The Ledgend of Alabacious T. Bartholomew, Part II

Journal Friday, February 05, 2010 9:19 AM
I am back home and will be here for a while. I have not even taken my bass out of it’s gig bag. Shameful because I have to practice the next song I mentioned making a simple video of.

It often feels like there’s this membrane-like barrier that is just over my head. I make progress on the album, in my career, losing weight, or just habits and mental processes I want to change. As I climb higher I push against that membrane stretching it tighter the and tighter higher I climb. Some period of time later, whether it’s a week, a month or longer, it snaps me back to where I was before.

I can work to overcome obstacles both internal and external but breaking through the barrier to a new plateau, a plateau I won’t fall off of, seems impossible some times.

I think it is dealing with this barrier, not wealth, talent, intelligence or even ‘who I know’ that will determine whether I am successful with this album and other things.

I know I have to change what I am doing to get different results than I have in the past 45 years.

Some days I can see it, see the potential of what I am doing and see it reaching an audience. Other days I see this—my working on my album—going on forever. Today is one of those days where it’s hard to imagine overcoming myself and busting through that barrier. There’s always tomorrow though, and I am a lot further away from throwing in the towel than I am from finishing the album and getting myself ‘out there’.

The Legend of Alabacious T. Bartholomew, Part II
If you have not yet read part one this would be an excellent time to click on the Part I link to the Left.

When Reverend Bartholomew approached the board of deacons with the idea of replacing the church organ with his unconventional barbed wire gizmobass contraption there was much closed-door debate on the subject. Those who had visited Albacious’s farm to witness the monstrosity knew that half a row of pews would have to be ripped out to accommodate the instrument and that it would effectively drown out the choir. It was for this later reason that they voted unanimously to approve its installation.

The reverend set to work immediately to move his creation to the church and make good on his promise to compose new hymns for it.

This began one of Bartholomew’s most production periods in which he composed an over a hundred hymns and spirituals. The songs were less traditional than the hymns the congregation was used to singing. Alabacious thought the old hynms translated from German were too lighthearted and forgiving. He felt his congregation needed more fire and brimstone and that the songs they sang should be nearly as painful as damnation itself—to serve as an example.

His monstrous instrument served this end aptly.

No recordings of his early works and hymns were ever made but a few titles have survived. Recovered titles include: “To Hell In a Hay Wagon”, If it Feels Good, You’re-A-Sinning”, “You’re a No-Good Sinner”, “Sin Sin Sin”, “Repent, Rejoice, Repeat”, “The End is Nigh By the Four of July”.

As time went on Reverend Bartholomew refined his techniques and his skill on the instrument. He spent more and more time playing and composing for the psycho-gizmo bass and less time preaching and farming. His music was thriving but his life was crumbling around him.

His farm was going largely untended his barn falling into disrepair. He barely acknowledged his wife and children and could no longer tell Bobby and Bobby Jr. apart (they were not twins).

Sermons were thrown together and were often improvised lists of openly aired grievances with each member of the congregation including his own children and crying babies. Tent revivals soon became mere vehicles for his gizmobass; concerts where previously taboo things, like discussing foreign policy and breastfeeding, became commonplace. They were beginning to resemble an early Midwestern Woodstock.

The board of deacons had finally had enough. The Reverend was asked to leave the Church and his wife both to his brother, Edwin.

He wordlessly packed his Psycho-gizmobass onto its thresher and left town.

From that time Alabacious’ home was the road. He traveled from town to town playing in speakeasies and even speak-with-a-bit-more-diffulties. In this un-Christian world he picked up habits of eating with his elbows on the table, leaving his hat on indoors and using words like “darn” and “swell” without the “pardon my French” disclaimer.

Now that the Reverend was traveling mobility became a more important factor. He refined the instrument adopting the concept of a guitar-like neck and body. This also meant that large farm tools and small animals could no longer be hurled at the bass. The calluses that had formed on his hand from the barbed wire and a hard life of farming and bible pounding, however, had become so hard themselves that they served aptly as a substitute. He eventually removed the barbs from the wires, which reduced audience casualties.

An artist's rendition based on police reports

 
Alabacious’ big break came when he ran into a prominent musicologist who was traveling through the Midwest recording the folk music of the plains. The musicologist was killed instantly by the Reverend’s ungainly bass cart and the headlines from the accident eventually earned him the notoriety that led to recording contracts and an endorsement deal with the Sunshine Pork Rind Company.

The Reverend did not find much acceptance from his own though. Gospel and country singers refused to share a bill with him He became well known in folk music circles and moved to New York as a result, living for years in Greenwich Village. He felt compelled to preach to the artists around him, calling them “Satan’s cheerleaders” and “candy-ass commie sinning bastards”. They only found amusement in his fervor. He was very popular at parties despite his abrasive personality and his tendency to use his bible to “pound some sense” into any guest he suspected of fornication. Most in the art community saw him as an ironic amusement; an impromptu absurdist and performance artist.

He gave regular concerts in café’s, small theaters and even in the subway. The Port Authority banned him from his subway concerts based on their suspicions that he had indirectly caused a derailment of the D train in November of 1949. Again, the press from his debacle served his career: A music professor from Columbia University invited him to play at the school which eventually led to a booking at Carnegie Hall in May of 1952.

Tragically, Reverend Bartholomew’s life ended a week before what might have been his breakthrough concert, thus damming him to obscurity. He had been bent on forcibly baptizing some teamsters with water from the East River. After many attempts to cleanse them of sin, it seems the teamsters did not appreciate his methods of salvation and returned the favor with cement shoes added to the equation.

It is not known what became of his psycho-gizmobass guitar or his body of work; scraps of music, a few scratchy recordings and a half eaten bag of pork rinds are all that remain of the pious preacher from the plains.

I’m not even sure how it is he has become such a big influence on my music with so little to go on. Perhaps it is his shear audacity of innovation that still hangs in the air refusing to go away until someone, like me, finds the perfect sound for his one-of-a-kind instrument, until every sinner has shamefully repented and barbed wire is back in vogue.