Greg Keeler's songs and poems parody life in the West from the raw edges of trailer parks to the calypso knowledges of cow colleges, and from ranch-style machismo and duct tape to new age neuroses and faxes. In August he appeared on an ESPN show, "On the Fly," taking a strike-vitually catching a fish while improvising a song for the interviewer.
The following interview accumulated over the three days leading up to his performance at the Old Main Theater on the CU, Boulder campus, in November.
You're not a standard, run-of-the-mill poet. What kind of venues do you play?
GK: Lately I've been playing quite a lot for female bank tellers, because I have a lot of songs making fun of men. They usually hire the ballroom in the old Baxter Hotel in Bozeman to have their Christmas party, and their bosses are there, who give them crap all year, and I come in and sing these songs about what assholes men are, and the bank tellers love it. I've played for the Montana roofers, who meet out in Big Sky. They were really impressed that I'd been on TV and insisted that I remember the lyrics that I'd made up when I was having salmon flies crawl around on me. And I've played for the Bighorn Livestock Association out in Hardin, Montana, because they'd heard I played cowboy music or something like that. I wound up having to duct tape one of those foot tall podiums with a microphone coming out of it so that it swung from the ceiling in front of me-that's all they had.
And then one time a guy calls me and says, "Do you recite that poetry about outhouses?" And I said, "No, that's somebody else; but I write funny songs." And he says, "Yeah, that's why I called you, you write funny cowboy sort of songs. We're from the Montana Society of Explosive Engineers in Butte-we're with Butte Tech, and we'd like you to come over and play for our annual get together." So I said sure, what the hell, two hundred dollars. But then he calls back and tells me a little more about the details, and I start to realize that these guys are really into the mining and logging industries heavy duty. So I said, "I think I should warn you that my songs are released through Earth First Journal, and I'm associated with that group." And he says, "Shit, well I've already hired you, and everybody expects you to be there. Listen, please, none of that crap." I said, no problem, I'll play what I think will go over. So I played "White Guy Dancing" and a bunch of stuff making fun of white guys and WD40 and duct tape and carp, and they all thought it was great. The last song I played was called "I Feel like Canada," from [the Keeler musical] "Aliens and Canadians," and there was a Canuck who blew the top off of doug firs, in the audience, and he came up afterwards and told me he thought it was great, and could he get a tape of my songs. So I said, well, I can give you my address…and at that point the guy who had hired me and told me not to do any Earth First! stuff, said, "Yeah, play him some of that tree hugging crap!" I started joking around, saying, "Yeah, those tree huggers, what I'd like to do with those fucking tree huggers is just wrap a bunch of dynamite around one of them's necks and blow his head off like a big doug fir," and the Canuck thought that was a scream. And then I left really fast. But basically, they couldn't believe that anyone who talked like I did could ever really belong to Earth First! But why I joined in the first place was because of Dave Foreman-you know, red necks for wilderness, as opposed to environmentalists.
What happened to Dave Foreman after the FBI entrapped those people into blowing up those electrical pylons?
GK: That turned out awful. Earth First! accuses Dave of copping a plea and getting off while Peg Millet, Kate's sister, and a guy called Davis went to jail. Or maybe Davis was the name of the FBI guy who infiltrated the group and cheered them on to cut down the power lines. The idea of doing the power lines came totally from the FBI infiltrator, and of course the FBI was there to catch them. So Dave Foreman wasn't in on that but because he was the head of Earth First! when they caught those people the FBI ran into his house in the early hours of the morning, and he woke up with a 357 magnum right at his head. He said it was just as well that it was, because he kept one under his pillow and if he'd had a chance he probably would have gone for it. So they did the right thing there, but it was scary as shit. And then they took him off to jail because they figured it was an Earth First! action. They don't know that they're just a bunch of chaotic, incoherent freaks. In fact, the FBI left their tape recorders running after they'd been with the Earth Firsters, and on their recordings you can hear them saying, "God, I can't believe these people. They're totally incompetent and they really believe in this shit that they're doing!"
Do you still go to play at Earth First! gatherings?
GK: I used to go to the rendezvous every year, but I haven't gone in quite a while. I just got burnt out on travelling-they were usually way in the east or way in the south-west.
Tell us about some other gigs you've done.
GK: A friend in Idaho, Scott Preston, who's a Fed Ex man, has helped get me gigs in Sun Valley now and then. He and a friend Tina Cole asked me down to do various things either for the Sun Valley Library Association or for the Northern Rockies Folk Festival in Haley. So Tina Cole called me and asked me if I'd come down there to do a gig for some Hollywood types. She said that this guy Frank Wells, who was a Disney CEO and Michael Eisner's second in command, was holding a celebrity ski contest-an event he held every year that was just an excuse to get his friends there to ski and drink and have fun with him every March. One of the main producers had broken his leg the year before in it in a skiing accident, or had a collision with a tram or something. But anyway, Tina Cole had painted a cartoon picture of the event happening and at the party she was going to present this to the person who brroke his leg, and I was to be trotted out as a local comedian.
