See You in the Funnies

That's really stretching it!

Our neighbor, guitarist Mike Merrifield, lives across the Stillaguamish River. Mike tells this little tale of an encounter he had when recording in the Sage Arts studio after the big remodel...

While Orville Johnson and I were recording, two men came in: Glenn Howard (from the American Musical Heritage Foundation) and a man who wore the kind of cap that Andy Capp used to wear. He was smallish, quiet with a nice smile. He asked about the piano, “It's so unusual looking!”

I may have just recently fallen off the musical radish truck, but the Steinway looks both beautiful and odd to me. My only comment was "Yeah, it’s so long it almost looks like a cartoon piano."

The man in the cap gently grabbed the end of the piano, posed in a leaning position, tugging at the piano. I heard this stretching noise in my head that went with his gesture ... czheeee.

I thought he was talking about Glenn, whom I knew only from the Sage Arts newsletter.

“No,” he said, “the guy in the cap. That was R. Crumb, Robert Crumb."

I quickly thought back to my cartoon comment and thought, how appropriate considering that R. Crumb is an extraordinary cartoonist.

Coincidently, prior to meeting Mr. Crumb at Sage I was working with Orville in Edgewood at David Lang's. Orville was giving me the low-down on good movies he'd seen lately. He had explained in great detail a documentary about Robert Crumb's family. This diverged into a conversation about Zap Comix, Mr. Natural and Fritz the Cat.

Then the next time we worked together - poof! There he was, R. Crumb, in the flesh.