Banjos in Heaven

There's one New York City moment I'm sorry I missed from the Great North Woods; last night's closing party for Banjo Jim's. Anyone who reads this blog and/or my e-mail blasts (sigh, mom) knows that for the last few years, Banjo Jim's has been my home base. Banjo's offered me residencies when nobody else would offer me gigs. Banjo Jim's picked me up and got me going again -- as a solo performer -- after my band went frizzy.  Banjo's literally resurrected my music "career," and for that I'll always be indebted to lovely Banjo Lisa, the owner, and all her kind booking and bartending staff.

It's worth a very truncated look back at some of the magical, moments that I was lucky enough to be a part of at Banjo Jim's. Like...

Jamming with Todd Snider at Brooke Lunde's Newville Sessions (that's Emory Joseph, Brooke, Todd, Keith Christopher and Aaron Lee Tasjan up there -- lotta' talent on that stage!)

The Zevonathon.

Performing at a tribute to the Carter Family and later a tribute to Blaze Foley hosted by the wonderful Elena Skye and Boo Reiners, two artists whose spirit of inclusiveness and appreciation of great, underheralded musicians was perfectly in synch with Banjo Jim's. (Read what Elena had to say about Banjo's here.)

Blaze tribute video:

Carter Family tribute pix:

Performing at one of Li'l Mo's Field of Stars songwriter circles with a few artists who I just thought were incredible. Read Li'l Mo's memories of Banjo's here.)

Fronting The Ramblers during a Lucinda Williams tribute for a couple songs. This gig was put on by Jeremiah Birnbaum.

Of course I'll always be thankful to Banjos for giving me my first solo acoustic residency. It really gave me an opportunity to learn a new way to perform, write new songs and try them out in a supportive, public environment. (I include in these memories getting to sing with two of my favorite duet partners, Charlene McPherson and Drina Seay.)

Smurfette and I even saw the late, great Odetta play at Banjo Jim's on our first date.

Banjo Jim's was that rare, special club where the artists that played there regularly were like part of an extended family. The first and only thing Banjos cared about was good music, not the number of fans or beer cans that passed through its doors. Really, that ethos made Banjo's too good for the New York street hustle anyway.

Like dozens of other artists, I'm so sad to say goodbye to Banjo's (and it's $3 Tecates!). But in remembering that sweet ol' club I like to paraphrase John Steinbeck, whose musical incarnation, Woody Guthrie, was the patron saint of Banjo Jim's. Wherever there's a club that books artists just because their music is good, Banjo Jim's will be there. Wherever there's a club that honors loyalty above draw, Banjo Jim's will be there. Wherever there's a club that gives musicians a supportive environment to grow, Banjo Jims will be there. Banjo Jim's will be there in the way a dozen pickers hoot when they harmonize on a song written by someone who didn't get his or her just dues. And when an artist writes a song that touches scores of hearts, because he or she was lucky enough to play in an environment that nurtured, why, Banjo Jim's will be there.

Is that pithy enough? Thanks for everything Banjo Lisa, Banjo Drina, Sean and Jeremiah. We'll miss 'ya!

Damsel in Distress

Damselfly, brook trout, Fawn Lake, YNP.

 

The Pelican Valley; Where 6″ > 20″

Pelican Creek in Yellowstone's storied Pelican Valley, which could very well be the park's wildlife crucible, is perhaps the only stream where a six-inch trout is better than a 20-inch trout.

Rich Hamstra and Bill Voigt, YNP volunteer angler coordinators, measure a 6-inch cutthroat on Pelican Creek.

I had the pleasure of visiting Pelican Creek today with Bill and Joann Voigt and Rich and Sue Hamstra, coordinators of the park's volunteer fly fishing program. The fact that we were able to fish Pelican Creek was a big deal unto itself: the stream had been closed for seven years because whirling disease was discovered there in 1998. Whirling disease is a parasite, imported from fish hatcheries in Europe, that infects, deforms and kills baby trout.

Whirling disease in Pelican Creek made for a double-whammy for the park's beleaguered Yellowstone cutthroat trout population. At the time the disease was discovered in Pelican Creek, the park's native cutthroats were already fast on their way to being decimated by lake trout that were illegally planted in Yellowstone Lake, into which Pelican Creek flows.

In many other streams that have been infected with whirling disease the trout populations have rebounded via natural selection. The small percentage of trout that are genetically resistant to the disease go on to survive and reproduce, eventually filling the stream with healthy trout.

