My earliest recollections of playing with Jerry Garcia are the informal Bluegrass pickin’ sessions in John and Deirdre Lundburg’s guitar shop on Dwight Way, just off campus, in Berkeley. This would have been around 1962 or 1963. He and I’d been introduced by a mutual friend, Lonnie Feiner, a singer-guitarist from Los Angeles, who seemed to know everyone and was a walking clearing house for people from many different sub-groups in the folk music cosmos of the ‘Sixties.

Most professional musicians from a certain era (mine) have all kinds of stories about what happened “when the bus broke down,” i.e., when some of the band didn’t show up for the gig. Playing a set with Bill Monroe, the Father of Bluegrass, is one of mine.

Sometimes Doc Watson stayed with me when he played at the Ash Grove, which was the top folk music club in L.A. in the ‘Sixties. That’s where you’d play if you were a marquis folk act or were just starting to make it, and Doc was just starting to make it. He had records out and was starting to be hero-worshiped by folkies and serious musicians, like myself. I think the pressure of that caused the ulcer which he had the second time he stayed with me.

If someone comes into your home a couple of weeks a year for three years in a row, you’re probably going to remember it, and maybe have some lasting memories from it. And so it was with Doc Watson, who stayed with me every time he played at the Ash Grove in LA in the middle ‘Sixties.

[The vinyl album slick (ca. 1966 or thereabouts) pictured here was a token from Doc in lieu of a signature. As I recall, Rosa Lee, his wife, took care of all his correspondence]

Doc Watson was playing at the Ash Grove in LA, probably some time in 1965 or ’66, and one day I took him to Roy Noble’s guitar workshop in Reseda, in the San Fernando Valley. I go 45 years back with Roy, whose guitars have been played and/or owned by Doc, Clarence White, Jorma Kaukkonen, Pete Seeger, Leo Kotke and other awesome players.

Had a good chat with Doc Watson and his wife, Rosa Lee, yesterday. We covered a lot of territory in a half hour: music and musicians, kids, Merlefest, computers (still none at the Watson place,) health, doctors and hospitals (Doc’s salty about some of these; tell you why later), and spirituality. That’s always an important subject whenever we talk.

It took awhile, but we finally made it around to the ostensible reason I’d called him: I’d gotten an email request to interview me for a biography on Doc to be released August 1.

Anyway, something went down between him and Clarence in the middle-‘60’s and Doc found himself a solo act. And that’s where I came in. He stayed at my house, and, in an old guitar mentor-disciple tradition, I was his lead-boy. Among my duties was helping him decide what to play or not play on stage.

It’s funny what things your memory may log in without asking your permission. For example, in mine there’s a mental snapshot of Doc Watson laying his hands on the driving wheel of a huge old locomotive in an outdoor museum in Los Angles. It reminds me of a teenager caressing a muscle car.

For someone who has made his living off a guitar style he invented, Doc Watson has been extremely generous in showing it to others. For the first few years he stayed with me, which was whenever he came to LA, he allowed me to tape him in informal pickin’ sessions where anyone I wanted could show up, gape and learn (as long as I wanted them there).