About 11 years ago, Dave Gallaher was driving to go play a gig when he received a cellphone call informing him Stephen King had written about Gallaher’s band, Microwave Dave & The Nukes, in King’s final column for Entertainment Weekly magazine.
Yes, that Stephen King. As in one of best-selling, best-everything authors alive. The guy who wrote landmark tomes of terror and fantasy like “Carrie,” “It,” “Misery,” “Salem’s Lot,” “The Stand” and a leg’s-length list of others. Many of which have been adapted into hit movies.
In his EW adieu, King singled out The Nukes’ live version of “Highway 49,” a blues song popularized by Howlin’ Wolf and powered by Gallaher’s force-of-nature slide guitar. The clip also benefited from locomotive rhythms by Nukes bassist Rick Godfrey and drummer James Irvin. The Nukes were playing for a small crowd in the clip, but the music still moved King. “That electric slide guitar will change your way of life,” King wrote in EW.
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About three years later, King gave The Nukes props again. He included Microwave Dave track “Pay Bo Diddley” in a playlist of songs he listened to regularly while penning his latest best-selling novel, “Doctor Sleep,” a sequel to 1977 spellbinder “The Shining.” King’s playlist was published on a Portland, Ore. bookstore’s blog. “I have a playlist for every novel I write,” King wrote on the blog. “The music serves the book.”
Then in January 2014 on Twitter, where King has more than 6 million followers, King posted, “Microwave Dave and the Nukes: Best slide guitar rock and roll since Lonesome George Thorogood and the Destroyers.”
Gallaher tells me King’s shoutouts “stirred up a lot of interest in us. And it gave is a kind of credibility, that he found something in us worthy of his attention. I was amazed.”
Now, King has amazed Gallaher again. Because King took time out from his ever-productive schedule to write a sincere and colorful forward to a new coffee table book about Gallaher, “I’m a Roadrunner: Life and Times of a Bluesman.” The 168-page book tells Gallaher’s epic arc through essays and more than 100 photographs. From his Texas childhood, to worldwide touring elite guitarist, to gracefully accepting his destiny as Huntsville’s most iconic musician. Gallaher has lived several lives. “I’m a Roadrunner” lets you live some of them too.
Named for The Nukes’ hit Bo Diddley cover, the “I’m a Roadrunner” book costs $35. It’s available for order Oct. 22 via microwavedavemef.org. In Huntsville, the book will be available early, at an Oct. 21 book release party, 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at The Open Bottle, 7061 Hwy. 72 W. in Madison. Tickets to that event are $25 via eventbrite.com, and include drinks, heavy hors d’oeuvre and live music by talented jazz/folk musician Ingrid Marie Felts.
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You’ll have to buy the book to read King’s forward in entirety. But he details how he first heard Gallaher’s music while driving in his car and listening to “Little Steven’s Underground Garage,” E Street Band guitarist Steven Van Zant’s Sirius/XM satellite radio show. King goes on to describe (as only King can) why Microwave Dave & The Nukes’ blues-rock rules. And how awesome their band name is. King closes with, “If you play the music, or if you just love the music, you’re going to love this book. God bless Microwave Dave.” And God bless you, Stephen King, for telling the world that.
Gallaher was having lunch at a local meat-and-three restaurant with Dennis Keim, who’s photographed Gallaher for 30 years, and Karen Corp, who came up with the book idea, when they surprised him with news King wrote the forward.
“They just pushed this letter (with King’s forward printed on it) over in front of me to read,” Gallaher says. “And I’m like, holy cow, how did they do this? They asked him to do it and he stepped up. But people ask me all the time, ‘What’s he (King) like?’ I don’t know. I’ve never met him. I’ve never had a chance to say thank you to him for all these different things he’s done. It’s made a big difference for us.”
Patricia Sammon wrote the book’s essays, culling from hours of interviews conducted with Gallaher on the patio of a Huntsville brewery. “I had a lot of recall in her company,” Gallaher says. “Things would come back to me that I hadn’t thought about. You don’t always get that either.”
Photos where sourced from local photographers, friends, Gallaher’s personal archives and even from an ex-wife. Initially, Gallaher wasn’t into the idea of a book about him, but eventually came around as long as they stayed out of “tell all” territory. If you’re into musician books that trash former bandmates, lovers, record labels, etc., keep scanning the shelf.
