In 1986, hunted by a serious drug addiction, country music legend and notorious bad boy Waylon Jennings covered the song “Will the Wolf Survive?” by the Chicano rock group Los Lobos. Jennings named an album after the song and used it to speak to kicking a cocaine habit, crafting a version suffused with a yearning to stay alive.
“Through the chill of winter / running across the frozen lake / hunters are out on his trail / all odds are against him / with a family to provide for / the one thing he must keep alive / Will the wolf survive?” Jennings crooned.
There’s something archetypal about a formerly hard-living troubadour realizing with a mix of regret and grace that life is seriously fucking short and you need to take each day breathing as another lucky break. (See also David Bowie‘s beautifully sad Blackstar and Leonard Cohen‘s You Want It Darker.)
Prolific country musician Mark LeGrand understands that struggle, though he hardly needs ol’ Waylon’s reminder these days. The Montpelier-based bard, who has long been open about his recovery from alcoholism, has been wrestling with his own mortality for the past year or so — and learning the power of the word “survival.”
It all started last year after LeGrand played a set at his local pub of choice, Bent Nails Bistro. LeGrand and his partner, fellow musician Sarah Munro, have held down a residency in the space for years, dating back to its incarnations as Sweet Melissa’s and the Langdon Street Café. LeGrand referred to those gigs as his and Munro’s “date nights,” a chance to play music and connect with their friends in the local scene.
As LeGrand left the stage on this night, however, he grew dizzy and his legs wobbled. Not long after, he was hospitalized and given the grim news: He had stomach cancer.
“My first reaction was Hell, I never get sick,” LeGrand told me by phone last weekend from his Montpelier home. “No such luck, though.”
In October, once he was strong enough for surgery, doctors removed LeGrand’s stomach and spleen. A subsequent blood infection sent him back to the sickbed for more than a month.
“My brother had cancer as well,” LeGrand said. “He told me that my worst enemy would be my own mind. And let me tell you, 40 days in the hospital … You better have a good hold of your mind.”
After returning home in November, LeGrand found it wasn’t just his body that had undergone a drastic change. For a while, he couldn’t watch certain films or even enjoy a football game because the violence disturbed him. He felt zero creative impulses; the idea of writing music seemed almost alien, not that he could anyway. In the immediate aftermath of the surgery, LeGrand lost strength in his hands and couldn’t even form a G chord on the guitar.
“An assault on the body like that changes the mind as well,” LeGrand said. “I was in strict survivor mentality; I had no impulse for rhythm or desire to pick up a guitar.
“I felt like a different person who was just, you know…” After a pause, he laughed and concluded: “I was just trying to stay alive, man.”
A month removed from the surgery, LeGrand’s hands started to recover, and he could form chords on the guitar again. He began eating and gaining weight earlier than his doctors expected. Soon, playing music seemed possible. Which was fortuitous, because Plainfield musician “Banjo” Dan Lindner approached LeGrand with an idea: a benefit concert at Bent Nails Bistro to raise money for LeGrand’s heavy medical bills.
Lindner is a local bluegrass giant who formed the much-loved Banjo Dan and the Mid-nite Plowboys in the ’70s and now fronts the VT Bluegrass Pioneers. He said he never doubted that he could rally his fellow musicians to LeGrand’s cause.
“It was just the feeling in the air around town,” Lindner said by phone. “It was this no-brainer sort of thing. We all knew we had to do something for Mark; it was just a question of what.
“I don’t know details, but Mark is a musician — we tend to not make much money,” Lindner continued. “So we want to help out the only way we know, which is to play some music.”
With the help of the folks at Bent Nails, Lindner organized the Benefit Concert for Mark LeGrand, which will take place on Sunday, January 28, at the club. Four solid hours of music feature a lineup 10 acts deep, including blues stalwarts the Dave Keller Band, singer-songwriter Chad Hollister, country artist Tim Brick and High Summer‘s Miriam Bernardo.
“This community has really been through the wringer lately,” Lindner said. “Between COVID and the flooding, it’s just been a rough run. But this is the most supportive music scene; there was never a doubt we’d do something for Mark.”
LeGrand acknowledged that the show is about him, but he believes it’s actually more about the community, whose effort on his behalf blows him away.
“Seeing something like this take shape so quickly, it reminded me of how good Montpelier is at self-support and checking in on each other,” he said.
The show represents something more than financial benefit to LeGrand: the sheer hope of playing music again. He misses going to Bent Nails with Munro and being around their friends and fellow musicians. Though he still has chemotherapy looming, his recovery has gone well enough that he might even play a few songs at his own benefit show.
“We’ll have to see, but I’m hoping it can happen,” LeGrand said. “Either way, it just being a possibility gives me optimism and gives me hope that I’ll be gigging again. Hope can be hard to come by, but music has always done that for me — it takes me out of whatever my current trauma might be. And that hope can lead to survival.”
For more information, check out bentnailsbistro.com.
This article appears in Jan 10-16, 2024.
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