Introduction

A Ballad of the West & Quest of an Epic Balladeer

In early 2004 British filmmaker Peter Wilson contacted me to inquire about filming a documentary based on my singular career as a “western epic balladeer”. Intrigued, I agreed to meet Wilson, his twenty-something son, Rupert, and “Computer Bob” Wishoff at Willie Nelson’s Pedernales offices  outside of Austin to discuss their ideas. I had worked with Computer Bob for a decade on various projects ranging from my quarterly newspaper Hoka Hey! to drafts for screenplays, grant proposals, and designs for album covers. During our initial meeting Peter told me that instead of an “in-depth” critical documentary, he and Rupert envisioned the film as a sort of “folk” testimonial featuring people who had worked with me interpreting my ballads either in various fields of music, theater, or literature. So I suggested a list of people they would want to interview and film and we got started in the spring of 2004.

Little did I know that this documentary film effort was part of a magical alignment of stars that would create a wild, two-month cinema-verite adventure and produce not only Peter Wilson’s documentary film Quest of an Epic Balladeer, but also the only visual representation of me performing my entire epic trilogy, A Ballad of the West. I retired live performances of my one man show of Part Two of the trilogy, Pahaska, in 2006 and Part One, Seekers of the Fleece in 2011. I still occasionally perform Part Three, Lakota, however, with my long time friend, accompanist, and frequent co-producer, John Inmon, and my son, Gabe.

Of course various video clips of my one-man show of Seekers of the Fleece and Lakota have surfaced over the years; indeed, the earliest known video of my one man show is from around 1977 and was shot by an anonymous videographer in the days when I performed the ballads regularly at Steve Clark’s Waterloo Ice House on Congress Avenue in Austin. This early excerpt is featured in the Quest of an Epic Balladeer documentary. And I know there exists somewhere a video of the first full company musical of Seekers of the Fleece. In the thirty-three years that have passed since it’s debut in Cody, Wyoming, that initial full-company musical of Seekers of the Fleece has become legend as it was directed by and starred, Tony-nominated, Joe Sears, the late, great Steve Fromholz, (a Texas poet-Laureate), the gifted Cherokee actor (and future Academy Award recipient), Wes Studi, and yours truly. My musical interludes, under-scoring, and songs were also beautifully enhanced and conducted by the show’s music director, the late, great Grammy-nominated, Bill Ginn. A video snippet of the debut production of “Seekers”, shot in Cody, Wyoming in 1988, is shown briefly in the “Quest” documentary. I also vaguely remember a video being shot of the final run of that debut full-company production at Live Oak Theater in Austin. And there were literally hundreds of performances of the full-company outdoor production of Seekers of the Fleece during its five year run in Wyoming. That said, however, my co-producers and I had very strict rules against audience members shooting videos of the five summer-long seasons of the outdoor productions of “Seekers” in Wyoming. Still, certainly more than a few audience members got away with videos of the show anyway. We would barely get the show started before the tourist’s video cameras came out. I also performed my one man show of Seekers of the Fleece on a soundstage in Lubbock for Andy Wilkerson, the director of the Southwestern Collections Archive at Texas Tech University. Later Andy arranged to film me performing Lakota at a house concert performance in Lubbock for the Southwestern Collections archives. Still, most of these known or vaguely remembered videos of the various theatrical, or pirated visual depictions of the ballads vanished long ago. Such is the ephemeral essence of the theater. 

In the spring of 2004, however,  Peter Wilson, his talented son, Rupert, Bob Wishoff, and I traveled from Austin to Nashville to interview my mentor, the master studio musician and record producer, Fred Carter Jr. After Nashville we flew to Phoenix to interview my theatrical mentor, renowned playwright/screenwriter, Dale Wasserman. Following our time with Dale in Phoenix, we drove toTucson to interview my long-time friends, Dakota author and philosopher, Vine Deloria, Jr., and Lakota activist, folk-singer, and actor, Floyd Red Crow Westerman (friends since childhood themselves). We concluded the major tour with a conversation with my old friend author/producer/director, Max Evans in Albuquerque. Sadly, all of these men have gone on ahead now and moved camp to the other side. Each of them had a major impact on my personal life, as well as my career and my ballads. I am so thankful and blessed we were able to visit with them before they departed and that they are now a central part of Quest of an Epic Balladeer. We returned to Austin to interview John Inmon and Bob Livingston, Jim Inmon, Joe Sears, Rod Kennedy, John T. Davis, Melissa, and Gabe. Fortunately, Erin Galey also filmed an interview with David Amram at the Kerrville Folk Festival.

