Chester's Barn |
Chester's Barn is a collaboration of a bunch of facets of Fat Dawg's life. Last year very happily, I built Chester's Barn. It is three universes existing in one space. The first one is an art installation of a 1953 back woods country roadhouse honky tonk barrelhouse or juke joint. You go down a dirt road on Astron Ranch, up in the mountains, and you come upon this rusted corrugated metal barn that looks like it's been sitting there for seventy years. Inside it is paneled in in old redwood wainscoting and the walls are covered with tons of old blues and R&B related art and beverage signs and acutriments of an old juke joint. Outside landscaped in two acres surrounding it are a bunch of 30s and 50s cars parked, where it looks like the owners ran in for a whiskey 50 years ago and just couldn't leave. Here's a quiz question for you R&B enthusiasts: What was Buddy Guy's real occupation? A: Tow truck driver! Well I just happened to own an old 30s Dodge tow truck, and that's parked at Chester's Barn, and I'm gonna paint "Guy Brothers Towing" on the side.
The second overlapping universe is a jam room complete with 30's through 50's guitars, amps, piano, organ, upright bass, and old drums. No Fender and Gibson stuff, but the real blues stuff - Supro, Kay, Harmony, Silvertone, and when you switch the stuff on, and hear the tone, Chester Burnett jumps down from heaven and and stands behind you and howls. It's as bad as it can be. Also in the near future you can push a button and two inch tape will be rolling through Ampex recorders. No wank off pedal boards or synths! One kid asked if he could bring his digital tuner in there, I said no way! He said. how will i tune? They've been tuning stringed instruments for hundreds of years, before they invented that shit. Another guy said - I'll be lost without my stereo chorus pedal! I said, yes you will! In Chester's Barn, your fingers are the thing.
The third and most important universe that occupies this space is a temple to Chester Burnett. On the west wall is a 13 by 16 foot cathedral window composed of an assortment of old multi-paned windows in all different shapes and sizes with blistered and multi-colored peeling paint. And that window isa masterpiece, on top of that it was composed by the great artist Rick Fox, who shares a similar name is in the same genus as Chester Burnett. Also adorning the walls are some of Rick Fox's beautiful, ceramic African masks. More of his masks are hanging on the trees on the way to Chester's Barn, and we call it the path of ancestors.
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