Keep Your Hands to Yourself – Georgia Satellites

Some bands get a proper stage. We got dinner tables.

One night near Ole Miss, we pushed those tables together and stood on them to play. That was our stage. The band was Bendover, with Ben Hagler, Eric Dover, and me. We only played one or two gigs, but apparently that was enough to earn a permanent booking in my memory.

This one is for Ben.

Ben was a man of big stature, with an appetite that deserved its own tour rider. At Taco Bell, he would order ten tacos, meat and cheese only. When he ordered a big steak, he told them to keep the garnish. He did not even want it sitting beside the steak, trying to look useful.

His explanation was simple: “The only thing green I eat is Jell-O.”

You remember a line like that. Years later, you can still hear your friend saying it.

Ben would come hang out, play gigs, and sometimes sit in with Another Roadside Attraction. After enough years, we shortened that name to Roadside. The friendships carried on through different combinations of musicians, different rooms, and whatever adventures happened between songs.

At the hotel afterward, Ben could fall asleep sitting straight up. I can still picture him there. Somewhere among the gigs, the tacos, the steaks, and those improvised stages, we were making memories we would eventually want back for an encore.

Ben loved the Georgia Satellites, so tonight’s selection is “Keep Your Hands to Yourself.” Put it on and let that guitar bring a little of that time back.

That is what I want this corner of WeRockTV to hold: the people behind the music, remembered through the details that made them themselves.

For Ben, tonight, that means ten tacos, no garnish, and a stage assembled from somebody’s dinner tables.

Thank you, Ben, for being part of my musical life. I am grateful we got to share those rooms, those laughs, and those songs.

We rock.