Marin musician Austin “Audie” de Lone spent the last days and hours of his life doing what he loved. Throughout his long and distinguished career, the charismatic keyboardist had taken great pleasure in producing concerts and special events, putting bands together, enjoying the company of his fellow musicians and making music for the sheer joy of it.

Over the past few months, suffering from the final stages of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a fatal lung disease, he knew his time was short, so he made the most of it. He got on the phone with his many musician friends and colleagues, inviting them to come together with him for one last hurrah at his longtime haunt, Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley.

It would be his way of saying goodbye. But he wasn’t looking for sympathy or sentimentality. As always, he wanted the night to be a rockin’ good time. It would be a celebration of his life in music, but a tongue-in-cheek one. He called it a “toast ‘n’ roast.”

“When he first called me to tell me it was going to be a roast, I said, ‘What’s to roast?’” recalled blues guitarist “Mighty” Mike Schermer. “I told him I’d never even seen him get mad.”

Two days before the show, set for Jan. 8, de Lone had settled on the lineup for his three-hour celebration, timing it so that everyone had a chance to shine. And then, with his wife and daughter by his side, he slipped away. He was 78.

‘His happy place’

Musician Tim Eschliman, who played with de Lone in the Christmas Jug Band and other groups, had spoken to his old friend on the phone just hours before he died on Jan. 6.

“He was working on this night of music, and I realized that this was his happy place,” Eschliman recalled. “He was organizing a big event with lots of pieces and performers and lots of people coming. And that was his happy place.”

The announcement of his death sent waves of grief through the Bay Area music community and beyond, blowing up social media with heartfelt stories and anecdotes about one of Marin’s most beloved musicians.

“Audie and I had a long-standing joke,” singer Rahni Raines wrote on Facebook. “I would take my arms and make a circle like I was showing the Earth, and I would say, ‘Everything is beautiful.’ And over the years, we would laugh and say to each other: ‘Well, my dear friend, everything is beautiful.’”

The de Lone family let everyone know that the show would go on, but it would not be about sadness and loss. This special night would be about love and music, fun and friendship.

“Audie wanted this to be a party,” his widow, Lesley de Lone, told the sold-out crowd from the stage to start the show. “And he has his eye on you. So, if anyone sheds a tear, we’re gonna kick you out.”

Despite that good-natured admonition, dry eyes were hard to find when his daughter, Caroline de Lone, herself a singer-songwriter, sang “Thoughts of You,” a poignant ballad her dad wrote that they recorded together and released in 2023. On this night, she was backed by his pre-recorded accompaniment on keyboards, a kind of heart-wrenching posthumous duet.

“He was charismatic, talented and one of the kindest people any of us has met,” she said. “He taught me everything I know about music. He was a pathological people pleaser. He always wanted to make sure other people were OK before himself.”

Before the show, the green room was buzzing with musicians representing the bands de Lone played in over his six-decade career.

One of his oldest friends, the rockabilly guitarist Bill Kirchen, hailed as “the titan of the Telecaster,” flew in from Texas for the show. Their best-known collaboration was in the 1970s country rock band the Moonlighters, a spinoff of Marin’s Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen.

In their 50-year friendship, they never went more than a week without speaking, Kirchen said, remembering their last phone call the day before de Lone’s death.

“His attitude was fantastic,” Kirchen recalled. “He was so excited about this show. But, he said, ‘You know, Bill, I might not be able to make it through the whole thing. I might have to go home.’ I didn’t really think about this until he was dying, but he was the closest person in my life other than my family and had been for decades.”

During their last conversation, they decided to sing a duet on Bob Dylan’s bittersweet ballad “To Ramona.”

“It’s one of Dylan’s most beautiful songs,” Kirchen said moments before going on stage. “But I don’t want to sing it without him. I just can’t do it solo.”

He sang Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin’” instead.

After growing up in a suburb of Philadelphia, de Lone studied at Harvard and the New England Conservatory of Music before embarking on his career as a professional musician. While at Harvard, he wrote “One for One,” the first single by Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys, released in 1967.

Over the decades, he toured and recorded with a galaxy of stars, playing with the likes of Elvis Costello, Bonnie Raitt, Nick Lowe, Boz Scaggs, Jesse Colin Young, Sammy Hagar, Loudon Wainwright III, Dan Hicks and the Fabulous Thunderbirds, among others.

“He had a sweet heart, but he also had a big, strong personality,” Kirchen said. “He was one of the most outwardly confident guys I know.”

Eggs Over Easy

In 1969, de Lone formed Eggs Over Easy, a trio with Jack O’Hara and Brien Hopkins that made rock history as the American band that launched pub rock in England, a grassroots phenomenon that laid the groundwork for the punk scene of the ‘70s. In 1972, he and the Eggs, as they were affectionately known, moved to Mill Valley, playing raucous shows at the Old Mill Tavern, a storied downtown watering hole that is now the site of Corner Bar.

