Alice in Hinterland

Alice Stuart is in town to do a concert at Comma Coffee in Carson City.. She was one of myfirst friends after leaving home and school. We happened to have the same landlord, the owner of a tiny, neighborhood grocery near the University of Washington. His store was on the corner and our minuscule apartments, opening directly onto the sidewalk, were on either side. We would have met eventually anyway as we knew a lot of the same people but being neighbors sped everything up.

Travus T. Hipp, Pat Arone, Alice Stuart

So much has happened since then. It would take a book to fill in the details so fast forward a few life times. Alice and I reconnected a few years ago at the Red Dog Reunion and then recently it occurred to me that she would fit right into Comma Coffee's Blues Concert Series so I passed her name along and tonight, finally, she's here.




Taj Mahal once said, "Alice cut the road that Bonnie Raitt traveled." She was briefly part of Frank Zappa's blues band when he was forming the Mothers of Invention and toured the US and Europe with Van Morrison, recorded with Jerry Garcia, Asleep at the Wheel, John Hammond, Dave Mason, Sonny Terry, Tower of Power, Bread, and played with Blues guys such as Lightning Hopkins, Jesse Fuller, Mississippi John Hurt, Albert King, and others.

Silver City, Nevada Cemetery

Yesterday Alice, her friend Pat Arone and I went up to Silver City and Virginia City to visit some old friends, including Travus T. Hipp and one of Alice's ex husbands, an excellent stain glass artist. On any summer day, Virginia City especially is a dreadful tourist trap but there the outlaw dream lives on in its own dusty time warp, lost in plain sight.