"'He wasn't loathed,'" Tony Markellis recently quoted a Washington Post reporter in regards to the passing of Prince Phillip, adding, "May we all be memorialized as fondly." A classic Tony quip right there. Funny, witty, irreverent commentary on current events, but also yet another nod toward his fixation with legacy. If you followed him on social media, you know that earlier this month was the 100th anniversary of his mother's birth. If any of us were to publicly pay tribute to someone we loved dearly, that big, round, triple-digit number would be the time to do it. Except we already knew about Dr. Victoria Markellis. He had been introducing us to her for years. On her 93rd birthday. Her 96th. Her 99th. He did the same for his father, and Big Joe Burrell, and a childhood friend from Montana, and the owner of some hole-in-the-wall soul food joint twenty miles southwest of Godknowswhere who cooked collards the way collards were supposed to be cooked. He was both a keen observer of everyday life and a gifted wordsmith, and he fused those two skills to pen moving memorials about those who have passed on. Why? When someone said of his recent tribute to his mother's 100th that it's lovely he always remembers such dates, he said, "Just trying to stay in touch."
One of the most remarkable things about my friendship with Tony is just how unremarkable it was. I could tell you how special it is to me that his big, perfect notes grace my records. I could tell you how much I am going to miss those hilarious asides between songs, the sparkle in his eye when I knew he was proud of me for nailing a new tune--or, more frequently, for not butchering an old one. How after every time we played "The Fire," he'd say, "I really like that one," and I knew that meant he really liked that one. How no matter where I was travelling, he knew of just the place to eat, and how he cringed whenever Ben and I showed up to a gig in Saratoga with a plate piled high with doughboys when, Jesus, boys, there were so many better options in town. I could tell you how we emailed frequently, and how so few of them had anything to do with music. I could tell you about that great, packed, well-paying gig we played with him, and also about that dead dive bar that paid us in burgers, and how the same great, greasy Tony Markellis bass lines showed up for both--he never mailed it in, never half-assed it, never looked down on you for not being Trey or Santana or Prine or Big Joe Burrell. I could tell you how he knew my mother, my sisters, my nieces and nephews and in-laws and friends and acquaintances and he kept them all straight and genuinely cared. He would always ask about them. I could tell you my wife was no less crushed about yesterday's news than I was, and that's because she and Tony were friends independent of me. When my first son, Anthony, was born, it was a big deal to Tony that he give the baby a proper redneck nickname--Little Tony Joe--and this was important, he said, because he did this for everyone. Yesterday, when Anthony came home from school, we told him Tony had passed away, and Little Tony Joe, ten years old now and about to pull on his baseball uniform, broke down in tears. Anthony, my Anthony, has been climbing up on stage with the band for as long as he could shake a shaker, and on a whole lot of those stages, Tony was there, slapping him a high-five, giving him that same small nod of encouragement he'd give me. If you want to learn to play the drums, growing up sitting next to Tony Markellis ain't a bad way to do it.
When you're a fan of Tony's work, especially his TAB-era career, and you meet him for the first time, you expect to pick his brain about the best preamps and his favorite strings, hear wild stories about tracking with TAB in the Barn or the time Carlos Santana sat in one night in San Francisco. Sure, he'd tell you about those things if you asked--Tony was never short on opinions--but he would much rather know about you, where you went to school, where you grew up, who your people were. He was fascinated with lineage and biography. A short-order cook's backstory was as interesting to him--and probably more so--than why Paul played a Hofner bass. "You should write a book!" was something people had been saying to him for years. The expectation, of course, was that someone of Tony's stature, with the number of miles he'd logged on the road, could write one hell of a rollercoaster ride of memoir. Well, turns out he did write a book (and more to come). Before it went to press, he sent me an early manuscript of his short story collection. It was a brave move, to write fiction, and I know he was nervous about it. He wanted me to give it an editorial once-over, check it for grammar, make sure it all made sense. But I also know he wanted my judgement about whether I felt this was quality stuff he was writing. It was. I enjoyed it. Much of it even impressed me. But this wasn't bass playing, where he was at the top of his game, unmatched, where one golden pass in the studio was all it took for a perfect take. I had to tell him he could stand to use a few less adjectives here and there. I had to tell him one story was too long, another too short. Small things, but things just the same. I didn't want to. Tony was a prideful man. I was aware that, as much as he asked for and appreciated my feedback, he would not have handled pages of red pen well. Fortunately for both of us, it was overall a clean manuscript. Better still--and really my whole point in bringing this up at all--is that the stories in that collection are all slice-of-life tales, small anecdotes about ordinary people who find themselves in amusing predicaments. A heart beats through all the stories, and they are told with humanity and respect for the characters. They are precisely the fictional yarns that a man who has been paying close attention to the mundane would spin and raise to the level of legend. You want to read Tony's tales from the road, there they are. For every two hours of holding down the low end for the likes of David Bromberg or Derek Trucks, there are two hundred hours of interactions with ordinary people--roadies, dishwashers, bartenders, floor sweepers, cab drivers, guitar techs--and he was as curious about them and their lives as he was about the one whose name graced the venue's marquee.
