Poetry and artwork - Henry Denander

Jerry Jeff Walker at Mosebacke
 

My friend Ake and I left the big
release party and took a taxi to
Mosebacke, a small music club in
the south of Stockholm.

Jerry Jeff Walker was playing there,
alone with his guitar. He had just started
when we entered the small bar, it was
absolutely quiet and everyone was
listening carefully.

He was one of my heroes from the time I
first started to listen to singer/songwriters in
the sixties; Tom Paxton, Gordon Lightfoot,
Tom Rush and Leonard Cohen, of course.

Ake and I were standing there in the bar
with a beer and it was one of those gigs
were you felt no need to talk, just smile.
Jerry Jeff had written so many classic songs and
he had us all under his spell.

In the intermission he was standing
there in the bar having a beer and I got him to
sign me an autograph and I cleared my voice
and said that he had written one of the best
songs ever written, “More Often Than Not”,
on that album from the late sixties.

- Well, I actually didn’t write that song, it was
written by David Wiffen, he said.

I felt like a fool of course, but later on stage he
said he was going to do a song he hadn’t
done in a long time and there it was, this beautiful
song, with just Jerry Jeff Walker’s voice, his guitar
and no other comments.

 

 

 

Published in Weeks Like This, 2005