Unknown: The ride, Gary. Oh yeah, I told I was telling John,
I told Gary, I said, "Man, I just want to, because Gary kept
calling me, thanking us for cutting the ride, and I said,
"No, man, thank you. He said, "Why are you thinking me? I
said, "Because when that ride came out, my level of traveling
on the road got a lot easier,
no more hamburgers at Crystal,
except for one time in Oklahoma.
Five straight days of nothing but Kentucky fries.
Welcome to a podcast about music and entertainment before it all
goes down the disposal. This is Circling the Drain.
Hey, welcome back to Circling the Drain. Of course, I'm John
E. Bozeman. Johnny B over there, my man Jay Harper. How you
doing, brother?
You talking to me? Yeah.
Hey, Johnny B. Always good to see you.
Yes, we do have another guy that is, if without him you wouldn't
be hearing us or seeing us. One James Patrick McCarthy,
Jimmy Tuton, Jimmy Tutton. Well, it's good we use the three names
for James Patrick McCarthy because we're going to talk
about a guy that is a country legend, and we just want to set
some stories straight, absolutely, about David Allen
Co. That's right. We recently lost, yeah, yeah, it's been,
well, I guess a couple of months now. No, it's only been two
weeks. Oh my gosh, it's wow, time, just 29th Yes, he did. But
anyway, we've got, and he wrote a great book called My Life on
the Road with David Allen Co, which I, I think I go down as
maybe the second person that bought it, because I bought it
right when it came out. No, only five people bought it, so you
were third,
Mickey. You played bass to have you with us.
Yeah, the great Mickey Hayes, who has been through the wars,
man. We ain't got enough time to get to all the stories that this
man can.. Oh, we could. We'll have to have several, several
episodes. We may be joined by Gary Gentry. Gary,
no show, Gentry. We don't know what's happened to Gary, but he
may show up and keep this on our toes. But even if he does,
fashionably late, yes, he wants to make a big entrance. Well, he
can afford to do that, because he said big, big, you know, big
song. He's had a few, yeah, he's VIP, yeah, he is VIP, didn't he
just have was a Garth who cut the ride recently? Yeah, yeah,
we got to ask him if he put the siding on his house, yeah, that
was his plan.
But Mickey,
you know, you wrote this book, man,
it is like I was telling you, it was like being on the road with
you guys and
David was a great entertainer. Yes, he was a great entertainer.
But the thing about you guys, it's like I told people that
they go, 'Oh, man, I went to see..
well, I went to see that this show, the Sex Pistols, man. It
was, it was crazy, it was dangerous. I said, 'You've never
been to a David Allen Co show?
Yeah,
you know, tell you how dangerous it was.
Maybe the first year into playing with him, we were doing
a club in
Miami called Cowboys, yeah. When after Urban Cowboy came out, all
of a sudden the disco started changing in the country, yeah.
And I came on stage to do a sound check, and David said, I
got something new over there, and I looked over, and on the
stand in front of his microphone, he had like a
little, like a music stand, but flat, it flattened out, yeah,
and he had a little eight channel board on it, so he could
do his monitors, and I looked over, he said he had something
new, and I said, what, I've seen those before, he said he
had a four shot, four barrel derringer lying on the side of
his monitor mixer.
What's that? He said, well, you never know,
which I found out. Yeah, you
never know when you first got together with David, what, what
year was it, if you can remember? And 70, it was the
first of the summer of 79 Yeah, and you flew, you were flown,
were you not? Yeah, what happened
is I was starving living in Garner, North Carolina. We
didn't have electricity, and always my mom said electricity,
but
shout out to my mom, but
I didn't have any money, I was starving. I just quit beach band
I was playing with, because I just made me drink a lot. I had
to quit drinking,
but so
Wizard Alan Hicks
was his bass player.
He was out front of house with Band deposit. I had quit, so
he called one of the roadies useless.
Useless had his daddy, his daddy was worthless.
But anyway, don't ask what Mama said. But anyway,
he said, "Mick, I said yeah, this uselessly introduced
itself. He said Wizard wanted me to call you, see if you'd be
interested in joining the David Allen Cole band. I said, Well,
who's that?
I've been rock and rolling news all night. He said, well, he
explained it to who it was and everything. I said, Well, yeah,
I'd be interested. I said, How much he pay
and pay was good for that time period, and, and he said, "Well,
we got you a plane flight in the morning to marathon.
