RUN DMC SHIRTS

Joe Ely was as cool as it gets

Dec 17, 2025

TW: this transmission mentions suicide

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T(H)WB [FOR ALICIA]

In the dark, he lifted it to his mouth. As he struck the flame there was a moment of panic. That it was turned the wrong way. And he closed one eye to examine it, as he pulled it out of his mouth and extinguished the flame. But it is right, of course it is, he is champion.

Raconteur someone described Joe Ely. Robert Earl Keen opened with “Road Goes on Forever” when I saw him last week. Now that Todd Snider is gone he is my last one that’s still alive. Cautionary tale, more often than not these days. But he ran it for a long time. Todd looked up to him when he was just starting. So there's that.

I got invited to sit down by security. It was a seated show and I was dancing real hard. I saw him coming up the aisle towards me. I quick scanned the room to see if any of the other security guys who know me were there, but none were working that night. There’s been some complaints, the guy said.

I’ll go dance in the back, I told him. I don't wanna interrupt anyone's good time.

Really? he said. I wish everyone was always this easy.

Of course when he played “Feeling Good Again” at the end I raced up front. I leaned all the way against the wall, so that I was not blocking anyone’s view. I held my hand up in the air so he could see it.

Fifteen people who I didn’t know came up to me afterwards, and high fived me for dancing. In all honesty, I did it for him, I told them. In case he needed it.

When he opens with “Road Goes On Forever” you know it’s serious.

It was after “Corpus Christi” that they asked me to sit. If any of the security people I knew had been there I might have done something differently. Still respectful. But different. None of them were there though.

I danced in the back and shouted real loud when the ones I loved were over.

Tenderhearted wild boys

That cry when Butch Hancock songs come on

Or at Kevin Costner movies

My favorite one never really got over losing him mom when he was in college. We met when we were in our 30s.

At 1 AM in the campground of Bristol Motor Speedway, he stepped out of the darkness, wearing pajama pants and a T-shirt.

“Hey...if you were a hot dog would you eat yourself?

I know I would.”

That’s the first thing he ever said to me.

I knew immediately that we’d be friends.

He was friends with our friend Chris, who we’d met the year before and now camped with.

“I invited a buddy of mine this year, you’ll like him” Chris told us.

Alva

We drank a beer and laughed hard and he invited us to his campsite for omelettes the next morning.

The omelettes took two hours to make for some reason. We drank more beverages. We sat around telling stories and laughing.

I laughed so hard my face hurt. It was the first time in my life that I got scared I might not be able to stop laughing. It’s still maybe the hardest I’ve laughed in my life.

It was the best day.

We all did the festival together again the next year, Bill and I and Chris and Alva and Alicia.

We became real friends.

Not just festival friends.

We’d meet every year for Bristol Rhythm and Roots Reunion.

He invited us down to he and Alicia’s house one weekend, and we had a grand time.

We laughed hard.

We saw the Avett brothers together in Charlottesville a couple years ago.

They sang all our favorite songs.

Every time we hung out, we had the best time.

I don’t know that there’s anyone that I’ve laughed harder with.

We’d always say I love you multiple times when we hung out.

Not just some drunken “i love you man”...

although it often was that too

I mean it he’d always say.

I know you do, I mean it too I’d always say.

He reminded me of Danny McBride the first time I met him.

His looks and mannerisms and energy level.

But he quickly became just Alva.

He was one of a kind.

He flew with preemie babies in helicopters.

To emergency hospitals to save their lives.

That was his job. A respiratory award therapist.

When he wasn’t working, he let loose and had fun.

He had a madness for life

He always went full speed.

He always went all in.

I was drawn to him for it.

He made me laugh so hard.

He and his beautiful wife Alicia were a power couple. I loved to be around them.

In 2020 when the world was locked down and I was isolated at home he called a few times to check on me.

I hardly ever talk on the phone, but we’d talk.

We laughed at our myriad of private jokes...tater tot intoxication and Dumas Walker and the squishy school bus.

And we’d each say I love you.

And we’d talk about making plans to get together.

He was charming and gregarious and made friends with people everywhere he went. He was always determined to have all the fun.

Why only have a little fun if you could have all of it? He welcomed anyone who wanted to join him.

