It was a sad day for Santa Fe's music community when we heard the news about Butch Crouch. Butch was loved by all and will be sorely missed. A memorial gathering will be held at El Farol. We expect to have a date and time very soon and it will be posted here. Please check back for details and come help us celebrate Butch's life and music.
Here's a story I'd like to share with you folks. Back when the west was wild, I booked a banquet gig at the Legal Tender in Lamy, New Mexico. The night of the banquet I arrived at the Legal Tender and discovered that the gig was double-booked. (Double-booking is something that accidentally happens every once in a while, and every working musician dreads it.) Well, it turned out that the restaurant had booked me and the banquet folks had booked Butch. He arrived ten minutes after I did and immediately came up with a solution. "Let's take turns playing and split the money," he said.
That's the kind of man Butch was. He was a true blue friend, and he had a heart as big as all outdoors. He had many, many friends here and we will all miss him.
Butch was a talented artist and he was so much more that I'm at loss for words to describe him. So I'm going to defer to Kris Kristofferson here. The words of Kris' song The Pilgrim Chapter 39 describe Butch pretty well.
He's a poet, he's a picker
He's a prophet, he's a pusher
He's a pilgrim and a preacher and problem when he's stoned
He's a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction
Taking every wrong direction on his lonely way back home...
And there's lots of wrong directions on that lonely road back home.
So long Butch. It's been good to know ya.
UPDATE: My favorite writer, Steve Terrell, has posted about Butch. Click HERE.