He didn't mention that it was a one-way flight, but
so we got, and we flew down to Miami, and caught a little
puddle jumper they called air sometimes. It was air sunshine,
but locals called it air. Sometimes I found out why I was
sitting, and uselessly, man, the engine over there was throwing
oil out. I'm like, well, go tell the pilot. So he went up and
pulled himself that damn DC nine seats, you know, you got to pull
up. He came back and said, what the pilot say? He said, let him
know if it quits.
Oh man. Welcome to David Alico World,
only the best,
but I walked off, and, like, I told you, I walked off, and
Darty, who was past president of the Louisville chapter outlaws,
Illinois, Louisville, Kentucky, and David was standing right
beside her, and look, Dougherty looked like a hardcore outlaw
biker, which he was.
David, like I told you, looked like a white mr. T. Yeah, he
did, had all the chance. He would drown if he fell in a
puddle, yeah.
And he had diamond rings, I mean, biggest 50 cent piece,
even on his sums, yeah, and I'm sitting there going and bib
overalls,
and I had that moment. Am I gonna go down these stairs or
I'm gonna get the get back in this plane?
So I went down, I got into limo, and we went on to the compound,
the purple house, yeah, yeah. Mimi, his wife, after Debbie,
the first Debbie left, no, the first Jodi, yeah, left him. Mimi
came in. She was from Florida, really a nice girl. Yeah, she
was, and
he painted the house purple.
I helped, I didn't want to, but she, she told him her favorite
color was royal purple. So we were going to Lowe's. I
just finished redoing the bus, me and Useless and Rodeo, you
know? He bought the old bus from Chubby Checker, and it was
pretty bad shape, so we went to Lowe's and bought nails and
screws and lumber, and I'm like, okay, I'm the bass player, all
right,
yeah, now I'm doing bus, so then we, we refitted a 50 foot wooden
hole, used to be a cable vessel, like it laid cable phone cable,
yeah, and we had to refit that,
and
then, and we had these beautiful busses, he had a 59 golden
eagle, we had the band bus was a 60 silver eagle, and Hobie Laws
was a fantastic art. Oh yeah, airbrush, he had painted two
porpoises, yeah, yeah, it was cool, and had the old western
with them right near him, and Waylon and Willie riding up, you
know, the sunset behind him, western cowboys riding up, yeah.
So I wake up one morning after a pretty hard night,
and I smell paint,
so I walk out, and we're right on the end of the peninsula, you
know, and you can see the seven mile bridge off to the right,
and I wake up, I walk out,
useless is on a 12 or 10 foot ladder with a spray can
of black paint, he's got boxes of hands over here by his side,
and we're on the Edit Peninsula, you know. We got wind coming off
the channel. Yeah, he's up there painting the busses black,
both busses, which break hands,
unbelievable. Yeah, I started learning a lot those early,
those couple of weeks, I bet. So, what was the point of that?
I mean, did some.. did David ask him to do that, or he just did
it? No, David had him do it. Oh, wow, yeah. Wow, David just got
it in his mind, he wanted.. he wanted, but.. and then he put
these.. had them, I think, rodeo.. he went and got gold
paint, because he's got to have his name on everything, and he
just really amateurish EAC in five foot levers on both sides
of the bus,
no AC, might I add.
Oh man, in the middle of summer in the Keys,
we're on a black bus, the windows don't open. Oh no,
school.
Us, we did,
yeah, but that was us, and we'd,
you know, back then, two busses, I wrote a song about it,
two busses, couple limos, two tractor trailers, outlaw bikers
behind us, and looking mean, and that was us, that was you.
I left out the elective case of swamp ass
people, people, you know, we come into town, and there'd be a
TV station or radio or whatever, so we'd stop about 20 miles out
of town,
and Mater was our Harley mechanic, we had Harleys on the
road, each memory had a Harley, he would get, he'd back our
Harleys out of the truck, and we put a little dust on us, you
know, yeah, right into town
with 20 miles in the town,
wow, man, them a hardcore outlaws, I'm like 20 miles back,
we sit on butt ring, Jack Daniels was smoking,
but it was all David. He was like, he told me one time, I
said, "Man, why have you got all these busses and trucks and
everything painted? Because the trucks, the trailers are painted
up too, and I'm like, "Why? Why is it all painted up like that?