There’s that part in On The Road, where Neal Cassady and Allen Ginbserg are running down the street together like dingledodies, and Kerouac says the thing about roman candles bursting, and shining so bright. My friend Alva burned so bright that everyone who saw him could see it.

Every time I ever think of Alva, I always smile.

And I always will and nothing will change that.

My friend Alva killed himself in 2021 at the age of 38.

And what I hate is in all the times we were together I never told him that twice I’d decided I was going to commit suicide.

I hadn’t figured out how to talk to people about that.

The first time it was Christmas, and I was alone, housesitting.

Gus the pug had just died.

It was a drafty farm house. Taking care of 2 dogs and a cat and a horse and duck and rooster.

It was heated by a wood stove.

Christmas night when I went to bed, I said to myself “If I close the flue the house will fill with smoke, and I just won’t wake up.” And it is so scary how close I came to doing that. “These people paid me to take care of their dogs though. They trusted me.” I stayed alive only because I promised someone I would take care of their dogs. I am forever grateful for dogs.

The second time was maybe worse. Because I was older. And knew I could do it if needed to. It was January and I’d bottomed all the way out. They say you have to tell someone so I told my sister. She pleaded with me not to. She told me to think about what it would do to my nephews. Who I loved more than anything in the whole world. But I was unable to hear her.

It was January and I had a vacation scheduled in March. That I’d been looking forward to for a long time With my best friends. And it was right after SXSW, my favorite thing in the world.

I figured if I was gonna kill myself in January, I could wait until April to do it. I promised her I wouldn’t do anything until after I took that vacation.

I had a magical SXSW, but that wasn’t enough.

Two separate things.

And then the second part of the vacation.

We went out to Big Bend, and hiked to a top of a mountain. I’d never hiked to a top of a mountain before. Sitting on top of it, looking out over the whole world, something like a force came over me. I was dizzy and lightheaded. I felt as high as I’ve ever been. And I was stone cold sober. I stayed feeling like that for 8 hours. For 8 hours I was so dizzy I was unable to drive. Walking down that mountain was the first time in my life I realized that my brain didn’t always have my best interest at heart. That sometimes it lied to me. It was the first I ever realized I couldn’t trust my brain.

I have spent every minute since then trying to figure out how to control my brain

Instead of allowing it to control me.

It is a constant battle
but I am winning.

Two years ago I took a pilgrimage back to the mountain that changed my life. I didn’t remember what it was called, so I texted my best friends. The name of the mountain was Panther Junction. That didn’t mean anything to me the first time I hiked it. It means a whole lot to me now.

These last five years have been the best five years of my life.

I am happy in a way that I never thought was possible.

I wish that I could tell him this.

It’s not that you miss them when they’re gone, Jack Ingram said at the Todd celebration in Nashville.

It’s that you miss the person you were whenever you were around them.

Images swirling around your brain. Trying to think if that’s true.

Sometimes you just miss them though.

If you were a hot dog would you eat yourself?

I know I would.

Tenderhearted wild boys.
And the ladies that love them.

A VERY FUTUREMAN XMAS

Blue Christmas is after White Christmas, the live Air Supply version. Booker T. and The MG’s Jingle Bells And then Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers Kick it off. Of course the Ramones. And John Denver and the Muppets. And both Joan Jett And Bob Seger’s “Little Drummer Boy” Which some people disagree with But I think they’re wrong.

When my twin nephews were two, for Christmas I went to Target and I bought them each a black RUN DMC t-shirt to match the one I had. The shirt size was 5T. I didn’t know what that meant, but I held it up and it looked small.

They were like dresses on them.

They are five now, and the shirts them perfect. This December I showed them Christmas in Hollis for the first time. Like our shirts, I said.

They loved it. Requesting me to play it again And again. The one with the glasses is my favorite, the nephew R said. He’s my favorite too, I told him, and both of us were happy like magic stars floating inside us.

DMC, he said proudly when I asked if he remembered his name.

Then we watched “Walk This Way,” where Aerosmith smashes through the wall.

I hope you get an Atari 2600 for Xmas.

You have to click that switch on the back of the TV - Coax/game.

Put it on channel 3.

