THE BALLAD OF BILLY SHAW
POKER, STATISTICS, ROCK-N-ROLL, SYSTEMIC RACISM, ALZHEIMER'S & LOVE
A Pair of nines, that’s all. It was down to the last two guys out of nine, and the final hand was dealt at the poker tournament in Reno. The pot was up to $245,000 and all he had to fight with was a pair of nines. Billy had battled all day and all night to make it to the final table, and nobody in that hollow, cold-hearted casino was rooting for him. He was an outlier. Nobody had heard of him. He looked at that giant stack of poker chips and he looked at his opponent. The guy was trying to be cool. He wore his championship bracelet proudly for all the world to see. To wear his trophy on his wrist like that, was a not-so-subtle gesture meant to intimidate the other players. It was boastful and proud, hell it was down right arrogant. Exactly the kind of bluster you’d expect from a professional poker champion. It did not intimidate Billy Shaw.
Bill looked at that bracelet and thought of his hand with the pair of nines, and wished he didn’t have to fight this battle so badly outgunned. With a quarter of a million dollars just sitting there, ripe for the taking. Whenever there was large sums of money to be had, Billy had a natural proclivity toward its acquisition and storage within the safe confines of his bank account. While the rest of us musicians were struggling to make rent, Billy owned about four or five homes, and had flipped an unknown number of others.
But now, at this card table on this night, his opponent would win another of the bracelets, so highly coveted by the elite class of players, if he could get past Bill. It stuck in Billy’s craw just to think of it. He knew the cards and he knew the guy probably had the winning hand. But, as a race car driver, Billy knew it was time to shift gears. Oh he knew alright.
He knew it like he knew the actuary tables for folks over the age of sixty climbing ladders. It’s called Fall Prevalence for the Elderly. Insurance company actuary tables were the type of thick textbooks that Billy Shaw enjoyed reading with his morning coffee. He’d often quoted these fatalistic tomes of doom to me because he was naturally drawn to the numbers.
Ladders kill the elderly. One-in-three will suffer a fall. 7 million of those falls result in serious injuries, and 27,000 die from fall-related injuries each year. Thats almost 74 people a day. If you have elderly relatives take away their ladders. But do something constructive with them, and send them postage paid to Lindsey Graham or Ted Cruz.
Billy always knew the numbers. It was one of his many skills. He told me once that the combustion zone of the tobacco in the cigarette I was smoking was burning at between 470 to 812 degrees. I didn’t believe him. Those temperatures were impossibly high. Over 800 degrees from a cigarette? No way. He said something about pyrolysis and tobacco at those temperatures creating a benzine-like chemical (called Acrylonitrile) that gets into your body through your lungs. Of course I had to look it up. He was right. No wonder smoking ruins your face, among other things.
It was so unusual that he knew all of that, but he was a consumer of information. I wasn’t really a smoker, and probably wouldn’t have had one if we hadn’t been enjoying some scotch. From then on, he made me think twice before lighting up. Billy memorized the stuff most people would never even read, and few knew existed.
Back to Reno. As he sat at that poker table with a pair of nines, Billy’s enemy pushed five thousand dollars in chips to the middle of the table, in a final cocky bet, his bracelet gleaming on the felt covered table under the bright fluorescent lights. Billy fearlessly saw him and raised him five thousand. More chips moved across the felt.
Finally, with the last wager made, the room full of gamblers went silent. Billy had a good poker face but he knew his opponent had the edge. He didn’t know what cards would do him in, but two nines weren’t gonna be much of a defense. What Billy did know was that in a corner of his opponent’s mind, he was already bragging to his friends about the new bracelet he’d win if he became the champion that night. He’d taken ownership of it already. That’s when Billy Shaw said to the guy; “How about we split the pot and you get the bracelet?” His opponent reacted quickly and said: “Done.”
It must have been a shock for the guy to see Billy’s nines.
He’d done it again. Billy Shaw had a knack for getting the money. Somewhere there’s a great picture of him and that massive pile of poker chips, with a pair of nines leaning up against it.
You can win a certain amount of money without paying taxes on it. So Billy Shaw, always thinking, took his time. He spent the wee hours of the morning playing a hand here or there, and then he went from one cashier’s window to the next, cashing in small amounts. Before he left that casino he put his share of the winnings, one hundred and thirty thousand dollars cash, into the brown paper bag they gave him. He walked out to his car and drove away.
