"Big Thing" genre: Electric Blues
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	Blues angst about love gone awry ... is there any other kind? John sings this the way the author never could. It ain't no big thing. Why don't you dream about me? We all dream about John now....
	CD: David's Buick   Label: BlueSky MovieMusic
	Story Behind the Song John "Carp Boy" Lindsey, 1949-2002 I would rather have a beer with John down at George's smoky bar than write about him in the past tense. I'd rather listen to him laugh at his own strange ideas than tell you how good that made people feel, like it was a fine thing to be a nobody in a world full of misguided somebodys. Maybe you never heard of Carp Boy .... The earthly details are that John had a bad heart and his luck ran out. He wore a ventricular assist device for the last year of his life, a gasping mechanical pump that lulled him while he dreamed of a transplant that never came. You could hear that damn thing keeping time when he played music, laying down a deep alien rhythm only he could fathom. None of us believed it was counting down his last minutes. He was a drummer, harmonica player, and singer; a washboardist who designed his own bizarre instruments. He was also a fine painter and connoisseur of the blues. His record collection is an amazing discography of legends: Bukka White, Robert Johnson, Leadbelly, Big Mama Thornton, so on and on, yard after yard of old LPs waiting silently in the basement. I wish I had a recording of John doing Son House's "John the Revelator," because John was a classic then, a tuned-in somebody in a world of reckless castle-builders. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe Blind Willie Johnson wrote it, maybe it's traditional. Whatever: The last time I saw John perform it, he was solo in a sweltering smalltown tavern, gasping for air while he blew harp and chuffed out the prophet's story in that granny-gear gravel truck he had for a voice. "Who's that writin' John the Revelator?" Carp Boy knew. The only recordings I have of John are a few random scraps of songs he wrote. We planned a CD of dusky tavern tunes to cheer hapless denizens of late-night roadhouses: Longneck Wimmens, Barfly Hotel, Ashtray Full of Memories, desperation honky-tonk laments based on our own dismal experiences. The only discography of John's singing I can find is of him moaning "Big Thing" with Patrick Hazell on harmonica. John's friends have instructed me never to sing that song again; it's his song now. He nailed it, leaving me in the wannabe dust. I met John in 1967, when he was the drummer for Alex Richman's St. John and the Heads. I recall seeing him onstage over the years with top players like Rad Lorkovic, Al Murphy, maybe Greg Brown at the Sanctuary. His evening at the Blue Shop with Washboard Chaz was a treat: Dualing, not dueling. John's final performance years were with solo guitarists, gutty players and writers like Mark Arnould, Dave Moore and Dave "Snaker" Ray. They understood John's stage value ... he merely backed people up with his steady, drummer-oriented washboarding. None of that fidgety sheetmetal spoon-scraping: John was too creative, too calm and peaceful, too singular for that. Instead, he wedged one leg of his corrugated wooden Columbus into his pants pocket and played with brushes, looking like a New Orleans paddlewheel gambler washed ashore on some backwater Iowa sandspit. John appeared on stage, a rangy nineteenth-century riverboat dandy: Tall boots jutting beneath a cavalier tailed coat. White ruffled shirt and string tie. Big Stetson raked over easy eyes, so that all you saw of his face was a sly smile framed by long hair and a beard. He cruised the Iowa blacktop in a big blue Cadillac; low-slung, whitewalled road beast, big wicked Texas cow horns bolted to the hood. Who's that driving? John the Singulator. All I see in my mindeye now is his broad goofy smile, like he was some defrocked priest and you were there to confess anyway. All I hear now is his big laugh trailing off into a warm chuckle, letting you know he understood your angst and that someday it would pass. He left an aching hole in our lives where an uncommonly decent, kind-hearted and soulful man once struggled quietly with difficulties far greater than anything about which the rest of us whimper and mewl. "Well," he might drawl, "it ain't no big thing." Then that laugh. John theorized that no one could truly make it in the blues world without a moniker ... like his friends Snaker and Washboard ... and so at some point, he became Carp Boy Johnny. "Some folks go for the fancy fish," he said. "I'll take the bottomfeeders." Then one day, some apprentice blues hero informed me that John was too innocuous, too laid-back to make it, Carp Boy or not. Revelating aside, they testified, he was nuthin' but a nobody. Maybe that's why everybody loved him. (If you want to suggest modifications to this page, please email bucky@bobsaar.com) Lyrics It ain't no big thing It's just this little thing It's just this thing I have about you Why don't you dream about me?

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