You know,
I don't want to say it's gaudy, but yeah, he's so well. If
you're in a small town and
circus comes to town and they put up that big tent with all
those pictures, you ride by, you're like, I gotta go and see
what they're doing in there. Same thing with us, we ride in
those
dive bar towns
until the ride came out, yeah, and everybody would show up.
Well, that's true. I mean, I always thought it was
really ingenious of David, because at the time, you know,
if you were a country singer, and especially in the case of
David, where you're playing clubs all the time, you usually
just had a bus, and that was it, that was all you had, but David
showed up, he had like three busses, several semis carrying
it was like, man, this is it, was PT Barnum, baby, exactly,
that's why in the book I called David the PT Barnum of Country
Music, I think he was, he
I am Vinny Tavarez. I'm the owner of Milltown Bikes, right
in the heart of Columbia, Tennessee, on the square. And
we're here to serve the community. We have bicycles from
kids to adults, e-bikes, mountain bikes, road bikes. We
run a repair shop. So I am the third generation of this current
bike shop, it's been here since the 70s. It's a historical
building, it's an integral part of the downtown community in
Colombia. We got customers here coming in and talking that they
got their very first bike here, so the reception is doing great.
Everybody's been super friendly, super welcoming. A lot of the
old customers that been coming here for generations now still
come here, they're now my customers, and I have a huge
responsibility to continue to carry that legacy and that
passion forward.
One
of the first times I saw you guys, I was also knocked out
that he had screens, oh
yeah, yeah. I think Popsco, Popco, Popco was, was, was
running, was running that head of God. Yeah,
David got this idea way back. I don't know where he got the
idea. I guess he's seen it, the curtain. Yes, we start Willie
Whaley and me, you know, that's our opening song in the curtain
falls. So we're in five points in Atlanta. I don't know, I
remember this stuff, but
Pop Co, the crew had to build him,
you remember the horse, the Trojan Horse? Yes, they built
him a tower like that, it had rollers on it, bottom up, so it
could roll them, you know. But anyway, that's where he stood,
and he's up about 10 foot in there. Oh yeah, pop cold from
Ohio, yeah, he worked the rubber company, yeah, he was a steward,
yeah. Damn it, come here, come here, but anyway, that's a whole
nother story. But yeah, and so David got his curtain, and so
that crew spent hours putting the damn thing up, and it was
probably about 15 foot high, black,
and the stage was probably maybe 3540
foot wide. So we're up there, and we start Willie, wait, the
curtain don't do anything. Oh no,
spinal tap still,
still nothing. David's getting pissed off,
so Roku has to go out and pull the curtain,
drag it off to the side. What happened
when you just pick.
People off the street,
and you're on my road crew now. What experience you got? None.
Okay, you're hired.
Well, it's like his son Tyler. I remember Tyler told the story
about when he joined up with his dad. Dad
said, have you been learned, you know, have you been working on
your guitar?
Tyler said, I lied. Oh, yeah. He goes, well, good, because you're
going to be working on a live album tonight.
Yep,
Scott Tyler, try your trial by fire. Yeah, people ask me when I
got to the funeral in Cincinnati, they're like, 'Is
Tyler coming? I'm like, I doubt very highly he's going to be
here. Yeah, he didn't show. He's got his own reasons, and I
respect him. I do too. I think he's in fact, I think both he..
I think all the kids, really, Tanya, all of them, yeah, have
handled it far better than very classy, very classy, far
classier than his widow. Yeah, yeah, but we won't go there. No,
I won't.
I respect what they're doing, and I show my respect to them,
and I know what they've gone through. Yes,
God, since early 2010 or whenever, but I've been there.
And then I went back and saw it firsthand. I worked with him. He
called me in the middle of 2014 wanted me to put another band
together, I guess. He respected the first one I put together,
but so I put him another band together and went out on the
road with him, and he was married then. And so I found out
firsthand what was going on, but you know that's family business.
Well, that's what he wanted. I mean, well, he told me one time,
you know, I asked him, because we had a good relationship with
y'all, and I said, "Man, I mean, what's going on? I mean, I'm not
putting anybody down, but I don't think you need her up here
on stage with you. People come to see you, and you're sitting
over on the side, yeah, coming to see you.
And he go, "And he told me. He said, "I just don't want to die
alone.