He looked forward to showing his mother, “Mama Kay,” that big bag of dough. She was always pulling for him. When he told me about it some weeks later he said: “Browny, I go down to the safety deposit box and I take out five hundred bucks, and the pile looks exactly the same.”
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There were two times in my life, separated by roughly twenty years, when my life fell apart, and I hit absolute rock bottom. Billy Shaw was there to help pick me up, both times. Of course my loving family was always there for me. Withinn my little circle of friends, he was the one who dusted me off and gently encouraged me to get back in the game. Way back when, I had a terrible head injury from a bicycle accident. I was lucky to be alive. I was trapped inside a busted brain for about a year I think, but I don’t actually know for sure. I remember trying to tell people what I was going through but never finding the words. Words were right on the tip of my tongue, but for awhile, I couldn’t string them together with any eloquence. I was completely vulnerable to any emotional stimulus, real or misinterpreted by me. Billy took the time to hang out with me and gladly listened to my broken conversational word mosaics.
It was frustrating to be unable to communicate. I was depressed by the nature of of my injuries. The multiple facial injuries changed me forever, at least I thought so. I was full of self doubt and deeply troubled. Bill helped heal my spirit. He showed me a lot of compassion. I remember when he said: “I get it. You only get one golf ball and you gotta play all eighteen holes with it.” Finally being understood was a sudden relief that comforted me. It arrived like a Chinook wind that showed up in the middle of winter up in Canada. You never forget that warmth.
Bill’s command of the most clever way of saying things was always uncanny. He changed my mindset in an instant. I needed someone exactly like him to care. More importantly, he spent time with me. He saw the depth of my pain. To have a peer see me where I was and understand was one thing, but to have it be Billy Shaw was even better. He was the smartest, coolest guy I knew. If he was pulling for me I must not be such a bad guy.
He’d call me in the morning and say: “hippy joint in 30.” It meant we were meeting at the diner run by hippies. We’d start with breakfast and at least a half gallon of coffee at the Sunlight Cafe at 64th & Roosevelt. Then, we’d play par-3 golf together at one of the many 9-hole courses all over Seattle. He had a beautiful golf swing and he put the ball right up on the dance floor almost every time. Thats the way he said it anyway, “right up on the dance floor.” That meant his first shot landed on the green, and as far as I was concerned, he already had at least a two or three stroke lead. I never beat him.
Many years later, when the other shoe dropped, I was arrested on false charges. A bad penny had rolled into my life, and I got thrown in the King County jail. It had a terrible, profound, and long lasting effect on me. Of course I beat the rap, but doing so consumed all of my resources and ruined me financially. The reality of the betrayal that got me into the situation and my temporary loss of freedom was difficult for me to handle. I suffered a form of PTSD. I was put on anti-anxiety medications and spent years trying to claw myself back to a normally functioning condition.
While I’m on this rather bleak subject let me quickly stop and mention that the so called justice system in Seattle, and probably all major American cities, is the best example of systemic racism you could ever examine. Inside the King County Jail, I was the only white male in a common room of about forty men. This group included a handful of young hispanic guys, but the rest were all young men of color. The King County Jail was absolutely the most disgustingly filthy place I’ve ever been. The guards were beating the crap out of one guy, and talking smack to a few of the other prisoners. I was glad to be separated from the guards by steel bars. The guys I was locked up with were a good humored bunch and I never felt in danger. We shared a common enemy, the guards. It was and probably still is, a hell hole run by a-holes from the top down. As far as I can tell, there has been no examination or reform of this heinous place. At the time, King County Executive Ron Sims, a man of color himself, did nothing to improve that place during his twelve years on the job. Current Executive Dow Constantine has proposed closing it due to its obsolescence, without acknowledging the multiple community groups calling for it’s closure due to the numerous in-custody deaths that keep happening, most of them suicides. What a hellhole. Anyone who says there is no such thing as systemic racism can kiss my...aw forget it. I just had to get that off my chest. Now back to my story about Bill Shaw.
Once I got out, Billy Shaw saw the mental strain I was under and stood by me as a friend. Out of the goodness of his heart he wanted to help me feel better. He called some close friends and started a regular get-together at his home in Ballard. To the guys involved, it was a weekly jam night with guitars and amps and his big red drum kit. To me it was a men’s support group. He encouraged me to share my original songs, and these kind men, assembled by Billy Shaw, helped me hone my material. It was a very healing procedure to go through. It gave me something to hang on to when my world was sinking. Billy on drums, Tito Fuentes on guitar, Tony Lease on bass, and later Walter Singleman on bass, and myself on guitar. Friends, guitars, a bass and some drums? It’s a prescription that most psychiatrists would never think of recommending. I have some nice recordings from those painful times and healing nights of musical camaraderie. Among those recordings, the most precious to me are the ones where Billy is drumming and singing. I will include some links to them at the bottom of this piece.
