For Keefy.

Today’s post was about a whole different band, from a different British-bred genre. It’s a band from another decade, with a harsher edge. That post is postponed because I want to write about Keith How. I should’ve written about him 5 years ago, but I didn’t have the strength.

Keefy, as he presented himself back in 2010, was an artist. He played bass. He painted. He wrote. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of music, both unheard and famous, and could keep the conversation going if needed. I met him on the back patio of The Washington, on an Oblong Night gig. It was between sets, the aromatiser at The Washington was doing tricks on my migraine and I had to go out. Chris McClure from The Violet May introduced us. It made sense, since Jono was Keefy’s kid.

Keefy was always supportive of Sloucher, and wrote for us for quite a bit, even contributing for our first printed edition, The March Hare Burns, so many lives ago, so many words in the past. He wrote for several places, and in his later years, he devoted everything to Penny Black Music.

A lover of nature, Keefy’s paintings would go for Constable’s keen eye of nature, with a Turner approach. His brush found a place in several galleries, and I went to an exhibition to Bakewell, his den, back in the summer of 2012. A lover of Tolkien and his infinity prose, Keefy’s reviews were always a pleasure to read. It could be a love letter to Sandy Denny, could be a brutal takedown of a band past their prime. He would write in “normal” review voice, he could go for a different, less quadratic form approach.

I find it hard to write more about him, my words could never do him justice, and every January 26th, I think of him and the first review he wrote for Sloucher. The band was Bronco, a deep cut of British Prog Folk. His review, which you can read here, guided me into another realm of review writing.

He called me “boss” on emails. I always called him “guv”. Like many friendships, we never had a proper goodbye, but every time I see a rainy day over a hill, every time I listen to Fairport Convention, and every time I grab a bass, I remember Keefy.

So, today’s song is Bronco -the UK band, not the Apodaca power house- and the song is Civil of you stranger. Til we meet again, guv.

-Sam J. Valdés López