So anyway, I got there and met Frank Wells who was a really sweet man who everybody liked, and before I went on he said, "Last year we hired a Hollywood comedian and he was OK but then he started to bomb and he started to insult everyone and tell dirty four letter jokes, and a lot of people left, and it was really bad. OK, it's your turn!" So then he asked me, "How long can you play?" I said, "I don't know-an hour, two hours, what do you want?" And he says, "Oh my God, twenty minutes." So I went up and played "White Guy Dancing," and they all just stared daggers at me. I'm planted right in front of Clint Eastwood, which took me aback. And there were several producers-there was a young Zanuck who somebody said was important, and a couple other people who everybody seemed to be looking at to see how they were responding to me, to see whether they should laugh, I think. And the women would look at Clint Eastwood and if he laughed, they laughed.
So then I sang "Co-dependent Cowgirl," and Clint laughed at "compared to me you're just a six-pack and I'm a twenty-four can case." Then people sort of looked at him and a tee-hee went through the crowd. And then I played "It's a Baby," and I didn't know it but Eastwood and his wife had just had a baby, and I think they thought I'd written it especially for this thing, and everybody liked that a lot. I guess even though he thought I was insulting him he thought it was funny. "Lament O' the Laundromat" went over really well, too, and "I call my Mama Papa." When I was through Frank Wells said, "You were great, I can't believe it, they laughed, they didn't walk out." He said he was going to pay me $700, but he wrote out a check for $1,500, and I was thinking, gee, gosh, Hollywood here I come.
As soon as I got back I sent him some of my tapes, saying, if you really liked them, here they are, and you can throw them in the trash or listen to them for fun. And then the next day I heard on the evening news on television that he'd died. They said Frank Wells, Disney CEO, died in a helicopter accident. My friends in Sun Valley wrote to me about it, and there was a big article in Newsweek on the tragic helicopter skiing accident of Frank Wells. All those people at the party had gone helicopter skiing, but it just happened to be Wells and the pilot who were in it when it crashed. So there went my Hollywood connection! And from all the rumors I'd heard about Hollywood, he seemed like the only truly nice person in that end of the business-both he and his wife were really nice, kind people.
Forget Hollywood-a lot of people heard you on a radio documentary about Montana politics on All Things Considered.
GK: Yes, that was when we had two congressmen. We've lost one since then. This is one of the songs I sang on that show:
Way out West in Big Montana We're a fine old piece of Americana And we got cowboys and Indians and wilderness out the wazoo. We got buffalo, we got movie stars, We got grizzly bears and Japanese cars And the last time I counted our congressmen, there were two.
We're just a bunch of small town hicks, stuck out here in the sticks. Hell, long as we got our guns, could be we just need one. Doodle da de doody etc.
We got a democrat who comes from Butte, He's a working man's hero and a liberal to boot. We got a Republican cowboy from the Indian part of the state. We got some flat broke farmers and summer cottage snobs, Some big corporations and some low paying jobs, And there's not enough voters to keep both guys on the slate.
We're just a bunch of small town hicks, stuck out here in the sticks, Hell, one might be too many, could be we don't need any. Doodle da de doody etc.
When Jefferson gave Lewis and Clark the nod, He believed that the farmer was next to God And the top of the Missouri was a little bit of heaven to plough. Yes an educated yeoman in the countryside was more righteous than relations who were citified, Hell Thomas would be rolling in his grave to see his yeomen now.We're just a bunch of small town hicks, stuck out here in the sticks, Hey, it's political abortion, lets get re-apportioned, Doodle da de doody etc.
Barrett Golding, who did the series, got great interviews from people around the state. He did one with the Republican congressman who's since lost his job-he was the one who didn't get to stay. It was just before the election, and Golding talked to Marlenee during some political rally, and Marlenee said, "On the way out I just knocked the hell out of a doe, she was just standing out in the middle of the road, poor dear." But that was a very good show, and it was easy to write the songs for it.
So how did A River Runs Through It affect fishing in Montana?
GK: Well, a lot of people around Bozeman had moved out to Montana because they liked to fish-there's always been a heavy population of people who like to fish, but when that movie came out, it kind of made a joke of fishing in Montana. When Paul, the younger brother, makes his majestic statement about how he'd never leave Montana and he's in the stream with his rod, I think a lot of people around the country saw this image of the outlaw who could stand in the river, and a lot of people moved out to Montana because of that mythos. Redford didn't want them to, and the producer said that they didn't want to lure people to Montana, but obviously the film had that effect.
Your books of poems are sold in fishing shops, and you also write for various outdoor magazines. You used to write for a very elegant and expensive one called Greys's Sporting Journal. Is that still around?
