Nowhere Is Now Here

David Allan Coe, Col. Bruce Hampton take the scenic route *(updated)

By Don Allred

Nov. 30. 2005

http://clclt.com/charlotte/nowhere-is-now-here/Content?oid=2360928

In 1969, Dave Coe was a 30 year-old parolee, resident of a hearse parked outside Nashville's Ryman Auditorium, home of the Grand Old Opry. Coe told tall tales of his years behind bars ---unless you believe he really did teach Charlie Manson to play the guitar, and that the State of Ohio lost all evidence of his alleged time on Death Row. With the name on the music biz contracts and the marquee now matching the one on his rap sheet,  David Allan Coe's life after prison soon became equally improbable, as he realized some of his rutted-grassroots cross-over appeal early on, opening shows for Grand Funk Railroad, not waiting for (though later having to catch up with) the 70s' Outlaw Country bandwagon---and got a chance to make his first album, Penitentiary Blues, backed by some of Nashville's finest.

Among the Nashville Cats on Penitentiary Blues is drummer Kenneth Buttrey, who previously played on Bob Dylan's "Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35" ("They stone ya when you're tryin' ta be so good..."). Buttrey got to march, pound, shuffle and roll Coe through the echoing halls of this portrait of the later-self-proclaimed Longhaired Redneck as young bluesman. Its songs don't all deal with prison life, but, in this context, they sure seem like cells, both connected and separated. Places where your thoughts crowd you and people are alone together, in little cages like stages, even when teeming, because somebody's always watching and being watched.

Penitentiary Blues -- long out of print, recently reissued by Hacktone/Shout! Factory in time for Coe's 66th birthday -- now seems like the blueprint for Coe's enduring worldview. Ro-mance is alluring, but in an elusive, somewhut fairytale way (later attempts at real normal, country radio-acceptable updates of countrypolitan gentility can suddenly morph into nobody-but Coe-politan after-midnight specials, with backing voices of dream babies from the holler and thee canyon suddenly spilling like a slo-mo gold rush all around his eternally smokey tones). He sees himself and his lady friends as forever finding and losing each other in the maze and locks of life, like ships that go bump in the night. If one of the pair discovers or accuses the other of (and/or finds oneself to be) bumping someone else, Coe's always ready enough, soon enough (sometimes eager, sometimes sad) to hit the road, to stay away from conflict, and any other confinement. (I've been told that he wrote a pamphlet of guidance for his fellow ex-cons, perhaps included in some LP sleeves of PB, which sternly advised them to have sex only with prostitutes for the first six months, or maybe more, after being released.)

And that applies to most other situations too, as in Coe's most famous song, "Take This Job And Shove It" ("I ain't workin' here no more"). No going postal or on strike for him: he's already out the door. Another standby, "You Never Even Call Me By My Name," establishes an ironic distance between himself and the clichés expected of country performers, which allows him to come back and use them again per his mercurial mood---always shamelessly, and, in proximity to this audience fave, pert near blamelessly.

Past certain once(?)-notorious self- bootlegs (and the country outlier round-up documentary Heartworn Highways' vibe-shattering backstage-at-the-prison-concert Coepulsive testifyin' on the seized-on record--- extruding, before the glittering eyes of a trusty, who is nodding obligingly, encouragingly, "Uh-huh, uh-huh...", the self-generating coat of many dark colors that was already, in the mid-70s, what he, especially, was known for among his also mythopoeic peers), studio outbursts of bluster are carefully framed, though sometimes still ludicrous rhetoric in motion (watch it now, podner). He long ago learned and still remembers to think, not always for the best, but in every-which-kinds-of cagey ways.
Like the latter-day Dylan, he seems to live and thrive on an Endless Tour, and in endless reissues. Performing jukebox roulette combinations of old and (carefully rationed) new songs, he moves kinda slow onstage now. But still, when Coe appears, it's nature's way of telling us to party.

It's the same with Col. Bruce Hampton, another dedicated road warrior and Southern rock veteran, who carved an itchy maverick niche for himself at the dawn of the 70s with his Atlanta-based, Zappaesque Hampton Grease Band. Col. Bruce deals with connection and separation by successfully combining -- but never binding -- wild strands of jazz, blues, bluegrass, garage punk and psychedelia, in a way so many jambands fail at miserably. This fusion is greatly helped by the fact that Hampton's a living crossroads for improbably talented musicians. A particularly good example is the first, self-titled and very live set by his 90s group Aquarium Rescue Unit, featuring several once-and-future members of the Allman Brothers Band -- keyboardist Chuck Leavell, guitarist Jimmy Herring, bassist Oteil Burbridge -- plus other finds like drummer Jeff Sipe and percussionist Count Mbutu. ARU's psych-jazz-rock even featured a mandolin player, Matt Mundy, who ricocheted through the heavier sounds.

Hampton's current band, the Codetalkers, is built around the post-bluegrass cadence of another mandolinist, Bobby Lee Rodgers, who also penned most of the songs on the Codetalkers' debut, Deluxe Edition. Rodgers' rippling rhythms and slightly nasal vocal clarity could make him seem merely mellow, without Hampton's infectious, restless guitar, and the solid-but-swinging rhythm section of drummer Tyler Greenwell and bassist Swan. Together, they illuminate the funny, scary, matter-of-fact blues of "UFO," "Saturn," and a cover of bluesman Skip James' just-as-cosmic "I'm So Glad." Hampton wails on the James classic and his own cell tune "Isle Of Langerhan" (it's a real place, look it up!). Furthermore, the Colonel spews the ebullient nonsense of "Rice Clients" like confetti, reaffirming his status as notable Zappa and Beefheart acolyte.

Col. Bruce has also been known to announce, "Nowhere is now here." Fittingly, this Friday night, he* and Coe -- these two inveterate rollin' stones who travel lighter than everything except the speed of sound -- exit the highway void to meet metaphysically (only) in Charlotte. Bring your wayward hearts and heads out for some of the best traveling music around.

David Allan Coe plays at Tremont Music Hall, at 9pm, Dec. 2. Tickets are $20.00. Call 704-343-9494 or go to etix.com. The Codetalkers featuring Col. Bruce Hampton* play at the Visulite Theatre, with opener the Redbelly Band, at 10pm, Dec. 2. Tickets are $10.00. Call 704-358-9200 or go to musictoday.com. *(update: Col. Bruce RIP, 5-01-2017: died after collapsing on stage, during his 70th birthday party jam.  Can't help thinking about an interview where he and some other musos were talking about going to see Widespread Panic's Mikey Houser, who was dying---and who comforted them. Hampton was amazed: "God, if it was me, I'd be going bananas." He came across as philosophically inclined, by nature and experience (not too much the Answer Man), which helped make him such a resourceful artist and entertainer, incl. the comedy (even tried his hand at stand-up, also selling cars), but part of that, the basis of it, seemed like, was being totally upfront about such feelings. "Basically Frightened" is one of his catchiest tunes.

The only time I saw him perform live was at an engagement party---everybody looked like the cast of Friends, in Montgomery's version of a Spanish Mission inn---bassist and drummer came out first, set up this shuddering heartbeat that went on all evening, and he came out and played thin, incisive, sustained guitar notes, avant-garage maybe: pared down and later for the poo. Long rolling vocal thunder.

Oh yeah, and when Tedeschi-Trucks Band played Beale Street Caravan a couple weeks ago (smoking show, posted on BSC site), Derek quoted the Col. re never playing the same set twice, "If it ain't broke, break it."