Remembering Don Everly

How I came to properly adore a guy I met as just another regular at the bar

Like everyone else on the planet, by the time I was 20 I knew the Everly Brothers hits. I never gave them too much thought or sought out their records in my dad’s vast vinyl collection, but I can recall being captivated by the story in “Wake Up Little Susie” and the almost martial beat of “Cathy’s Clown.” By that time I knew just enough of heartbreak to appreciate “All I Have to do is Dream,” but I’d yet to really get them.

At the time I worked at Faison’s, the restaurant/bar that raised Nashville’s dining game by its menus at lunchtimes and early evenings and its nightlife by the clientele it drew, both to the circular inside bar, which spanned two rooms, one of which enclosed a tree that once been in the house-restaurant’s front yard — but more especially to the slapped together back bar, officially known as Joe D’s Hot Chicken Club but often as not known simply as “the Coop.”

Over the years, I’d see everyone from Jimmie Dale Gilmore to Mike Love, Mark Chesnutt (a content solitary drinker) to Glenn Frey, Deana Carter pre-”Strawberry Wine” to Mark Knopfler, who, well, came in for a drink with my dad. As you can see this is a varied list; the assholes on it tended to be spillover from our rival Sunset Grill across the street.

But Don Everly? He was a regular. Around sundown most nights, if you were in the Coop, you’d hear the gravel crunching in the back parking lot as his limo cruised to its designated spot. Before you’d even hear the doors slam, you’d catch a waft of the primo weed his posse smoked, and then you’d hear laughter and heavy doors slamming and guttural cries of “Big Pink!” “Big Pink!” “Big Pink!”

This was the light and airy cocktail Don’s squad invented for themselves — Coop bartender Christine Ahr remembers it as some kind of “citrus shooter on the rocks, of Vodka, cranberry, and pineapple.”

The posse generally numbered about five, the only one of whom I can remember (besides Don himself) was “Bob White,” , aka “Roberto Bianco, Your Latin Lover,” aka “The Romantic Voice of Our Time,” though born under the closely-guarded name Robert Biles.

He had a kindly but airy demeanor of a suave maitre d’ and the pencil-thin moustache of a Vegas crooner, his velvet tenor matching one his friend, legendary Nashville producer Jim Rooney, likened to that of Julio Iglesias, “only slightly more unctuous.”

Roberto, left, and Jim Rooney

In addition to his services as Don Everly Posse court jester, it was Roberto’s role to be the posse’s “weed carrier,” meaning that if any Metro cop got above his raising and tried to haul Don Everly to jail over a joint, Roberto would swoop in and take the rap.

“Every scene has someone like Bob,” remembered Rooney, on occasion of Roberto’s passing. “A person with no visible means of support, who is always ready to party, who has some mysterious attraction for women.”

Roberto also served as something of a human shield for Don. I believe Don was one of those introverted extroverts who liked to be out and about but didn’t particularly care to meet strangers, and, being who he was, many a stranger wanted to meet him. Roberto often so charmingly disarmed these interlopers they forgot all about Don as Roberto beguiled them with 24-carat blarney.

When I think back on it, I was in close proximity to Don for hours and hours and I don’t think we ever exchanged any words aside from a passing introduction, and that was where I kind of recognized in him a kindred spirit, one confused about where they were on the spectrum of introvert vs extrovert. There was just a little fear in his eyes, the generic fear we all have of all strangers. Back in the bosom of his posse, of course, that disappeared, and boisterous Don resumed his bonhomie.

I just missed on a chance to get to know him much better. Both Everly Brothers were enamored with the music of David Schnaufer, still the reigning mountain dulcimer champion of the world. So in love were they, he was hired as their opening act for a 1990 American tour. David was perfect for that gig -- his gentle mastery over mountain music, classic country and Beatles tunes was just what the doctor ordered for the Everly's crowd as they found their seats and strapped in for an evening with their heroes. Schnaufer would serenade them with his versions of songs like "Here Comes the Sun," "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," "Wildwood Flower" and his originals, and the crowd would be rarin' and ready for the Everlys and that incredible band they put together back then.

At the time, my dad was managing David, so we cooked up a scheme whereby we hoped I could get hired as a flunky — part stage hand / roadie / fixer what have you. So dad and I piled in his car and headed up to Indianapolis to one of their shows so we could make our pitch.

