Today is a sad day for Prairie Flyer. About 7:30 this morning I got a call from Andre’, which is not that unusual but I could tell by his voice that something was wrong. It was then that he told me that Richard Doble had died from a heart attack somewhere in Texas.

I met Richard about 12-13 years ago at a bluegrass festival in Sandpoint, Idaho. We had an instant connection, singing Little Feat songs and others that only the two of us knew the words to until about 5 o’clock in the morning. I know we pissed a few people off that night but it was magic for us because we kept going, one obscure song after another until it was time for me to drive home. I will never forget that morning.

I didn’t see Richard for awhile and didn’t really know how to get in touch with him until one night I was working patrol on the south side of Spokane and I saw him coming out of a convenience store at about 1 am. I talked with him a bit and we exchanged phone numbers and that began a long singing partnership that lasted until just a few years ago.

In 1997 we performed as a group with Nikki Young(now Clevenger), Don Oberg and Ru Searson. Richard and I had sung publicly before as a duo and we were particularly fond of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings and learned a lot of their songs. We called ourselves The Barley Brothers even before we hooked up with Nikki and Ru but kept the name after we started the band.

Throughout his time with The Barley Brothers/Prairie Flyer, he provided a strong, gruff baritone to my tenor and to me it was such a pleasure to hear the blend of our voices if we were on stage or traveling to and from a gig. We sang all the time in the truck if he wasn’t sleeping, which was much of the time. During those road trips we got to know each other quite well and shared a lot of tall tales as only road trips can do. I can still tell story after story of things we would do. One of my favorite things was whenever we would go to a small town we would look for a bakery or coffee shop and ask if we could go in and sing a few numbers, which was very easy for him but extremely hard for me because I’m pretty shy at heart. We would inevitably be given a loaf of bread or some coffee or something and once in awhile we would sell a CD or two and invite the locals to the show. But we did it mostly just so we could sing.

I talked to Richard last weekend when I was getting ready for a show in Pasco, Washington. He called me from the road and told me that he had “The Dust of Oklahoma” on his wheels and was currently in Texas. We talked about his upcoming birthday on Monday and how I was going to send him a copy of Levon Helm’s Dirt Farmer CD because I thought there was some stuff on there that he could learn and maybe the next time we were together we could work out some harmonies. He was in good spirits and laughed quite a bit. The last thing he said was something about having to pull into the weigh station and then we said goodbye, neither one of us knowing that it would be the last time.

My heart has been pretty heavy today as you might imagine. I considered Richard to be like a brother to me and even though we drifted a little after he left the band, I thought of him as a friend and always will.

To quote Steve Earle:

We’ll meet again on some bright highway
With songs to sing and tales to tell
I am just a Pilgrim on the road boys
Until I see you fare thee well

We’ll miss you Richard.