Jeff Pevar

Sometime in 2005 I did a string of dates opening for Crosby, Pevar & Raymond – David Crosby’s side project with his son and his collaborator Jeff Pevar. The truth is I joined the tour and was kind of like the anonymous appendage, but two things happened that brought me into the fold. One is my chocolate lab Maple escaped my dressing room and PILLAGED David Crosby’s catering spread – I mean WRECKED. When I found him, David was in good cheer feeding him the remains of the cheese plate. Good for my music career, not so good for my dog’s digestive track.

The other ice-breaking event was that Jeff Pevar remembered me from having played a festival together some years before. He was kind enough to join me for a song or two during my set on a couple nights. Jeff plays multiple instruments and on those occasions accompanied me on Dobro or lap steel – I can't remember.

We reconnected this past year via Facebook, right around the time I was herding musicians to perform on Some Assembly Required. I asked him to participate and he graciously agreed. The interesting thing about the track that Jeff played on – “You Lay The Dust” – is that there was no instrumentation to speak of, just acoustic guitar and vocals. Jeff added Dobro, fretless bass and mandolin, and more or less “produced” the track. He is a mad musician who has performed with music’s elite, including one of my heroes, Ray Charles. There’s a video floating around of Jeff trading solos with Ray Charles in the 80’s... it’s NUTS.