My Time with Former Famous Singing Duo, "The Judds"

   Some years ago, I decided to see some of the country I had never been to.  A train ride from D.C. took me to Richmond Virginia.  I did the usual guidebook thing and that night I went to a bar/restaurant in the tourist "gas light" district.  After dinner, (it may have involved hominy grits and hush puppies, I don't know; I was trying the local cuisine.) I wanted to meet some locals, so I sat at the bar and got a drink.  Soon, I found myself chatting away with a friendly fellow to my right.  "Ha!, where y'all from?  I'm bettin' it ain't from around here; this bein' the tourist part of town."  I explained that I was just traveling around.  I started in DC and was wending my way down to Florida via AmTrak, our nation's fine taxpayer sponsored national railroad system.  Richmond, then Charleston, then Savannah then Jacksonville then fly home to San Francisco.  "Frisco?" he mused, "I used to live near there in a little town across the bridge called Corte Madera."  

     Imagine my surprise that we had, at one point, practically been neighbors.  I mentioned that I lived in Mill Valley.  He asked me what I did back there.  I said I gardened, read a lot, oversaw a three acre homestead where I boarded horses and, oh yeah, we have a recording studio on the premises.  He asked if I had ever recorded anybody famous.  I explained that it was a partnership and I didn't have much to do with the day to day running of the place.  I did mention that I happened to be there one day when an awfully cute mother and her young daughter came in to sing backup vocals on some country/western music we were recording.  This woman was dying to "break into the biz" and they were happy to harmonize on other people's music till their big break came along. 


       Here's what our studio, Tres Virgos eventually looked like.

 Here it is in its former incarnation as a garage studio at Happy Acres with my old pal and partner Rob Yeager at the controls.

 Here's our eight track recorder that first recorded the Judds at the beginning of their incredible journey to fame, fortune, The White   House and the Super Bowl.  We had stored those original tapes in my basement.  One day my partner, Robin, called me up and asked if I still had those old tapes the Judds had first recorded on.  I went fishing around in the bowels of my basement and found them.  Unfortunately, the basement leaked during any good rain storm and the tapes were all stuck together and useless.  Mores the pity...

     One of our partners, Pete, who was our main instrumentalist, (voice, keyboards, guitar, fiddle and mandolin), had been giving fiddle lessons to this mom's youngest daughter at the local music store.  Pete and the mom got to talking about music and that's how she and her older daughter ended up at our studio.  "So, this mom you was recordin' was she famous?" asked my drinking buddy.  "Not then she wasn't, but she and her older daughter eventually became the country western duo called "The Judds"."  In fact Pete, my studio partner set me up with the mom, Naomi and we double dated at the Grand National Rodeo in SF.  It was the first time I'd ever eaten a corn dog.  They were so good I ended up eating five that night.  Naomi looked like a beautiful native American princess; Pocahontas perhaps.  She was wearing a pale tan buckskin dress with leather tassels hanging from the sleeves.  I had never been to a rodeo and we had great fun.  I was instantly smitten by Naomi's beauty.  She had a certain southern charm to her that was like catnip and her southern drawl made her sound like a character out of "Gone with the Wind".

     That night when I took her home to her little duplex she shared with her kids in West Marin, I walked up to the door.  It was late and the girls were in bed.  It was dark but for the moon.  She turned to me with her face in the moonlight and told me how much she had enjoyed being with me that evening.  I agreed that she was also quite delightful to spend the evening with, blah, blah, blah.  The next thing I know she gently grabs me by the soulders and pulls my face down to hers and plants a serious French kiss on my all too willing lips.  That was all it took and I barely made it out of there in one piece.  Although it was pretty obvious there was big chemistry there, it was just a first date.  It turns out that that didn't matter as we were a couple inside a week.  "Partners!  Meet my new girlfriend, Naomi Judd; country singer!"  "Hot damn!" said my Virginian bar-mate.  "Naomi Judd!  You were going with Naomi Judd!  I just finished reading her auto-biography!  Number one New York Times bestseller!"  I told him I didn't know about a book.  Although I heard their first couple of singles as they got a  lot of air play, the truth was that I hadn't followed her career and wasn't that big on country/western music.   

As I remembered Naomi and Wynona during our time together.  They're probably singing "The Cow-Cow Boogie." 

     Naomi had her hands full without my involvement in her life.  She was hustling music gigs for her and her older daughter Christina; she was attending nursing classes at the local community college and she had two kids to raise; one nine-year-old and Chris, who was thirteen.  I liked the kids.  Ashley, the younger one, was a stone beauty and just as charming and sweet as any nine-year-old girl you can imagine.  Her older sister, Christina, didn't look anything like her.  She was big for her age, kind of stocky and feisty.  She had a big head of ginger colored hair and, boy, she could sing.  She was also learning to play the guitar and as a former professional musician---steakhouse troubador---I showed her some licks, some chord stylings and various finger picking styles.  She was mainly interested in accompanying her and her mom on their vocal duets.

     The routine quickly came to this:  After work on Friday, I would drive over to their little place out in the country that is West Marin to the little town of Lagunitas, and I would spend the weekend with them.  In the evenings, we'd sit in the little front room and we would play music.  They were working on a whole set they hoped to debut at the local cowboy watering hole out there called Rancho Nicasio.  The songs I remember them singing were "The Cow-Cow Boogie" and "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B" I believe they did some more contemporary stuff too, Dolly Parton and Emmy Lou Harris and the like.  When those two gals started singing, the hair on the back of my neck stood up.  I had never heard such a divine pairing of two female voices in my life.  Think:  The Everly Sisters...  I was having a great time being the surrogate dad and Naomi's lover.