The problem in Pelican Creek, according to biologists I spoke to, is twofold. First, the concentration whirling disease in Pelican Creek is incredibly high. Scientists took healthy baby trout inside fish cages and put them in the water in Pelican Creek in several sections along its length. When they went back and measured how severely they were infected with whirling disease, using a scale of one to five with five being the worst, all the little trout were fives.

Here's Bill examining minnows and trout fry caught by his granddaughter Dana Megginson for signs of whirling disease.

The second huge problem is that even if a cutthroat born in Pelican Creek did have a natural resistance to whirling disease, that fish would eventually migrate down to Yellowstone Lake where the odds are high that it would become a meal for a lake trout.

Thus by the early 2000s the trout population in Pelican Creek, which once averaged around 30,000 spawning cutthroat each spring, collapsed. Also, ominously, of the cutthroats that remained most were old and big. Entire populations of young, small cutthroats were missing, a bad sign for the future.

Bill had gone into Pelican Creek a couple weeks ago with other volunteer anglers that caught two 20-inch cutthroats. He said it was great to see cutthroats in the creek, sure, but what would be really encouraging would be to see some different sized fish, showing that there are different age groups that are surviving.

Enter me. Need a little fish caught? I'm your man. Look what I pulled out of Pelican.

That's Bill holding my 6-inch cutthroat. He had me put the little dude in that yellow bag of water so I could bring him over to be measured before we released him. Note that the cutthroat shows no visible signs of whirling disease, such as a deformed spinal cord or a swollen head. That fish was probably born within the last two years, Bill said, and has survived.

Cutthroat trout aren't the only animal to have been pushed to the brink in Yellowstone's Pelican Valley. In his remarkable book "Last Stand: George Bird Grinnell, The Battle to Save the Buffalo and the Birth of the New West," author Michael Punke brings the story of North America's mass bison slaughter to an incredible climax in Yellowstone's Pelican Valley. It was there, by 1902, that the last 23 wild bison hid out after they were pursued by a notorious poacher named Edgar Howell. A U.S. soldier and a civilian scout captured Howell in a brutal snowstorm in March 1894. The two men heard shots from Howell's rifle, and then they snuck up on him while he was cutting the head off one of five dead buffalo lying around him.

The buffalo in the Pelican Valley today are descendants of those 23 survivors, making the 50-square-mile valley the only place in the U.S. where bison have roamed continuously since the last ice age.

It was really cool to see one of them today.

Yellowstone's volunteer angler program is a neat way for regular Joes and Josephines who love the park and its trout to help out. The program started because the park's fisheries biologists are so overwhelmed battling the massive lake trout problem in Yellowstone Lake. Volunteer anglers can help these biologists by bringing them information on trout populations in other waters, and by harvesting non-native trout from certain lakes and streams.

Click here for more information about the program.

Me & Bill in the Pelican Valley.

Buffalojam!

Ah Yellowstone National Park, where the scenery is like Eden and the drivers are like New Jersey. At least I appreciate the reasons for some of the traffic jams.

Hare-ly Got One

I went to the far tip Yellowstone Lake's remote Southeast Arm mixing my tracks with those from grizzlies, wolves and moose. I was pretty on edge with all those Big Animals around. So what beast did I have a weird, close encounter with? A snowshoe hare.  Last night one of the big-footed hoppers came and warmed itself by my campfire. It was strange and sweet. Please tell me if there are any religions in which a campfire visit from a snowshoe hare foretells something ominous.

For four damn days I hiked in search of the now-rare Yellowstone Lake cutthroat trout. For 32 of 36 miles I saw just five, one in Beaverdam Creek (a 17 mile hike) and four rising in the lake (which I surf fished hard, but caught nothing due to the low numbers of cutts and murky water).

Quite the scenery, though, like Yellowstone Lake at Signal Point.

Those purple-turning mountains beyond my campfire make up the Thorofare, the part of the continental U.S. furthest from any road. I had planned to go in there, but Beaverdam Creek (in the foreground) was too high to ford, and I'd already gone through one that was chest-high. Still, I was a little crestfallen.

I mentioned wolf tracks, right?

On the way out today I explored up a feeder stream so thick in Griz country that rangers who used to work there drove spikes into trees so they could ladder up if a bruin came at them. I found this. Whaddya' think, 26-inches? Salmon-sized.

 

I'd hike three-dozen miles for a trout like that.

Now go make lots of babies, loverboy.

Keep tabs on where I'm at here.