For the Sweetwater tribute, O’Hara traveled from New York and Hopkins, who died in 2007, was represented by his daughter, Liz Hopkins, a singer with the nationally known band Delta Rae.

“I’d talked to Audie a lot in recent months and pretty much knew what was coming,” O’Hara said. “I pretty much have the long view. I think about and am aware of our mortality all the time. I feel the release of Audie at this moment. And to be here with the people he’s touched so much and have touched him, I’m just happy to share whatever I can of myself.”

The joy in the music

In recent years, de Lone was a member of the popular local band the Wreckless Strangers, singing, writing songs and playing keyboards. He also served as a musical director for the Hellman family, the clan that founded and has financed Hardly Strictly Bluegrass for the past 25 years.

“Audie was really joyous,” said family scion Mick Hellman, drummer for the Wreckless Strangers. “For him, it wasn’t about instrumental technicality, not that he wasn’t technically capable. He was. But, for him, it was about finding the joy in the music, the joy in the moment. I would look at him at rehearsals, even when he was very sick in the last few weeks, and he would have his eyes closed and a huge smile on his face as he played. It was hard for him to breathe, but he was going to find the joy in this. And that’s been true his whole life.”

‘A musical uncle’

For as long as anyone can remember, de Lone hosted the Monday night open mic at Sweetwater and was a devoted supporter and mentor to generations of upcoming young musicians.

The band Vinyl, which opened the musical portion of the tribute show, has been a mainstay on the local scene for decades. But when its members were just starting out in Mill Valley, de Lone was the first to encourage them.

“He gave us so much credibility,” said Jonathan Korty, the band’s keyboardist. “Just to know that Austin de Lone liked us was a big move for us. It started a 30-year relationship. He was like our musical uncle in many ways. He would sit-in with us whenever we played Sweetwater. What was so beautiful about him was that he would be so humble that he would be comfortable with a small band like us just much as he would be with Bonnie Raitt and Elvis Costello.”

A home for Richard

For a dozen years, de Lone was the musical director of the now-defunct Bay Area Music Awards, aka the Bammies, once the biggest night on the local music calendar. After his son, Richard, was born with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS), a rare genetic disorder, de Lone used his organizing skills as a bandleader and producer to stage an annual benefit concert for the Richard de Lone Special Housing Project, a nonprofit to raise funds for a residential home for people with PWS. The organization, now called Prader-Willi Homes of California, recently celebrated its first year of operation in its first residence, the de Lone House, named in honor of its founders, Austin and Lesley de Lone.

Funny songs and dueling pianos

As a musician, de Lone was seriously talented, but he never took his music too seriously, often injecting it with wry humor. When Eggs Over Easy released its second album, for example, he and his bandmates titled it “Fear of Frying.” He also wrote and performed comic holiday songs as a member of the Christmas Jug Band, a seasonal group that began at the Old Mill Tavern in 1977.

At the band’s most recent gig at Sweetwater in December, de Lone was struggling to breathe, having to inhale oxygen from a tank beside the stage between songs, but he recovered enough to sing the novelty number “I’m Stuffing the Bird,” which he co-wrote with bandmate Paul Rogers.

“He was my inspiration and my mentor and my spiritual guide,” said Rogers, who spent the week listening to de Lone’s two solo albums: 1991’s “De Lone at Last” and “Soul Blues” from 2007.

“I had so much fun with him on these stages, bashing our heads together with dueling pianos,” he added. “I’m lucky I got to play with him two weeks ago right here (with the Christmas Jug Band). He almost made it to today. It was amazing how many people showed up and how much love there is for that guy. He’ll be with us forever.”

‘Goodnight, Audie’

Speaking from the stage, John Goddard, the longtime proprietor of Village Music, a legendary vinyl record store in Mill Valley that closed in 2007, talked about the invaluable role de Lone played in putting together the bands for the legendary private shows that Goddard presented at owner Jeanie Patterson’s original Sweetwater with rock, blues and R&B stars, from Ry Cooder and John Lee Hooker to Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and soul singer Bettye LaVette.

“Audie was the bandleader, the ringmaster,” Goddard said. “He never said no. He was always there. He did all the work. Sweetwater would not be what it was without Audie.”

He said his favorite memory was of de Lone leading a store full of people in a chorus of “Goodnight, Irene” as Village Music closed its doors for the last time. It was only fitting, then, that he deserved the same loving musical farewell at Sweetwater. To end the show, all the musicians gathered on stage, singing, “Goodnight, Audie, Goodnight, Audie, I’ll see you in my dreams.”

Contact Paul Liberatore at p.liberatore@comcast.net