She didn’t stay forever right away, but the first weekend dates were so successful, the Lodge hired her full-time. Each Saturday night, after her show, she made the three-hour drive back to the ranch, but within a year she had sold it for lack of reliable caretakers. From that point until she retired, her career revolved around the Notaras Lodge.
In 1988 and ’89 she recorded five singles on the Playback label; her last one, “Still The Same”, rose to #79 on the country charts. She continued to perform around the region from time to time. Gregg Keplinger, Pearl Jam drum tech and drum maker for the likes of Jerry Watts, Elvin Jones and Art Blakey, recalls accompanying her for many of those dates.
“When she played, to my ear it was like an orchestra,” Keplinger says. “She’s really playing a lot of parts. I was blown away by how strong it was, and how she’d structure stuff with her instant arrangements. I mean she’d open up the tune and play a solo that would be different every night.”
As for her repertoire, Keplinger says, “She’s a dictionary and encyclopedia both.”
“The funny deal among other musicians,” he continues, “is she’s quite a bit older than most of us and she could grind you in the dust. How whacked is it that a guitar player would even attempt to do four-hour shows with just a drummer? And she’d do it, and people would be dancing, and carryin’ on.”
The intensity eventually took its toll, particularly in the Notaras Lodge work. “To tell you the truth, I was getting burned out,” Bonnie says. “In the summer there were many times I worked 14 or 15 days without a break. I had special things going on all the time to keep the club alive — ’50s night, Hawaiian luaus. We had outdoor shows in the daytime and sometimes I’d get up and set up something to play canned music for two or three hours for the early morning people coming into the town. Then I’d go to work at 8 or 9 o’clock and play until 2 in the morning, or whatever traffic would bear for people who were still there. So I really burned myself out.”
These days, her dexterity is not what it once was, a result of carpal tunnel syndrome and a touch of arthritis. She still writes songs and stories constantly, but now has no interest in the bother of getting them published or produced. Although she estimates she already knows more than a thousand chords, she has ordered a copy of The Gig Bag Book Of Picture Chords For All Guitarists, and is excited to see what she might be able to learn from it. “I just love chords!” she says, and she says it frequently.
And then there are those calls from the past. Just recently she was surprised by one from DeWayne Blackwell, best known in recent years for writing Garth Brooks’ smash “Friends In Low Places”. “He said, ‘I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate the fact that you recorded ‘Mr. Blue’ with the Fleetwoods, because you liked the song and made it a hit for me.’ Just out of the blue! I hadn’t talked to him since we recorded it. It’s things like that that are so fulfilling and make you feel so good, you know?”
Sometimes, rarely, she thinks she might rather have wound up in Las Vegas, but she says, “I wouldn’t be gambling and out watching shows all the time. I’d probably be just settled back, like I am now; I’d just be surrounded with more lights and more activity that would be, you know, embracing me in a different way than this is.”
She pauses, mid-swing, to marvel at the descent of a jet headed for a training ground in Moses Lake — and calls attention to the splendor of the pale, rising moon.
No Depression contributing editor Linda Ray urges readers to look all these people up on the internet, but read skeptically. Special thanks to Mike Callahan and Sarah Claussen.
