![]() ![]() He plans to sell it this afternoon to a folk-art dealer up in Maryland. A bright acrylic painting signed by Skyshaw, it’s a portrait of ’30s Delta blues legend Charley Patton, one of his heroes. On this miserable winter day the only hint of color in the gray haze pokes from the bag. He’s bundled against the cold in a hodgepodge wardrobe: a shabby coat over a Georgetown Hoyas sweatshirt he found recently on a bus seat. Skyshaw stands near the corner of 14th and P Streets NW holding a battered cardboard guitar case and a plastic bag. Nobody knows this better than the club’s owner, a man who calls himself Dr. The New Vegas Lounge is a musty incubator of stale fantasies, where anyone can be his own instant mojo man. They come to be reborn under the hot red lights. ![]() And even though their chops are suspect, most of them have would-be outlaw monikersNevada Newman, Skyshaw, Billy the Kiddlegends in their own minds. ![]() They arrive here with unwieldy instruments that they may or may not know how to use. Lawyers, frat boys, television producers, government workers, psychiatrists, hearing-aid salesmen name the occupation, you’ll find a Walter Mitty bluesman at the Vegas. It doesn’t matter who you are, and it doesn’t matter if you can play. Hordes of aspiring musicians gather for these open-mike nights, open-ended gigs where anyone can plug in and jam. If the blues is all about the public display of intensely private hells, this is the world headquarters, right here on P Street NW. A dose of humiliation is just part of the admission price at this Halfway House of the Blues, a purgatory where the penance is a two-drink minimum. Embarrassed by his predicament, the bass player clutches his useless instrument and stares at Bigfoot helplessly: Damn, says his pained expression, this is not what I signed up for.īigfoot shows no sympathy. The lawyer launches into the same solo, complete with the same miscues, that he’s been playing all night. His replacement, a long-haired grunge orphan, flails wildly at the drum kit in a tempo known only to him. ![]() That’s precisely what has happened now, and Bigfoot smiles perversely at the shipwreck of sound he has abandoned on the stage. Cecilia save the customers trapped in their seats when Bigfoot takes a breather and his own advice, heading to the bar to bum a Jack Daniel’s. Not even a professional musician like Bigfootalways outnumbered, even in a triocan salvage such a maddening racket. No amount of booze could work such a spell. ![]()
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