Wednesday, August 2, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
Music keeps
summer hot
in Sisters
Sisters’ music-filled sum-
mer continues in August.
The family-friend and dog-
friendly Food Cart Garden at
Eurosports welcomes Central
Oregon favorites The Quons
on Friday, August 4, perform-
ing their originals and covers
with Linda’s big vocals and
Mark’s guitar. Eurosports’
music runs 5 to 7 p.m.
Central Oregon country-
folk-Americana band Honey
Don’t plays on the same eve-
ning at Angeline’s Bakery &
Café.
On Saturday, August 5,
Hardtail’s Bar & Grill con-
tinues its summer of musi-
cal tributes with Erotic City
— a tribute to the beloved
and recently departed artist
Prince.
Erotic City delivers a high-
energy show that features
classic Prince songs from his
ultimate collection. When it’s
time to party like its 1999,
Erotic City doesn’t hold back
with the high heels, the lace
pants, the infamous purple
coat, and all of the sexiness
you will get in a Prince show.
On, August 5, at
Eurosports, it’s swing-time
with Austin native Paul Eddy
and his smooth vocals featur-
ing original music and covers
like Bob Wills, Nat King Cole
and other greats, while over at
Sisters Saloon it’s Thomas T
and the Blue Chips.
The Allan Byer Project
plays August 5 at Cork Cellars
Wine Bar & Bistro, at 7 p.m.
August 10, Halden
Wofford and the Hi-Beams
bring their Colorado twang
and honky-tonk to Fir Street
Park in the third of the Sisters
Folk Festival’s free summer
concerts. Music starts at 6:30
p.m.
Brad Tisdel Extravaganza
takes the stage at Angeline’s
on August 11.
Sisters Folk Festival
favorite Beth Wood makes
her debut at the Garden on
Saturday, August 12, 5 to 7:30
p.m. Wood is a winner of the
festival’s songwriting contest
and has organized the event’s
community show annually
for several years. With her
honest songwriting, char-
ismatic stage presence and
lovely vocals, she is one of
the Pacific Northwest’s most
beloved folk singers.
Chops Bistro offers live
music that night as well, with
longtime Sisters musician
Tony Lompa.
The folk duo NTT plays
at Cork Cellars on August 12,
while the Bobby Lindstrom
Band takes the stage at Sisters
Saloon.
BUNKHOUSE: Buckaroo
life is rich — but
not in dollars
Continued from page 6
with people, “settling up”
in Len’s words, and I men-
tioned, perhaps too bitterly,
that, “We can’t stop what’s
coming.”
Len just smiled: “You
can’t even slow it down,” he
said. “Just be glad you got
in on a piece of it. That’s the
way I look at it.”
One of the things I love
about Len — and it’s been
true of so many of the real
buckaroos of his generation
— is how genuinely open-
minded he is.
“I never wanted anybody
telling me what to do, and I
never wanted to boss any-
one,” he said.
A man like Len can say
that without irony, and offer
his life as proof, which
makes him rare enough in
the world.
In his hand-built log stu-
dio, which could easily stand
in for a perfect bunkhouse on
any ranch I’ve ever known,
Len has an old FA Meaney
saddle sitting on a rack.
It has the WT mark on it,
meaning it was built in the
Wyoming Territory, prob-
ably in the 1860s, and most
likely in Cheyenne, by Frank
Meaney — another legend
of the cowboy underworld.
He has a collection of beau-
tifully crafted rawhide rea-
tas —which he still ropes
with — beautiful enough
to make a sad-sack townie
like myself cry out loud. He
has a pair of big-rowelled
spurs that his father traded
off a Sioux Indian back in
Wyoming, a rack of muzzle-
loaders that he has killed
bucks with, and a single
skylight that throws the
heavenly desert light down
onto his canvas while he
works.
Winters, he sits by the big
wood stove in the middle of
the room, turning beeswax
into beautifully sculpted
horses.
He has a buckaroo’s
hands, lithe and precise, soft
in a horse’s mouth, steady
for brushstrokes on canvas,
but hard enough in the right
places to knock a rude man
into next Wednesday.
Len focuses his work on
the early years of the open
west.
“After the automobile
came in, the glamor of
cowboying went out the win-
dow,” he said. “I did a lot
of good cowboying, but not
like you wanna draw pic-
tures of. People come around
and say, ‘Well, Len, I guess
you get a lot of ideas out
there,’ and I tell ’em I really
don’t because what would
you paint? Somebody get-
ting out of a horse trailer?
An old black cow staring
at you?”
Len wants his paintings to
sell, and they have, and I’m
confident he’s on the edge of
something much bigger, once
the world finds him — but
that isn’t why he does it.
“The people I’ve asso-
ciated with could count all
their money without taking
their hands out of their pock-
ets,” he said.
Which is the same moti-
vation a buckaroo finds when
he is moving three hundred
pairs alone, miles from any-
where, up-canyon in a storm
blowing sideways. Money
isn’t the reason a man signs
up for that kind of thing.
It’s passion, a deep, abiding,
unwavering passion.
My own grandfather
begged me not to go out into
the desert.
“You’ll never have a pot
to piss in, or a window to
19
throw it out of,” he said.
He was right about that,
and I knew it, but we both
knew that in my case it
wouldn’t matter. You either
hear the siren song or you
don’t. And if you look out
into the desert and hear it,
and chase it down, lashed
to the mast like Ulysses, it
alters forever the way you
see the world.
What informs Len Babb’s
art, his drawings, paint-
ings, and sculptures, is that
siren song. He’s heard it his
entire life, since the day his
father moved the family from
South Dakota into Glendo,
Wyoming, hauling one
truck full of horses, and one
full of cattle, and stopping
every now and then to pour
water on the over-heating
engines.
And then Charlie Russell
came into Len’s life and
threw gas on the fire.
Len Babb truly is a leg-
end, and a man I am hon-
ored to have shared a few
laughs with on a beautiful
desert afternoon. He has
heard those beautiful sirens
of the outback singing in his
ear, been lashed to the mast,
and has sailed as close to the
shores of Titan as a man in
the modern era ever will.
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Menu at SistersSaloon.net
Smile by Hailee and
The Brace Place!
541-382-0410
54
541-549-RIBS
410 E. C
Cascade Ave., Sisters
190 E. Cascade Ave.
www.CentralOregonBracePlace.com
Len Babb
Western Art
E XHIBIT
AND S ALE
August 5 & 6
10 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Sisters Fire Hall
Community Room
301 S. Elm St., Sisters
Live Music | Light Appetizers Served
541.728.8787 | facebook.com/lenbabbwesternart
SEE YOU THERE!