Tony, for many of us, was the link between the coffeehouse gig and Bonnaroo. He worked with our idols, and for those of us fortunate enough to work with him on our own off-Broadway projects, he made us feel as though we were worthy of the same care and attention and worth. More times than I can count he left us tickets when the Trey Band came through town, and he would always introduce us to his TAB bandmates in the same way: "Jen, I want you to meet my friends," and never, "Andy, I'd like you to meet Jen Hartswick," the implication, of course, was that I was important in my own right, worthy of Jen (or whomever) meeting. This happened all the time, and it was always such a kind gesture that was never lost on me: "Vinnie (from moe.), I'd like you to meet Andy Campolieto from the band Jo Henley." After the Ghosts of the Forest show in Boston: "Jon [Fishman], I don't know if you know these guys, but this is Andy and Ben from Jo Henley.”
Tony knew everyone, it seemed, and everyone knew him. The first time he gigged with us, thirteen or fourteen years ago, we dragged him to Ithaca for a weekend of shows. The morning after one of them, we all went out for dim sum in Collegetown. Now, Tony worked with the Burns Sisters a bunch and spent time in Ithaca, so in hindsight this isn't entirely shocking, but we walk through the door to this place it wasn't clear he had ever been to, and from the rear of the restaurant an old Chinese woman steps from the kitchen through red beaded curtains, spots us, and yells, "Tony!" That same meal, he gushed over the glorious, gelatinous texture of chicken feet. Another time at a Chinese restaurant in some other town, in some other state, the waitress ran through her specials. One piqued his interest because it was so unusual. When his meal arrived, delicious as it was, he was disappointed. It turns out that pork with peanuts, when spoken with accented English, sounds exactly like pork penis, but alas, it is not.
Tony, so far I could tell, never burned a bridge. With very rare exception, he never had a bad word to say about anyone he ever worked with. His career, much like his life, was just an ever-expanding book of contacts. He was definitely fussy--he needed to sit at a certain spot on stage, he cringed when your guitar was out of tune, he drove sound guys nuts with his monitor demands and sonic adjustments, and if you're a record producer in the studio, good luck getting him to play that sweet vintage cabinet you own that you're just sure would sound killer or convincing him to try something fancier in the choruses. He would politely but definitively decline your suggestions. He was always right, though, especially about the fanciness. More than once we tracked a song and I had wished in the moment that he'd done some little flourish, something sassy, something that jumped through he speakers, and he never would. And why? Because six months, a year, ten years from now, on your ten-thousandth listen, you will hear that stupid sassy flourish and wish to God it wasn't there, and he knew that. Instead, you had a clean, timeless, melodic bass track that is always and forever just exactly perfect.
I am unremarkable in that, especially in recent years, I worried about him on the road more and more. I knew it was getting tougher. But, damn, man, the stuff he was doing right up until the end was at the highest level. He told Ben and me about the Beacon run shortly before it was announced, and in his usual low-key way. Well, that run of shows was flat-out epic. The peak of artistry. The level of musicianship required to pull that off was astounding, and there was my friend Tony up there every week, just crushing it. Just owning it. I emailed him--and I love that he still emailed in an era of texting and DMs--during that run to tell him, as I periodically did over the years after especially memorable shows, that I was really proud of him, and that even though I knew that's who he was and that's what he did for a living, I had to pinch myself sometimes.
My fellow musicians: I am unremarkable in that I will miss that big bearded smile on his face when he climbed out of his car at a gig and said, "Hello, boys!" and then bitched about the traffic or that he had to park more than a block away. I'll miss his hugs and his asking about my family. I will, selfishly, horribly selfishly, worry about how this impacts my own music, and bemoan that he'll never play on another record or be on stage for another show. I will never feel those full, beautiful bass notes bounce around me, dancing, pulsing, grooving in that deep, wide groove he'd created. Many of you I have come to know through Tony--heck, some of you have even become really close friends and bandmates. And even those of you I haven't met who worked with him, I feel like I know you because he talked about you all the time as if we were all one big family. Which I suppose we are. We're all card-carrying members of Tony's extended family.
Tony was always "just trying to stay in touch." I think he would want us all, somehow, in some way, to just stay in touch, and to remember that whether we manned the grill at his favorite restaurant or are John Prine or Jerry Garcia or Trey Anastasio or Bonnie Raitt, we're all remarkable in our own way, worthy of our own short story, worthy of being introduced.
Tony, you played it like you meant it; that's your legacy, and we are all better off for it. You made us play it like we meant it too. I'm going to miss you like crazy, my friend.
