Last Call

"He never looks down on anyone. I've seen him stop to help people most of us wouldn't give the time of day to. Even now, when he's in such pain and it looks like he's gonna die, he's more worried about how his friends and family are coping. He's always telling me, 'Ahh, there's people worse off than me.'"

Even at his lowest, Bobby was always there for his friends or if someone needed help. Sometimes it seemed that he played more benefits than paying gigs, "even when he had no money himself to even pay the rent," Joe says. But recently the tables were turned, and two benefits were held to raise money for Bobby's medical bills and his trip to Mexico. ("I think it's one of those things where having a place to go is what's important," Joe says, "not necessarily gettin' there.") Hundreds of friends and fans showed up to support Bobby and listen to more than a dozen bands.

"When Bobby was going through rough times, he lost some members of his bands because of his problems," Joe says. "But they still like him and come in to jam with him. All of those guys brought their bands to the benefits."

Bobby isn't one to take something for nothing, either. "He and his boys played at his own benefit," Joe points out. "Basically, he just wants to play. He'd play 24 hours a day if he could.

"I can't tell you the number of times I've seen him in here during the day, giving free guitar lessons to some kid who wants to learn to play the blues. How many professional musicians do you know who would do that?"

Joe credits Bobby with creating and sustaining the bar's Sunday night jam session. "It's outlasted every other blues jam in this town," he says. "Sometimes the bands that were playing at the other clubs would show up here to jam."

And none of the musicians, including those from bigger, well-known bands, was better than Bobby Hornbuckle.

B.B. Walker of B.B. Walker and the Roadsters, a band that used to play in Denver and has found success in California, pays tribute to Bobby every time he plays, Joe says. "He always says, 'I stole this song from Bob Hornbuckle, a good friend of mine in Denver. It was not complete until he showed me the guitar licks.' Every time."

A beer distributor walks in the back door with cases of Coors Light for that night's crowd. He and Joe get into a discussion about baseball player Roberto Alomar spitting on an umpire.

"Aaaah, they shoulda kicked his ass out for spittin' on that ump," says the beer guy. "What's the world comin' to?"

"I don't know," Joe says, wagging his head as he looks down at the floor and his cowboy boots. "What bothers me the most is the kind of example it sets for kids. My son won't even watch the games anymore, and he loves baseball. He's lost interest 'cause of that."

The beer guy leaves, and Joe starts talking about Bobby and drugs. From the beginning, the two men--the blues musician and the former drug enforcement agent--knew where they stood. "I told him where I was coming from and that I wouldn't put up with drugs in the bar. He said he wouldn't," Joe recalls.

"Now, I don't know if that meant that he was going back in the alley and doing something. But he never brought it up in my face. Even when I'd go over to his house as a friend, there wouldn't be anything laying around...no needles, no roaches in the ashtray. He respected me too much to make me uncomfortable, even in his own home. And I respected him."

Their relationship has not been without its rough spots. Many nights, after hours, the two have had it out. "Usually me telling him he needed to quit drinking so much," Joe says. "And him telling me I need to quit badgering him about drinking so much. Then we'd get to talking... about life, our kids, the blues.

"I've kicked him out of here once. Usually, it's been Bobby who gets so mad that he walks out the door like he's never coming back. A few days later he'll walk back in and act as if nothing had happened."

But Joe knows that one of these days Bobby's going to walk out of Ziggie's--and he won't be coming back.

It was Brian who called Joe to say that his father had cancer.
Joe's a tough guy. A cowboy. A cop. He's been knocked around, shot, stomped and done his share in return. But this is hard. "He looks terrible," he says of his friend. "Now, I know some people say, 'Oh, Bob Hornbuckle, he's a junkie' or 'He owes me money,' and that may be true. But if you are Bobby Hornbuckle's friend, you have the best friend you'll ever know."

Joe pauses to look around his tired old bar. "If you haven't heard him play, you've really missed something," he says. "Some of the heart and soul of this place will go with him."

Whiskey and women almost
wrecked my life.
--John Lee Hooker

Cathy lives in an immense home on top of a hill in one of those new, upper-crust house farms with wide, lazy streets where the children, as well as the sidewalks, dogs, cars and windows, all look recently scrubbed. The back of the house faces the Front Range. Standing on her sunny front porch, she can see the downtown Denver skyline, which on this day gasps beneath a dark haze.

Cathy needs no such reminders that she lives in an entirely different world from the one she left behind when she walked away from Bobby Hornbuckle. She's so far removed--physically and intellectually, if not emotionally--that she asked that her full name not be used in this story.

At 45, she remains a beautiful woman: green-eyed, her hair now blond and short. She tries to run six miles every day, having picked up a fitness bug after leaving Bobby. Her husband, to whom she has been married six years, is a successful real estate entrepreneur.

Cathy leads the way past a sunny, plant-filled room with a baby grand piano to a Better Homes and Gardens kitchen about the size of Ziggie's. On the counter are twenty videotapes focusing on such topics as developing "more loving relationships" and "making your marriage divorce-proof." Even in the best of circumstances, she notes, relationships take work.

It's been a tough year for Cathy. Her sister recently died from cancer, soon after which she got a call from her ex. He, too, had cancer; it also looked bad.

The memory of the telephone call still brings tears to Cathy's eyes. Fourteen years after she left him, she still can't decide how she feels about Bobby. Hates him. Pities him. Admires him. Gets mad at him. And yes, there's even a little love left over for the boy with the guitar in the photo album.

When she left the marriage, Bobby told her she was holding him back. But when his career took a nosedive after she was gone, part of her felt vindicated. "The other part knew that what was bad for Bobby would be bad for the boys," she says. "I didn't wish that...I wanted him to get his life together."

She had seen plenty of the damage done to others in that scene. The drummer in the band in which they'd met had since died from alcohol and drug abuse--after borrowing money from Cathy that he, as a junkie, of course never repaid.

Bobby had been so gifted. But it was almost as if he were afraid of success. He had sabotaged every real chance with drugs and alcohol, losing gigs left and right, chasing off band members and people who might have helped him make the big time. "Every night he played, it was a party," Cathy remembers. "It was like the little boy who never got to have a childhood decided to have one as an adult.

"He might think he was, but he was not at his best when he was so drugged-up that he would stumble around and mumble the words or forget what song he was playing. When he was using drugs, he did not give his audience what they deserved, and that was to see him at his magnificent best."

Like Bobby's mother, there was nothing Cathy could do to save her husband. But for fourteen years she has worked to save her children from following in his footsteps.

It hasn't been easy. The boys worship their father. They want to be musicians. And if that's what they want, she won't try to stop them, only make them aware of the traps their father walked into.