Yet the aforementioned star-alignment continued when another important character entered the picture: Cinematographer/Screenwriter/Director Nick Meagher (pronounced “Marr”) and I have a long history that began at the 1990 National Mountain Man Rendezvous in Utah. There was a ban on anything “post-1840” at that rendezvous, but during an event, this big, tall blonde guy walked up and stood beside me and I immediately heard an odd whirring sound. Then I noticed he had hidden a sixteen millimeter camera under a buffalo hide and was doing hip shots of the people gathering for the event. This was such an “authentic vous” that I had to walk for two miles with my guitars from a parking lot to even get to the event. Once there, I had to resort to the “established in 1838” imprint on the head of my Martin Guitars for the Rendezvous Board to allow me to enter with them. So I had to ask this guy what he was doing. I learned before entering the rendezvous he had requested permission and the Rendezvous Board allowed him to shoot film if he gave them a copy and if he disguised the camera. I learned Nick was planning a feature film based on the life of mountain man Joe Meek and we became great pals.

Immediately following the National Mountain Man “vous” in Utah, Nick met me at the Fort Bridger Mountain Man Rendezvous in Wyoming and shot footage of me performing my one man show there. Thereafter, whenever I was performing in Utah, Wyoming, or Colorado, Nick and I would get together and we had frequently discussed shooting a film of my epic trilogy. With perfect timing, Nick and I reconnected around the same time Peter Wilson arrived with the idea for a documentary. When Nick learned what we were doing he offered to back a film of my entire trilogy under the single condition that we shoot it at his incredible ranch in the spectacular San Juan mountains near Antonito, Colorado. 

Consequently, soon after completing principal photography on the Quest of an Epic Balladeer documentary, Peter and Rupert Wilson, Bob Wishoff, my assistant, Erin Galey, my wife Melissa, son Gabriel, a caravan of musicians, camera men, recording engineers and a small trailer of technical recording equipment headed from Austin to the T-Bone Ranch near the Colorado/New Mexico border to begin a week-long four-camera shoot. After we completed principal photography, Steve Cox, Rupert Wilson and I edited the epic trilogy on line on a futuristic AVID Editing Suite at the Bauhaus Studios in San Antonio, Texas. Later, Rupert, Erin Galey and Peter edited Quest of an Epic Balladeer in Austin. Jim Inmon, Brad Sellars and I spent months editing and mixing the 5.1 sound track of the trilogy at Brad’s Sellar Studio on Lake Travis outside of Austin. Jerry Tubb mastered the 5.1 sound track at Terra Nova Studios in Austin. We completed video and sound editing and mastering of the project in 2008 in time to coincide with the University of Texas publication of my autobiography, Bridger. 

I never released it. Why? For decades now, aside from writing and performing the trilogy, my primary job with A Ballad of the West has been to shepherd the production and release of the three ballads in their various incarnations: musical, print, stage, screen, or whatever. The timing wasn’t right to release the videos shot at the T-Bone Ranch. And I also felt I might do a better video production of the trilogy later down the trail.  

So why now? In June, 2020 -three months into the COVID pandemic- I was diagnosed with Stage One cancer on my left tonsil. I began treatment in August and in September, 2020 and concluded six chemotherapy sessions and thirty-five radiation treatments focused on my throat area. Thankfully, we caught the cancer early and I was pronounced “cancer free” in December, 2020 and remain so at this writing, over a year later. Needless to say, however, the radiation had a dramatic impact on my vocal cords. Having been a professional singer/songwriter for nearly sixty years, I knew I was facing a long road ahead if I wanted to continue performing live. But with the pandemic basically shutting down touring I was able to complete treatment and recovery during a time when things were shut down anyway. That said, I concluded several months of rehab with a speech pathologist and have been gently singing and retraining my voice now for months now. I had planned to remain silent about having cancer until I completed treatment, recovery from treatment, and the complete rehabilitation of my voice to perform on stage again as the pandemic lingered. I preferred just keeping things quiet about my having throat cancer. As I was restructuring my website to prepare to launch the streaming format, however, my son Gabriel reminded me that by remaining silent about surviving throat cancer my behavior was like ostracizing myself into a self-imposed exile. His wise words had a profound impact on me. So I decided to announce my cancer with the launch of audio and video streaming of my epic ballads.

There is yet another reason for releasing the videos of A Ballad of the West  now: Photography has a way of becoming increasing precious over time as a trigger of memories. As I survived cancer these videos of A Ballad of the West have also survived to become the only visual collection of me performing my entire epic trilogy pre-radiation treatments. But more importantly, however, we captured the epic ballads at a moment in time that will never return. Thus it is also a sweet bonus that two of the original Lost Gonzo band members -John Inmon, and Bob Livingston- were also involved as part of the band I quickly assembled in Austin in 2004 for the filming of an outdoor “concert” version of the entire trilogy. The Lost Gonzo Band has a history with me and my ballads going back fifty years; the Gonzo’s have been helping me since the beginning of the recordings of these ballads; in 1975 the band’s founding members -Gary P. Nunn, and Donnie Dolan, along with John and Bob- recorded Seekers of the Fleece  in Colorado with me and the late, great actor, Slim Pickens. Gary and Donnie would have been there for the 2004 filming, as well as the recording of Pahaska and Lakota in 2000, but Gary was was involved with other projects and Donnie retired from music decades ago. So I was equally fortunate that the great drummer and percussionist Steve Samuel took a break from his regular gigs with Jerry Jeff Walker and Natalie Cole, to join with the lovely and brilliant multi-instrumentalist, Darcie DeVille, Bob and John, to provide the perfect accompaniment for me to perform the entire trilogy. 

