Club Characters #2: Roscoe Shoemaker

Came down from Oklahoma to reinvigorate a scene we took for granted

Steve Wynn, Ross Shoemaker, Scott Garber

It’s fashionable to bitch about newcomers to Austin, even though we all came from somewhere else. But some transplants are more like reinforcements, letting us know through their unbridled enthusiasm that we live in a special place.

Ross Shoemaker, who everyone here called Roscoe, came down with the great Oklahoma migration of the ‘80s. At first he was known as “the guy who recorded The Shit Hits the Fans,” the legendarily awful/perfect, drunken Replacements set at the Bowery, where he worked in Oklahoma City. God, how Roscoe loved the ‘Mats! But after you ran into him a few times and hung out at a couple 3 a.m. living room parties, you knew him as the guy who loved ALL his music deeply and sincerely. He was the pure fan, not a snob. I would tell him the Replacements were way overrated and he would laugh and rattle off 26 song titles that told me it didn’t matter what I thought.

Roscoe, who got jobs at Waterloo Records and Liberty Lunch so he could be around music full time, died May 20, 2015 in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. He’d moved back to his home state 20 years ago. Got married, had a daughter, stayed in touch. At about 9 p.m. on a Wednesday night, Ross was driving his Ford Focus when a drunk woman in a Cadillac Escalade crossed into his lane and hit him head on. He was 60. His killer got five years in prison.

Roscoe represented the good and the bad of Austin in the ‘80s, when you toyed with excesses daily because that party was too good to end. All the bands we were getting tired of — Doctors’ Mob, Wild Seeds, True Believers, Poison 13, etc. — almost became new again in Roscoe’s pure and devout worship. “His love of music was contagious,” Max Crawford of Poi Dog Pondering posted on Facebook. If you went to a show and saw Roscoe, you knew you were at the place to be.

Following Ross on Facebook was a human roller coaster ride. His bad days were painful, especially after he lost his job a couple years ago, but then he’d see a great band or run into an old friend and it would be the Roscoe of old. “Awesome” was his favorite word and it meant something when he said it.

Roscoe at Goldie’s.

I enjoyed a perfect day with Roscoe in June 2014 when I was sent to Tulsa for a story about the lawyer who represented the wife in a divorce that was settled for $1 billion. The attorney was an interesting guy, but I couldn’t wait for the interview to be over because I was meeting Ross for lunch at Goldie’s, a hamburger joint recommended by former Tulsa musician Ron Flynt. We talked about a lot of things, but mostly about the highs and lows of being a single parent. We both married dumb, but conceived wisely. Roscoe’s ex was a newlywed or about to be, so she was always calling him to modify the custody situation, he said. “I always say ‘sure,’” Roscoe told me. “I’ll take every minute I can get with my daughter.” We had a lot in common, but not all of it good. I think Roscoe was 9 months sober at the time and went to meetings.

The best part of the day was when Roscoe proudly showed me around Tulsa, with its rich musical history. Ross talked our way inside the famous Cain’s Ballroom, which would probably be a CVS right now if it was located in Austin, then drove to Leon Russell’s old church studio where Tom Petty’s band Mudcrutch recorded for the first time. Bonnie Raitt, Freddie King, Dr. John, J.J. Cale, and of course Leon, recorded there. He took me to the Woody Guthrie Museum, which is worth a long drive in itself, then showed me Guthrie Green, a fantastic free live music venue bankrolled by a billionaire music lover. He showed me the small club where Alejandro Escovedo had played just a few days earlier and where Roscoe got to catch up with his old friend. He moved away, but never really left, which is pretty common among ex-Austinites. Last stop was the intersection of Greenwood, Archer and Pine Streets, from where Tulsa’s GAP Band got their name. And where the “Black Wall Street” was destroyed by white mobs in 1921.

That was a somber end to a great day.

Roscoe with Bishop Fred Jones and Lady Sarah Jones of the Jones Family Singers at Guthrie Green 2014.

About two weeks before he passed, Roscoe proudly posted the list of Rolling Stone magazine’s “50 Greatest Live Records of All Time,” which ranked The Shit at No. 50. M’man produced one of the 50 greatest live records of all time!

If you can live a life like Ross Shoemaker did, so full of love and enthusiasm, you will have a great one. It will be a real life of ups and downs, deep sorrows and bursts of euphoria. A life that touches many.