Two for the road
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Jim Willard, right, and Tracy Willard of the
duet “Saxy Lady and the SurfCat” perform in Silver Lodge on Wednesday
night. After 26 years of hotel life and playing shows on the road, the two
have their share of stories. However, it’s their love story that steals
the show. - Photos by News-Record Photographer Alton Strupp
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By News-Record Writer JEREMY
GOLDMEIER, jgoldmeier@gillettenewsrecord.net
Published: Monday, December 28, 2009 12:01 PM
MST
In
all honesty, Tracy thought Jim was kind of a nerd.
Thick glasses, frizzy hair... the guy was in his 30s and rode around town on a
10-speed bicycle, for crying out loud. And yet, in time, this would be the man
she would marry.
Sounds like a typical Hollywood romantic comedy, right? Awkward boy wins over
the pretty girl: cue orchestra, roll credits.
But for Jim and Tracy Willard, “typical” was never in the cards.
For starters, she was already married when they first met, with two sons. He had
gone through two divorces. They were both struggling musicians gigging around
Las Vegas, a town not exactly known for producing lasting marital unions.
But Tracy’s first marriage was becoming destructive. The night she met Jim,
she swore she heard a divine voice whisper in her ear: “Tonight you will meet
your new husband.”
She couldn’t believe Jim was the guy at first.
“How am I supposed to marry a man with absolutely nothing?” Tracy remembers
thinking.
“Hey!” Jim has to the interrupt the story here. “It was a nice bike.”
Nice bike or no, something clicked when they met again at the DMV. Tracy
describes it almost like a spotlight flashing down on Jim from the rafters.
She threw his bicycle in the back of her pickup truck and gave him a ride.
Shortly thereafter, she divorced her first husband. Even more shortly
thereafter, she and Jim exchanged wedding vows on a sweltering May 25, 1983.
They played a gig together that same night. It was a sign of things to come.
Survive 26 years of marriage, and you’re liable to get at least a pat on the
back.
Survive 26 years of marriage spent traveling the country with your spouse,
trapped in vans and hotel rooms, working a job together, raising three sons on
the road ... is there a medal for that sort of thing?
And yet the Willards have made it work. They perform at hotels, bars, hotel bars
and everything in between as “Saxy Lady and the SurfCat.” Blame an overeager
promoter in Florida for that stage name, but give full credit to Jim and Tracy
for forging a lasting marriage from a number of dubious ingredients.
For starters: they have to share the stage in front of crowds that can range
from ambivalent to downright hostile. They have soundtracked bar fights, endured
some of the nastiest hecklers imaginable and fielded indecent romantic proposals
from audience members.
One night, a guy said something so unspeakable to Tracy that an irate Jim made
the man apologize to her in front of the entire audience.
So if they weren’t totally committed to the music, it’s safe to say they
wouldn’t be doing this anymore.
But really, they’re only onstage together a few hours each day. It’s the
endless downtime between performances that could have driven many couples to
strangle each other out of frustration. When your spouse is your bandmate,
there’s really no place to hide. You have to load gear together, rehearse
together, stare at the highway together.
“People don’t know how we do it,” Tracy says, before pausing. “I don’t
know how we do it.”
Spend some time with the Willards, though, and the chemistry is easy to
recognize. Some of that obviously stems from playing cover songs together for
two-and-a-half decades.
Even when they put the instruments down, there’s an almost musical dialogue
going on between the couple at all times. They do that creepy
complete-each-other’s-sentences thing quite often. They tell jokes in tandem,
one riffing off the other as if performing a complex duet.
There are plenty of times during the day where they could try to catch some
“alone time” at the hotel. But with the Willards, nearly everything is done
together: visiting the local museum, swapping kisses in the Jacuzzi, reading,
watching TV, fixing meals. They both geek out over history, mysticism and
conspiracy theories (the “X-Files” theme is Jim’s ringtone).
