Chris Gaffney had musical friends in high places.
Joe Ely, Boz Scaggs, Los Lobos, Dave Alvin, Tom Russell, James McMurtry, Robbie Fulks, John Doe, Dave Gonzales and members of Tucson Ãŧber desert rockers Calexico â the A list of Americana roots rockers and alt-country folk.
When Gaffney died of liver cancer last April, his friends â who also included Dan Penn, Jim Lauderdale, Alejandro Escovedo, and Big Sandy y los Straitjackets â got together to honor the former Tucsonan. They recorded a tribute album of Gaffney's songs, "A Man of Somebody's Dreams: A Tribute to the Songs of Chris Gaffney."
Alvin was the ringmaster, making phone calls and recruiting an enviable guest list that would make any roots-rock afficionado drool in anticipation. Alvin, a fellow musical compatriot who is legendary in the roots-rock world, was Gaffney's best friend.
Gaffney played in Alvin's Guilty Men for several years. Alvin was one of Gaffney's staunchest cheerleaders, aside from Gaffney's Hacienda Brothers partner and fellow former Tucsonan Dave Gonzalez.
Gaffney's music was an amalgam of Western soul, Americana and roots, with tender, insightful lyrics, a wink-wink at Nashville country and nods to red-dirt country and Tex-Mex. Accordions, steel guitars and fiddles made regular appearances in his acoustic-leaning music.
In the liner notes, Alvin wonders aloud why some may never have heard of Chris Gaffney.
"For whatever reasons, Chris never got the breaks, recognition, money and widespread respect he justly deserved," Alvin penned. Despite years of hard work and rejection from record labels and radio, "Chris never stopped singing and writing wonderful songs," he wrote.
Tucson knew Gaffney through his constant presence on our stages â including the intimate club Vaudeville on East Congress Street and the midsize theater at Desert Diamond Casino â and support from community radio station KXCI. There were still others who remember him from his days as a Tucson resident; he grew up in both Tucson and California, where he died.
The tribute album, released on Yep Roc Records, includes tender interpretations by friends and fans alike. Heavyweight Nashville writer and singer Jim Lauderdale teamed up with the New York collective Ollabelle for a wonderfully twangy take on "Glasshouse." Alvin introduces "Artesia" with an anecdote about Gaffney. Calexico turns in an impassioned reading of "Rank's Tavern," one of the album's highlights, especially for Tucson fans.
John Doe strips down for an acoustic performance of the cry-in-my-beer ballad of regret "Quiet Desperation."
Gonzalez, who was partnered with Gaffney for the last years of his life, remembers his buddy with an accordion-saturated song that bemoans how a lover has worn down the partner to the point where he's "Tired of Being Me."
Gaffney himself closes his tribute album with the mournful ballad "Guitars of My Dead Friends."
"The guitars of my dead friends / Offer silent witness / The guitars of my dead friends / Remind me of the distance / Of where we once were / And how it all ends / The guitars of my dead friends."
The Hacienda Brothers' final album, "Arizona Motel," came out last June, two months after Gaffney's death.
"A Man of Somebody's Dreams: A Tribute to the Songs of Chris Gaffney," various artists.
