Well, that’s a title sure to get clicks. Before anyone gets too offended, please allow me to explain.
Your humble blogger has called Bisbee home since Day of the Dead, 2007. In the nearly two decades since I’ve seen so many creative types come and go, in and out of Bisbee–and often enough, back again. We have an artist colony, a palette-full of art galleries and museums including a Smithsonian affiliate. We have Central School Project regularly hosting openings and exhibits as well as housing for artists-in-residence. And: more bars than you can count on two hands, most of them hosting local and national music acts. One can find live music almost every night of every week in Bisbee.
For those driven by creativity, Bisbee’s heady enchantments are pure, uncut catnip. It is truly a land of opportunity for such people. Newcomers can attend or even teach yoga classes at Club Kilimanjaro, or fulfill a lifelong dream of being a DJ with their own radio program, or finally be the poet–or songwriter–they were meant to be.
Once many years ago I and others in town were interviewed for a rather odd video series exploring “what made Bisbee so special.” Surely my long-since forgotten answer was profound and oh-so-deep, but soon I regretted it as too sincere. A wisecrack would have been more authentic. The answer should have been ADOT, the Arizona Department of Transportation, for without their keeping Highway 80 in good shape there would simply be no Bisbee as we know it. One needs the infrastructure for proper placemaking–you can’t make a place if you can’t get there.
There is in fact a robust infrastructure for placemaking here. The institutions mentioned above provide spaces and places for creativity and culture to flourish. It is not simply tolerated, but required. The town thrives on it, is hungry for it. Consider for example the Sidepony Express music festival held each November–a “speed dating” affair that wouldn’t be possible without the sheer density of venues required for that manic Musical Chairs game.
All of this is to say, the barriers to entry are low for those drawn to create, perform, share. Sometimes these creative types are truly world class, but more often they’re just regular folks who found a place where they could realize their dreams. The Land of Magical Mediocrity is thus my tongue-in-cheek nod to Bisbee’s secret sauce. One need not be the greatest to be great here. Bisbee is a beacon, drawing in those with the audacity to dream it and do it.
And occasionally it spits them out.
I’ll tell you a story: in Bisbee is a band called Rockus, a classic rock cover act filling Brewery Gulch with good old rock and roll for two decades and counting. Then and now they draw big crowds, rendering the barstools at Elmos cold and the dance floor hot.
When I arrived in 2007, Rockus was fronted by a man, a true Bisbee native with deep roots named Dean Morin. Dean was a master of his craft, and that craft was dressing up in leather pants and a low cut blouse, with a glorious mane that could almost pass for an afro in neon lighting. He was a fantastic singer, but his real talent was being the frontman. He played that mic stand like a conductor’s wand, gyrating and strutting like a peacock in heat, bringing his band and the crowd up and down at will–an engineer running a rock and roll rollercoaster. Some locals called him “Mock Jagger,” an epitaph blending good-natured mockery with undeniable respect (like the title of this post). Dean was aware of the nickname and took it with good humor. After all, it is rare praise indeed to be compared in any way to that rock legend, and he couldn’t help but take it as a compliment.
One night in 2008, on the porch of the Stock Exchange, I had the good fortune to offer my respect for the man, what he did and more importantly how he did it. And we got to talking about Bisbee, and I’ve never forgotten his words.
“Bisbee is a self-flushing town, man.”
I didn’t get it, and so offered a nervous chuckle in response. Was he really comparing Bisbee to a toilet?
“What do you mean, self-flushing?”
“I mean Bisbee makes you be your true self. That’s the magic. This town will draw your true self out of you, ready or not. And some people can’t handle that man. Like, they think they can. They think they can handle that true self but they find out the hard way that they can’t deal. Or when it comes out they wind up burning all their bridges faster than they can build them. And they don’t last long.
I don’t know if it’s them burning up their time here or the town using them up. It’s a case by case but either way, they move on. Self-flushing.”
Dean’s assessment was spot on. In the years since he laid it down I must have seen half a dozen couples move here, wide eyed and spellbound by Bisbee’s siren song. Then, just like he said, the town reveals something in them and suddenly a relationship that worked just fine in Los Angeles, or Phoenix, or Minneapolis no longer pencils out. Maybe they both skip town like thieves in the night. Or, one stays behind and starts teaching Tai Chi, or becomes a painter or poet, or finally picks up that guitar while the other goes back to Peoria, tail between their legs.
Flush.
As for Rockus, well…Dean Morin passed away a few years later. Merciless cancer made quick work of that lithe, sexy frame. And so he passed, pouting those big rockstar lips and strutting across that Milky Way one can still see above Brewery Gulch all the way to Rock and Roll Valhalla. Rockus still plays, honoring their local rock god’s legacy–and their own–and drawing good crowds to this day, most recently on Halloween night at good old Elmos.
Let’s be honest: Rockus was never in any danger of being invited to play their drum-tight set of classic rock covers at Carnegie Hall. Dean was inducted posthumously into the Bisbee Music Hall of Fame in 2014–that’s right, Bisbee has its very own hall of fame for local musicians. But it’s doubtful one will ever find a BMHOF exhibit in Cleveland. That was never the point. The point is it’s enough to be their true selves, to honor and live the magic of Bisbee, for the people of Bisbee and, yes, its many visitors. They need not be the greatest act out there in the world, because on this side of the Mule Pass Tunnel they are definitely world class. You can’t fake a full lotus nor a full dance floor. That is Bisbee’s secret sauce: coaxing authenticity from a world drowning in fakeness. When I consider the town I’ve called home these last 18 years I think of Dean “Mock Jagger” Morin and the secret he shared in the one conversation we ever had. He described it almost as a hazard, but it’s also a blessing.
You just have to follow your dream and hang on tight.
Keith Allen Dennis is a Bisbee writer, living the dream of becoming the songster he was meant to be. You can find his music at http://keithallendennis.bandcamp.com.