     On those Fridays, I would already have a bag in my car so I didn't even change from my office duds of tweed coats, knitted ties and polished gabardine slacks--oh--and loafers.  I'd pull up to the front door about six.  The door would come bursting open and little angelic Ashley would run out and launch herself into my arms crying out, "Momma, momma.  Tweeds is here!"  So that became my identity; "Tweeds".  When I was "in residence", all was sweetness and nice.  But a few times, Christina (she wouldn't take her stage name of Wynona for some time yet), would pull me aside into her bedroom and tell me that she and her mom often fought when I wasn't there.  She showed me a swollen purple bruise on her finger and said things had gotten physical.  This was disturbing to me since they were all perfect ladies when I was in residence.  

     I found it hard to believe Naomi would come to blows with her daughter.  She seemed the very essence of a charming southern belle.  She did come from Kentucky, after all.  To me she was sweet, loving and had an old fashioned tendency to want to please her man, anyway he wanted.  A couple of times she came to stay at my place.  She would get up before me, make a full country-style breakfast and then insist on washing the dishes after.  When I protested, she said something about it being women's work.  I shudder to think what my female co-workers at the little Sausalito leasing company would have thought of that sentiment!  Several times I came home from work after one of her nocturnal visits from the night before and I found the apartment was spotless.  Not only that, she had also made my bed and had pinned a little love note to my pillow.  Who is this angel?  I didn't think they were making them down on the farm like this anymore.

    By Virginia drinking buddy was mighty impressed that I had been the "squeeze" of the great Naomi Judd.  "Well, pal, it sure sounds like you had it good.  What happened?"  "Well, as time passed", I responded,  "I started going to some of their gigs.  Naomi was tenacious in furthering their singing fortunes.  She would fib about Chris's age so she could play in bars.  Between sets the girls would head out back with the other musicians and Naomi would get high while her daughter flirted with the other players.  I didn't approve of a thirteen year old girl being put in those situations.  Naomi also had a very secretive side to her.  She would never tell me where the money came from that they lived on since she didn't have a job.  She smoked pot morning, noon and night in those days.  For Valentine's day that year we were together, I took her to meet my boss at the leasing company.  He was from Nashville so I figured they'd hit it off.  After our romantic Valentine lunch at the local French bistro, I kissed her goodbye and headed back to work.  Boss-man Dan was waiting for me."  "Mike, buddy" said my boss Dan, "I got to tell you, that accent of your girlfriend is pure corn pone.  Ashland Kentucky, where she says she grew up, is just across the border from Ohio.  It's as far out of the South as you can get and still be in it.  And I'll tell you something, people in Ashland Kentucky don't talk like your Naomi.  My people talk like that cuz we're from Nashville."

     I had to admit Naomi was beginning to seem somewhat of a conundrum.  She made her own soap out of lard, lye and oats.  I took her to the beach one warm sunny day.  The rest of our volleyball gang was in their swimming suits.  Naomi wore an ankle length dress.  I got some strange looks from my friends that day.  My interest in music as a career had been a fleeting bucket-list kind of thing.  Myself and a partner had a little steakhouse duet and we performed professionally for about a year.  I agreed with my dad that music was a good avocation but not much else.  It was plainly obvious that Naomi and I weren't all that compatible.  "She was going in one direction and I wasn't", I said to my friend.  "Pretty soon I met a gal who was more my style and I ended up breaking up with Naomi after about a year together."  My guy looked at me with a strange look on his face.  "You dumped Naomi Judd?" he said.  "Yeah, I guess that's what happened", I replied.  Then the strangest thing happened.  He looks at me and says, "Is your name Mike Stevens?"  This guy and I had never introduced ourselves so there was no way he could know my name.  "How did you guess my name?" I asked, dumbfounded.  He let out with a mighty whoop and exclaimed excitedly, "You're in the book, dude!  She says you're the only guy who ever dumped her.  For some reason that really struck me, kinda, and I guess I just remembered your name.  Crazy, huh?"

     Crazy indeed.  My mind is still reeling from this situation.  A guy from the other side of the country in a city I've never been to before, identifies me by name from something that he just read about that happened some twenty-five years ago.  I'm in the book.  I have been in a book before.  It was written by my brother and had a print run of about 1,500.  I figured in a couple of his stories.  But his book never made it to the top of the New York Times Best Seller List!  My Virginian drinking buddy insisted on buying me a drink.  He also insisted on informing anyone within ear shot that he was drinking with the only guy who dumped the great Naomi Judd.
I beat a hasty retreat.  I was definitely in "Judds" country and didn't want to generate any bad blood.

                 "Always Mercilessly Candid"?  I don't think so...

     One of the first things I did when I got home was buy "The Judds" first album and purchase a copy of "Love Can Build a Bridge" Naomi's autobiography (as told to Bud Schaetzle).  The cover enthused, thusly:  "An explosive autobiography.  Unforgettable! (this book) exhibits the woman the world has known and adored, outrageous, breathless, voluble---and always mercilessly candid"---Chicago Tribune.  My, my!  I can't wait to delve into this torrid read.  I started thinking more about my time with Naomi and the kids.  If she was really going to be "mercilessly candid" there was going to be some stuff about her life that her rabid fans down in Southern Baptist country would find a bit hard to believe about their beloved "Mama Judd".

     Here's Naomi's recounting of how we met.  I was not a CPA, I did not start a magazine called BAM.  I was an employee of a magazine called "The Mix" which was about recording studios.  I was a guitar player and I was a "tall blond-haired volleyball enthusiast".  So, she did get some things right...

     More in the conclusion to this tale in the next posting.
         
     Mickey da Mayor of Happy Acres