Remembering Chris Gaffney
When Hacienda Brothers’ frontman Chris Gaffney lost his battle with liver cancer in April 2008, the world lost a great talent who really seemed to just be hitting his stride. I was fortunate enough to see him play a couple of times. The first time was with his best friend, Dave Alvin, back in 2005 at the Continental Club in Austin in what might have been the best show I have ever seen. Their friendship translated into a natural chemistry on stage as Gaffney played accordion to accompany Alvin on songs like “Fourth of July” and “Marie Marie” and “So Long Baby Goodbye.”
Although he was a more than able compliment to Alvin, Gaffney was also a songsmith in his own right. Gaffney’s friends recently came together celebrate his talent on “The Man of Somebody’s Dreams: A Tribute to Chris Gaffney.” The interpretations of Gaffney’s music from Alvin, Joe Ely, Los Lobos, Alejandro Escovedo, Tom Russell, James McMurtry, Robbie Fulks, John Doe and others are a moving remembrance of the man and his music. As frontman for the Hacienda Brothers, Gaffney and his bandmates crafted a brand of music they described as Western Soul, a seemingly incongruent and impossible hybrid that was quite infectious and natural. The characters who inhabit his songs navigate heartbreak, regret and disappointment but find solace in the small moments of everyday life and love.
In the hands of such a skilled lineup, the album is a penetrating reminder of Gaffney’s immense talent. Alvin contributes “Artesia,” maybe the most poignant song ever written about the aroma of cowshit. “The Gardens” by The Texas Tornadoes, “Get Off My Back Lucy” by The Iguanas and the title cut by Los Lobos really capture the sounds of the Southwest that held such a fascination for Gaffney, and it reaches its apex on Calexico’s deconstruction of that sound on “Frank’s Tavern” which manages to be lush and elegiac at the same time. The album also remembers Gaffney as an interpreter of the Bakersfield Sound on Peter Case’s “Six Nights a Week” and “King of the Blues” by Robbie Fulks.
But first and foremost, Gaffney was at his best as a storyteller. Tom Russell does justice to “If Daddy Don’t Sing Danny Boy,” which I am partial to because of its reference to one of the best boxers from Fort Worth, Stevie Cruz. And Escovedo captures the isolation and emptiness of haunted Vietnam veteran in “1968.” And it’s appropriate that Gaffney himself gets the last word with “The Guitars of My Dead Friends,” a touching song and a fitting epitaph. Rest in peace, Gaffney, and thanks to musicians who are helping keep his musical legacy alive with this album. Every cut is a winner.
