On February 12, 1991 Mardi Gras, GDub asked if I’d like to go and check out the music store in Santa Rosa, Stanroy’s on Fourth Street. My heart fluttered. He was asking me out on something close to an actual “date”. We’d been drawing closer and this was one more step in that scary wonderful direction of love.
It was a beautiful day, just like today. Sonoma County gets these fabulous, oddly warm days in February. GDub picked me up after work. We drove the back roads from Penngrove to Santa Rosa. I don’t remember all of what happened as we chatted and enjoyed each other’s company. It didn’t matter. We were together. We came back to my pad and hung out in the living room for more talking while we drank pots of herb tea and then…not long after I saw arcs of light coming through his body into mine and from mine into his…we connected in the “biblical sense”. It was very nice.
We didn’t spend a night apart for months.
I wrote “Street Dog” to surprise Mr. Wium when I “competed” in the second Ms. Accordion / Main Squeeze contest in San Francisco that September. Tom Torriglia put on the event at the Cannery.
I was writing lyrics in my head as we drove to the show. I loved singing it to him in front of hundreds of people.
I took second place and still have my “crown”.
And my Street Dog.
“It was Mardi Gras when I first saw him sitting outside my door”
from “Crazed and Enthused”
with:
Johny Blood: tuba
Bill Schwartz: drums
John Hensley: trumpet, Pujé, cornets
Lawrence Jarach: trombone
J. X. Jones: tenor sax
Maggie Martin: accordion, vocals
Lewis Wallace: bass guitar
Gary Wium: guitar