Dave Alvin w/ Gaffney & Red Meat "Only Hell My Mama Raised"

In the early part of 2003, singer Johnny Paycheck was very sick, and struggling to pay bills, so Owen Bly, manager of the band Red Meat decided to organize a little fundraiser in San Francisco as a way of honoring this great musician. A lot of musicians agreed to be part of this event. Right as the fundraiser was coming together, Johnny Paycheck died, so the event was transformed into a tribute to honor his legacy. On the day of the show at the Elbo Room, March 19, 2003, by some coincidence, the invasion of Iraq began, and the streets of San Francisco were filled with people protesting the war.

This is the big finale of the show -a performance of the Paycheck song "The Only Hell My Mama Raised" by Dave Alvin with Chris Gaffney & Red Meat.

Chris Gaffney, one of the performers in this video, passed away from on April 17, 2008. He had liver cancer, and there were some ongoing fundraising efforts to help him with his medical bills.

If you enjoyed this video, and would like to do something really nice, you can donate to the HelpGaff.com website, which will help Chris Gaffney's family with the medical bills.

The video was produced by Eric Predoehl and Jesse Block of Octalouie.com and LouieLouie.net, with camera assist by Laurel Rudy. We're sharing this video free of charge to pay tribute to some great musicians. We'll probably be posting more clips from this event, as there were some great performances. We had some problems shooting video that night, as one of the cameras got broken, but we've able to be assemble some decent footage in spite of it all.

ENJOY!

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Americana
• country
• western
• Johnny
• Paycheck
• Red
• Meat
• Blasters

[art2liv4]

Good on Dave Alvin for calling Scott & Smelley back-up to the stage, I know how much fun it is to sing with them.

[thehellout]

Awesome! Thanks for posting. Don't get much better than this.

[gabriellemonk]

thanks for sharing - we miss Chris

[WildBillGrover]

Great video - gracias!

[owenbly]

Hell yeah!