It was a cold dark and dank day in Denver when I first met Steven Flynn. He had just graduated from the University of Colorado with a major in The Golden Rule and a minor in Drinking. I put an ad up in a music store looking for musicians, or, Steve put up the ad and I found him, I can't remember exactly, you see that was almost 30 years ago.
Arna, my former future-ex-wife-to-be and I were invited to jam and to meet with Steve at his flat in a dark and dank Denver barrio where Buggsy Malonian Pocked-Art .45 facades kept you alert and on your toes, even in the light of day. Steve introduced us to his future ex-axe, a Bluesy-looking blonde piece, complete with the essence of termite
Since Arna was a mite young lil' lass, fearing for her very mite lil' life, we earned a spot for the night in Steve's own bed. It was there proper my young wife and I consummated our wedding vows and it was there the next day- with Steven G. Flynn as our witness - that we vowed to 'do it' again someday in the future if she didn't have a headache. Who knows what lechery could have cast itself down upon this freshly wed couple's future if not for a Mexican urban drug war and Steven's Denverian hospitality.
Some time after Arna and I met up with an old musician friend, Tom Danner, and blazed a trail to Seattle, got moved in, found day jobs, and made it all safe and secure for Steve to come and settle there. Steve integrated into 'my' band in a very pash little soul bar situated in a picturesque, down-town district in one of Seattle's best-known musical communities, splattered the corner of Who's Yo Mama and Don't-Forget-to-Duck Avenues, a place called The Ridge Tavern. And it was there, in that bar, my young wife was introduced to a style of life she hadn't reckoned back in her loving thirteen-room home in Rhode Island. The Ridge was graced with some of Seattle's most fashionable, dashing and well-mannered locals. There was this one tall handsome fellow who took a shining to her, and rightly so, I guess. I can't remember his name but he called me, Yo, cracker, yo bitch fine! . . whatever that means. Anyway Steve took right to slam dancing his keys and took several memorable vocal opportunities that were crowd pleasers, except for his musicianship and singing. Arna had a ball, danced all night and graciously closed the establishment with a purse-ful of new social contacts, a pink-red heat rash from her lower neck to her upper bosom well on its way to the point of festering. I still believe it to be the steamy hot breath of Mr. Yo Cracker that caused it. But it was, of course, somehow my fault for not being there to protect her.
The Ridge Tavern band was a real piece of work. We called ourselves, Tanya Blue-Jeans Tighter 'n Shit and The Quick 60, as in, "Hey, what the hell, I'll do it, I need the money, man." The white soul band came complete with one Gary Spears, grandson of the late great Albert who immigrated to the US after the big one and opened a bullet factory somewhere in Idaho. We covered a lot of James Brown, of which his Doin' It to Death pleased just about everyone there, even those who passed the whole night in the rest room looking at themselves closely in small mirrors and listening through the thin walls. We rendered Doin' It at least twice per set or else it got scary - know what I mean? We took long breaks and had ourselves a time; cocktail glasses filed with the coldest, freshest, clearest ice a freezer could freeze, tallish glasses filled to the brim with non-artificially flavored Kool-Aid and straws that - through a then-new enhancing process and nurtured right there in The Ridge's back room - bore traces of an essence of alcohol. The drinks were complimentary and at our beckoning call, everything on the house! Steve, of course, brought his own flask of Jim Beam mixed 60/40 with MD 20/20 and did his own enhancing in the shadows of the drum set, so as not to offend the bartender's due (Steve and his Golden Rule).
Later Steven joined up with Gary Cerudi, one of my most admired Seattlites, and took on another gig at a bar called Place Pigalle. The Blues group was known as Watch How the Food Particles Never Clog My Reeds with Hammerin' O'Flynn on Keyboards and Lips. I remember Steven getting angry (a truly rare event) just because this one-armed watered down king crab hunter hurled a beer bottle at him on stage; kinda like that scene in The Blues Brothers but without the chicken wire. Later that same night his friend, a one-legged sardine stacker, tripped up to the stage to remind me for the fifth time that I bore an uncanny resemblance - and even played like - his idol, David Cassidy. On about his third hop he was taken by gravity and went down upon the neck of the Gibson 330 I'd borrowed for the night. He offered to have it repaired at The Marx Bros. Guitar Works but I declined and glued it myself . . it was never the same after.