That was, that was all I needed. Wow, I respected that. Yeah, I
do too. He just didn't want to die alone. He knew his time was
coming sooner or later, and he, yeah, because his health was
already getting bad back then. But he, I'll give it to him, he
tried, you know,
he'd get up there and we played shows, and
he just didn't have that
well. I saw him in 2009
with Blackberry Smoke. It was in this little place called
Covington, Georgia. Great show. In fact, I wasn't expecting
much, because I thought, man, David's got to be up there now.
And, and what was weird, they didn't have a bass player.
There was no bass player, but they just, they had really
pumped up the bass drum, like, oh yeah, yeah, right, yeah, but
he was great, I mean, he, and she wasn't there, it was just
him, so it was a really good show. Now, last show I saw with
him, no, I really wanted my money back, because they only
stayed on stage maybe 30 minutes. He acted like he didn't
want to be there, and we got
when I went back with him, we got
a lot of club owners and promoters,
because we, I made a point. I rented a vehicle for me, and I
hired a drummer and a guitar player, but I made a point of
renting my own vehicle, because I got, I saw what was going on.
Yeah, and so I'm in control, and y'all send me itinerary, I'll
meet you at the show, that way you know I don't have to be
there, and
but it just, it wasn't same, it was
every show was a struggle, you know, yeah, and, and having that
tambourine going in,
it just wasn't what I remembered, you know, and no,
because you guys, you put together a great band, that was
a really good band, because you found, of all people, Warren
Haynes, who, I mean, that dude was, I remember, first time I
saw him with you guys, I thought, where they find this
cat, man. I was, we'd finished that movie, we
filmed the movie Lady Gray over in Charlotte with Ginger Aldrin
Earl Ownsby. Yeah, we got drunk one night. She told me what
exactly happened. I can't repeat it. She formed me in secrecy,
but she told me what happened that night. Wow, and I'm like,
oh, okay, because I'd read all this other crap in the papers,
you know. You can't believe any of that. Her mom, after she told
me a good part of it, her mom came
and got hers because they had a lawsuit, because they'd promised
her a house, right? And they were in legal thing, you know.
So her mom said, "Come with me.
I got most of the story,
but she was a sweetheart, but yeah, David, man,
like in a song I go, you know, David comes along one once in a
lifetime.
What was the last line of the song? Country Mute, Nashville
said no, but old Dave said.
Diamond, yes, I can,
and he did, and he did, he did it his way, yeah, he did, and a
lot more artists are doing that now, which I really like, you
know. Well, he paved the way. There's a lot more really good
entertainers that write their own songs, which I hate, because
I'm trying to write songs,
but I'm not an entertainer, I was a bass player. Yeah, you
know, I sang harmony. I can give you a fifth or a third or
whatever, but I've never wanted to be out front. Yeah, I go now
and people want to hear a code song, and I'll play on my co
song with my acoustic, and then I sell my book. Yeah, and I just
don't want to be the front man, you know. Yeah, I just.
I'm enjoying. Got I got the book finished, and it just opened up
a new thing for me.
I think I've written in the last two months, I've probably
written 3540
songs, you know. Wow. Well, it just, it opened up that, uh,
cannabis-induced dead part of my mind.
I don't know, maybe it's been there for a while, but I finally
found it. But now that's what I do.
Promote the book. I stay on the road as much as possible.
Sally owns the Iron Horse Saloon. Yeah, I go down Steven.
Yeah, Sally's a good old girl, but
she thought the world of David. Yes, she really did. But she,
she put my book in her stores, and I go down twice a year and
get up and do a song or two. I got to do Perfect Country
Western, darling, darling. Oh yeah, got to do that one. But I
do the ride sometimes, and every now and then I go back, and
if it's inside somewhere or something, I like to do.
Would you lay with me? Of course, everybody knows that
one, but there's a lot of his old songs people don't know that
are really good. That early stuff rides again, all those
albums. Oh, I mean, he.. I mean, you look at his whole Columbia
catalog. I mean, there were a lot of songs. That's why, when I
was in radio, yeah, I played a lot because I thought these
songs should be played on the radio, they're too good, and
great statues, rides again, those, yeah,
find, find a bad song, I dare you, called Mysterious
Rhinestone Cowboy, Once Upon a Rhyme, those albums were great,
we,
we were rewrote, you know, he did stand by your band, that's
the song we wrote. He did stand by your man. So me and Warren
got together and rewrote Stand By Your Man, and rewrote it into
Stand By Your Band.
