A musical genius. Compassionate. Generous. Talented. Kind.

These are just a few of the words that those close to Slats Klug chose to use when describing the musician, who passed away May 5 last year after a short battle with cancer.

This weekend the Brown County Playhouse will host a memorial tribute for the musician whose compositions told stories of Brown County locale.

A memorial was originally planned to take place soon after his passing, but ended up being postponed due to the pandemic.

With the tribute happening now, those close to him say it is now a celebration of his life rather than a time to mourn his death.

“It would have been a funeral then, not the celebration of life it will be now,” Rich Morpurgo, a musician and producer of Klug’s album “Summer Sky,” told Klug’s partner of 16 years Jane Mitchell.

In addition to his love of music, Klug loved animals. All proceeds from tickets sold will benefit the Brown County Humane Society.

‘A musical genius’

Klug was born and grew up in West Virginia, the son of Harry V. Klug, a college professor, and Ruth Stillman. His sister Kathleen remembers elementary age Klug already studying classical piano and by junior high he had taken up playing the trumpet.

She also remembers him as a young child liking to dress up and strike a pose, foreshadowing his life ahead as a stage performer.

After he spent some time enrolled at Hobart College, Klug traveled to New York City where he made a living performing in various bands, most notably the country western group The Taft Hartley Act where he donned cowboy hats and country clothes.

One of his bandmates Richard Crossin told Mitchell how he came to be involved with Klug.

“I’m not a religious man, never have been,” he said. “But the first time Slats played and sang ‘I Come to The Garden Alone’ for me, I was uplifted and knew if someone could move me like that, I wanted that person to be in my life. I don’t even know if Slats believed, but the purity of what he delivered every time when he sang and played would make a believer out of most.”

In New York City Klug met another musician, Lauren Robert, and the two played together in a band. They were married and later divorced.

Together they moved to the Bloomington area where they formed a “swamp boogie” Cajun band MoJo Hand. Musicians in that band, like bass player Steve Mascari, remained friends with Klug up until his death.

Mascari said Klug was “an absolute giant of a player and one of the sweetest, funniest, most generous human beings I’ve had the pleasure of calling my friend.”

Klug played in Mojo Hand, George Jones Tribute Band, Kookamongas, Buncha Bums, Piney Woods and many other bands.

On songwriting, Klug once said: “If I have any kind of wine or beer or booze, forget it. For writing I’ve got to be there in full focus and see what comes in the door.”

Klug moved to Brown County in 2008, on Somerset Lake.

Mitchell said he loved living on the lake and would paddleboat almost every day in good weather, watching the turtles, fish and birds.

“He took endless joy in coming up on the grass carp and taking them by surprise before they saw us and bolted away,” she said.

Later a friendship with Brown County architect Steve Miller sparked Klug’s interest in the history and the characters of Brown County. That led to seven CDs about the Nashville area. The first was a collaboration with Miller called “The Liar’s Bench.”

He said he enjoyed writing about Brown County as an outsider who would come to call the hills here home more than his own angst.

“I like being near, but not from Brown County. By having a certain stranger’s point of view I get the best of both worlds,” he once said.

In the upcoming musical tribute planned for May 1 many of the musicians who performed on those Brown County CDs will take the stage to sing songs from those recordings including Dave Gore.

Gore said to Mitchell that Klug’s “music and lyrics captured the essence of Brown County both past and present. To me, he was a musical genius.”

Story continues below gallery.

 

Heart and depth

Mitchell described her partner as a kind and generous person with a caring heart. Musically he was generous, often sharing the stage with other musicians, she said.

“He really thought about who would sing the song best and was really generous with sharing the stage,” she said.

He was incredibly funny, she added.

Despite being a performer, he was a very shy person, Mitchell said.

“He had the stage persona for so long,” she said. “He didn’t really seek the limelight. He liked it when the shows did well, but he’s the kind of person you might consider a hermit.”

Mitchell’s own training is in art, but the revelation of Klug’s music was brought to her in what others had to share.

“I just know from the quotes, people said as a musician he was really good at bringing out the best in your performance. Really good at listening and taking ideas,” she said of Klug.

“He was unbelievably talented and, of course, I love his voice.”

