Scotty at the Savoy

Scotty at the Savoy Bar and Grill in Mankato, Minnesota

            Between tunes, most of the folks gathered for the show at the Savoy Bar were talking about their retirement.  The economy was terrible and if you still had a job and could retire with a decent pension, then, it was best to get out while you were ahead.  No use waiting around to be downsized and laid-off.  Scotty had lots of fans in Mankato, and when he was singing, some people listened, but others were talking.  He played acoustic guitar and sang the blues accompanied by a stocky man with a harmonica.  The music wasn’t so loud that you couldn’t continue a conversation.  Listeners shushed the talkers and, then, moved closer to where the musicians were playing.  Happy hour was ending and a few of the people were drunk and that made their voices louder.

            The poster for the gig said that Scotty was playing from 6:30 to 8:30.  Another band that Scotty’s fans had never heard of was supposed to start at 9:00.  There was a woman behind the bar and a tired-looking waitress that moved among the tables.  If you were hungry, you could buy a plate of gyros and pita bread from Abdullah’s next door.  Maybe both the Savoy and Abdullah’s were owned by the same guy.  At least, that’s how it seemed.

            The bar with bottles and beer-pulls was built along the back wall of the square-shaped saloon.  There was a big mirror behind the bar that showed the curls on the back of the barmaid’s head.  The mirror was foggy and made the people sitting on the barstools look gloomy, drowned in brown darkness.  The ceiling was made of stamped zinc or tin and the acoustics in the bar were bad – that’s why conversations carried so well, echoing off the ceiling so that voices distracted you from the singer and his guitar and the weird wail of the blue’s harp.  Scotty and his harp player, Curtis, were seated side-by-side on wooden chairs in front of a big store-front window that looked out onto the sidewalk and street in front of the tavern.  There was no stage – the musicians sat at the same level as the people at the tables who were drinking beer and mixed drinks, some of them eating hummus with their gyros.  Pickup trucks and cars were parked at the curb out front and there were other saloons down the street: college kids walked by and pretty girls strutted past the window.  Most of the kids passing the Savoy didn’t even glance through the glass at the people in the bar.  They were hurrying to other places.  Sometimes, when an attractive girl walked past the window behind the musicians, the old bikers and retired social workers in the Savoy hooted. 

            A skinny woman with many studs pierced through the rim of her ear talked to me.  She seemed to be pretty drunk.  The skinny lady said that she had just retired from her job at the County welfare department.  “My last day,” she said, “was Friday” – it was Thursday of the next week.  A man at my table said that he was sunburned from fishing all day.  He had worked for the post office for many years before retiring.  Scotty was singing a song about his “Tv momma, the one with the big wide screen.”

               Scotty took a break and stood up.  Seated in front of the storefront window, steel-body guitar across his lap, he looked short and compact.  But when he rose, it was clear that he was a tall, lanky man with a fringe of iron grey hair around his face.  He wore sunglasses so dark that his eyes were invisible.  Everyone in the bar knew him.  He toured the tables, shaking hands with people.  The harp player came over and talked to some of the people sitting by me.  He was sweaty and seemed happy.  Between numbers, he called to the waittress to “stripe him” – referring to the Red Stripe beer that he was drinking.  Someone at my table looked at the bottle of beer in his hand and said: “That’s mighty tasty so long as its ice-cold.”  “It’s got to be ice cold,” Curtis agreed.  He said that he had been playing with Scotty for a couple months.  I asked what he did when he wasn’t playing the harmonica.  “I cook cajun at Sea Salt,” Curtis said.  He told me that Sea Salt was a restaurant in Minnehaha park in the old refectory building across from the green, ferny gorge where the falls drummed down on the rocks. 

            A woman asked Curtis how he was getting along Scotty.  Scotty was a Vietnam vet who had been wounded in the service and he was famously irascible.  “So far so good,” Curtis said grinning.

            After a quarter hour, Scotty and Curtis went back to the front of the bar and sat on their chairs beneath the big window.  While they were playing, some kids came into the tavern carrying instruments in cases.  There were a couple of boys wearing dark glasses and a girl in a sun dress – the girl looked like she might be part Asian and part Black.  Another boy with a bad complexion came from the parking lot behind the bar, walking along the corridor that lead past the toilets to the saloon’s square room and the dark oak bar.  It was 8:30, but Scotty didn’t show any sign of ending his set.  The people in the bar clapped loudly and encouraged him to keep playing. 

            One of the boy’s standing against the wall walked between Scotty and the people sitting at the tables.  He opened a door that lead to the basement beneath the tavern.  A naked light bulb was behind the door and it cast a momentary, unflattering light from the stairwell into the dim tavern.  The boy shut the door behind him, was gone for a moment, and, then, emerged toting a big black amplifier.  The amplifier was the size of a baby’s tombstone in an old graveyard.  He set the amplifier on the floor about a foot from where Scotty was tapping his toe.  Scotty glared at him.  Curtis was blowing his harp and didn’t seem to notice.  The boy went back down the stairs, this time leaving the door partly open so that the harsh light from the bulb splashed across the old wooden floor.  He dragged another tombstone-sized amp from the cellar below and put it at Curtis’ feet.

            It was 9:00.  Scotty finished a song and the people in the bar applauded loudly and pumped their fists in the air, calling for him to sing some more.  Scotty and Curtis played another song.  Kids came into the bar from the back parking lot.  There were some battered cars parked along the embankment holding the big river in its bed between slopes rip-rapped for flood control.  The river purred like a cat.  The kids coming into the bar shouted greetings to the boys standing against the wall.  The half-Black half-Asian girl was drinking something the color of an expensive silk scarf with a crescent of lime studding the rim of her high-ball glass.  The woman who had just retired from the county welfare department was staggering a little, walking from table to table and pouring beer from people’s bottles into their glasses.  It was as if she was tidying up the place. 

            Outside, the street was darker and even looked a little glamorous.  The street lights caught the chrome on the parked trucks and cars and pretty girls were swooshing by in summer dresses and the sky was full of flashing bursts of light – a big storm was rolling across the prairie toward town.

            Scotty finished and, with Curtis, stood up to acknowledge the applause.  He thanked everyone for coming out.  Then, he stood a couple paces beyond the microphone, shaking hands with people who came from the tables to greet him.  The boys standing along the wall moved to where he and Curtis had been sitting and shoved their wooden chairs aside.  Scotty’s steel-body guitar was lying across its open guitar case.  The kid who seemed to be the leader of the band knelt on floor to make electrical connections to the amplifiers.  He looked like he was 24 maybe, but was already losing his hair.  His dark glasses didn’t fit him exactly and they slid down his nose a little bit.

            Standing behind Scotty, the band leader rose and began to readjust the microphone to his height.

            Scotty turned around: “What the fuck?” he said.  “I’m not out of here yet.”

            “We’re just setting up,” the kid said.

            “What the fuck man?” Scotty said.  “You can’t give me ten minutes.”

            “I can give you ten minutes, dude,” the kid said.

            The other boys gathered around the kid with ill-fitting dark glasses and the balding forehead. 

            “You’re gonna give me ten minutes,” Scotty said.

            “You got ten minutes and that’s it,” the kid said. 

            He muttered something to a young man standing next to him.

            “What the fuck man?” Scotty said again. 

I had a long drive to get home.  I went into the toilet at the back of the bar.  Someone in the

band getting ready to perform had stagefright.  The toilet smelled awful. 

            The thunderstorm came from the west and chased me all the way home.