Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)
Tim, I Wish I’d Gotten to Know You Better
By Bob Wire, 6-27-08
Well, my week started out on an incredibly shitty note. A musician friend of mine emailed me Monday morning: “Hey, did you hear Tim Ishler died?” I knew he wouldn’t kid about something like that, and I felt like I’d been punched in the chest. I called him right away, and he told me what he knew. Like everyone else who knew Tim, I was stunned.
I have been jammed up all week with trying to tie up loose ends with my work, and gathering equipment and supplies for my family’s impending road trip. I haven’t had more than five minutes to ruminate on Tim’s passing, and to deal with the grief.
But this morning when I looked at the front page of Missoulian, it became real. The story, by Jamie Kelly, was well written, sensitively done, and informative. Hell, just seeing the headline had me collapsing in tears. I sat on the front porch and dripped all over the page as I read the story. Heartbroken, I still had to get the yard mowed before we leave. So I pulled the lawnmower from the shed, put Led Zeppelin IV on my iPod, and proceeded to grieve.
Tim was only 49, about my age. But he’d already lived several lifetimes’ worth of experience. As I mowed and Robert Plant wailed, I could picture Tim and his barking, staccato laugh. I think a lot of us hadn’t heard that laugh much since he lost his wife, Dawn, in a house fire last year. Every time I saw Tim after the fire, he just had this hollowed-out look, and the light had gone out of his eyes. Pushing the mower, I kept shaking my head like it wasn’t true, but there it was in the paper.
I finished the front yard and moved to the back, thinking that I had blown another great chance in my life. Although Tim and I were acquainted, I’d never played music with him. I wanted to ask him to play on my CD a couple years ago, but just never made it happen. Every time we were at the same party and the guitars came out, I was too intimidated to join in. I know Tim would have laughed if he’d known that. For someone as massively gifted as he was, he was also very down to earth and easy-going.
As I mowed stripes into the grass, I thought, man, I would mow Tim’s yard every goddamn day if that would bring him back. Silly, but it’s just a thought that goes through your head: what kind of deal can I make? How can I short-circuit this terrible reality? Then, as Communication Breakdown blasted into my skull, I thought, well maybe once a week. The yard wouldn’t need it every day. So much for bargaining.
Then I got pissed. I got real pissed. It crossed my mind, this is EXACTLY why I’m an atheist. Who would want to worship a god who puts a guy through the tremendous pain of watching his wife die from a fire, and then just as he’s starting to be able to live with it, he dies himself? “It’s God’s will” seems to be the stock answer to explain away this cruelty. Not for me, baby. It’s God’s won’t.
How utterly unfair. How completely wrong, to lose someone who loved life, music, and his friends as much as Tim did. He was just beginning to find his soul again. As I mowed the final section of the yard, I was sweating and fuming, mad as hell, but had nowhere to put my anger. Then the mower struck an unseen rock under a bush, killing the motor.
“Great,” I said aloud, Zep still throbbing at top volume. “Probably bent the fucking blade I just spent 20 minutes sharpening!” I kicked the mower housing hard, sending a bolt of pain through my right foot. “SHIT!” I reached down to disconnect the spark plug, and lifted the mower up to inspect the blade. It wasn’t bent, but it was loose. Fine. I stood up and dropped the mower, and the edge of the housing landed on my left foot. “OW! SHIT!” I yanked the earbuds from my ears and hobbled around to the garage to get a wrench, thinking that all this anger was making me careless. I’m STILL pissed. There are so many other people who deserve to be dead. Not Tim.
So I’ll be thinking about you, Tim, and how you brought so much joy to so many people while you were with us. And for my money, that’s the best thing a talented, creative person can do. Thank you for that, and I raise my goblet of rock to you, bro. I wish I could have known you better.
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I thought it was odd, though, that the reporter referred to the Dobro as a "resonant" guitar. Maybe, but the common term is "resonator guitar."
I never missed an opportunity to play with Tim after that, weather it was the two of us playing for tips at Larry's Six Mile, the Trax or Sportsmans in Alberton, or pushing my way up onto the stage to inject some harmonies while his band was playing. There were a few memorable nights where we played till sunrise at my home. These will certainly be some of the musical highlights of my life, and will stay with me forever.
