Chuck Ragan Literally Gave Me the Shoes Off His Feet

Just another tall tale about the nicest man in music.

April 21, 2014, 2:30pm

Chuck Ragan is the nicest man in music. I know this because I spent much of my winter writing a cover story for New Noise Magazine about how Chuck Ragan is the nicest man in music. In researching it, I talked to everyone from his wife Jill to people he’s toured with—Frank Turner, Jenny Owen Youngs, Ben Nichols—everyone had their own favorite tall tale about Chuck's exceptional manliness and overwhelming generosity and they all loved telling them. Dave Hause has a doozy about Chuck catching a fish with his bare hands that is the stuff of legend.

It was fun collecting these urban legends in one place but it almost made me envious that I didn’t have one of my own. I’ve known Chuck for a while, spent some time with him, but I didn’t have an Official Chuck Ragan Story™ to call mine. Until this weekend when he GAVE ME THE SHOES OFF HIS FEET.

Let me explain.

On Friday night, I stopped by Chuck’s show in New York. Even while performing, the man is over-the-top gracious, thanking the venue’s staff, the crew, the band, the audience of Tim Riggins look-alikes, Martin guitars—yes, he actually thanked his guitar sponsors mid-song—he basically stopped just short of thanking the automatic urinals for all their hard work.

We caught up in his green room afterwards and his southern hospitality was in full effect, passing out all of his cans of Bud Light and Guinness, making sure everyone in the room felt welcomed. He and I talked about the magazine story, the tales people told about his mythological kindness, and obviously, fishing.

The thing about Chuck is, it’s sort of hard to shoot the shit with the guy. How do you make small talk with a man who’s larger than life? It’s like talking about the weather with a unicorn.

Chuck sat across from me on a bench with one leg crossed over the other. I noticed he was wearing a pair of manly-ass boots, the kind I would see someone much cooler than me wearing while knowing full well I am not badass enough to pull them off myself. They were the leather jacket of feet. In fact, I recognized them from a few weeks ago when I saw them in a store window. I went inside and asked how much they were. Three hundred and twenty dollars. I immediately put them back on the shelf and ran out of the store on my beat up pair of Vans because in fashion terms, I am what you would call a “poor person” and I dress like I’m “13.”

Just trying to make conversation, I kicked the sole of Chuck’s hanging boot. “These are nice, what kind of shoes are they?” Chuck told me they’re a brand new pair of Red Wings that he’s been breaking in.

“Yeah, I was just looking at a pair like these. They’re really cool,” I said.

“What size are you?”

“Usually between 11 and 12.”

“Well here, try ’em on!”

All of a sudden, Chuck is rolling up his pants and unlacing his boot. This is a guy whose face was hanging on a poster in my bedroom when I was in high school, the elder statesman of punk, and there he was handing me the shoes off his feet.

“How do they fit?”

“Good!”

“Well then they’re yours.”

I knew he wasn’t joking because Chuck is not much of a joker. Sometimes when I fall back on the defense mechanism that is my terrible sense of humor and crack a joke around Chuck, I immediately regret the words as they’re leaving my mouth. But I couldn’t accept the shoes. I went to Catholic school for Christ’s sake. The guilt was too much. I repeated the words, “I can’t take these, Chuck” approximately 500 times until he and everyone in the room were sick of hearing it and said, “Just say ‘thank you’ and take the damn shoes!” So I did. I thanked him profusely and ol' Chuck just shrugged as if he’d lent me a dollar to get a Snickers from the vending machine.

Here is me pleading with Chuck not to give me his shoes.

As he passed them off to me, he explained every little detail of them. “See this perforation? I believe they were originally made to endure the wetlands, so these holes here would vent the moisture.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him that as a lifelong New Yorker, the only “wetlands” I’d been to was the now-closed rock venue where I saw Avail and Dillinger Four. It was almost as if he was giving me one of his chocolate labs. “She likes a little treat after her walk in the morning and she usually takes a nap in the sunlight around noon.”

These were also the shoes he was just wearing on stage for an hour so they were still warm. “Yeah, they’re a little sweaty,” he noted, “You might want to spray them down with some baking soda,” which I won’t do because I secretly hope I can harness Chuck’s mythical powers from them.

Chuck then walked around the room in his socks, making sure everyone else there was comfortable and taken care of. Eventually, he went into his suitcase and took out an old, beat up pair of brown boots and put those on.

I almost feel like these boots come with great responsibility. I will try to wear them the way Chuck would: I will go on more hikes through the marsh at dusk, I will leave footprints along the seldom-trodden barren plains, I will carve handmade gifts for people from oak and etch my initials into them, I will wear flannel shirts and stare pensively into the distance. But more likely, I will just take a lesson from Chuck and pay it forward more often.

So yes, Chuck gave me a brand new pair of boots. They cost $320. But he also gave me something much more valuable. He gave me a Chuck Ragan Story. And those are priceless.