He was a versatile performer and musician, playing piano, guitar, harmonica, trumpet and accordion. His taste and ability in music was just as varied. He played everything from Cajun style, jazz, blues, country and reggae music, Mitchell said.

Klug was a perfectionist in the studio where he was “probably driving studio people crazy,” she added.

“‘Let’s just do one more thing, add one more thing,’” Mitchell said Klug would say.

Klug was also Mitchell’s best friend.

“He was so caring, he was so kind, he was so respectful,” she said, tears filling her eyes.

“He respected who I was as a person and never tried to make me be somebody else.”

Mitchell had been married before, but said she understood a new depth of love when she began a relationship with Klug.

“I understood, for the first time, lyrics in a love song, passages in some great novels about love,” she said. “I never would’ve known that, what that kind of depth of love was.”

“I really feel happy that I got to have that. I really didn’t even know what it was that was missing.”

The contribution that Klug made to Brown County music is one that Mitchell said is comparable to Frank Hohenbergers photographs.

“Hohenberger came in with the photographs, Slats came in and revived the stories and the characters and even the feel of Brown County,” she said.

A local musician she spoke with about Klug said that he came in as an outsider, but was able to understand and write what locals were living.

Though he lived in Bloomington at the time of his passing, he and Mitchell were planning to move to Brown County. She is in the process of moving back now. The memorial, Mitchell said, will provide a closure for his Brown County chapter.

“I feel like to me this is more than just musicians performing his songs. It’s a celebration of life, it’s a musical tribute, it’s kind of closure to me on this chapter of his life here,” Mitchell said.

In 2014, Klug closed another chapter when he released the final CD in the Liars’ Bench and Brown County Home Series. A total of 29 musicians were eager to lend a helping hand, or voice, to the project, and that made Klug happy.

“I felt like it wasn’t done. I felt like there was one more to go, and that’s this one,” the Brown County musician said about his new album “Summer Sky” in 2014.

Roots is the genre that best fits it, he said in 2014.

His Southern upbringing influenced his music. He played the organ in his church when he was younger.

“Those roots stayed with me,” he said.

Klug played with numerous musicians since he arrived in Brown County in 1986, which made it difficult to say who he admired the most.

“It’s sort of like if you have in a circus 29 tigers and you pet one, you got to pet them all,” he said.

One voice he wanted on “Summer Sky” that he hadn’t worked with before was Barry Elkins, an Indiana Boys and White Lightning Boys member.

“Barry Elkins is, to me, the definitive Brown County sound,” Klug said in 2014.

Now Elkins will join at least 20 other musicians at the tribute in Klug’s honor including well-known locals Robbie Bowden, Carolyn Dutton, Lauren Robert, Kenan Rainwater, Carrie Harris, Jeb Brester, Picker Dan, Bird Snider and Frank Jones.

Considering Klug was a shy person himself, Mitchell said that he’d be “overwhelmed” with the eagerness of those now wanting to play his music in his memory.

“I think he’d be overwhelmed with the outpouring of love. Some of the musicians have said they’re so happy to be included becasue he meant so much to them. I’ve had a good cry with them too,” she said.

After Klug passed, Mitchell began to go through his belongings. In every single room she found notebooks full of ideas and songs.

Music was his world, she said.

“He was always involved in his head in music,” she said. “If we were in a conversation he’d say, ‘Wait, wait, I just got this melody.’”

“I’m finding pieces of paper with a title for a song, a phrase, it was just constantly — he was living it, constantly.”

Part of what made him a talented musician was not just the fact that he was a storyteller who could craft thoughtful lyrics, but also because of his deep and caring heart. Mitchell said.

“He told me a story where he had written a song for me. When the CD came out he heard from a friend right away. The trueness of that song he brought through to the person,” she said.

”In art, if it’s visual or musical, when a person can get that feeling they were having to the viewer, that’s sign of a really terrific artist. He had so much heart and depth.”

Memorial Tribute 

Sunday, May 1, at Brown County Playhouse, 70 S. Van Buren St. at 2:30 p.m. 

Tickets are available for purchase at the box office for $20. All proceeds will benefit the Brown County Humane Society.