Hey Joe (Part 1)
“I'd ask you to play something, but don't have any cash on me,” I said to a homeless man in who looked to me in his 20s.
He strummed an acoustic guitar while sitting on a grate under a massive rhododendron, leaning against a Presbyterian church.
It was 5:30 in the morning and Elmer and I were cruising toward the park. That is, until I heard music, glanced right, stopped, and there the man was, strumming, the guitar perfectly in tune.
Elmer was intrigued with the sound and his reaction prompted me to get my guitar out later and play some songs for my dog, something I inexplicably hadn't done in the seven months since adopting him.
“You don't have to pay me anything,” he said.
“I always pay buskers.”
“Well, I'll play something for you.”
“What are you doing here at 5:30 in the morning?”
“Charging my phone. I'm super stoned.”
I noticed his phone was plugged into an outlet. Most of the churches in the neighborhood had locked up their outdoor power outlets and shut off spigots because apparently homeless people utilized them for survival and that somehow became a nuisance.
But not this church. Amen.
The man stopped strumming and began playing a lead line. It took me all of ten seconds to recognize it as “Hey Joe.”
I shouted “Hey Joe!” and he said “that's right” and kept on playing. I thought he might start singing but he didn't, so I did, and utterly shocked myself by belting out the lyrics even though it wasn't one of the 50 or so rock songs I knew how to play.
Hey, Joe, where you going with that gun in your hand?
Hey, Joe, I said, where you going with that gun in your hand?
Did it feel strange singing along to a Hendrix classic played on guitar by a homeless man under a rhododendron in front of a church with the sun coming up, my husky with me?
For some reason, no.
I stopped singing and asked him his name.
“Cody.”
“Cody, if you're here tomorrow morning at this time, I'll have a few bucks for you.”
“Okay,” he said. He never stopped playing.
Elmer and I walked away and I sang “Hey Joe” for three blocks and I sang pretty damn loud:
Hey, Joe, I heard you shot your woman down
You shot her down, now
Hey, Joe, I heard you shot your old lady down
You shot her down to the ground
Someone cozy inside a nice home surely must have heard me through an open window. They probably thought it was some crazy, drug addled homeless man!