Funny Gatemouth Story

I’m stealing borrowing this story from PW Fenton, who posted it to the Blues-L mailing list several years ago.

I was at Skipper’s Smokehouse during late January. It was one of those rare nights during the Tampa winter when it was actually cold. I was dressed in a coat, and wore thick gloves. Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, performing on stage, stopped between songs to cup his pipe in his hands and draw in hard to create some warmth for his fingers.

Despite the cold, he played like the guitar master that he is. During the break after the first of two sets, I went over to this blazing bonfire that the management had started in an effort to thaw the audience. As I stood there enraptured by the soothing heat on my frozen face, who should walk up and stand beside me but “Gatemouth” himself. As he held out his hands toward the flames we made small talk about the unusual Florida weather. Gatemouth confided that he had to take a leak badly and asked for directions to the men’s room. I offered that since I had to go as well, I would lead the way.

We made our way into the empty bathroom, which at that time was a rather crude affair. It had one long tub at which 4 or 5 men could stand and urinate at the same time. We walked up to it, unzipped, and began the business at hand. At almost the same time, a young audience member walked up to the trough on the opposite side of “Gate”. After a few seconds he realized he was standing next to one of the great figures in Blues, and said, “Oh Mr. Brown, I just want to say how great you are. I can’t believe it. You make it look so easy.”

Gatemouth, looking down at the business at hand, replied instantly,

“Shit man, I just point the thing, the piss comes out all by itself”.

This is an absolutely true story.

You can read my own, much less funny story about Gatemouth here.