Bobby Bare – Daddy, what if…
“Daddy What If”, a sentimental dialogue between the father and 5-year-old Bobby Jr., tugged at conventional country heartstrings enough to break the double-album. But “Marie Laveau”, as blackly humorous as “The Winner”, gave Bare his first (and only) #1 country hit. And at more than five minutes, “The Winner” was long, but at more than seven minutes, “Rosalie’s Good Eats Cafe” dwarfed it.
Lullabys, Legends & Lies broke all kinds of rules and still became Bare’s highest-charting country album to date. The success of the father-son duet led to the 1974 follow-up Singin’ In The Kitchen, another Silverstein-penned album featuring Bobby’s whole family (daughter Cari died in 1976, at age 15).
Though never known for novelty songs during the ’60s, Bare returned to them often once he hooked up with Silverstein. Some would argue he did so too often — that whole albums of Silverstein songs were maybe too much of a good thing. But there’s no doubt they put a twinkle in the baleful Bare eyes that used to stare from album covers (even when he was smiling, or trying to). Besides, it was hard not like to such novelties as Paul Craft’s “Dropkick Me, Jesus”, which is as spiritual as it is hysterical. Meanwhile, albums such as Hard Time Hungrys stayed right in tune with mainstream country’s working-class ethos.
Cowboys And Daddys, released in 1975, balanced artier material such as Terry Allen’s “Amarillo Highway” with hoots such as Ray Wylie Hubbard’s “Up Against The Wall, Redneck Mother”, creating a sweep that was unusual even in the Outlaw era. Onstage, Bare became a more outgoing performer, and his shows grew increasingly raucous into the 1980s. But he didn’t live too far out on the edge, and that’s doubtless why he’s still with us today.
“There was a lotta craziness during that time, a lotta craziness,” he recalls. “I watched all my friends doing lots of drugs, especially coke, and it was hurtin’ ’em. I couldn’t let myself get caught up in it, because I was married and had a bunch of kids.”
When Waylon gobbled a handful of pills to keep going for several days, Bobby would shave just a taste off the edge, enough to keep him up and singing for a few hours, and then he’d go to bed. Among his friends, sleeping came to be called “the Bare disease.” Having given up whiskey in the ’60s, he managed to party sufficiently on a combination of Budweiser, Red Man and Skoal. And even at his peak, he played little more than 200 dates yearly, usually four a week so he could come home for half the week. Only when he toured overseas would he be gone for three weeks straight, and every year he took off all of January. To this day, he’s never even had a serious illness. If Bare wasn’t so damn much fun to be around, you could almost say he was no fun at all.
In 1978, under the new management of rock impresario Bill Graham, Bare switched labels to Columbia. The albums became patchier. Down And Dirty, which yielded two of that era’s signature singles in the whimisical “Numbers” and “Tequila Sheila”, was the most successful. The 1981 As Is, produced by a young and hungry Rodney Crowell, might be Bare’s all-time best album; it features Crowell’s band, with Albert Lee on guitar and Ricky Skaggs on fiddle, and songs by the likes of Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt. In 1979, Bare helped Rosanne Cash onto the charts for the first time by duetting with her on “No Memories Hangin’ ‘Round”. Starting in 1983, he hosted a three-year run of “Bobby Bare And Friends”, a singin’ and pickin’ and talkin’ show that’s still the best regular program ever aired on TNN or its successor CMT (reruns, anyone?).
But when his contract expired and Columbia execs offered to renew, Bare neither accepted nor declined; he simply skipped the meeting. “I could have had record deals right and left, but I knew it was useless,” he explains. “I’m not pissed off or bitter or nothing because that’s the way it should be, that’s the way it’s always been. Young people control the business and the way the music goes, and I’m glad to see it. They got the energy, they’re so eager, just like I was when I was in my 20s. Hell, I’d do anything back then to get a record deal and get played on the radio; I’d do whatever it took.”
Still, he admits the Old Dogs albums came out of a conversation he and Silverstein had about how they couldn’t listen to the radio anymore because all it played was kid music. Though they made the Old Dogs music for people their own age, they wound up getting their airplay on Americana stations. But when Shel’s heart suddenly gave out at age 67, Bare was devastated, as was his family.
“Shel was the one we knew would live forever; he didn’t abuse himself with drugs and alcohol. He did yoga and meditated and he walked or swam every day; he ate healthy. So when he was the first to go, it knocked me down for quite a while,” Bare sighs. “And our kids, Shel was like…our kids all loved Shel, they grew up with Shel, he was family.” Bobby believes Shel was a bigger influence on Bobby Jr. than dad himself (for the record, Junior gives them equal credit).
“Faron Young used to live right over there.” Bare points across the lake. “George and Tammy lived right next door to us; Georgette was born there. John [Cash] lived right down the lake on the left. Charlie Walker once lived two houses over from here, and Hank Cochran and Jeannie Seely lived four houses down on the left. Merle Travis lived right around the corner and Harlan was right across the street.”
He jokes about hearing loss and the like. “My wife heard this new album and said, ‘Bobby, I’m so proud of you,'” he told an Americana Music Association audience during a lunchtime guitar pull with Hayes Carll, John Doe and Jack Clement. “And I told her, ‘Well I’m tired of you too!'” But you can bet that Bobby Bare sometimes feels his age and is not so amused.
“That’s something you don’t really dwell on,” he cautions. “Just kinda enjoy the day and be grateful that you’re healthy and can do things that most of my contemporaries can’t do. In my life I have never experienced the joy my two grandbabies bring; it’s unbelievable, completely blindsided me. I told Bobby Jr. the other day, ‘Of course I loved you kids, but it was nothing like this, this is pure joy.’
“My friends are almost all dead and gone, that’s the trouble with living to be 70 years old. My turn’s coming, all of us are, but meantime I’m gonna see my little grandbaby here in a bit and enjoy her, and then I’m gonna plan a fishing trip.” For Bobby Bare, life — and music — after stardom is good.
John Morthland, who first interviewed Bobby Bare in the mid-1970s, shares Bare’s concerns about aging, but so far so good.