I had written a song called Brown is Blue. It was Bill’s favorite. There was a lyrical couplet he liked the most: “Reality and truth, have tried to rob me of my youth. I played my innocence like a pawn, one bad move it was gone.” He always smiled approvingly when I sang it. He really went on about that song and how good he thought it was. It was a shot in the arm for me. Each time he acknowledged me in that way, it was like he was giving me some life. All of these guys had been in some of Seattle’s most popular bands and they were supporting me, playing my songs. It really gave me hope, when otherwise I would have been reluctant to feel lucky.
As for those awful anti-anxiety class of medications? They nearly killed me. The benzodiazepines such as Xanax, Librium, Valium, Ativan, and the one that I was on, Klonopin, have been the cause of an epidemic. Overdose deaths, quadrupled in the period between 2002 and 2015, the very period of time in which I was suffering. Big Pharma pumps them out to the tune of about $4 billion a year. Here’s what the statistics say:
35% of people who take benzodiazepines for more than four weeks will become dependent.
16% of overdose deaths involving opioids also involved benzodiazepines in 2019.
9711 people died of a benzodiazepine related overdose in 2019 alone. That's a little more than 26 people a day, or about one every hour.
I’m going to shift the timeline again, back to my story about Billy…
About six years ago, and a decade after those therapeutic jam sessions, I attended a record release party for Seattle singer Caela Bailey. Billy Shaw was there with his girlfriend at the time, and dancing partner. Bill was always known as one of the smoothest dancers. When he showed up, I looked him in the eye and said hi. He just kind of ignored me though and I thought it was strange. He wasn’t the type to “bad-vibe” me or play any kind of mind games. Additionally, I would never have done anything to piss him off. Not Billy. He held too high of a position in my life to ever do that. He was my hero, like a big brother. Like Wally on Leave It To Beaver. I knew it wasn’t something I’d done, but his nonchalant attitude and failure to say hi really struck me as odd. Months passed.
What I didn't know then was that Billy had the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. The insurance company actuary tables say that 6% of people aged 65 or older get Alzheimers disease. Six years ago he could still care for himself for the most part, although his Porsche started to show some dings and dents. As a skilled race car driver and instructor, those kind of blemishes were uncharacteristic of any vehicle Bill would drive. His family began to take notice. Before too long, he was officially diagnosed. He’d call me every once in awhile, and we’d talk about his battle with the disease. Then the phone calls stopped coming. He stopped answering the calls I made. I figured he was probably too busy, but in fact, he couldn’t operate a phone anymore
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Last summer I took a long train trip that circumnavigated the portion of America on the west side of the Mississippi, starting in my new home state of Arizona. When I passed through Seattle I stopped in to see Billy. I brought my guitar when I went to meet up with Bill and his big sister Patty. I played them some songs by Bob Dylan, Bill’s favorite artist. At one point he cried a little bit and told me he couldn’t believe I came to see him. I was deeply touched. He seemed lonely. It’s not uncommon for Alzheimer’s patients to live in social isolation. Nonetheless, he found a way to be funny even though he spoke in very fragmented sentences. We sat on his front porch as the sun went down and I sang him my version of Dylan’s “Man in The Long Black Coat.” After I finished, we were quiet for a minute or two and he said: “We’ve been runnin’ together for a long, long time.” It was good to know he still remembered that. Later my son Samuel and I turned that line into a song for Bill.
I was moved by seeing him and felt I owed him some of the love he’d shown me back in the day. His big sister Patty needed some help renovating Mama Kay’s house so that she could get Bill and Mama Kay under the same roof and help share the enormous cost of caring for them both. Bill is 71 now and Mama Kay is a healthy and vigorous - wonderful 98 years old. With longtime friend and master guitarist John Olufs spearheading the project, I returned in the fall for awhile and helped with the renovation. I also put together a few YouTube videos, so that Billy could see pictures of himself with his old friends. I hoped putting these videos up on Facebook would get some of his friends to show up a little more often. And it worked. Billy finally moved in with Mama Kay earlier this year. Bill’s empty Ballard house is on the market now. His family is hoping its sale will help with the enormous cost of his care.