I hope you get a walkman. With orange spongey headphones that go over your ears.

Turn the volume all the way up. The sound is amazing.

I hope the DJ plays your request when you call in. Have the tape ready. Hit record.

I hope you hear Grandma Got Run Over by A Reindeer 57 times in a row.

I hope you get River Raid and Pitfall and Space Invaders and Donkey Kong.

Run backwards as soon as Pitfall starts.

It makes you run to the right when you press the orange fire button but you don’t have to.

Push the joystick to the left.

You can go that way.

Jump over alligators backwards

Swing on the rope the wrong way.

Watch out for quicksand and scorpions (always)

I hope it’s the real Santa when you go to Richmond to see him.

I hope it’s not one of his replacements.

He’s busy though I know.

If you can go all the way back there, jumping into the person you were then, then you can inch along the time line, age progressing a year or two at a time, and you can figure out where things changed.

Once you know when it was, then you can work on solving the why.

The morning after Thanksgiving, Christmas music is blaring in my mom’s kitchen and the oven will be on all day. It will be Christmas music all day day every day until December 25. Kenny and Dolly and Boney M and Donna Lou’s Shenandoah Valley Christmas are her three favorites.

“Donna Lou was your granddad’s favorite Christmas album,” my mom says.

“I know,” I always say.

She sings along loudly and dances to Kenny and Dolly “I’ll Be Home with bells on.” She always dances and sings along to “Mary’s Boy Child,” by Boney M too. When it gets to the rap/reggae she will sometimes try to keep up, and then she’ll start laughing.

Do NOT play any Christmas music before Thanksgiving.

She WILL get angry about that.

My mom hates “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer,”but it’s my favorite. It’s so funny. She thinks it’s sacriligious I think. There was a DJ in Ohio somewhere who locked himself in the control booth and played it for 5 hours in a row. People went crazy. They had to break down the door to make him stop. He was my idol. For all the years I lived in Texas, the first time that she heard it every holiday season she’d call me and hold the phone up to the radio.

I’d have a voicemail that was just Elmo and Patsy, singing their holiday classic. Now that I’m back in Virginia she hates it again.

“Merry Christmas everybody!”

We never had a live tree. My dad would climb up in the attic and get down our fake one. We’d open the tattered cardboard box and pull out the individual green limbs and the long cylinder “trunk” and the stand. The trunk had holes in it, of different colors. White, blue, orange. We’d find the branches with the right color paint at the end and insert them in the corresponding holes. When you put the last few branches it, it was always kind of magic how it transformed into a real tree. We’d cover it with ornaments, all the ones my sister and I had made.

Each year my mom bought herself one nice one, from Lloyd’s Hallmark that said the year on it. We always had an angel on top, not a Jesus, or a star, and my mom would put the electric candles in the windows.

Pulling into the driveway at night they’d be glowing a majestic orange in the dark, and it’d feel just like a movie.

The teacher was playing rap music in class today, the nephew says today when I pick him up from school.

I told her I didn’t like rap music,just RUN DMC, he said.

When they are teenagers I will teach them about The Beasties. And LL Cool J. And all the other things they are too young for now. I have a giant list, like Dignan’s 75 year plan *, I keep of all the things I want them to know that I am excited to get to share with them over the next 10 years. And then I will step back because I know how The Giving Tree and Puff The Magic Dragon end and I know I won’t be able to take it

So I will do it first.

I watch how excited they are as they open their presents.

Trying to absorb enough of it that maybe one day I will be like that again. If I just keep purposefully trying.

A thin, sort of rectangular present that your mom hands you from under the tree. Your heart racing, because You know it’s the DVD you’ve been wanting of the movie you love.

Ripping the paper off, immediately flipping it over to read the back of the box to see what kind of extra features it has.

You can watch it anytime you want now.

It is real. And you can touch it.

You can’t wait to watch the deleted scenes, and to listen to it with the director’s commentary on, learning all sorts of awesome new facts about this film that you love so much because this is how much you love things when you still have an attention span.

I hope you get a walkman and an Atari and a Cabbage Patch Doll for Christmas.

I hope all your dreams come true.

Try the TV on channel 2 if channel 3 doesn’t work.

Flick the switch again.