We arrived hours early. It was summer, and the show was at a lovely amphitheater at Butler University. “Wait until you see this band they’ve got,” dad enthused, as we roared through the tall and waving corn. “Buddy Emmons on steel, Larrie London on drums, Albert Lee on guitar….” To me, at the time, these were only names. Names I revered for the hushed tones I’d heard them in, but names only still. (Except for Lee; I knew his name through reading rock history, and I think, though am not certain, that I had already heard his jaw-dropping “Down Yonder” session with Schnaufer.)

So we arrive at the venue and head off into the wings, and dad and I were in the green room after sound check and he nudged me in the ribs. "Larrie London and Buddy Emmons," he said, nodding toward a couple of middle aged fellows across the room, each edging toward the portly side. London was generally recognized as the greatest Music City drummer of his generation, and bowler-hatted Emmons one of the all-time titans of the pedal steel guitar.

As they approached, in deep conversation with one another, I couldn't wait to hear what they had to say. What were these Music City Legends so deeply engrossed in conversation about? What pearls of wisdom would I glean from a chance encounter with Larrie London and Buddy Emmons in Indianapolis, Indiana?

As they approached, their words became recognizable and right at the second they walked past dad and me, I received my message:

"Sheee-it, Larrie, just th'ow her down and fuck her," Buddy said.

And then they breezed past, leaving only than bon mot behind them for my 20-year-old mind to process.

Not long after that, an hour or two later, I got to see this whole machine in motion..."Linus and Lucy," the Charlie Brown theme was the band’s opening vamp, and wow, what a perfect selection. It harkened back to the youth of the Everly Brothers — they were ever straddled with the expectation that they would remain youthful even when they could not — but updated with the incredibly sophisticated playing that only masters like Emmons and Lee could bring to the strings. And they perfectly captured that strange mix of childishness and melancholy shot through all things Charlie Brown, not just the music, this theme and even more so the Christmas music, but the whole mystique of the naive waif Charlie Brown, ever bewildered by a world that came at him too fast.

And then the brothers themselves came out…Honestly, I don’t remember the setlist. I remember the otherworldly harmonies though, and the way their acoustic guitars entwined. There is something about a perfect harmony — I mean, a fucking perfect one, one dripping with both love and bitterness and ingrained since the onset of memory itself and going back beyond that to the freaking ancestors — that exceeds the sum of its parts, and then you couple that with those guitars, and then triple that with what that band was doing all around them…

It took all that to make me a real fan.

Especially in a town like Nashville, when you are young, you are kind of blase about these legends you find yourself amid and among. You just kind of think they are dad rock or even grandaddy music. Then somebody not from Nashville tells you how "Important" the Everly Brothers were. "Dude -- no Everly Brothers, no Beatles!" So you are a bit validated and maybe you listen with fresh ears and find out why they were legends. And then next step is to see them, and check how they were doing absolutely the opposite of mailing it in in their later years. These guys absolutely raged against the dying of the light.

Here is some footage of that titanic band, tho'in' down and fuckin' some of their classics. I guess they left out the Charlie Brown song because they were in Australia.

No Everly Brothers; no Beatles. But by that point I didn’t care about influence or importance or any of that jive — I loved them for themselves.

And it was around that time that through an interview with Lemmy of all people, I discovered one of his Desert Island Discs that has since become one of mine: Songs Our Daddy Taught Us. That one is just the two of them as kids, really, singing songs of family, trains, poverty, and murder, lots of murder.

I used to ask David for the skinny on the bros. What were they like?

“Well, Nova, they put up with a lot,” he said. “After the show, there are all these women who want to meet them. But not for themselves: they try to give them their daughters.”

David’s mind was capable of making salacious leaps of logic, but who knows? ( I didn’t get the gig as their young majordomo, either, lol)

Don, David continued, was the Irish Everly. Phil got the English genes.

I asked what he meant. Phil, he explained, was ever composed. He’d sip wine at parties, his glass ever acceptably held at a tilt. He would see to it that each guest had their very own joint — he found the passing of joints common, you see.

And Don? Whoo boy, melancholy Celtic Don: wild-eyed, emotional, feelings on his sleeve Don. David said Don and Phil would put on a masterpiece of a show, and then David would ask Don how it went.

"Ah David, I died a thousand deaths out there," he would say, inhaling deeply off a joint.

See? Shy. Kind of trapped in it but loving it all the same.