GK: It still exists, but actually it cost Ed Grey so much he had to sell it. The people who bought it are doing a pretty good job but not nearly as good a job as he did. Now I write a regular fishing column for Big Sky Journal, which models itself on Grey's. The first article I wrote was about Richard Brautigan. Another one was about the battle between bait and fly fishermen and democracy. And the one I just wrote, which will come out this winter, is about Vern Troxel, my old fishing buddy, an old logger who taught me how to ice fish when I moved to Montana. So I talk about how ice fishing has changed: it used to be great perch fishing, but now there's these huge dragon-like fish called ling or burbot that are eating all the perch, so it's like fighting dragons. Vern is getting on-he's seventy-five now, his legs were really bashed up during his logging days, he's worried about his body going out on him, and I figure the ling are getting thicker under the ice as Vern starts getting closer to the grim reaper. So in other words, whatever's going through my head, fish play an integral part.
So since trash fish were invented by people, what about the trash people who are in a way invented by the trash fish?
GK: Well, I never read Zorba the Greek, but somebody told me that Kazanzakis' philosophy behind that book is how you can't hold down the human forces welling at the bottom. There's definitely trash people.
So would you say that trash people are the real Montanans? The ones that live in trailers, got a wooden leg or something, sticking their heads out into 70 below?
GK: Well, Butte reflects that. It's sitting there in the middle of a bunch of poison, but it's still got character-the only place in Montana that really still does.
You know who was from Butte-Evel Knieval. He's classic trash.
GK: Oh, definitely, of course. Just give him a baseball bat, dammit. When immigrants came to Butte they set out from New York and got on the train headed for Butte, America. It was that big a chunk in the West. There were Cousin Jacks from Cornwall, Finns, Irish, Slavs, Italians-but they all stuck in their ethnic groups so Butte got all divided up into ethnic communities. The Italians were big in other parts of Montana-in Roundup they lived in these caves and they painted the walls pink.
Trash fish are sort of fun to watch. Trash fish out compete the other fish eventually. Generally we have to poison the trash fish to put the trout in to make a delicate aquarium. The Gallatin, the Madison, the Jefferson-all those blue ribbon trout streams in Montana-the upper Missouri, the Yellowstone, they're all aquariums. Because nothing's natural in them. I mean there's natural flora, but all of the fish are from out of state. The native is the cutthroat, and that's basically the Shoshone, the Crow to a certain extent, the Northern Cheyenne, the Salish Kouteni-those are the people who were there when the cutthroat were there. And then Lewis and Clark came in, and shortly thereafter they sent the first stocking wagons out here. They stocked these rivers way back before the turn of the century. The people who came out here wanted variety and so they brought in brown trout from Germany, rainbows from California, brooks from New York-New York and California, the same pattern all over again-and the golden trout that they put in the higher lakes are from California too. So you've got these white people who came here around the same time the fish did, in the 1860's or `70's, who say, "Ma family's bin here forever, I'm a billionth generation Montana cowboy." But they're basically a rainbow trout.
So that's what I mean by aquarium: you take the fish you don't want out of your aquarium and put in the ones you do-because they're prettier and you like to look at them. And it's even more of an aquarium when you catch and release because then the bubbas can't come in with their trailers and worms and follow the stocking trucks and catch a ten fish limit and eat them sons a bitches. But it's funny, serious fly fisherman up there say, "Oh, we only have native stock-browns and rainbows." Which have been there maybe since the fifties. They had to bring in some cutthroat when they realized they wanted to keep it like it was-although they had some Montana stock cutthroat that they could put in.
They're talking about bringing in sea lampreys from the Great Lakes to eliminate the big non-native trout that have invaded Yellowstone Lake-or were planted there by saboteurs. Department of Defense scientists have suggested wiring the lake bottom with an electric grid to shock the lake trout into submission. What do you think they should do?
GK I think they should release a squadron of Mormon worm fishermen-they'll take care of the lake trout.
GK: There was a joke about Camille Paglia, and in Montana they pronounce that Palia, without the "g", and basically the joke depends on it because if Camille Palia is going to marry a red-neck you're going to have to say, "Palia, want a cracker." So we take the "g" out of Paglia, but we put the "d" in Anaconda. If you live in Anaconda, you pronounce it Andaconda. Nobody has any jobs in Andaconda-basically it's Andaconda copper going broke.
We're talking about a Montana the environmentalists don't know.
GK: It's true, it's called a bunch of people who don't have jobs. Butte is the best emblem of that whole thing. It's just a big poisonous sump and people live around the edges of it.
Do the rest of Montanans called them sump people or what?
GK: No, not sump people. There's a certain pride we take in Butticians-they are the soul of Montana dammit! They're the working class people who've got fucked over.
Left behind by Hollywood.
Gk: Right.
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