{"id":2929,"date":"2017-07-01T07:00:10","date_gmt":"2017-07-01T11:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=2929"},"modified":"2022-05-16T08:45:31","modified_gmt":"2022-05-16T12:45:31","slug":"pancho-lefty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/pancho-lefty\/","title":{"rendered":"Pancho and Lefty (and Monte)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Pancho and Lefty\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QI3YcNTdkZ8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This song will always be associated in my mind with Monte Jones, a longtime friend who played harmonica with me whenever I came through Vancouver. He wasn&#8217;t usually a singer, but on this one he sang Lefty&#8217;s part and his rough, dry voice perfectly fitted the character.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-2936 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/elijah-and-monte.jpg?resize=300%2C223&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"223\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/elijah-and-monte.jpg?resize=300%2C223&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/elijah-and-monte.jpg?w=434&amp;ssl=1 434w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>I&#8217;ve written a bit about Monte and his affection for Townes Van Zandt&#8217;s work in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/waiting-round-die\/\">a previous post<\/a>, but there are so many stories&#8230; we met during my first couple of weeks in Vancouver, staying with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/we-sell-everything\/\">my friend Maggie<\/a>, and for some reason we hit it off. He was a tough, gentle man and a tasteful, rowdy musician. In the early 1980s he was drinking at least a fifth of Jameson&#8217;s a day, always had at least five lady friends rotating through the week, managed a halfway house for juvenile delinquents, and never seemed to slow down. I remember once arriving in town, calling him, and getting the response: &#8220;I&#8217;m sorry, Lije, I&#8217;ve just finished a 36-hour shift and I&#8217;ve got to get some sleep. I&#8217;ll meet you at Joe&#8217;s in two hours.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Joe&#8217;s was the coffeehouse where everyone I knew in Vancouver used to meet over the course of the day to chat and shoot pool. It was famous for serving cappuccinos with an inch and a half of foam above the edge of the cup and never a single drip down the side &#8212; later on, Monte worked there and made the cappuccinos, and later still he helped organize a strike and was fired on national television.<\/p>\n<p>Another story: Monte had booked us to play at a Portuguese restaurant called Santo&#8217;s, but when I hit town and called him he sounded kind of concerned:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So, Lije, I&#8217;ve got some good news and some bad news.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;OK, Monte&#8230; what&#8217;s the bad news?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So I was over at Santo&#8217;s last week, and Santo&#8217;s brother got in an argument with his wife and slapped her, so I had to ask him to step outside and&#8230; I broke his arm, so the gig&#8217;s been cancelled.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;OK, Monte&#8230; so what&#8217;s the good news?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I was in there again last night and won two hundred dollars off Santo playing poker dice, so I can pay you anyway.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-2943 \" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Monte-playing-harp.jpg?resize=207%2C221&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"207\" height=\"221\" \/>I loved Monte, and loved playing with him, and for a few years made sure to spend at least a week or two in Vancouver. Then Maggie died and I cut down on hitchhiking and touring around the US, and what with one thing and another there was a gap of almost twenty years.<\/p>\n<p>When I got back out there, though, it was like old times. The first visit of the new millennium I was supposed to get in around 10pm and Monte arranged to meet at a bar called Bukowski&#8217;s. The bus was more than three hours late, I arrived after last call, and Monte was sitting with two double shots of Jameson, one for each of us, to welcome me back. Then we went over to the Wise Club, where he was tending bar, and he opened it just for us and we spent hours catching up.<\/p>\n<p>For the next few years I got to Vancouver pretty regularly and Monte usually set up a gig, typically including a phenomenal guitarist named Paul Pigat who could play anything, and often Paul Rigby on mandolin, and maybe a bass player or a drummer &#8212; I didn&#8217;t deserve those guys, but they turned up for Monte and it was great.