Written by Joe Peppercorn | 08 December 2009

Welcome to the Treehouse blog. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Joe Peppercorn and I bartend at the Treehouse every Thursday and Saturday, run the open mic every Wednesday, and run the door every Friday. I am also a church organist, a father, an amateur animal husbandry afficianado and now, a real live blogger. Here you will find tri or bi-weekly entries wherein I will discuss the ins and outs of the Treehouse: meaning mostly music, movies, friendship, life and whatever else pops into my mind as I contemplate The Tree.

Let’s start with the name of the blog and where it came from.

In July 2008, I had a lot of exciting things happen in my life: I played wii Mario Kart for the first time, started recording an album, saw Iron Man a second time in the theater, wrote a couple songs, learned how to bartend, and met a guy who--for the sake of this story--I will call Dave Brady. Bartending is a great gig at the Treehouse, except for when Dave Brady comes around.

On a random Thursday in July, the weather was hot, the sun was shining gorgeously and I figured most customers would stay away from the Treehouse until sundown. I love the Treehouse as much as the next guy, but who would want to be in the Treehouse 2 hours before sundown on a gorgeous day BY HIMSELF? Dave Brady answered the question rather quickly. He arrived covered in paint and stumbled through the door asking where everyone was. I nervously said ‘well, I guess they are enjoying the beautiful day eh?’ Dave Brady laughed with an abrasive cachinnation that I unfortunately was about to become all too familiar with over the course of the next year. Dave Brady was wearing all white and was covered in paint and I asked him how the painting was going. He looked shocked for a second and aggressively asked how I knew what he was doing for a living. I tried to explain to him that I was a sort of Sherlock Holmes of Clinton Township and he responded by muttering “whatever man, I’m just doing my thing.” Little did I know what kind of horrors Dave-Brady-doing-his-thing entailed. He ordered a PBR, made himself comfortable on a stool and began ‘talking’ to me, which for most people involves a series of questions and answers, anecdotes, jokes and a general getting to know you thing where you connect with another human being on a number of levels. For Dave Brady, this meant berating your ‘conversation partner’ (person in front of you) with stories detailing exactly how you end up in the Treehouse at 7:15 PM on a beautiful Thursday, covered in paint and screaming ‘go suck an alligator tail’ at random costumers once the sun had set. Oh wait, I am getting ahead of myself.

So I tried to chat politely with Dave Brady at first, asking about music and he responded to my surface questions with explicit details of his life. It was like a Johnny Cash autobiography except instead of finding redemption in sobriety, family and gorgeous music, Dave Brady found whatever it was he found in ruining my night. We don’t have flies in the Treehouse, but for the sake of the story, let’s imagine we did have flies and let’s imagine one of them is on the wall and let’s imagine that it has the capacity to understand slurred, horrible English. Here is what the fly would have heard:

"man, I am painting a high school right now and it sucks man, I been painting it for two months and these carpet guys show up a week ago to lay down carpet and they think they F---ing OWN THE PLACE! CARPET GUYS! I HATE THE CARPET GUYS!"

"man, I paint a high school man, I do whatever to get money to buy some beer man, I drink beer whenever man, drink at lunch, you drink before you eat man and that’s how you get drunk without spending too much money man"

"man,  I remember in high school man, my mom would give me lunch money and I wouldn’t eat lunch man, I would save the money and buy mushrooms with the money man, you wouldn’t need to eat believe me, I did mushrooms, drank beer man, I didn’t need lunch but I would say to my mom, hey mom can I get some more money for lunch! HA HA HA HA!"

"man, I jam man, I play music and jam but nobody wants to jam with me, I play in a metal band man, with my newphew, but my sister don’t want me coming around man, she don’t get it man, I’m just doing my thing man and that’s the only thing that I know how to do"

"man, I play music man, I know all that s---, like Jimi Hendrix, Yngwie Malmstein, Jon Petrucci, Paige man, Jimmy Paige, Van Halen man, they had some good stuff, I know ALL THAT S--- MAN, ALL THAT S---, I can play ANYTHING! I can play my d--- off man, nobody f---ing gets it man, music is MY LIFE, MY LIFE, and nobody f---ing gets it"

THESE GUYS know what he is talking about.

Even through all of this verbal jackhammering, I maintained a sense of empathy and was wondering if perhaps this was a guy down on his luck on a bad day, so I still tried to maintain my patience. That is until he screamed his name at me- ‘I AM Dave Brady, Dave Brady MOTHERF---ER’ and I responded by saying ‘take it easy Dave’ and he turned with horror and asked ‘how the f--- do you know my name?’

It was quite an introduction to one of the locals that continued through the night, through the arrival of customers and culminated with him screaming at the entire bar (from the couch) ‘nobody f---ing gets it man, music is MY LIFE! MY LIFE!’ I asked him to leave and he went outside and slammed the door screaming ‘GO SUCK AN ALLIGATOR TAIL, I WILL DEVASTATE YOU.’

Flash forward a few months and you get several return visits of pretty much the same thing, sneaking in his own beer, ruining people’s nights, and finally playing open mic.

I love running the open mic, and if there is one thing I have learned in doing it is that there are always surprises and that people can rarely be judged by their appearance. Guys who look like they have it totally together end up sounding like this and guys who look like Dave Brady end up sounding like this.

Well, Dave Brady played like he talked, and for those of you not keeping score, Dave Brady talking is to normal person talking as kids who can only play with duplo legos is to kid who can play with normal legos. It was horrible, I have video, anyone who wants to see it has to understand that if you watch it, you will die in seven days unless you show the video to someone else. There was an attempted Hendrix cover, an attempted Zeppelin cover and then finally an attempt at an attempt at a lot of notes? He blamed me for sabotaging his amp? Then he insisted that I had hid the plug to his pedal, and then he told me I did not want him to play the open mic (well, some truth in there). He finished his set by screaming at the ROOM: “HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT!?” And thus, a blog is born. It was the first time I had heard him use the catchphrase, but he returned the next week and screamed the same phrase several times at people trying to enjoy their evening. He also continually mistook the CSI episode on TV for Dragnet several times within the same one hour period, berated the owner for not letting him play the open mic that was not taking place that night? And told everyone how music was his life.

Needless to say, we now live an Dave Bradyless existence of peace and tranquility at the Treehouse. We sent a peasant to a village to recruit seven samurai on a particular night we sensed he would come around, and after a long battle and repeated beratings, after we were made to realize how much we really do not get it, after once again hearing HOW DO YOUUUU LIKE THAT! We were let loose. As salesman Moss said “he went out on his own, and was free.”

So that’s the story of Dave Brady, the story of this blog’s name and an instruction manual for how not to behave the next time you go to a bar. So how do you like that? Next entry will be about Christmas music and last year’s holiday extravaganza at the Treehouse.