Remembering Jeff Hickey

I knew Jeff Hickey for over 30 years, and worked very closely with him for most of that time, and he was one of my very favorite people. From a certain perspective, he was a very unlikely kind of hero, and the kind that our success-obsessed society rarely recognizes. In fact, it would be easy to belittle his life and achievements, and if you used any of the standard financial and status-based yardsticks we use to measure people, he would not stand out in the crowd. But he lived his unique life with great passion and dedication to his own set of ideals, and he did a great many things very well. He didn’t golf at the country club or lunch with the power brokers, but he had an unusually large number of circles of friends scattered widely, who loved and appreciated him.

We met in a bar in Nashville in 1979, where we were both exploring our chances as songwriters in Music City. I was struck by his powerful voice and guitar, and his finely-crafted lyrics.  His songs were good enough for him to “make it” there, but he couldn’t stand the Nashville system and “establishment” once he saw how the channels of money and power worked. Jeff would have also made a fine gypsy; he knew the game and was good at it. He traveled as long and hard as anyone I ever knew, but eventually chose to settle and become a family man. He didn’t drive a fancy car or wear expensive clothes, though he played a superb guitar through a very nice sound system. He had a college degree and was very well-read and informed, and would have made a fine intellectual, but he abandoned that path in favor of an earthier existence, among the people. He loved the power that the words of songs had over the listeners in daily life, and found considerable meaning in playing music in taverns others might have scorned.
Jeff Hickey called me unfailingly, every year on July 14 (the day he died…), and wished me, in French always, a “Joyeux quatorze juillet” or “Happy Bastille Day,” and then he would laugh heartily and demand that I grab my pitchfork to help him storm the castle to behead the king. He would have made a fine French Revolutionary peasant, but I am glad he instead chose to be a quirky modern American who saw life through his own eyes and lived according to his own set of values. I am richer for having known him, and I wish I could line up for all to see all the other people who also will miss him dearly. Their sheer number, their collective accomplishments, and the depth to which they will also miss Jeff stand as a powerful but barely visible testament to a fine man who left a large but not easily measurable imprint on his surroundings. Au Revoir, mon ami.

Chordally yours,

Harvey Reid
York, Maine