Steve then joined with John Lee, Jeff Zions, and Mike Lynch, whose half brother David, a Brit by birth, later became a director/producer of some of my favorite films. I liked that band a lot. Steve was becoming one of the better pianists in town by then, in demand, and now mixing his Jim Beam 70/30 with a drop of lemon for grit and a splash of soda for color.
Later Steve and Delilah started a lounge act called, Steve and Delilah and Our Royal Blue Velveteen Covered Rhodes 88. We had a lot of mutual friends in that time: Steven had met a cool friend of his, an erotic dancer up somewhere near North Lake where they sell used cars. She was expert in friendship. Then there was Don "Olaf, Prince of The Fiords" Larsen ( who, so it is rumored, gave up his sax because it muscle bound and turned his lips to stone making them virtually unkissable) became my moral advisor. There were many other unforgettable musician friends too but I've forgotten their names over the years, sorry.
Once Steve asked for and received permission to re-build the motor in his VW in our driveway. Arna was for it. She adored Steve (still does, I'd bet) and liked the smell of oil on her man's hands (that'd be me). The project was something of a failure, bonding wise. You see I am as a gunfighter from the ol' West; a hip-shooter, fast on the draw, while this O'Flynn dude is more an archer to the likes of Robin of Loxley. We got together on a second project that turned out better though. This was when we replaced the clutch in his quarter-ton pick-up with the one and a half ton wooden house built onto it. Steve, I do believe, just wanted me for upper body strength, it is work that doesn't require an advanced degree in thinking or knowledge of any philosophy I know of.
At about this time I was a college student - the oldest on record - and wrote about Steve and Delilah for an assignment in a creative writing course. Steve's life was portrayed in a steamy novelette called Road Girls, and Delilah's talents where exposed in an article called Delilah Delish. Road Girls didn't please Steve at its first reading, rightfully so. You see one of my evil alter egos took control of my pen and inserted, using Steve's name with out his permission, all that he wished Steve to be. Delilah's story was better but the publisher misspelled her last name to read Balish and not Delish.
After my Nipples fame in Bellingham and my fourth divorce from Arna, I left her and our daughter Hester to fend for themselves tethered in the natural leather of a pearl-white Porsche 911 SC Targa. This was a time when Steve and Delilah were feeling the oh-so-classic tension of being friends to both parties of a divorce. I felt the tension as well. Jo Ann Clausen, my new future ex-live-in-wife-to-be-or-so, a simple and soulful young woman, and I moved down to live in and join with a band from Bellevue called Gone Hollywood, a second rate (at best) lounge act. It was then I first razored my beard and covered my guitar with a Velveteen-like carpeting woven from those very shaven hairs. I went for the Lilac-dyed shag, since Steve's Royal Blue was practically his patent, his hallmark and certainly a large part of his identity around the Seattle lounge scene. It was about then I departed Washington and repatriated in Central-Coastal California. Having to dodge bill collectors for twenty years, I became a migrant worker who traveled around the world teaching university students of developing nations how to fuck us good in business, but with accentless fluency.
Steven and I have been either close or at odds (once or twice about moral issues) over our 30 years of friendship. You don't need me tell you what a keeper Steven G. Flynn is. I don't see Steve and Delilah as often as I wish but they are with me in thought almost daily. We had quite a time in our day. I still play my guitar but for crowds that scream with Rs that sound like Ls . . Lock and Loll baby! Or even, Rook teacher, rook, it me, Sa-nguanrt Jengpibonpong, you student!! All I can think of is: Good God woman, call Pat Sajak, get on the show and buy yourself a vowel!!
From Thailand, the land of smiles ...
Jonathan Blair
