Joy! Bob Walkenhorst streaming live

[Onkel Neal]

My life ha reached a new high!

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/bob-norm-jeff

[Onkel Neal]

Another fine show.

http://www.reason.com/news/show/131982.html

It’s Wednesday night at the Record Bar in Kansas City’s Westport entertainment district. As two notes on his guitar’s E string alternate in the background, singer-songwriter Bob Walkenhorst is introducing his next number: “I didn’t play this song for a long time. It just didn’t feel right. Recently I’ve had several people come up and say, ‘This song fit into my life this way.’ That’s what you want to know, how it fit into somebody’s life. It makes you feel like you made a good chair. You wove a good rug. You made something useful.” Then he launches into a verse that is as relevant today as it was when it first turned up on the radio in 1986:

“Give a man a free house and he’ll bust out the windows / Put his family on food stamps, now he’s a big spender / No food on the table and the bills ain’t paid / ’cause he spent it on cigarettes and PGA / They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please / They’re feeding our people that government cheese / It’s the man in the White House, the man under the steeple / Passing out drugs to the American people.”

As the front man for the Rainmakers in the 1980s Walkenhorst teetered on the verge of rock ’n’ roll stardom. Rolling Stone gushed that “Walkenhorst may be rock and roll’s answer to Emerson.” Newsday called the Rainmakers “America’s next great band.” Music Connection honored Walkenhorst for writing the “Lyric of the Year”: “The generation that would change the world is still looking for its car keys.” The Los Angeles Times told music fans to “index the Rainmakers high in the ‘to watch’ file.” Best-selling horror author Stephen King quoted lines from Rainmakers songs in his novels.

Despite that early acclaim, the Rainmakers failed to make it big. Whether their subject matter was too controversial, their songs too smart, or their luck too poor, they disbanded in 1997.