Mike Tigas

November 16, 2006

In one of Columbia’s oldest homes, up a flight of creaky stairs and beyond rooms full of antique historical furniture, 60-year-old Eddie Boster stands in a crowded room uncharacteristic of his frontier-era house. Among shelves of thousands of records and CDs, a drum set, several guitars and two amplifiers, he picks up an electric guitar. “This is my baby,” he says. He holds up the guitar, a 1966 Fender Stratocaster, and explains that the ‘66 was the last year to be built with original Fender parts before CBS bought the company.

Eddie seems very unassuming at first, with a soft-spoken voice and long, silver hair. However, much like his house, he has a long and storied local history and holds up well in spite of showing age; especially if one considers playing in a rock band at 60 “holding up well.” By day, Eddie supports himself with a full-time job at the Newz Group Missouri Press Clipping Bureau. But by night, he is one of Columbia’s most seasoned local rock veterans.

Eddie has seen firsthand the changes and evolution in the Columbia music scene over the decades. A fledging musician, his love for music bloomed in the 70’s when he learned to play guitar—and in the 30 years since, he has not shown any sign of stopping. Though an experienced guitar player, Eddie mainly considers himself a songwriter and seeks more talented guitarists to play with.

Throughout the years, Eddie has played in four local bands and performed all over the Midwest. In spite of the preconceptions of touring like a rock star, Eddie’s experiences are more down to earth. “We didn’t tour as much as take a weekend and drive out to Lawrence (Kansas) or Fayetteville (Indiana) and hope we earned enough to eat and sleep and get back home,” Eddie says. “All you do is hope you played well enough to sell some records there and make enough money to record another one.”

Eddie once owned Salt of the Earth, a downtown record store, which he operated for a few years in Poplar Bluff before moving to Columbia in the 80’s. “It was my love for 23 years,” he says. “Local artists would come and play and it was a sort of gallery for local originality.” The store, which was located next door to the Missouri Theatre (and is now occupied by Top10Wines), combined hippie culture with local indie records and saw constant changes to the Columbia music scene. “The town’s so transient that music scene always changed fast,” he says. “But some years, there’d be so much talent bubbling over that you’d start thinking that Columbia had to be recognized (by the music world).”

He fondly recalls a time in Columbia when the creative music scene was bigger than ever, when Shattered was an indie music venue (now a nightclub), and before any open container laws or noise ordinances existed. “You could walk to East Campus and you could find a band playing on any given patio, with people hanging out and (drinking from) kegs,” he says. Thinking of today, he laments, “the city’s changed a lot—unfortunately not all for the best,” citing a very conservative shift in the city culture, which he says was aimed to lure in wealthy retirees and money for the city. Increasing rent and a downtown economic recession led Eddie to close Salt of the Earth in 2001.

In spite of the closing of his shop and the changes to Columbia that Eddie has seen over the years, he hasn’t shown any signs of going old and giving up. He currently writes and plays in a local band called Big Medicine, which includes characters as diverse as his own musical history. “We have a 49-year-old schoolteacher who plays guitar, and he’s one of the most talented guitarists I’ve ever played with.”

Eddie doesn’t picture himself stopping any time soon. “I played for Chuck Berry in St. Louis a few years ago,” he says. The band didn’t know Berry was there until they started packing their equipment away after performing, when their producer asked for CDs and pointed Berry out in the crowd. “When we were standing, listening to the next band, I looked over at him and we made eye contact for a few seconds… Then he gave me a big thumbs-up.” Eddie could think of no other reaction but to put his hands together and bow in Chuck’s direction. “Ever since then…I don’t need anybody else’s opinion—I don’t care if they like it or not. I feel like I could do this forever.”

If he could do this forever, he would have it no other way. “I don’t feel like my life is ‘full’ or ‘real,’” he says, “without some sort of musical involvement.”

Update: November 19
Uploaded a few pics from a concert featuring Eddie’s band, Big Medicine