On June 20th, 2009 m’lady and I found ourselves mired in a traffic jam of epic proportions just outside of Chicago. Before us lay a sea of cars so dense it wouldn’t have parted for an ambulance driven by Moses. Every inch of asphalt in every direction was covered with stop-and-go traffic that was decidedly more stop than go. Every offramp was a parking lot…in fact the only cars that seemed to be going anywhere where the ones merging onto the highway in front of us.

In a fit of desperation (or maybe it was just boredom) we inched off of the highway at a random exit and relied on instinct and a vague road atlas to backroad it to Alpine Valley. We ended up driving twice the miles in half the time and made it to our Stalin-esque no-fun hotel with plenty of time to get to the venue.

Of course the band was Phish, playing the first night of their tour-ending two-nighter in the steep Alpine Valley. This was my first time at the classic outdoor venue, one I first heard of on August 27th, 1990 when Stevie Ray Vaughan died in a helicopter crash after playing a show there.

Sigh*

We had pavilion seats and enjoyed a rollickingly great show from our spot just in front of the notoriously steep GA lawn. The setlist almost looked like I picked it myself, hitting tons of my favourite Phish tunes: Runaway Jim, Stash, Maze, YEM, Makisupa Policeman, Lizards, Sparkle, Ghost…it was great.

They even encored with Character Zero, as much to my enjoyment as it was to m’lady’s chagrin.

I don’t remember how we got back and forth to the hotel – I’m thinking there was a shuttle involved – but I do know when we returned to our hotel we started to get a fuller appreciation of just how strict the place was. They were scrutinizing wristbands, checking room keys and stomping on good vibes with an enthusiastic fervour that showed just how reluctant they were to put up with filling their hotel to capacity at premium prices for any future Phish concerts.

I thought it was us that was supposed to be giving them the business, not the other way around.

*I’ll certainly never forget about the moment I heard about that helicopter crash. My band was driving to Toronto for a gig in two vehicles; me and JP in my Toyota minivan packed full of gear (and most likely our soundguy-ish Paöule) with Patrick and Raymond following behind. The news of a helicopter crash came over the radio. The announcer said that members of Eric Clapton’s crew and band were aboard. There was no mention of Stevie Ray Vaughan whatsoever.

After the next song the DJ came on and said, “We now have confirmed reports that Stevie Ray Vaughan has died in a helicopter crash over Alpine Valley.”

We were floored.

This was pre-cell phone so I pulled the van to the side of the old highway 16 to tell the guys in the other car the terrible news (they were undoubtedly listening to old cassettes of The Osmonds; pre-Donny of course). As we commiserated at the side of the road it started to rain big, hard drops. We hopped back into our vehicles just ahead of an epic downpour that continued for the entire drive to Toronto.

We loaded into Clinton’s in the pouring rain, watched the opening band complete outclass us (an act called The Saddletramps featuring a young singer named Sarah Harmer) before working up an extra-sweaty set in front of our usual mediocre crowd in the swamp-like humid Toronto night. Outside the rains continued to pour down.

I have no idea where we slept that night but I do know we woke up under continued dark skies and still more rain. Impossibly it kept pouring all the way back to Ottawa. We unloaded the gear into Pat’s basement quickly to avoid getting it too wet and I continued on towards my dorm room at Carleton University.

As I approached the Hog’s Back Bridge I heard what turned out to be a final burst of thunder and all at once the rains stopped and the sun came out. I found myself stuck in traffic and got out to see what the hold up was. I walked up to the Hog’s Back Bridge and was told that lightning had just hit the…let’s see, what are those things called?

You know those black and white wooden barriers that came down at railway crossings to stop the traffic? Anyways, the Hog’s Back Bridge has one of those on either side and one of them had just then been struck by lightning. I saw two-foot length of the shattered wooden barrier laying on the ground and grabbed it.

So here’s what happened. As soon as I got the news that SRV was gone the sky opened up and stayed that way as I travelled for almost a thousand kilometres. The deluge ended abruptly with a bolt of lightning pretty much exactly twenty-four hours after it began and in a Zoroastrianist fit I drew a connection between the spirit of Stevie Ray Vaughan and that destroyed bit of wood. That fleeting burst of energy lifting from the earth up to the heavens (they say lightning actually goes up) represented a tangible transmission of the guitarist’s soul and the destroyed piece of…whatever those things are called…was an actual physical relic of SRV’s own explosive energy.

I cherished that piece of wood like it was holy and displayed it prominently everywhere I lived until I finally lost it in a house fire.

Sigh.

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