With John’s brother, master recording engineer, Jim Inmon, recording sound for the video shoot I had another of my stalwart collaborators who had been with me from the very first recordings of the ballads. Jim, and associate engineer, Brad Sellers, quickly bonded to form a splendid sound team. Of course Jim was already well-accustomed to coping with technology and my unusual recording location requests. In 1975, to prepare the team to record Seekers of the Fleece, mountain man Timberjack Joe Lynde and I arranged a gathering high in the mountains just outside of Sedalia, Colorado to record a mini-rendezvous in a tipi. In order to provide electricity to record this gathering, Jim Inmon drove a Volkswagen van as far as it would go up the side of the mountain. Next, to generate the electricity we needed, Jim ran a mile of extension cord even higher up the mountainside from a generator in the parked van to the tipi gathering. In 2004 we arrived at the T Bone Ranch to discover the pasture in which we had originally selected to construct a stage for the shoot had been plowed, thus ruining our prime location. Prime because the pasture offered the best view of the San Juan’s in the distance, but also clear access to the ranch house only a few feet away in which we had hoped to set up a studio in a bedroom with electrical power for recording. So we were instantly met with a serious and immediate dilemma. I had seen an antique sheep-herder’s wagon gathering dust on Nick Meager’s T-Bone Ranch and knew those wagons to be incredibly sturdy and mobile. So I suggested that they try to convert that into a studio. So while the band rehearsed, the sound engineers cleaned and converted the old wagon into a comfortable, portable, sound-proof recording studio. Next, the two engineers asked some of the cowboys working at Nick’s ranch to help them haul the sheep-herders wagon a mile out into a pasture to the alternative location where we had constructed a primitive stage. Then, they ran a mile of extension cord from their “soundstage” back to the ranch’s closest buildings and the electrical power needed to record the concert of A Ballad of the West.

Still another major reason for releasing the videos now is that much of my work with A Ballad of the West has always been somewhat like a shepherd’s responsibility with his herd; my job is to over see which of the narratives that form the epic ballad -poetic, musical, historical, or graphic- are united to tell the tale. Since the work was researched, written and performed over such a long period of time I have presented various sections of the larger body of work without the other parts that, united, form the original vision as a trilogy. For example: I performed a one man show Seekers of the Fleece and Lakota in Two Acts under the banner of A Ballad of the West for decades while I continued research and writing drafts of Pahaska. Also: I always hoped Seekers of the Fleece would be illustrated by the paintings of Alfred Jacob Miller, the artist who traveled to the Rocky Mountains with Sir William Drummound Stewart in the 1830’s and captured the only known images of the original mountain men. At the turn of the 21st Century the “Creative Commons License” made the Alfred Jacob Miller paintings available for use and I was finally able to finally accomplish the dream this at this site. If you visit the Seekers of the Fleece page at this site here you will find an example of my original intention of a combination of poetic, musical, and graphic narratives create form of the epic ballad. With a copy of my A Ballad of the West paperback you have the fourth part -the historical narrative. I had this awareness of being a “form shepherd” and  had moments of “cinematic” flashes back in the 1960s and early 70s when I was fusing narrative poetic couplets and long folk songs, paintings and historical footnoting to create a new “hybrid of forms” in order to tell the story of Jim Bridger and the mountain men. In 1982 the high prestige western art magazine, Four Winds, boldly attempted a different organization of the narratives of my ballads with the very first printing of my ballads in a beautiful collection with my poetic and musical lyrics intertwined with Miller paintings and historical text. Nevertheless, the music was missing.  

So aside from having survived a bout with throat cancer, there is final answer to the “why now?” question I pose here: Technology. Digital streaming has become the visual and audio medium of our time. Ever since John and Jim Inmon and I digitally restored Seekers of the Fleece in 2016 and the Creative Commons License made use of the Miller paintings possible, I have been slowly consolidating the original four narratives of the epic ballad -poetic, musical, historical and graphic- to make them available exclusively digitally at one place. It occurred to me during one of those radiation treatments that the magical alignment of those stars back in 2004 and the creation of these videos was much more of a synchronicity than I initially could have ever realized. Now I can finally accomplish this life-long vision of consolidating all the narratives of A Ballad of the West at  www.bobbybridgermusic.com. Consequently, these video recordings of A Ballad of the West have earned the romantic shadings of time’s compassionate patina and, finally, they have their obsessive-compulsive author’s blessing. I hope you and your family and friends enjoy A Ballad of the West.