Page 88 - Been There… Done That!

Gary Graham
I had met a guitar player, Steve Edwards in San Francisco, but I had never heard him play. Keith said Steve was really a kick-ass player, so we flew him to Missouri and it was then that we really started getting a groove going. We were doing all kinds of music from Elvis to Johnny Rivers, with a little blues thrown in and maybe a country song or two. By that spring we had a lot of bookings and offers coming in. My manager was pressing me to go back to L.A. and Voss wanted me back in San Francisco. At that point, I felt like I had my head pretty damn clear and then I broke my leg and shattered my ankle messing around with a horse.
What happened was I had roped a wild pony and come off the horse and was trying to get my footing on the ground so I could run up to the pony, but I didn’t see a big rock sticking up from the field and it just shattered my ankle. I still have a stainless steel screw through that ankle and can still see the scar. It doesn’t hurt anymore, but it can set off the metal detector at the airport. Then I heard one of the worst things a performer could hear when the doctor announced I was going to walk with a limp. I was supposed to keep the cast on for eight and a half months, but after four months, I knocked the thing off with a hammer. I couldn’t believe I was going to walk with a limp.
The band members apparently lost faith in me and I think it was because they thought I was going to limp. Keith went to San Francisco and wouldn’t say why, but I knew. I went to my folk’s place and sat on a bar stool with my leg on a beer keg and continued to play and still made pretty damn good money. I was determined to overcome the problem and that was why I removed the cast after
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