Rataj-Berard
Jim Schwall
They say you can’t take it with you. Usually it’s meant in a metaphysical sense, i.e. “...to the great beyond.” When singer/songwriter Jim Schwall says it these days, he means it literally, as in “...when you’re moving out of the two-story house you’ve inhabited for 15 years and into a 26-foot RV.”
So what do you do when you really can’t take it with you? If you’re Schwall, you give it away. You invite a bunch of friends and strangers to the Harmony Bar, the east-side neighborhood joint where you’ve hung out and played music countless times, and tell them to just take whatever they want, while you serenade them from the stage with your time-tested brand of blues and folk.
After calling Madison home for over 20 years, Schwall is hitting the road. He’s moving out of his house in August. He plans to do a couple of shows around the Midwest after that, then make his way down to New Orleans in October to hang out and maybe play some Cajun music. Then he’ll spend the winter in Mesa, Ariz., where he has a bartending gig lined up at a luxury RV resort. After that, who knows? Maybe he’ll end up back in Madison. Maybe not. He has no idea.
“I’ve always wanted to just go on the road,” Schwall says. “There’s nothing holding me here anymore.”
Schwall had a nice run in the national limelight in the late ’60s and early ’70s as co-leader of the Siegel-Schwall Band, one of the groups that sparked the blues revival of that era. The band called it quits in 1974 while still near the height of its popularity, though there have been occasional reunions. Meanwhile, Schwall has continued to perform regularly with his own band, and in recent years as a member of other groups including So Dang Yang (fronted by the late, great Marques Bovre) and, currently, the Cajun Strangers.
The crowd at the Harmony on this day is decidedly middle-aged and exhibiting more than a touch of gray on top. I recognize a handful of local musicians kicking around. One of them is guitarist Andy Ewen, a longtime Schwall friend and collaborator.
“Cartoonist extraordinaire Pete [P.S.] Mueller introduced us when Jim moved here in about 1993 or so,” says Ewen. “Jim said he was looking for a guitar player and heard I could play that kind of music. So we started playing together then, and developed a magical interaction and friendship.”
A lot of musicians make a big chunk of their money at gigs by selling CDs, T-shirts and such. Today, Schwall has several tables set up, displaying not just his CDs and T-shirts featuring his own original photographic work, but household knick-knacks, art, telephones, boxes of electrical junk. It’s like a garage sale in a bar, only instead of selling his junk, Schwall is giving it away (though donations are welcome).
“Please, take it home, because whatever you don’t take is going to St. Vinnie’s tomorrow,” he says from the stage between songs.
By then, a well-used Boss ME-50 multi-effects pedal sitting amid the clutter on one of the tables had caught my eye. I tell myself that if some real guitarist (not a hack like me) hasn’t nabbed the pedal in 30 minutes, it’s mine. A half-hour passes, and I giddily whisk Jim Schwall’s Boss ME-50 multi-effects pedal out to my car, delighted to have helped him lighten his load and be like a rolling stone.
Jim Schwall Moving Out Party
Years living in Madison: 24
Number of Siegel-Schwall Band albums that won a Grammy for Best Album Cover: 1 (self-titled 1971 release)
Number of Ph.D.s in Music from UW-Madison held by Jim Schwall: One
Best item unloaded at the Harmony: Original photography using Civil War-era technique known as pre-silver printing