Recalling King’s past raves about The Nukes, Corp wrote to his manager. She was psyched to hear back King agreed to write contribute. She passed along the deadline. “And on that day,” Corp says, “I received an email directly from Stephen King with the foreword. He was incredibly generous to do this and is a wonderfully nice man. Very down to earth.”
Some memorable images from “I’m a Roadrunner” include a photo of a strapping James Dean-looking Gallaher delivering copies of the Houston Chronicle from a motorbike. There’s a great shot of him as a touring musician backstage with country stars Naomi and Wynonna Judd at a 1985 festival.
As a young boy, Gallaher first got into the blues from listening to late-night deejays to ward off nighttime terrors. As he grew older and into a musician, he got to see soul music godfather James Brown perform live several times, which left a lifelong impression on him. Here’s where the book and Gallaher’s entire life pivots: While serving as an Air Force intelligence specialist in the Vietnam War, he decided if he made it back home safely, he’d “play music the rest of my life and make people feel better.”
Asked if there’s a theme that runs through the book, Corp says, “Follow your bliss. Dave could have done a lot of things, but music was his passion. Because of this, he has enriched the lives of many, many people.”
Corp and Keim are both board members of Microwave Dave Music Education Foundation, the nonprofit that provides funds to local musicians to perform in area schools. Sales of the book benefit the foundation, which held a fundraiser earlier this year to pay for the book’s funding. Who knows? Perhaps one of those kids that hears a musician perform at his or her school will one day start their own band … And 30 or so years later someone will make a book about that kid’s life too.
Copies of “I’m A Roadrunner” will also be at Microwave Dave Day. A daylong concert featuring local bands that launched in 2015 as a tribute to Gallaher, MDD quickly blossomed into a can’t miss day of Huntsville music. Things happen there musically that don’t happen anywhere else at local Huntsville shows.
This year’s Microwave Dave Day is 3 to 10 p.m. Oct. 24 at Stovehouse, address 3414 Governors Drive S.W. As always, the lineup is all-local and includes a set by Microwave Dave & The Nukes. An all-star jam is the cherry on top. The event is free to attend, although donations are welcomed and benefit the MDMEF.
Gallaher started The Nukes in 1989. He’d been employed as a woodworker, but when it looked like that day job would soon dry-up he stopped by Godfrey’s stained-glass shop looking for work. Soon, Godfrey took up the bass. They started jamming at the shop before taking things to the stage. The Nukes went through several drummers over the years before an effervescent 22-year-old Irvin, influenced much more by Nirvana than Muddy Waters, joined in 2004. It gave the band a jolt The Nukes are still riding.
Post-Vietnam, Gallaher had lived in Boston, studied at the Berklee College of Music and joined a rock band called Cameron, which later relocated to Florida and on one memorable mid ‘70s night jammed with Allman Brothers guitarist Dickey Betts and singer Gregg Allman. It was Gregg’s brother Duane Allman’s bottleneck licks on Aretha Franklin’s 1970 gospel-soul cover of “The Weight” that drew Gallaher to slide guitar, which became his own superpower on the instrument.
Later, the Nukes recorded with producer Johnny Sandlin, known for his work with the Allmans. Once they even opened for heavy-metal legends Iron Maiden. In recent years, The Nukes have become increasingly difficult to categorize musically, zigzagging from ZZ Top boogie to ethereal excursions influenced by The Police. And beyond.
He has at least six Nukes/solo albums to his credit, the last being 2011′s soulful “Last Time I Saw You.” Lately he’s been writing songs again. The tunes are more in folk-mode and even spirituals than roadhouse rockers. “I have no idea what I’m doing with folk songs,” Gallaher says. “But I’ve got some.” However it’s hard for him to get excited about recording and releasing new music in the Spotify age. “You’re feeding the system by going along with it,” Gallaher says. “But the actual making of a record, I love it and I miss it. But right now there’s nothing in here that would really pull me in.”
Since the pandemic shutdown subsided, Gallaher has resumed weekly patio gigs 6 to 9 p.m. Thursdays at craft-beer hub The Nook, address 3305 Bob Wallace Ave. S.W.
So what does Gallaher hope people who read his book will get from it? “Music itself has leveled more paths for me than anything I can think of,” he says. “It has created opportunities and it has paved over problems. It has provided a consistent way through life for me, besides just the work. Every turn of my life, there it is.”
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