cadillac fraf
i was working yesterday evening when my sweetie fell by the market to let me know that jesse sierra hernandez had called with some bad news: cadillac fraf had been in an accident thursday and is in a coma. i'd read something on a friend's myspace that gave me an inkling of this and now i knew what she meant.
funny, until last night i didn't even know his real name: chad percy. really, all i knew about fraf was what he invented and what he wanted me to know. i'd a never guessed that he was an arlington heights h.s. grad; i always thought he was from amarillo. he'd spent a couple of yrs there, working on stanley marsh's cadillac ranch, a summer down in wimberley, and a year when, his friend linc sez, "he lived everywhere." fraf rode the rails and hitched all over the country, like a modern-day woody guthrie. jon teague sez that when yeti was touring the west coast, fraf showed up, zelig-like, everywhere they played. when we visited him in hospital, one of his friends said, "maybe we should get a bunch of ppl to bring their gtrs in here to sing union songs and get him stirred up."
first time i met fraf, i was scribing for the fw weekly and he was working door at the wreck room. "you're that guy who writes for the paper," he said. i admitted i was. "you need to be back on [such-and-such a date]. there's this dude playing named cadillac fraf who's really bad-ass." i came back on the appointed date and realized i'd met a self-publicist of some style. in reference to his own music, fraf once told me, "it might not be good, but it's real" -- which might be the most self-aware statement i've ever heard from a muso.
i remember the night (back when fraf held down monday nights at el wreck) when he was displaced by the berry st. "acoustic mafia" crew. he was indignant, but he had the last laugh, playing on the roof of the wreck the night it closed (damn, was that almost a year ago?). alone among the regs, he held no nostalgia for the wreck, comparing it to "that girlfriend that you're always trying to get rid of, but can't." it occurred to me last night after i heard the news of his accident that he was right: places aren't important; it's people that make them so.
keep him and his family in your thoughts today, won't you?
funny, until last night i didn't even know his real name: chad percy. really, all i knew about fraf was what he invented and what he wanted me to know. i'd a never guessed that he was an arlington heights h.s. grad; i always thought he was from amarillo. he'd spent a couple of yrs there, working on stanley marsh's cadillac ranch, a summer down in wimberley, and a year when, his friend linc sez, "he lived everywhere." fraf rode the rails and hitched all over the country, like a modern-day woody guthrie. jon teague sez that when yeti was touring the west coast, fraf showed up, zelig-like, everywhere they played. when we visited him in hospital, one of his friends said, "maybe we should get a bunch of ppl to bring their gtrs in here to sing union songs and get him stirred up."
first time i met fraf, i was scribing for the fw weekly and he was working door at the wreck room. "you're that guy who writes for the paper," he said. i admitted i was. "you need to be back on [such-and-such a date]. there's this dude playing named cadillac fraf who's really bad-ass." i came back on the appointed date and realized i'd met a self-publicist of some style. in reference to his own music, fraf once told me, "it might not be good, but it's real" -- which might be the most self-aware statement i've ever heard from a muso.
i remember the night (back when fraf held down monday nights at el wreck) when he was displaced by the berry st. "acoustic mafia" crew. he was indignant, but he had the last laugh, playing on the roof of the wreck the night it closed (damn, was that almost a year ago?). alone among the regs, he held no nostalgia for the wreck, comparing it to "that girlfriend that you're always trying to get rid of, but can't." it occurred to me last night after i heard the news of his accident that he was right: places aren't important; it's people that make them so.
keep him and his family in your thoughts today, won't you?
posted by stashdauber at 8:51 AM
3 Comments:
You can find donation jars for Fraf and his family to help offset medical cost/recovery cost (and probably to buy some black watches and roll yer owns too- because we know that is indeed how fraf rolls) at a few Fort Worth locations. I dropped one off at the fairmount and the chatroom and will be taking one to spiral diner, lolas and liberty. If you know of anywhere else that would like to play host to a jug with yellow roses and frafs mug on it let me know and I will gladly make some more and bring them buy.
*Kat Valentine*
Benefit show? I'm in, regardless of the band.
Sadly he passed away at 2:40 this afternoon, January 10,2009, at Wedgewood Nursing Home.
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