I don't remember meeting Paul Lacques. It felt as if I had always known him through the many years on the L.A. music scene when we would run into each other accidentally or on purpose. Others probably felt the same, because of the way he would extend his hand upon seeing you again, tilt his head sideways and squint down his long nose, as if he could extract all your interim information from your eyes. Brevity was necessary much of the time, because Paul had to set up his gear, break it down or hump it out. At our last meet-up, I offered extra assistance with his guitar amp, because of the sounds he made when he bent over. I complimented him on his shorn trucker look, ignorant of the cancer, of which only a few were aware.
Paul got to be a fantastic lefty guitarist through love and incessant work. His country-rock picking with I See Hawks in L.A. gleamed with perfection: clean, even and deceptively leisurely, while graced with the same kind of narrative you get from a fine lyric, and with the same kind of gentle distance a lyric can put between listener and core emotion -- suitable for crying and dancing at the same time. That skill hit home on a celebratory occasion when I requested the Hawks' "Good and Foolish Times," and realized mid-twirl that this upbeat stomper (words by singer Rob Waller, I believe) was a breakup song.
Paul could also go hog-wild, especially with the distortion turned up on lap steel, his usual mode with the instrumental quartet Double Naught Spy Car. Wild did not mean out of control, because Lacques knew where the barriers were, and always gave his listeners a ride, not a crash. And as a band member (Andy & the Rattlesnakes, Rotondi, Bonedaddys, Sheiks of Shake, etc.), he listened and left space. He was one of my favorite guitarists, and that includes everyone.
And what a dude. When I was going through a trauma, he called to ask what he could do, clearly meaning it. I told him he could distract me with a lesson in slide guitar, and he came right over to dish out the patient rudiments. Now I can play "No Expectations."
Hawks nest near where I live, and when I took out the trash this morning, a Redtail circled overhead, screeching at me not to write something stupid about Paul. No promises, but in tribute to Carlos Castaneda, whose books apparently taught Lacques something about following one's own path, I will relate a vision that appeared Wednesday, the day after Paul's passing.
Scanning the sky for hawks in Griffith Park, instead I spotted a pair of crows. They sailed with great grace, head to tail, wing to wing, meandering high over the treetops and calling out in crow language. Finally, a third crow, hearing their summons, flapped slowly up and joined the two. The three crows turned and flew together into the west.