<\/p>\n<p>Monte died a couple of years ago, after a long, hard battle with heart trouble, liver trouble, cancer &#8212; his body held up longer than any of us expected, but it could only take so much. He was himself to the end, though: I made it out for a final visit and found him sitting in an armchair in a friend&#8217;s living room. (The friend, Jason, had invited him to crash in the guest room after the last hospital stay and was seeing him through to the end.) <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-2945 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/monte-smoking.jpg?resize=238%2C242&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"238\" height=\"242\" \/>He was on a lot of morphine, which made him groggy, and was smoking cocaine-laced cigarettes to stay alert, and I sat there while he slowly got one to his lips, reached for his lighter, tried to get it to light&#8230; dropped the cigarette, painfully bent down, picked it up, tried again and dropped the lighter, slowly bent over again and felt for it under his chair, found it, tried again, dropped the cigarette&#8230; and like that, for maybe five minutes, until he dropped the lighter yet again and I reached down to hand it to him. He fixed me with an icy glare and said, &#8220;Lije, you&#8217;re just going to have to learn to control yourself.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I still hear his voice singing Lefty&#8217;s part.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This song will always be associated in my mind with Monte Jones, a longtime friend who played harmonica with me whenever I came through Vancouver. He wasn&#8217;t usually a singer, but on this one he sang Lefty&#8217;s part and his rough, dry voice perfectly fitted the character. I&#8217;ve written a bit about Monte and his &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/pancho-lefty\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Pancho and Lefty (and Monte)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Pancho and Lefty (and Monte) - 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That used to be a pretty common thing; I knew a bunch of musicians who went to Alaska to work the fishing and save some money to tide them\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Monte-photo-by-Maryse-Zeidler.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3114,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/ive-been-everywhere\/","url_meta":{"origin":2929,"position":1},"title":"I&#8217;ve Been Everywhere (Hank Snow)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"October 21, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"So, to start off with, I have hitchhiked out of Winnemucca, Nevada. I don't remember if I was picked up by a semi, but I've had rides from a lot of truckers over the years, in a lot of places, both in and out of the United States. Which said,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Hank-Snow-Everywhere-LP.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2919,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/a-mans-a-man\/","url_meta":{"origin":2929,"position":2},"title":"A Man&#8217;s a Man (Bertolt Brecht\/Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"July 8, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The title song from Bertolt Brecht's early play Mann ist Mann, this was my professional recording debut, arranging and playing guitar for Dave Van Ronk. Dave was a great interpreter of Brecht's songs, and even appeared in an off-Broadway production of The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Brecht-CD-cover-296x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2130,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/waiting-round-die\/","url_meta":{"origin":2929,"position":3},"title":"Waiting Round to Die (Townes Van Zandt)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"November 19, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I first heard Townes Van Zandt on his live double album, which I borrowed from my sister's erstwhile boyfriend, Kevin, who turned me on to a wide range of music I might otherwise have missed in the early 1980s: Public Image Limited's Flowers of Romance, Rachel Sweet's Protect the Innocent,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"townes-van-zandt-live","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Townes-van-Zandt-live-297x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3229,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/urge-for-going\/","url_meta":{"origin":2929,"position":4},"title":"Urge for Going (Joni Mitchell\/Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"November 18, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The ultimate fall-into-winter song, by Joni Mitchell, arranged by Dave Van Ronk. I tend to be more optimistic about this season, so my standard autumn song is Bill Morrissey's \"My Baby and Me,\" but I always loved the way Dave did this -- plus, my Vancouver buddy Monte Jones had\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/van-ronk-polydor.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4026,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/mr-mudd-and-mr-gold\/","url_meta":{"origin":2929,"position":5},"title":"Mr Mudd and Mr Gold (Townes Van Zandt)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"October 13, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Another from Townes Van Zandt, though I don't play his chords. I don't remember why I changed them, or even if I was aware I had, and when I recently listened to his version I thought his were more interesting... But I've been playing it this way for a quarter\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Townes-van-Zandt-live-297x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2929"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4670,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2929\/revisions\/4670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}