You know, David, we drive your busses all night long because we
care. Just to get to the hotel the next morning and find out
you spent the money on your damned old hair.
What started the what started the wig thing happening
was you?
He liked your hair. We were in London. Well, you know, you saw
the Gilly show. Yes,
head full of hair. So we were in London, and so I'm, it's Mimi's
birthday, so I'm in my room somewhere downtown, and she
knocks on the door and comes in, and we talk, you know, and she
tells me the itinerary for the day,
and said, I got something to tell you, you're not gonna
believe,
honey, I believe anything
you talk about your husband,
and she said Dave went downtown and bought a wig. I said, yeah,
well, his hair is starting to fade, you know. Say, well,
that's not it.
I said, well, what's it? If he bought a wig, what's it? He
named
it. He named his wig,
and of course, what do you name it, Mickey? I'll
bear that for the rest of my life. Oh man, well, and some of
the wigs.. oh Lord,
actually it started slowly. We were in Meridian, Mississippi.
Yeah, I remember, because I was sitting. Mimi had booked this in
a salon, David. Yeah, I said I called her. I said David's going
to a salon. She said, yeah, yeah. So we went, and you know,
day
John Lennon got killed. I was sitting watching it on TV.
He was getting extensions,
you know, his little, yeah, things with all the colored
beads, oh yeah, he was getting them extended and getting a
little extension in his hair, yeah, and that kind of broke the
ice into going, and then we got to London, he went and got a
wig, but some of those wigs, you're right, they were, oh
man, oh, they were bad. There's one you can see it on YouTube.
He's being interviewed by some television station. He's got a
Farrah Fawcett wig, and it's just blonde as can be. And
thinking, damn, we did Ralph Emory one night. It's right when
they were having the, what do you call it, the CMT
of.
All the stars come out and sign, yeah,
so he did it that day,
and he wore a short haired wig
to do something. So we're on Ralph Emory, he's got a long
haired wig over,
so he's in between songs. He goes, "Now, most of y'all saw me
today at the festival, and I had long hair, new crowd.
He said, Well, that's not my hair, and he pulls it off. He's
got the short hair wig on TV Live, Ralph Emory in Ashville
now, and I'm sitting there with my bass, going,
and he pulls the wig off, he's got his short hair wig on in the
crowd. He said, but that's not my hair either. Then he pulls it
off, he's got another long hair.
I always said they're like my mama's watching this day.
I remember one, remember one show, because we had him several
times at the Rusty Spur in Birmingham. Oh yeah, he really
liked the club, because I mean, he pulled great crap, and plus
the station did a great job promoting it, but
I think it was whenever Deb, Debbie Pardue left him. Yeah,
and he came, and he was not in a good mood,
and he had forgotten his wig, because he was.. it was just.. I
mean, there was no hair at all. Yeah, so I thought, how's he
going to explain this to the crowd,
and he said, yeah, I know you all saw me a few months ago, and
I had hair, real long hair. He said, my wife just left me, so
he said I cut off all my hair and threw it at her, said you're
taking everything else
that's inventive
old day. Yeah, you never knew what was coming down that road.
I tell you, Mickey, the first time you met him, though. Yeah,
I mean, what, what was that like? I mean, did it take a
while for him to warm up to you? Was it an immediate,
you know, kind of you hit it right off immediately? I mean,
how did that go, especially with a guy that you admit you didn't
really know who he was. Well, it wasn't the first time I met him.
It was the first week, and we were on the road, and we're
playing in Fort Lauderdale Center, or someplace down there.
And
the first week, Wizard was gave him a week's notice, the bass
player, Alan Hicks, and he was going to leave at the end of the
week and get married, and so I was tuning David's guitar for
the first week. So I'm sitting on the side stage right over
here and tuning his guitar
because he capo is on the third fret, so you have to tune it
with the third fret on, make sure it's right, because he
knocks that capo over you out of tune, so I'm tuning a guitar,
and David walks up, and he's kind of knows me, you know, and
he walks up and goes,
I need my guitar, so I look him in the face, I'll say, well, it
ain't in tune, he says it classic line, if he's pissed at
you, he ends it with his word, it's in tune with me,
sir. So, what do I do here? Here you go, there you go. So, he,
this is where I got the respect, because he told the crew
afterwards, I like him, because I stood up, go play, I don't
care.
