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I’ll remember the Phil & Friends show in Burlington on November 16th, 2001 for a long, long time and not for Phil Lesh (1940-2024), as great and wonderful as he was on this night, not because of Warren Haynes who played and sang so well he actually blended with the Dead sound perfectly (which I think is rare) or the fantastic Jimmy Herring who could have easily stolen the show had he chosen to. Not because of John Molo or Rob Barraco or for the amazing second-set cover of Strawberry Fields Forever or even because Phish’s keyboardist Page McConnell sat in for the encore, which was a pretty sweet run-through of Wilson Pickett’s In the Midnight Hour.
Nope, I’ll remember this one because it was Matt’s last show.
Matt Erwin was a friend of mine. He was tall and handsome with a soothing baritone voice that was calming and engaging. Matt got cancer and died way, way too young, a week after his twenty-eighth birthday. Thinking back now I find that surprising; he seemed so much older than that. Wiser, for sure. I always figured he was older than me but he wasn’t, not by almost seven years.
Matt was a really super guy, and he was a poet. Not only that, he was the only person I have ever known personally who wrote poetry I enjoyed (sorry, everyone else). One time before he got sick Matt came over to my apartment with a binder full of his poetry. He told me that he felt like some of his poems were meant to be songs but he wasn’t a musician so he asked me for help. He flipped through and pulled out a short poem that he had called The Ballad of Margot Kidder. It was about how the actress had been born and raised in the Northwest Territories before achieving stardom and how Kidder’s mental difficulties and conspiracy paranoia grew after she got famous, leading her to disguise herself as a homeless person and live on the streets of Los Angeles. I had known about none of this and I liked the poem immediately. I picked up my guitar and started strumming chords and humming melodic ideas.
After about forty minutes of tinkering together we had: absolutely nothing. With a shrug and a smile we gave up, mission aborted. It’s really, really too bad I had come up so empty.
Then Matt got sick and started going through treatments and stuff and nothing was ever looking like good news and his body began to deteriorate. A group of us drove down to this concert together, and when we walked into the Memorial Auditorium (which is basically a small university basketball court) we all knew that this was going to be Matt’s final show. We all huddled twenty feet from the stage and communed together drenched in suppressed grief and beautiful music.
During an especially poignant Into the Mystic I leaned into Matt and asked how he was doing. “I feel like my feet are stuck to the floor,” he half-yelled into my ear.
“Huh?” I leaned back in. “What do you mean?” I asked him. I’ll never, ever forget Matt’s response. He turned and stared into my eyes and spoke to me like he was explaining something to a child. “I mean: I feel [pause], like my feet [he’s pointing down to the floor now] are STUCK [said with all the emphasis he could muster] the the floor.” Then he turned back to Warren singing Van.
“Oh,” I said, dumb and meekly. I didn’t understand anything.
Shortly after Matt died I was in my apartment leafing through a bunch of papers that were stacked on my bass amp and I found the page with The Ballad of Margot Kidder typed on it. I had no idea Matt had left it. I picked up my guitar and five minutes later I had the song finished. It just came out; it took no effort whatsoever. I think it’s my only real collaboration. I’ve since played it a hundred times at gigs and things and y’know, it’s a pretty great song.
It makes me sad to think that Matt never heard it. I so, so wish I had come up with the music when he was in my apartment that afternoon. But then, sometimes things don’t go at all the way you wanted them to.
RIP Matt Erwin (1974-2002)
The Ballad of Margot Kidder lyrics by Matt Erwin music by Todd Snelgrove There’s a story I could tell you It would change the way you think But there are people in high places That won’t let it get to ink There’s a bomb inside my purse A razor blade in my hand I foil assassins and secret agents I’m forgetting who I am Hey Margot, where did your teeth go Since the last smile on your face? Superman has to learn to walk again And he’s from outer space There’s a pine tree up in Yellowknife There’s a cardboard box down in LA Oh Margot, where is your hair? You scare me when you act this way You scare me when you act this way Hey Margot, where did your teeth go Since the last smile on your face? Superman has to learn to walk again And he’s from outer space
Todd Man Out 