I stayed with Bill quite a few nights this past year, and I am so happy to have had that time. We watched Bob Dylan videos and Leave it To Beaver at least a hundred times. We were both able to repeatedly discuss out mutual love for Barbara Billingsley, literally every time she came on the screen. We also agreed that Eddie Haskell was a dope and a creep. I’m glad I had the time to hang out with him and listen to his broken conversational word mosaics, like he did for me so long ago. His brain doesn’t work like it used to but who cares? After all “you only get one golf ball and you have to play all eighteen holes with it.”
Statistically speaking people with Alzheimer's disease live between four and eight years after their diagnosis but many can live as long as 20 years depending upon certain factors. Billy is six or seven years into it. Billy gave a lot of love in his life and his friends aren’t forgetting him. But we have to continue to spread the word.
My son Samuel graduated from college in December of last year. He has been working part-time as Bill’s weekend, overnight caregiver for the past six months. Slowly over that time, he’s watched Bill’s condition changing. A few days ago, my son told me Billy was in the Northwest Hospital after suffering multiple seizures. It was all caused by an allergic reaction to some medications. Now he’s recovering from a low level kidney infection. He’s shown some improvement in the past few days. He’s had many hospital visitors and he’s been smiling a lot. He also gets great comfort listening to music on his headphones.
My son has a lot of affection for Billy. Samuel will be leaving for Los Angeles before too long, to chase down his own dreams. It will be hard for him to say goodbye. When Sam was very little, I’d play him the recordings of Billy Shaw and me jamming with our friends. I always told him: “That’s Billy Shaw singing,” and Sam remembers that. He’s known Billy pretty much his whole life, though not as much as he’s come to know him this year. Bill has been fighting a disease that affects his ability to speak, but he’s still found a way to say special and supportive things to my son Samuel. Even amidst the harsh and cruel battle he fights with an uncaring disease, brave Billy Shaw is in there somewhere, still trying to do some good, to be a mentor. Sam talks to Bill as though he understands everything, whether he does or not. Knowing Sam is headed to Hollywood, Bill recently said: “Just go down there and get it done.” Every once in awhile he still says stuff just to be funny too. It is amazing.
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I’ll never forget the first time I met Billy Shaw. I was “sitting-in” as a guest with The Rangehoods, a truly great Seattle band that was quite popular in the 1980’s. I wrote a whole chapter about them in my book: Almost Famous In Alberta & Other True Stories. I spent many a night admiring the guys in this band. To me, they were just so very cool. Any one of them could have been a movie star.
On this particular evening I didn’t know what to think, because I’d always been a huge fan of the original Rangehoods drummer Don Kammerer. But Don wasn’t there that night. Billy was playing his big, thunderous red drum kit.
Our legendary friend, Bruce Hewes was still alive and playing his bass with his usual fire. Brucie sang a great version of Wild Thing. My musical heroes Steve Pearson and Pat Hewett were smoking cigarettes and each had a Gibson Super 400 hanging over their shoulders. Pat Hewett nearly broke the neck of his Gibson bending the notes. They went down their great list of original tunes, one by one as the crowd sang along on every song.
Later in the night they invited me onstage. I got to play one of the four, great-big, beautiful, hollow-bodied Gibson Super 400’s that were on stage that night. My heart was bursting. Just to get to hold that guitar was a thrill. It played like a Ferrari. It can’t be explained. The rock-n-roll sound we generated was colossal. I was lucky to be included and I knew it. I was as alive as I would ever be. I would return often to this welcoming oasis of music and friendship. They were a beloved Seattle club band and it was a Saturday night.
Bill counted off a song with four clicks of the sticks and the band tore into the old Roy Head song “Treat Her Right.” The place was jammed full of their fans, all of whom were dancing somewhat frantically. We were all fresh faced and full of youth and vigor. Billy Shaw became my kind-hearted, lifelong friend, and it all started the moment he was about to begin singing. I looked over my shoulder at him, he gave me a little wink and the slightest of grins as he sang the opening line: “I’m gonna tell you a story, every man oughta know…” I’d never heard that song by Roy Head until then but it was burned into my mind from that day forward. With some folks you never know where you stand, but Billy Shaw made it easy to be friends. For me and him, it was automatic.
His battle continues, he’s brave every day of it. If you know and love him as I do, he’s not hard to find. He needs a lot of love right now. It’s a beautiful thing that he’s still around for us to give that love to. When you see him, say hi from me.
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For more information on Alzheimer's disease visit https://www.alz.org