered kind words to me and everyone departed and went on their ways. Then next day I went to call my buddy for the next shoot and I realized I had lost his number and my movie days were over. So I missed out on meeting Willie Nelson who was the judge in the court scene for the trial of Frank James. Most movies on Jesse James end with Jesse’s death. But this film continued and showed what happened to Frank James. Kris played the part of Jesse and Cash played the part of Frank. A few months after Jesse’s death, Frank gave himself up. He was tried for murder in Missouri and found not guilty, tried for robbery in Alabama and found not guilty, and finally tried for armed robbery in Missouri and again released. He got away with all his crimes. I eventually got to give the painting to Cash and after he died I mysteriously got it back and it now hangs in my living room.
I was in my early 20s when I started working as a carpenter’s helper for various contractors around Nashville. The standard pay for a helper was paid $5/hr. But they liked my energy and work ethic and I usually got $6/hr. I got a job working with a framing crew and we worked alongside a crew of masons from East Tennessee. Their foreman was a boisterous good ol’ boy with curly red hair named Buck. He was big and muscular and took a liking to me for some reason. Even though my hair was short at the time he called me “Flower Child” due to the peace sign tattoo I had on my right arm. When I heard that one of the guys on his crew was married to his own sister I asked Buck about it. He had no shame admitting it was true and was very nonchalant about it. I asked him how they could do something like that and he just smiled. “We have ways around the law.” While curious about the legal aspect, I was talking about it morally. I just let it go.
Another day Buck just happened to casually mention that there were no good black people. He had black guys on his crew who couldn’t challenge him. But he wasn’t my boss and I was free to speak out and I couldn’t let that one slide. So I confronted him loudly so both crews could hear. “Are you telling me, in the whole world there isn’t one good black person?” Everyone was waiting to hear his response. He thought for a minute and then said, “Well…maybe Ray Charles.” Then he added, “But he is blind and doesn’t know he’s black.” I looked at him to see if he was joking and it was clear he wasn’t. Later that afternoon a brutal brawl broke out between Buck one of his black workers who also a big muscular guy. They were trading violent punches with each other before the crew split them up. The black guy was told he was fired as me stormed off to his truck. But I think he had already quit in his mind and wanted to give Buck a thumping before he left. I had mixed feelings. On one hand a felt bad the guy got fired because of me. But on the other hand I was glad I exposed Buck for his racist view and he suffered a consequence for it.
Towards the end of the job Buck approached me, “Hey Flower Child. Are you right wing or left wing?” I didn’t know how to respond as I didn’t know the difference. I remember when I was young and asked my dad the difference between a democrat and a republican. He told me that the democrats believed in supporting the working man and the poor, while the republicans believed in supporting the rich, would eventually trickle down to the poor. But I didn’t know what wing either of them were. So I just responded, “Somewhere in the middle I guess.” Buck just huffed, “Then you are going to die with all the left wingers when the right wing takes over. We are in training and when society breaks down we are taking control.” Then I reminded him that I said I was in the middle. He just glared at me and scowled, “If you ain’t right, you ain’t living.” A chill went down my spine. There was an awkward pause. Then suddenly his demeanor changed and he smile at me. “Do you want to come to our training camp this weekend? Admittedly, I was curious. But I was a Yankee that he called Flower Child and I liked black people. So I politely declined.
