Celebrate Harry Dean Stanton’s under-appreciated rock band career with The Call

The name is Harry, not Harvey. Harry.

Jim Goodwin, longtime keyboardist of The Call, knew that. So did Harry Dean Stanton, the sublimely original, Kentucky-born, character actor who unexpectedly stumbled into The Call’s orbit. A lot of the celebrity pals that watched Stanton take a workingman’s holiday in 1988 from a celebrated film career to tour nationally — playing vintage folk, blues and country tunes with the band — however, didn’t. And that suited the actor and his new rock star pals just fine.

The joke was triggered by Call frontman, singer and primary songwriter Michael Been, an Oklahoma City native who bestowed upon Stanton the Okie-friendly nickname of Harvey Jean.

“Michael loved to get into what we called the ‘Okie Zone,’” recalled Goodwin. “So Michael dubbed him Harvey Jean. For me, that stuck immediately. One time, we were at this small gathering for a Super Bowl party where I kept calling him Harvey Jean and the actor David Keith (of ‘An Officer and a Gentleman’ fame) took me aside and said, ‘Hey man, I don’t know what you’ve been told, but his name is Harry. His name is Harry Dean Stanton.’ And I said, ‘Oh yeah? Okay. Thank you.’ Harry found it funny because he saw people reacting to me acting like an idiot.’ He never excused me or told people, ‘Hey, he knows. It’s just a thing we have.’ He never said anything. So that was our nickname for Harry.”

The teaming of Harry Dean Stanton and The Call for a series of concert dates in the fall of 1988 serves as one of the more overlooked undertakings in the careers of either participant. It’s also a collaboration that will be celebrated at the annual Harry Dean Stanton Fest this weekend.

In the five years leading up the tour, Stanton furthered a film career that reflected remarkably diverse range and appeal. For fans of fringe/underground satire, there was “Repo Man” (1984.) For the art house set, there was the stark, dusty allure of Wim Wenders’ “Paris, Texas” (also 1984.) For comparatively mainstream tastes, there was John Hughes’ coming-of-age saga “Pretty in Pink” (1986.) All three became cult classics.

Meanwhile, The Call was slowly generating a national fanbase for potent rock music that steered clear of narrative romanticism in favor of higher, sometimes spiritually inclined inspirations. Peter Gabriel nabbed Been and company as an opener for his 1982-83 tour, just before MTV took to videos for Call songs like “The Walls Came Down.” In subsequent years, The Call earned a solid radio following through the singles “I Still Believe (Great Design),” “Everywhere I Go” and the title track to 1989’s “Let the Day Begin” album.

How The Call, Stanton met

So where did the seeds get planted for a musical collaboration between Stanton and The Call? Where else? Morocco. That where Stanton and Been met as actors in Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ.” In true upstart, rock ‘n’ roll fashion, both played apostles (Stanton was Paul, Been was John). When the day’s filming was done, cast members would gather around a nighttime fire and trade songs. That cemented a friendship between the two artists and led to plotting for a future concert trek that would come to be known as “The Broken Light Bulb at the End of the Hallway of My Heart Tour” (the title was suggested by another “Last Temptation” apostle actor, Gary Basaraba, who played Andrew.)

“We were between tours and between (record) labels,” said Goodwin, who joined The Call as keyboardist in 1983. “After the tour with Harry was when we went into the studio to do our ‘Let the Day Begin’ album. We were basically not going to do anything that fall, so we were like, ‘Let’s book a tour with Harry.’ We wanted to see if we could get enough people who, out of curiosity, would want to watch us do something different. And to see Harry. We also wanted to see if it would pay for itself. And it did. We didn’t lose any money, we were able to stay sharp and have a good time and, play, perform and do material that we didn’t normally do. It had all this upside and no downside. We needed something to do and Harry was game.”

The tour was less of a standard rock club presentation and more of a relaxed, living room session with Been forsaking his usual duties in The Call (where he also played bass) to serve as harmonizer, co-guitarist and general foil for Stanton’s love of vintage Americana music. The tour made stops in Lexington, Louisville and Cincinnati.

