The night my band pissed off Jeff Buckley

It was a place called the “Discafe” in San Diego; a hip little spot where one could go and check out CD’s- as in the library type check out – and listen to them on bolted down CD players while you did your homework and drank your Café. Get it – ‘Disc-Café’.   A novel idea allowing you to listen to CD’s without the hassle of lugging those God-forsaken Walkmans around. Last long? Um, no. Quaint while it lasted though. The place later turned into the ‘Zanzibar’ and then a bank or something uncool.

So my band (dryve) got asked to play a gig opening for some lone singer dude named Jeff Buckley. Supposedly he was  a national act that had some buzz going on. So we were hip to that –always were to any artist that was doing more than playing their local scene.

The coffeehouse scene at this time (early/mid 90’s) was in full tilt. It was the scene. It was like MTV’s unplugged gone viral.  Before there was such a thing as viral. Pre-viral. So stripping it down and jacking it up (with caffeine) was the bomb. (Although I don’t think ‘The bomb’ was being used at that time…) I mean, just a few miles down the road at the Innerchange coffeehouse, Jewel (Kilcher as she was known back then) had just attracted the LA suits and inked her deal with Atlantic records. So we were next in line awaiting the inking, hoping opening for ‘some guy’ named Jeff Buckley might just get us there that much quicker.

So we played our set and wowed the crowd with our multi-instrumentalist talents showing the world the accordion, mandolin and harmonica were instruments that could rock as well as roll. All the time there was some brooding fellow in a white t-shirt lurking in the background waiting to go on.

After the set I was satisfied but alas, hungry. Being in San Diego, there was a Mexican food joint within walking distance, so our singer, Paul and I went to grab a burrito and let the Buckley guy do whatever he was going to do.

Fifteen minutes later our other singer Cory comes running up to us as we patiently waited for our burritos and said to Paul, “Dude, where’d you put that Buckley guy’s tuner? He’s about to go one and I can’t find it and he’s getting PISSED.”

You see, our singer/guitar playing frontmen had a nasty habit of forgetting a tuner so they usually ended up borrowing one from another band. Well, this time a tuner got borrowed AND lost. And Mr. Buckley was not happy that it was his tuner. Perhaps that was why he called his next album ‘Grace’ as that is precisely what he showed our frontmen.

“Dude, grab my burrito”, said Paul as he scurried off to save Cory from getting a Buckley beatdown.

So after my burrito and a few chit-chats with the local homeless guys I wandered over to the venue to see if this Buckley cat was worthy of any of this so-called buzz surrounding him.

As I walked up all I heard was a single electric guitar and some ungodly banshee like wailing that was disturbing to say the least.

“Nope,” I thought, “Not worthy,” and wandered off.

Then after awhile, as I impatiently waited for him to finish so I could get my drums out of there and split, I started thinking about his name and why it seemed familiar. And why his name seemed to trigger some association with these wild vocals I kept hearing.

Slowly, I began to recall an article I read about an artist who never quite broke through, largely because of an untimely death from a drug overdose.  An artist that supposedly had some amazing angelic vocal abilities. I remember being  intrigued by the tale of this lost and forgotten talent and made a mental note to look him up. I went to Google it but… Google didn’t exist yet.  I don’t even think ‘Alta Vista’ existed.

Buckley, Buckley, Buckley… Wait, wasn’t it TIM Buckley?

Yep, I read an article about this guy who had amazing potential cut short by not-so better living through chemistry. And as I sat there thinking about this I looked over at the venue and thought, “Wait a minute…could that be his kid?”

So I wandered back over and caught what was his last song.

A couple years later, Jeff Buckley was a critic’s darling getting huge kudos from a few talentless unknowns like Jimmy Page, Bob Dylan and David Bowie.

A few years after that he was dead from what was ruled an accidental drowning.

Unfortunately, just like his Dad, a talent cut short.

Sorry about that tuner Jeff; thanks for showing grace.

Father Tim. The resemblance is eerie.