“Do not think dishonestly” is one of Musashi’s precepts. Being overly optimistic isn’t honest thinking. If I was thinking honestly I wouldn’t have tried to squeeze one more trip to Tennessee out of my little Toyota. It made it about halfway. Fortunately for me died it dramatically on a back road while I was driving slow and not on the interstate doing 70. I exited the interstate to get gas. It was late at night and both the gas stations were closed. I followed a sign pointing me back onto the interstate. It lead me down a dark country road for half a mile before the car came to a grounding halt. I managed to turn onto an empty back road but a portion of the back of the car was still in the other road. The car wouldn’t budge. It wouldn’t steer. I couldn’t shift into neutral or any gear. I got out and could see the driver’s side front tire laying horizontal on the ground and knew the car was a goner. I wasn’t rattled. Unlike the old days of travel I had a cell phone and AAA. All I had to do was wait. The sky was filled with stars and there wasn’t any sign of life or civilization in view. I kept the immovable car running to keep the lights on to passing cars could see my back end that was hanging out in their lane. I sketched the scene while I waited there alone in the dark. After an hour and a half I called AAA back and was told they had no record of me calling and I had to call for another tow truck which eventually arrived and took me back to a garage in Columbus. I slept the rest of the chilly night in the car waiting for the garage to open. When they opened the next morning they confirmed the car was now worthless and I made arrangements to have it junked. I took an Uber to a bus stop where I had to decide whether to take a bus back home or to proceed to Nashville where I have many friends. I chose Nashville. All in all it took 36 hours to get to Nashville on that trip. I remember hitch hiking down there in 18 hours on one trip back in the day.
I finally got a chance to see Dylan up close with the opportunity to photograph him. He usually doesn’t allow cameras when he is performing. but this time he did. Unfortunately, a woman took a seat directly in front of me and stood for almost the whole show. I did manage to get a pocket size sketch of him at one point and a few pics. When Dylan finished his set she left. It wasn’t even her seat.
Sometime in the 80s I went into the Ernest Tubbs Record store on Lower Broadway In Nashville to buy some records. I had just acquired some traveling money and I wanted to treat myself to a couple of albums. They say not to judge a book by its cover but I was drawn to the night paintings by Susanna Clark on an Emmylou Harris album and a Willie Nelson album and I bought them both. The title song Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town was written by Susanna. Willie’s Stardust became one of the top selling albums of all time. A few days later I was on the road hitch hiking back home to New York State. I had grown so nonchalant about traveling that way that I carried the two records in the original plastic bag that came with them like I was just returning home from a shopping trip. It rained a lot on that trip and I had learned to have my ride drop me off at the last underpass before their exit so I could stay dry while I thumbed. I later learned that Susanna was married to the legendary Texas songwriter Guy Clark, but it was Susanna that caught my attention first. I got to meet them both a couple of times at his shows, but it was nothing memorable for them. Not like it was for me. Eventually I got their address when they lived at a place they called Crosswinds in Mount Juliet, Tennessee. I sent her one of my night paintings as a gift with a letter telling her how much she inspired me. It took awhile but she wrote me back with a most inspirational letter. I had hoped our paths would cross again but they moved into Nashville and their new address was hard for me to get and we lost track of each other. She would go on to write and co-write some great songs and create some fine art. She was a beautiful person and a muse to many, including me. But towards the end of her life she was heart broke. Guy had her heart but Townes Van Zandt had her soul and when he passed away she gave up on life and art. At least that is my understanding of what happened. Reading her letter now makes me sad that I didn’t keep up our correspondence and continue inspiring each other. Art can be a powerful medicine and I am reminded of the Bob Dylan quote, “The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What more can you do for someone than inspire them?”
I found some VHS tapes that I made at a yard sale down the road from me. Back in the 1900s, I got a grant to create a series of art instruction videos that I distributed to all the libraries in Orleans and Niagara Counties. When they upgraded to digital, none of the libraries digitized them before discarding them, and one set ended up at a yard sale. It was missing volume #5, which has the bloopers on it. Someone got a find. http://www.arthurbarnes.com
I’ve received many suggestions over the years to write a book about my travels. This has led me to many questions such as where do I begin the story, which is really a combination of many stories. I have put down many of these stories in words and many are still in my head. I don’t see myself as a great writer but I can tell a great story. Telling the stories in writing is not the same as telling a story with your voice. But I will try and write with the same voice as I speak which isn’t as easy as you think. Instead of keeping people waiting for the entire story I have decided to share it as I write it. So it begins.
The Artist Monk 