Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

Best of 2010, In a Clamshell

By Bob Wire, 12-29-10

	The girls of MAT's "Rocky Horror Show," the sexiest live theater production of the year. A toast! (photo: Bob Wire)

Mired here in the Dead Zone between Christmas and New Year’s, I find myself looking back on a year that was packed like muffin-top jeans with music, death, work, travel, drama, laughs and tears. Kind of like an early Coen Brothers movie, only with less John Goodman.

Actually, Goodman featured heavily in one of Missoula’s cinematic highlights of 2010. Joe Easton and Rick Wishcamper’s “The Next Round Robin (I Can Get You a Toe),” a gathering of Big Lebowski freaks at the Wilma Theater, was the most fun I’d had in years. Several hundred Lebowski Achievers, most dressed as their favorite characters from the movie, sucked down oat sodas and White Russians while we laughed and hooted to a screening of the cult classic in a rare showing on the big screen. Rubbing shoulders with all those Walters and Dudes and Maudes while trading favorite quotes from the movie was like a hipper, sexier version of a Star Trek convention. And instead of a leering George Takei, we had Easton decked out in long johns and a head wreath, performing his dance quintet (you know, the cycle) onstage. It’s coming up again in January. Maybe this year I’ll bring my special lady friend.

Another movie highlight was the release of Machete, a high-camp homage to ‘70s action flicks done up with loving care by Robert Rodriguez. Danny Trejo, the most bad-ass 66-year-old on the planet, saunters through the over-the-top action leaving a trail of sliced-up enemies, blowed-up buildings and well-laid women. All with barely four lines of dialog. Best scene: Machete escapes police custody in the hospital by grabbing some poor schnook’s exposed lower intestine and using it as a rope to sling himself, pirate-style, out the window and down to a lower floor. Everyone in the theater roared at this spectacle. All five of us.

There were several standout moments in 2010 in my musical world. I played 18 solo shows, ranging from a sold out, wine-drenched fund raiser in Napa, California, where Shane Clouse and the Salty Dawg kazoo horn section serenaded the crowd, to a surreal performance at an assisted living retirement home in Missoula where I witnessed a bold escape attempt. I also played a dozen raucous shows with my band, the Magnificent Bastards. Our apex was opening for the Marshall Tucker Band at Ryan Creek Meadows in July. One note for rookie bands: when you are one of several acts on the bill, and the show is behind schedule, don’t play an encore. And if you do, don’t stop right then to retune all your instruments. Class dismissed.

My favorite new music of the year was Mojo, Tom Petty’s best album since Wildflowers. Reuniting with the Heartbreakers, Petty recorded this stripped-down, no-bullshit set that served to remind the world that rock ‘n roll comes less from the head than from the crotch. It’s one of those rare albums that gets stronger with each listen. Petty has always been an underappreciated lion in the rock world. He doesn’t wear make-up, he doesn’t beat on his wife or shoot smack or use auto-tune or cover himself with tattoos or go to jail or star in a reality show or screw Jessica Simpson. He also refuses to follow trends, unlike so many of the flavor-of-the-month lightweights who land on the cover of the Rolling Stone after releasing their first album. In our puddle-deep culture where someone named Snooki may soon run for office and millions of people get their news from TMZ, thank god true fans of rock and roll like me have Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers cranking up their guitars and making lasting art. Like Joe Perry said, let the music do the talking. Mojo lays ‘em all to waste.

The year’s best local musical moment technically occurred in 2009. It was Kira Means’ solo performance at First Night Idol (now known as First Night Star). Kira was a freshman at Hellgate High, and she’d lost a friend to a drunk driver barely a week before the Idol showcase last New Year’s Eve in the Wilma Theater. When the shockingly talented singer-songwriter settled her diminutive frame onto a stool and played her song, “Hello,” to a hushed full house, the only other thing you could hear was the sound of a thousand hearts breaking in unison. It was like a wrecking ball of poignancy. She finished the song to a tidal wave of tears and a thunderous standing ovation. I was one of the judges for the competition that night, and having to announce a winner after that became almost incidental. We’d all shared a transcendent human moment together, which made everyone in the building a winner.

I saw more live theater than usual this past year, for some reason, and my two favorites were strikingly different productions of Shakespeare. Bozeman’s Shakespeare in the Park company favored a hardy Missoula audience with two nights of classic Bard in the Oval on the UM campus. The first night, a performance of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” was sublime. The second night, “Julius Caesar,” not so much. Night one: comedy, sunshine, wine, laughter. Night two: drama, rain, cold, misery. Hats off to the intrepid troupe, though. They were quite talented and impressive. I’m auditioning next year for the role of Mediocrates.

The other play, Montana Actors Theatre’s production of “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged,” was the most fun I’ve ever had at live theater where there wasn’t a pole onstage. The three manic cast members had the audience snorting delicious local microbrew out our noses in the intimate confines of the Crystal Theatre, hurling themselves around with reckless fervor. Bonus: now I’ll do better in the “Shakespeare” category of Jeopardy. Still failing miserably with those Bible questions, though.

I did more traveling in 2010 than I usually do, but much of it was work-related. If you can call playing music work, that is. Napa, Venice Beach, Chattanooga, the Oregon coast, Las Vegas, and several spots within Montana all saw my shadow in 2010. Promoting my last book, researching my next one, visiting family and seeing the sights, it was all grand adventure and great sport. And every time I came back home to Missoula, every time Mount Sentinel or the Rattlesnake Wilderness or the Sapphires or Bitterroots came into view, I was reminded why I live here in the upper shoulder of the Northern Rockies. It’s endlessly beautiful and inspiring, mostly free of concrete and steel, and my town is full of people who are even more interesting and fun than the landscape. I look around at the mountains and rivers and relatively sparse population, and I wonder why everyone doesn’t live here.

But I’m glad they don’t. Happy New Year.

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