I love to listen to the blues. I used to be a regular at several of the small, smoky clubs that are hidden from Main Street on the north side of the city. Those dens where electric blues screamed from towers of speakers piled on small bandstands. Places infected with rhythm and soul. Places where even old white men would get up and dance. 

Some of the best musicians in the country played these joints on their way to Chicago, Kansas City or Dallas.  The best guitarist was Bobby Brean. He was a local kid and made the rounds in all the downtown clubs. Bobby was always playing somewhere. His bottleneck slide techniques are as legendary as his harmonica riffs. Bobby could bend a note until it screamed for release, like a victim on a torturer’s rack. He was backed with good guys on a stand-up bass, drums and keyboards – but it was Bobby we all came to hear. He could lift your soul with his expressive guitar.

He was a good-looking kid – tall, lean, with a chiseled face and big hands. Women would throw their underpants at him while he sang and tormented that old Gibson hollow body – some men did, too. Everybody loved Bobby Brean.

I gave up the nightlife. Years went by, then I ran into Bobby at my office. I went down to the lower level for a Coke one day, and there he was – dressed in a gray pair of overalls, stuffing soda cans into a vending machine. Same Bobby – older, but still a good-looking guy. We caught up on old times and I asked him what the hell he was doing filling vending machines. Here’s what he told me:

“Hey, man. This is the day job. Every artist has to have a day job. I know I ain’t no vending guy. You know I ain’t no vending guy, but I need health insurance, man. This is the day job, baby. A guy’s got to eat while he’s waitin for his break.”

Bobby laughed, dug into the bowels of the machine and pulled out two Cokes. “You’re a writer ain’t cha?”

I nodded as he handed me a cold can.

“So you’re an artist, too. It’s all the same for us – musicians, actors, artists, writers. It’s all the same shit, man. You’re a writer. This is your day job, man. You’re waitin for your break, too.” Bobby winked at me, downed his Coke and then crooned melodiously in that soulful blue tenor voice of his, “You gots the day job blues.”

He tilted his hand-truck and said, “See ya, man. Keep writing. Ya hear? We’re artists, baby. We’re artists waitin’ for our break. You keep the day job till that happens, man.

I stood there listening to Bobby sing “The Day Job Blues” while he followed his hand-truck to the elevator, remembering his past stage performances and thinking to myself – I know I ain’t no ad guy. He knows I ain’t no ad guy. I’m a writer and this is just my day job.

Bobby Brean could always lift your soul, man.

(Originally written July 22, 2003)