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.
