’Til I Collapse
With a long and intriguing music career behind him, Joe Carr now just wants to play for anyone who’s willing to listen.
Nothing will keep Joe Carr from playing the blues By Leah Sottile
T
hings are falling apart, but Joe Carr is still smiling. His plan to perform a simple guitar set at the Thursday Farmers’ Market out in front of the The Shop on Perry Street started to go awry when the rain came. When it was just sprinkling, Carr didn’t even hesitate to set up his jury-rigged amp/stereo system outside. But now that rain is coming down in sheets, his white-tarp-covered booth is leaking and his speakers are crackling. But at no point — even when the rain has soaked his jacket, when customers stop looking his way and start scurrying to their cars with bagfuls of spring produce —
does the 58-year-old musician even consider packing up and heading home. He says he’ll play acoustic before he gives up. He’ll move inside the coffee shop. He’s playing tonight, come hell or high water. When he gets the chance to play his music these days, Joe Carr seizes the opportunity. It’s why he prefers playing alone, usually on a downtown street corner and most often in front of the shopping centers on Spokane’s South Hill. He can’t wait on another band member. He can’t wait for a venue to book him. He has no music online because he doesn’t use computers or email (“I’m not too good at that stuff,” he says). He’s a free agent. A
Young Kwak photo
rambling man. Or maybe he’ll stand and play in the rain because there’s so much Joe Carr can’t do anymore. A bad heart has slowed him down, keeping him from the wayward musician’s life he lived for so long. Those days of hitchhiking and playing spontaneous tavern gigs are a thing of the past — just stories he tells now to whoever wants to listen. It’s those stories that make people love Joe Carr. If they stop and listen to his wailing blues guitar solos, his boogie-woogie tracks and acoustic covers of his favorite ’60s and ’70s songs, it’s almost sure that he’ll tell them a story. Carr, with combed-back gray hair that ends in curls at his earlobes, is like a cool beatnik grandpa with a million tall tales to tell. They’re yarns that even he can’t prove are true. Like the time he won The Gong Show back in the late ’70s with a harmonica routine that got the judges out of their seats and dancing on the studio floor. Or the time he walked into a South Carolina blues club, challenged the all-black bar to “play the blues with ...continued on next page
JUNE 27, 2013 INLANDER 51