Notes from the Boneyard: The outsider

I guess thats why they call it ‘outsider music’. Because when anybody walks into the room and hears the stuff your listening to, thats how they view you.

As an outsider.

Not part of the club.

But who wants to be part of their club anyway?

Put me in a room with the freaks any day of the week.

I have a whole section in my record collection dedicated to the outsiders.

The stuff thats hard to find.

Beyond earshot of the norm.

It’s the stuff you never hear on the radio.

It’s not exactly ‘Top of the Pops’.

When you look up the backstory of some of the people that made this music, it very rarely ends well for them.

Most of my heroes are either dead, insane, or broke.

John Fahey lived in his car.

I guess Daniel Johnston would be an example of someone who broke the mould and found mainstream glory.

But he couldn’t handle it.

His mind wasn’t built for such things as success and fame.

It may have even made him worse.

I met him once.

In Austin Texas.

He’d just played a gig and he was being hounded by a lot of people, praising him like a god.

He just sat there, chain smoking, wanting to be anywhere else than where he was sitting.

Trapped by his own success.

Then there are people like Bob Frank, who had their big chance.

The moment they’d worked towards; the big time. And when it gets handed to them on a silver platter, they hit the self-destruct button.

And then spends the rest of his life trying to get that moment back.

I’ll never understand it.

I’ve always been drawn to the outsiders, the outlaws, the freaks, and what they call ‘outsider music’.

But then you stop and ask yourself, what exactly qualifies as ‘insider music’? The mind boggles.

Anyway, its a fine morning up at the Boneyard ranch.

Two wild deer ran past me as I sat outside for sunrise.

They stopped when the music I was playing came into earshot.

They just stood and stared.

Made me wonder if it was the first time they ever heard music of any sort.

What must it sound like to them, that magic?

They seemed to enjoy it, or at least they weren’t spooked by it anyway, like most humans are.

An appreciative audience, those deer.

They dig the outsider vibes, being outsiders themselves, I guess.

And with that in mind I will retreat again for the day, back into the studio, to stockpile more songs for a rainy day.

Will half of them ever see the light of day?

Or is it just music for deers?