“Michael realized back in Morocco that their two voices had a blend that was super magic,” Goodwin said. “Sure enough, when we were doing those songs, they made it really intimate, like you were pulled into a living room situation. That’s what was magic about those shows for sure.”

Interviewing Harry Dean Stanton

The only interview I ever had with Stanton followed the Louisville performance at the tiny Preston Street club Uncle Pleasant’s. After complimenting him on a slow, quietly soulful reading of the country murder ballad “Long Black Veil,” Stanton took a moment to appraise my appraisal.

“So then, the rest of the show was just ...” He ended the sentence with a solid, pronounced vocal raspberry.

“That is so Harry,” Goodwin said with a laugh. “The persona I think he really worked on to project in public was kind of curmudgeonly. You were probably going to get some kind of ... not dismissive, but dark response to just about anything. He liked being that guy who was kind of crabby, kind of malcontent. That’s exactly how he wanted to come across in public all the time. But of course, in private life, he was such a sweetheart. He tried to be a hard ass, but when he was really relaxed and was really himself when no one was watching, so to speak, he was such a sweetheart.”

The Call disbanded in 2000. Been retired from performance life but maintained a more familial offstage role in son Robert Levon Been’s popular San Francisco band Black Rebel Motorcycle Club as sound engineer up until his death in 2010 at age 60 (his last visits to Lexington went almost undetected as he assisted BRMC for same-day shows at The Dame and CD Central in 2008.) Stanton worked on films up until his death in 2017 at the age of 91.

Lexington reunion

The spirits of both, however, will be reignited this weekend for the 13th Harry Dean Stanton Fest. The three surviving members of The Call — Goodwin, drummer Scott Musick and guitarist Tom Ferrier — will reunite for only the third time since Been’s death for a July 12 performance at The Green Lantern. (The first reunion, in 2013, enlisted Robert Levon Been to sing his late father’s songs.)

“Scott and I will be doing most of the singing, so it won’t be anything like what The Call was with Michael Been. We won’t even have a bass. I’ll play piano and kind of piano bass, Tom will play guitar and Scott will play drums, so it’s just the three of us. The festival will be a really nice opportunity for Tom, Scott and I to spend time together and play music together again. I’m really looking forward to it. I’m sure Tom and Scott are, as well.

“I finally came to realize, after all those years, how special that material was that we did with Michael. I was really lucky, because I got to write a handful of the songs with him. At the time, I kind of took that for granted. It wasn’t until all those years later that I saw how lucky I was that I got to even have that experience. “You really have to look at the power of the arts to at least help awaken people’s personal experiences and put them in some kind of perspective,” Been told me in an interview prior to a sold-out November 1989 concert at the long-since-demolished Lexington club Breeding’s.

“All I know is that music has done that for me.”

Harry Dean Stanton Fest

Here is the full lineup of events for the 13th Annual Harry Dean Stanton Fest.

July 11

▪ “The Straight Story” screening at Blue Grass Memorial Gardens (Harry Dean Stanton’s final resting place), 4915 Harrodsburg Rd. in Nicholasville. Gates open at 8 p.m. Screening at dusk. Free.

July 12

▪ “Zandy’s Bride” screening at the Farish Theater, Lexington Public Library (Central Library), 140 E. Main. 12:30 p.m. Free.

▪ “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid” screening at the Farish Theater. 2:45 p.m. Free.

▪ The Call with Movie Jail at The Green Lantern, 497 W. 3rd. Doors at 7 p.m. music at 8. $20.

July 13

▪ “Young Doctors in Love” screening at the Farish Theater. 1:15 p.m. Free.

▪ “Cruise Control” (1992 Short Film) screening at the Farish Theater. 3:00 p.m. Free.

▪ Ed Begley, Jr. book signing for “To the Temple of Tranquility. ... And Step On It!” Lexington Public Library (Central Library), 140 E. Main. 3:30-5:00 p.m.

▪ “Lucky” screening at the Kentucky Theatre, 214 E. Main, preceded by Q&A with Ed Begley, Jr. 7:30 p.m. $15.

This story was originally published July 7, 2025 at 4:55 AM.