Here’s a fun one for you–Robert Ward on Redneck Rock circa 1976 for New Times Magazine:
The bus floated through the Nashville streets and stopped at the James Thompson Motor Inn. I got out and walked with Tommy (the Outlaw) and Coe’s old friend, Bobby.
“It’s on the fourth floor.”
We climbed the steps and walked down a long motel corridor. Looking over, I noticed it was a good 75 feet to the parking lot. At the door, Tommy waited for me.
“Come on in, writer.”
“Sure.”
I felt frightened by his tone—soft, but mocking. I had assumed that there would be women, other musicians, and whiskey. But there was none of that. Instead, there were Outlaws, about 15 of them, sprawled around the room. I looked at their eyes, which were all trained right on my own. In the exact center of the group, like some ancient fertility god, David Allan Coe sprawled on a bed. On his lap was an ugly, trashed-out looking woman, who was laughing insanely.
Behind me the door snapped shut. “This here is the writer,” someone said in a steel-wire voice.
Everyone was totally silent.
“The writer who wrote that shit about David Allan not being an outlaw!” someone else said.
I felt my breath leaving me and tried to laugh it off. “Hey, c’mon, you guys. I didn’t write that stuff.”
A short, squat, powerful man, the same Outlaw I’d seen screaming at the Exit Inn, came toward me. “You wrote that shit, did you?”
He reached in his back pocket and pulled out a five-inch hunting knife.
“Hey, wait now,” I said.
[Photo Credit: George Tice, 1974]
