An editorial comment from the trenches - Tommy Womack

The Benefits Of Benefits       
By Tommy Womack

Peter Case is a buddy. We’ve worked together in Nashville, Memphis, Lexington, KY, Decatur, GA, and – I kid you not – Sesto Callende, Italy. He’s a true hardcore troubadour who has lived it to his toenails out of a suitcase for decades, playing his guitar and weaving stories with his words, wearing a rumpled suit, with an old hat, looking like a man who took a train into town. 



Peter had open heart surgery earlier this year. A benefit gig was at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in California back in May. Dave Alvin played, T-Bone Burnett, others.They did it because yet another exorbitant medical fix-it bill affected yet another life that has value.



There were benefits for Duane Jarvis and Tim Krekel too, before the hammers fell. Perry Baggs of the Scorchers was a beneficiary of a big two-night one here in town two years ago. A few years back, Government Cheese reunited to help an old friend deal with her bills.



There was even a posthumous benefit once when Jack Emerson passed away suddenly, leaving a mountain of bills. So it goes.



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Tim Krekel Remembered

A Guest Post

By Tommy Womack

The last time I saw Tim Krekel was at the Bluebird last winter, when we did an in-the-round with Marshall Chapman. It was a really fun night – it always had been with them, we’d played as a threesome 7 or 8 times in the last couple of years, and Tim was fine.  Just fine! He looked good and played and sang like the fleet-fingered rockin’ R&B hard man by way of Louisville guy that he’s always been.

And now he’s gone. Just like that. I’m only learning as a middle-aged man-child now how fast cancer gets people. I heard in spring he had a tumor needing removed and then I heard nothing more, until Friday the 18th of June when I heard he was in hospice. I should have called already for a long time before, and after that I vowed to rectify that soon.

I put it off, pissed at myself for doing so but datgummit I hate the phone. I hate not seeing the person you’re talking to. But I swear to God I was coming home from the Y that next Wednesday evening and I said distinctly to myself “TONIGHT! I CALL TIM!” Beth had her Facebook open when I got home and 

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