They’ve become experts at turning a bland hotel room into a cozy home. Their
current suite at Gillette’s Tower West Lodge features a full kitchen’s worth
of cooking appliances, a neon lit Christmas tree and a digital picture frame
with rotating snapshots of family members. The bathroom sink doubles as a
kitchen sink.
The Willards have somehow found a way to pack all of that stuff, plus their
stage gear, into their Dodge van for road trips. They describe the
puzzle-solving process of squeezing all of their belongings together as a good
metaphor for marriage: constantly rearranging things and scratching their heads.
Let it never be said that it’s only been clear sailing for the Willards for 26
years. Their lifestyle never was glamorous. There have been fights, especially
in the early years. Tracy has shed many tears along the way, and jokes that
she’s contemplated quitting the road “every week.” They homeschooled three
sons along the way, and the boys complained at nearly every stop about the
constant travel.
But somehow, all of the things that could have destroyed the family fused it
tighter together. Today those three sons, Jim, Josh and Chris, reminisce
nostalgically about their days on the road. One of them seems to call the elder
Jim’s cell phone every hour to see how Mom and Dad are doing.
Jim and Tracy, meanwhile, have become best friends. Even when there are storm
clouds, they have it as a policy to make up before sundown. And by necessity,
any ill feelings instantly disappear once they take the stage.
They’ve begun to seriously consider some form of retirement from touring.
There are grandkids to dote on now, and the Willards spend about three months
out of the year at home in Garden City, Kan., doing the grandma and grandpa
thing.
But Jim, 58, and Tracy, 50, still have some juice left in them for the road.
“People talk about working all their lives to travel and relax,” Jim says.
“For our work, we travel ...”
“... And relax,” Tracy adds.
The Saxy Lady and the SurfCat have a bit of a thing for the Silver Creek Lounge
at Tower West. They’ve played there a few times before dropping in for their
current residency, which lasts until mid-January. The lounge’s manager and
employees know them like a pair of old friends.
A Tuesday night performance shows why Gillette has become an annual stop for the
duo. The dancers in the audience are limber and eager to strut their stuff. Not
every song gets greeted with a burst of applause, but the casual listeners are
at least receptive to what the Willards are putting out.
Jim sticks to guitar, while Tracy alternates between vocals, percussion and
saxophone (she doesn’t go by “Saxy Lady” for nothing). Some processed MIDI
music plays as backing. They’ve performed most of the songs in the set
hundreds of times ... if not thousands ... but a sense of playfulness still
colors the proceedings.
When they get to their version of the Alannah Myles smash hit “Black
Velvet,” Tracy and Jim share their married couple moment.
They stand face-to-face. While the MIDI track vamps beneath them, she repeats
the lyric “if you please” again and again in a sultry coo, one hand holding
the microphone while the other strokes his chin. He responds to her caresses
with a grin and little guitar licks. There’s that spark in their eyes.
No one claps at the end of the song. With eyes on their mugs, most of the
patrons probably didn’t even notice the exchange.
But, hey, that’s the job. And that look that Tracy and Jim shared? That’s
what gets them through it.
Life
on tour
First gig on the road: Altus, Okla.
Weirdest gig: Playing in the meats
section of a newly opened Walmart.
Worst accommodations: One hotel in
Nebraska tried to set up the Willards and their three sons in a basement storage
room with hard concrete floors. The Willards balked until they got a real room.
First tour vehicle: A little Toyota
van with poor heating, no air conditioning and barely enough room for the
family’s belongings. It rocked side to side at a stiff breeze.
Number of traffic accidents: 0
Number of states visited: Nearly all
of the lower 48, except in the Pacific Northwest and parts of New England.
In case of a bar fight ... Keep
playing, Jim says. “If you don’t, there’s dead silence, and then it just
escalates.”
When performing at a casino ... Play
only upbeat music. It keeps the customers gambling.
Kid activities: While traveling with
their parents, the Willards’ sons ran a parody newspaper (“The Daily
Crazy”) and founded a fake “restaurant” to treat their parents to dinner.
After serving Jim and Tracy food, the boys would receive tips