A funny thing happened to Dave Manning on his way to the Burning Man Festival — he rocked Denio, Nevada, again.

Denio’s heyday was back in the wagon wheel days when it was a hub for settlers heading to Oregon, Idaho or California. The town 90 miles north of Winnemucca, Nevada, in contemporary times is called the most remote place in the Lower 48. But its residents turned out in droves on both of the occasions Manning came through.

“The whole town must have been there because there’s only 40 people in town and there were 40 people there,” said Manning, who played his piano from atop his traveling companion, a 1965 Volkswagen microbus he calls Vincent. “I made some extra money, filled up my gas tank, and got some good info on how to get to Burning Man. It wasn’t much of a choice: Either 100 miles of dirt or 200 miles of paved, and even on paved I would have had to do about 20 miles of dirt to get down to Burning Man.”

Not surprisingly, Manning took the dirt path. Manning sometimes lives in Alaska, but mostly he and Vincent tour the West, playing one-night stands in bars and restaurants. He’s in Tahoe this weekend for a pair of shows in which he will team up with Reno slide guitarist Jack Rudesill.

A modern-day Jack Kerouac with a portable keyboard, Manning writes songs and tells stories about his life on the road. The timing of his appearance with Rudesill at the Cottonwood Restaurant — Sept. 11 — could make for an interesting night. His track — “The Iraq Song” — could be the most powerful tune he has penned.
Manning is outspoken.

He performed at the Alaska Folk Festival just before President Obama was inaugurated.
“I said, ‘All I’ve got to say is four more days ... ’ and people started clapping,” Manning recalled. “And when the clapping died down, I said, ‘... before we get another guy in office who is bought and paid for by the same corporations.’ ”

After another winter in Alaska, Manning took Vincent on a seven-state tour which included the national Rainbow Gathering in New Mexico’s Santa Fe National Forest.

“Somebody told me the FBI considers the Rainbow family as America’s largest terrorist organization,” Manning said. “They like to go in the woods and live in peace — we can’t have that.”

Manning is a regular contributor on the Anchorage radio station KWMD — “Alaska’s Weapon of Mass Discussion.” Manning records shows from his van which can also be heard on the Web site Davemanning.net.

Manning said KWMD is operated by a “left-wing hippie type of guy. He’s good at setting up transmitters and dealing with the FCC. The little radio station with no budget is ‘cast to well over half the population of Alaska. He runs all kinds of crazy shows from all across the country with some Anchorage programming. I have a half-hour show about my travels and music from other musicians who I meet.”

Two of Manning’s features were about the Rainbow Gathering.

“The pivotal thing is on the 4th of July when from dawn until noon thousands of people maintain a vow of silence, and then at noon the place goes crazy,” Manning said. “It just blew my mind. It literally went on for at least two or three hours, cheering and drumming and dancing, this mass of people just going nuts in the woods. At one point I couldn’t tell where the earth ended and the people began. And, of course, a gigantic double rainbow comes out at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon. You just want to believe that that stuff doesn’t happen, but then there it was.”