The River Room...........Part VII

The first three months of operation went fairly smoothly, mostly because I wasn’t there to analize over the details or agonize over the defeats. Julie and I were still working in Kansas City, and my only involvement with The Riverside was through nightly updates from Rachel or the American Express card statements, monthly evidence of the daily ‘going to the store for supplies’ thing. I’m thinking things were especially good for our two chefs – limited work as we were only open for dinner Thursday thru Sunday, which led to copious amounts of downtime for snowboarding, Nintendo playing, guitar plucking (Gabe is a player of professional quality) and lots of late night partying which led to lots of late morning waking up. There didn’t seem to be much time left for hotel fixing and cleaning, which was one of the things that I’d hoped our chefs would do to round out the forty hours per week of pay they were receiving vs. the 20 hours of work they were doing in the kitchen. I didn’t stress too much over it, as I viewed this whole period as a dry run before Julie and I arrived at the beginning of the summer season; again, Julie and I were still getting paychecks which allowed for the funds to fuel this fantasy.

The only discordant note in this scenario involved the personal interaction between the three young participants, which was understandable, considering you’ve thrown three family members into a badly insulated mausoleum located in an isolated mountain town. Picture a low budget version of The Real World – too bad, as this whole ordeal damn sure would have made for some fine reality television. One of the issues involved Rachel ratting out the chefs for playing music loudly enough in the kitchen that it would drown out the lilting strains of the classical music that we featured in the restaurant – more than just a minor pet peeve for me.

As good as is Thomas’s taste in food, his taste in music is bad (singularly unique) – wretched, heinously, God-awful bad. For example, anyone here ever heard of The Mars Volta? Of course you haven’t, because if you had ever listened to this band for more than a few minutes you would’ve already grabbed the nearest 12-gauge and blown your head off; it’s that bad. And then there’s Buckethead; two obvious reasons why he wears a bucket - for drowning out the noise that he’s making so he won’t suffer as the rest of us who have to listen (truth be known, he has really good headphones in that bucket and he’s listening to Brahms), and second, to retain his anonymity, ensuring that people of good sense won’t recognize him and kill him dead on the streets for the damage he’s done to our musical culture. And these were but just a few of the musical gems that were thrust upon the ears of our genteel restaurant customers. I’d say it to myself again…this to shall pass.

Gabe and I didn’t promise each other much in terms of commitments; he wasn’t sure how long he wanted to stay, and I wasn’t sure how long I’d need him once I got to the hotel full time. It worked out well as I was glad to have him there for however long, as he served as referee between the two first cousins, he helped Thomas get the kitchen off to a running start and he gave the place an air of uniqueness – like it needed any more of that – for Gabe truly is a characters definition of ‘a character’.

In what I quickly learned was Gabe-like style, about two months into the arrangement he informed me that an opportunity for a sculpture project (he was a sculptor, amongst his many other talents) was opening up in Washington DC, and he was planning on leaving the hotel in mid-March. After that, he might pursue some travels with his band, or do some cooking for a Mississippi Blue Cruise, or whatever; he was bound by no calendar, reliant upon no clock and responsible only to himself.

The middle of March coincided with our spring break visit to the hotel; we’d be there all week to work our asses off – painting, cleaning, decorating, hauling trash, installing new beds and tossing out the old, and on and on and on. Friends from Kansas City were coming with us to help in the effort, and in a dizzying display of the illogical, they remain friends to this day, possibly out of pity. A few weeks before our trip, Gabe called to ask if he could have a farewell concert at The Riverside, as two of his band mates were coming to pick him up, and he’d promised some of the locals that he would play for them before he left Colorado.

For a fact, our Property, Casualty & Liability insurance strictly prohibited us from having live music, due to either the increased risk of people drinking to excess and getting rowdy when exposed to live music, or to the one in a million chance that Buckethead or The Mars Volta would show up, play live music (?) and the ensuing potentially lethal effects that exposure to their live music would incur upon a tort-hungry public. But I relented, thinking ‘what harm could come from a little concert for some close friends’? Heck, I’d always wanted to hear him play anyway, as Gabe had advertised himself as a bluesier version of The Black Keys – a group that occupied more than a little space on my iPod.

“Sure Gabe, go ahead, that’ll be fun!”

I didn’t give it another thought until I stopped for gas at a station in Winter Park, some 35 miles from The Riverside, on our way into Hot Sulphur for Spring Break. Plastered in the window of the gas station/convenience store were several posters, advertising, no, screaming,

“THE RIVERSIDE HOTEL BLUES FEST”

Featuring

The Gabe Meyer Band

Sunday, March 19th 8:00 PM

$10.00 Cover Charge
All beers 2-for-1 !!!
$5 Jaeger Shots

The Historic Riverside Hotel
Hot Sulphur Springs, CO

“Holy Schitt!”, I thought; not only did our insurance policy prohibit live music, but it also prohibited any type of drink specials, especially the men’s bathroom cleaner’s worst nightmare, the dreaded 2-for-1 beer special. The situation became more dire the nearer we came to Hot Sulphur; for on every store window in every town, Fraser, then Tabernash, and finally Granby, the posters were everywhere, a loud and clear beacon pointing the way to every Grand County drunk in search of an ‘Open on Sunday’ place to pound down beers at half price.

As I’ve mentioned before, excessive consumption of alcohol is a Grand Countians' National Pastime – it was something that came as naturally to them as getting out of bed in the morning, albeit always late and terribly hung-over; they damn sure didn’t need an excuse, or an invitation, and here were both, everywhere you looked. Possibly even the churches in Grand County mentioned it in their weekly announcements on that Sunday at the end of their service – “and in case you haven’t seen the 500 posters scattered about Grand County, there’re ½ price beers and live blues at The Riverside tonight…Now go in peace, Amen.”

While I had to give Gabe an A+ in the art of self promotion, I quickly had to figure out a way to delicately rain on his parade without his losing face with me and those thirsty locals.

To be continued……