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Here are some scenes or things Bruce said that were originally intended for “The Music and Mythocracy of Col. Bruce Hampton: A Basically True Biography,” but for one reason or another didn’t make the final cut: “I’m a premature vessel to the second level of consciousness.” “I’m like an accountant that weird shit happens to.ContinueContinue reading “Deleted Scenes”

The dad is downstairs in his self-appointed salt mine, pounding plastic keys with arthritic fingers, trying to make stories about scientific research, trying to wrap his damaged brain around the carbon cycle and soil organic matter and, oh yes … what if those microbes are putting more methane into the air than carbon dioxide? WhatContinueContinue reading “Joe Feels the Music”

Bruce was the everyman bandleader, an irregular regular man’s man who loved eating, smoking, betting, sports, music, and the company of his friends. He was part Oscar Madison, part Babe Ruth, part Frank Zappa, and entirely Bruce Hampton. He was also a car salesman. Buy low, sell high. Anyway, the photo below is from aContinueContinue reading “Bruce Hampton, Car Salesman”

As I post this, it is 12:20 a.m. on May 2nd, 2021, four years after Bruce fell on the Fox Theatre. It was almost at this exact moment on that night when I saw the EMTs rolling Bruce out of the theatre and into the ambulance and I thought, “this won’t be the last timeContinueContinue reading “That Night: May 1-2, 2017”

I’m the idiot you see out there pitching baseballs past invisible batters into an invisible catcher’s mitt, sometimes on the Sautee Nacoochee ball field and sometimes in one of the batting cages/nets/things at the recreation department complex. Rather than going after dragons disguised as windmills, I’m chasing something more elusive. It’s an addiction that hasContinueContinue reading “Have a catch?”

The book has had its second printing and it still hasn’t fully sunk in. Chuck Leavell wrote the foreword. The keyboardist who provided the soundtracks for so many lives. The guy who played with the Allman Brothers, Sea Level (get it? C. Leavell?), Eric Clapton, George Harrison, the Rolling frickin’ Stones. That Chuck Leavell, oneContinueContinue reading “It Hasn’t Sunk In”

Bruce Hampton was, among other things, an avid baseball fan. Yes, he was a fan of the Atlanta Braves franchise. More than that, he was a fan of the game and knew its intricacies, its nuanced statistical nooks and crannies. For instance, if you named the second string catcher of the Tampa Bay Rays, heContinueContinue reading “It is Opening Day!”

This should have been the first thing I wrote after turning in the final portion of the manuscript, which was the index, which was basically all her work. She is Sam, my first-born miracle, my brilliant little Valentine, Spider Monkey, and Field Mouse — my cross-country companion, tiny and mighty, sometimes pointy but always sharp,ContinueContinue reading “She Is Sam”

There was supposed to be five of us but Joe Zambie cancelled so it was just four: Bruce, Johnny, me, and I forget who the fourth guy was. Sue was our waitress, as usual. Johnny ordered tea and crepes, as usual. And the bullshit began to flow like four kinds of syrup on Bruce’s turkeyContinueContinue reading “One Day at the IHOP in 2014”

These four men played in the Negro Leagues before reaching the previously all-white big leagues. Clockwise from top left: Larry Doby broke the color barrier in the American League a few weeks after Jackie Robinson’s debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers; Don Newcombe became the Dodgers’ pitching ace of, winning the first Cy Young Award; JackieContinueContinue reading “Better Late Than Never”