A while after Dawns passing Jerry Douglas came to town. I got tickets for Tim, my wife and I and we went to see the master play at the Wilma. The show opened with the Broken Valley Roadshow, who did a fantastic job. Jerry was in the lobby signing CD's etc after the show. Tim never traveled anywhere without his instruments, and as he eyed Jerry talking with fans I asked him if he'd like Jerry to sign his Dobro, an ancient instrument, which to the untrained eye looked like it could hardly produce anything besides rusty screeching, but which already bore Vassar Clements signature (Tim had played with him a number of times). I told him to go grab it, went over to Jerry and told him Tim’s story in a nutshell, and Jerry adorned Tim’s 2nd love with his signature, as well as talking with him for a while.
After the show we headed over to the Top Hat, and after a couple beers we saw the members of the Broken Valley Roadshow coming through the front door lugging upright bass, banjo, fiddle dobro, mandolin, and guitar in their wake. I talked with them and sure enough they were going to crash the bar and play. I asked Tim if he wanted to jam with them, knowing of course he would, but he was hesitant to approach them. Leave it to me :) I asked them if Tim could sit in and they were not immediately agreeable. I assured them he was a good player and would do nothing but compliment their sound. They finally agreed, but as it turns out there was a piano player hired to provide background music in the bar that night. So, everyone hauled their gear through the back doors and over to the Rhino.
All the musicians sat around a large, round table and began playing to a hugely enthusiastic crowd. Tim had his Dobro in his lap and it was practically under the table, so nobody was really hearing it. But at one point the banjo player caught what Tim was playing and his jaw literally dropped, and he stood there staring, open mouthed, his picking suddenly an afterthought. I pointed it out to my wife and said "Watch..." One by one the rest of the musicians started to realize they were in the presence of "greatness" and soon there was a featured Dobro solo every few minutes. This was by far the most enjoyable, spontaneous jam I have ever witnessed. Every person in the bar was into it, and there was no standing room left on the bar itself. An amazing evening.
This is how I will always remember Tim. I don't think he ever got over losing Dawn, it was just too tragic. We shed many a tear for her, and there will be many for Tim as well.
He was a Montana treasure, a diamond in the rough, and I loved him that way. My life has been made immensely richer for knowing him, and I will miss his compassion, his laughter and his music while I still breathe.
RIP Tim - and give our love to Dawn.
Mark Chase
Huson, MT
God's Child: I'm not (much of) a Christian, but I don't hold God responsible for the tragic and evil things in the world. But Bob Wire: if you're gonna blame God for all the bad things, shouldn't he get credit for all the good ones? Like every happy and healthy day Tim lived before tragedy visited his family?
But I hope we can all agree that Tim is no longer in pain.
RIP Ish - you rocked, bro!
- Darrell Harvey, San Diego, CA
Mr. Kemmick, to answer your question about how Tim sounded in recent years, he was flat-out better than J.D. in my opinion.
That statement is not circumstantial. We all said as much the first time we heard him play.
Mr. Douglas is pleasant. Tim Ishler's playing that night unleashed a seismic shitstorm inside of my ribcage.
I'll never forget it. I went home feeling blessed that it had happened to me. I didn't know the half of it.
Speaking of magical nights and people named J.D., can I add this? There used to be a Missoula guitar player named J.D., who had a French last name that was pronounced in such a way that you'd hardly connect it with the way it was printed, who played with the Lost Highway Band. Sometime in the mid-70s he branched off and formed his own side band, J.D. and the Jaguars. One night at the Park Hotel he had a new song he was itching to play, but the band had never heard it. They ran through it anyway, with J.D. calling out the chord changes as he went along. Whatever it was, J.D. gave it everything he had, and the band, picking up on his excitement, made it sound as if they'd played it a hundred times. It was a rousing blues song that called out the best playing, and the best singing, I ever heard from him. When it was over J.D. was drenched in sweat and smiling from ear to ear and those of us lucky enough to have witnessed it were on our feet madly clapping and whooping.
Damn, that was some kind of music scene, and it sounds as though Tim must have been the most talented guy in it.
Mark>> Thanks again for your great story and support at the funeral. It felt great to here from all the people that loved him for his music and for just being Tim.
Willie>> Call us sometime.>>>>> Dan Ishler