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April 16, 2019

The Rock Legend of Don Harrison (Part 2)

Let us return to those loose and lazy Oregon City days of my youth and I will I try to recall the details of the Legend of Don Harrison with accuracy. It’s all a little hazy, imprecise, and I am going deep into the vortex of my memory to get the story right and set the record straight. Because what is a legend if it’s not true?

In 1979-80, I knew absolutely nothing about rock. I didn’t own any rock records. I suppose my first education in rock was watching Don Harrison live rock and roll right in front of me.

Don was a big dude, long haired, and wore faded Levis and threadbare rock t-shirts to school every day. I definitely remember a Ramones t-shirt, because I’d never heard of the Ramones. I can’t remember him ever wearing a coat or carrying a bag.

He hated disco and I recall many tirades against it. He once lavishly praised Rocket to Russia and I thought he was talking about American Cold War policy. Turns out it was a Ramones’ record released in 1977. How he heard about it Oregon City in that era seems impossible to reconstruct. Did we have a record store in town then? Did Don find his way to Crystal Ship or Music Millennium or For What It’s Worth records shops?

I believe Don played an electric guitar, yes it was electric, but I don’t recall the model. He didn’t use an amp because the teacher wouldn’t allow it. The rest of us played cheap acoustic guitars provided by the school and sat up front for instruction. Don sat toward the back, on the highest row of a classroom constructed with risers for choral music. He towered over us as he riffed away—The One and Only Riff.

Smoke on the water / fire in the sky

You know, when I think about it, Don nailed that riff. How could he not. He only played it over 32,000 times that semester if my math is right, and it is because my stepfather, a former high school math teacher crunched the numbers:

A nine second riff
A 52-minute period
Five periods a week
Eighteen weeks in a semester
= over 32,000 times

Smoke on the water / fire in the sky

If that isn’t a world rock record of some kind, then I don’t know what a world rock record is.

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The Old Crow

Book Club

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In December of 2020, author Matt Love moved to Portland to care for his elderly father.

Returning to the Rose City jolted Love after 23 years residing on the Oregon Coast. In the Sellwood neighborhood where he lived, Love met a homeless man named Mark. They formed a friendship over literature and the unforeseen magical discoveries in street libraries. They created The Old Crow Book Club, and yes, sometimes that involved drinking Old Crow on a sidewalk.

The club also included several other Sellwood homeless men and women cut from John Steinbeck's Cannery Row cloth.

In due course, Love learned the members' stories of homelessness and how they survived. He wondered what happened to his beloved state of Oregon and attempted to help Mark get off the streets only to run up against the seemingly futile policies to address the crisis.

Along the way, he had the best conversations about books in his life and wrote The Old Crow Book Club, where he recounts his interactions with the homeless people in his neighborhood and offers some suggestions how to alleviate what he considers the greatest man-made American humanitarian disaster of his adult life.

The Old Crow Book Club is available for purchase here and select independent bookstores in Oregon.

Choice Cuts

of Oregon Fiction

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Choice Cuts of Oregon Fiction by Matt Love contains 20 stories, all set in Oregon. The cast of characters includes a depressed Santa Claus, Steve Prefontaine, Jack Ramsay's fast break offense, socialist squirrels, a clearcut, a dead deer, a junior high football team, a high school tennis player, a dissipated teacher, a man who evolves into a beaver, a homeless vet, a jilted preacher, a double date to a prom, rural degenerates, a wily caterer, and much more.

The publication of the collection culminates a quarter century of the author's writing about Oregon and rambling around the state.

Choice Cuts is available for purchase here, through Amazon, or select independent bookstores in Oregon.

The Savage

of State Street

Nestucca Spit Press is proud to present The Savage of State Street: The Thieving and Literary Lives of Smoky Epley. He is the greatest unheralded writer in Oregon history and also one of its more mediocre, colorful and persistent thieves.

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In 1973, Oregon State University Press published Men in Exile: An Anthology of Creative Writing by Inmates of the Oregon State Penitentiary. Twenty-two of Smoky Epley's pieces appeared in the book.

Smoky spent most of his adult life in state and federal prisons for robbery. In 2008, during one of his brief stints of freedom, Smoky became friends with Matt Love, an Oregon author and publisher. They met after Love discovered Men in Exile and wrote a newspaper column about the landmark book. Smoky read the column and reached out.

He returned to prison in 2009 after forging a check. Upon his release in 2011, Love encouraged Smoky to write a memoir. He completed half of Auto before dying in February of 2013.