Spokane musician Ben Staley loses battle with cancer

Ben Staley, a key figure in Spokane’s music scene for more than four decades, died July 20 at age 59 after a six-year struggle with cancer.

“He was one of the best ever in Spokane, an unbelievable player,” said Bob Gallagher, owner of the 4000 Holes record store and a longtime observer of the local music scene.

The names of Staley’s former bands will evoke instant nostalgia for anyone who frequented local clubs and music halls from the mid-1960s on:

•The Barons

•Northern Lights

•Locksley Hall

•Shannondoah

•Silver Dollar Band

•Whiskers

•The Larson-Staley Band

•Planet Lounge Orchestra

•Two of Clubs

These musical incarnations ranged from psychedelia to country to lounge. A musician making a living in Spokane had to be, above all, flexible.

“There are the people who knew me as a hippie guitarist playing at war moratoriums,” Staley told a Spokesman-Review interviewer in 1988. “There were people that knew me back when I was a whiskey-drinking hell-raiser in a cowboy hat. But a lot of those people don’t really know me at all.”

Staley’s closest brush with wider fame came with Locksley Hall, generally regarded as Spokane’s first and best “hippie” band. Epic Records signed them in the early 1970s and they moved to L.A. to record. But the band was already coming apart and the record company eventually cut them off.

Even as a student at Shadle Park High School, Staley was a guitar whiz and songwriting prodigy. He turned his talent into a lifelong career, yet no one should ever mistake it for an easy career.

“It’s hell,” he told another S-R interviewer in 1979. “You take a beating. You’re up one day and down the next. You have to be a philosopher, psychologist and comedian. You really have to love doing it, because you don’t do it for the money.”

Staley once said that “we like people to have fun with us.” Gallagher said that if Staley “hadn’t been successful in music, he would probably have been a stand-up comic.”

Over thousands of appearances, Staley created a lot of happiness in the Inland Northwest.

Newfield postponed

Country singer Heidi Newfield’s Aug. 11 show at the Martin Woldson Theater at the Fox has been pushed back four months, to Dec. 10.

The usual explanation was given: “scheduling conflicts.” Newfield’s tour itinerary had her pinballing across the West, from Wyoming to Spokane to South Dakota, in four days.

The Fox box office will be calling all ticketholders and issuing new tickets. If you can’t make the new date, you can get a full refund.

The December show will include a little something extra: Newfield, former lead singer for the country megaband Trick Pony, will do some Christmas songs along with her other material.

Bravo to Verne

This year’s Bravo Award went to Verne Windham, the artistic director of the Spokane Youth Symphony, last Sunday night at the Royal Fireworks Festival and Concert.

The Bravo Award is presented each year by Allegro’s David Dutton and Beverly Biggs to the individual or group who has given outstanding support to the performing arts in Spokane.

Windham is also well known as Spokane Public Radio’s program director and on-air host.

Previous winners include Myrtle Woldson, Rosemary Sellinger and Elizabeth Welty.

We’re off to see …

The Oz-vitational – the art show based on themes inspired by “The Wizard of Oz” – opens Friday at the Tinman Gallery, 811 W. Garland Ave.

You can see 40 original art pieces with themes ranging from, we presume, the Munchkins to Toto. The opening event and reception will be Friday from 5 to 9 p.m. Enjoy live music and “Oz-cream.”

The Magic continues

Here’s a little more information about the newest incarnation of the Magic Lantern Theatre, Spokane’s art-house cinema at 25 W. Main Ave.:

•It features a coffee bar and desserts from Madeleine’s.

•It’s open Wednesdays through Sundays.

•Ticket prices are only $5 for an eclectic mix of foreign and indie films (go to www. magiclantern spokane.com for a schedule).

And we owe it all to Joe Davis, a medical resident at Sacred Heart Medical Center and serious film connoisseur, who bought the theater a while back.

He said his goal is to make it a place where you can sit with friends, chat, eat, drink and then watch an intriguing movie. The original plan was to have beer and wine, but liquor license complications have delayed that until at least September.

Davis said he “doesn’t have a ton of time” to devote to the theater, which is probably an understatement. Yet he has found plenty of people, including some of his fellow residents, to help out.

“We just said, ‘Let’s open it, have some fun, and see what happens,’ ” said Davis.

So far, so good, he says.