Eshtine

johnny fox

The Little Easy bar has a sign in the window proclaiming it an official Mardi Gras establishment. There is an umlaut above the "a" in "Gras" as though The Little Easy considers Mardi Gras a joint German/French celebration. Perhaps it does; it stands, after all, in the shadow of the Anheuser-Busch brewery.
To reach the Little Easy, I drove past massive brick buildings with tiny wrought-iron balconies on their second story. Every second building was a bar. The interior of the Little Easy is not heavily decorated. There are one or two video arcade games and a jukebox. On the inside wall, which is also brick, is the logo for the bar--a hammock strung between the legs of the Arch. Just below the logo is an amp with "JOHNNY FOX" written across the front in white.
The last time I saw Johnny Fox play was a Fourth of July some years back. He was with a band called Villanova Junction then. They were playing outdoors under a little tent during the airshow. Jets would thunder overhead and drown out the band. The sound system wasn't great, even without the jets. Johnny was having trouble with his guitar. Finally he stood still, stared out at the crowd, muttered something about how much this fool guitar had cost--and then broke it. He simply wrenched the neck backward until the wood splintered where the base of the neck had joined the body. I thought, "Now this is rock and roll." A man came through the crowd selling Villanova Junction t-shirts; I bought one. It was black with an intricate cream-colored design. Dice and beer bottles and other assorted symbols of bad living were all woven in.
Today it's just Johnny and a twelve-string guitar and a harmonica. He plays old Creedence Clearwater Revival and Bob Dylan and Rod Stewart tunes for the 9 or so people here. Three of us are at tables, the rest are at the bar. The man at the table next to me praises Johnny and says the songs take him back.
Johnny Fox is well named. He looks wild--shoulder-length dark hair under a bandanna, large brown no-nonsense sunglasses, overalls that may be a little long for him. His voice is raspy, gravelly but somehow sweet, with just a hint of vibrato--an ideal rock and roll voice. He sounds like he's listened to a lot of Janis Joplin records. He doesn't treat his guitar kindly. He doesn't break it this time but he bangs down on the chords like a man who's snapped a lot of strings in his day. When he sings a blues song about praying for mercy at the crossroads, he stomps the rhythm; it shakes the floor and rattles the tables.
Toward the end of another song he takes a small step back from the microphone, which is big, old-fashioned, and set just above him so he has to crane his neck to sing into it. He takes another step, another--all small steps, just like he's shuffling his feet. He sings softer as he goes and attacks his guitar a little less cruelly. When he backs into the corner he stops and smiles. "That's my fade-out."
He plays underneath a big screen showing a WNBA game and commercials for Goedeker's Superstores. He plays here every Friday for Happy Hour and then sometimes will play another bar till late in the evening. He's a musician; it's what he does to make money. And if it requires snarling out jeremiads like "Like a Rolling Stone" on a sweltering July evening--hey, there are worse ways to make money. Only when Johnny sings this song, it has lines like "When you ain't got jack shit, you ain't got jack shit to lose."

Johnny Fox has his schedule (and some audio of original songs) at cornerband.com.