So, he hit that first capote on the third fret, and he hits the
D, so you don't have to play that bar chord in F, you know,
and here's that first chord, and it sounds like dog poo,
so immediately he's looking at me with the
prison stair, and you know us old boys, you know what this
means when you look at somebody and they're saying something bad
to you, you just go
that
It just turned around, kept playing, you know. And then the
show Wizard said, "Man, he came to me. He said, "He likes you.
Okay, and David said, "The only thing I have is you're the best
rodeo on my guitar I've ever
had. I said, "Well, it's either I play bass or I gotta.. I guess
I gotta pay for the plane ticket, go home, but I'm going
home. He hired me. Yeah, so he got,
he got that. What Wizard told me, he is, because I stood up to
him. He respected
it. Did he? Did he appreciate that? Did he have a lot of yes
people around him? I see. Yeah, yeah. So, you were, you're the
standout. I just said, hey, you know. Oh, many mornings, man, a
lot of times.
One really good one.
We bought this car. He bought this car out of Miami Coach
Works. It looked like an old Packard with the pipes coming
out of it. Remember that car?
I had a CDL, which didn't matter for driving the car, but I was
elected to drive the car,
and so Warren, I said Warren's gonna ride with me,
so
picked it up in Miami Coach Works, and I got in the car, he
got in the car, Warren got in the car, and we had two trucks,
two busses, limbos, blah blah.
So started pulling out on the road, and I was right behind the
band bus,
and
I called David on the CB,
said, "David, I gotta pull over, we'll catch up to you, I gotta
get some gas in the car. So we're going for gas, we're going
to get some beer and some rolling papers,
because he'd given explicit directions, you can't smoke no
pot in that car, and don't drink it. I'm like, okay, sure. This
is
crazy, although I did it, but we got it, and I caught up to him,
and David was driving his bus that day. Rodeo didn't feel
good, so David's up there, you know,
and
I pull up that old, it was on a Ford big Ford Explorer chassis,
but it looked like an old Packard. Yeah, it had a ball
punk radio in it, man. I was blaming, but pulled up outside
of David. He looks over and he goes, "What are y'all doing?
By that time Warren
pulls up a joint, and I take a chug of some old beer.
I pulled the classic, because I used to drive a truck with my
daddy. I go in my mic, I go, well, that
even pissed him off,
so I fell back in line,
but you know he knew that I'm just an old country boy. Yeah,
you know, you say something to me and I don't agree, I'm gonna
tell you, yeah. Well, you, he appreciated that, yeah. Well, he
was in prison. You give respect, you get respect, exactly. You
know, and
we won't talk about death row.
Well, yeah, there was always that story. Yeah,
I killed a man with a mop handle.
Well, in fact, my stepmother was Sherry Bryce. She was.. she sang
with Mel Tillis. Yeah, they had some hits, but she met David at
Mel's office, and she said that was the first thing out of his
mouth when, because she, she never did care for him, and she
never understood why I dug his meat, but she said that's the
first thing out of his mouth was, she goes,
I've been to prison and killed the man, and she said I had no
idea what to say.
Everybody knows the true story, right?
Y'all know the true story about death row. Well, you told me
recently, and I've kept it. Well, some somebody, he, the
cell block he was in,
some guy was pissed off, so he flooded the cell block, the only
cell block they had open.
Mops did figure into it, they had to mop the floor, but, but
not in my handle, but they had to move everybody death row, so
he was on death row, but not is true, but not another reason,
not for the reasons, but you know, David was kind of that
way, but I looked at it as show biz, you know, because most, I
mean, even a lot, I mean, a lot of entertainers kind of jazz up
their resume, so to speak, you know, and that's the way I
looked at a lot of people gave him hell for that, but it
didn't, it didn't bother me as bad,
what is the old saying?
If you got me in the paper, just spell my name right. Well, I
think he.. I mean, I think a lot of what David did, and in fact,
even with the X-rated albums, is that he wanted people to talk
about him. He liked controversy. Yeah, he welcomed
it. I mean, you got
a patched member of the Outlaws MC. He's been in prison reform
school and rough life. Boy, is it song?
David was on David was on death row. He took a ride from Juvie
straight to the penitentiary. Yep, that's one of my thing, I
write about, I write, I learned from him,
right from your past, what you've seen, what you
experience, how you feel about it. I was lucky enough to meet
Christopherson, and because I asked questions, I mean,
somebody, they tell me shut up, but if I don't ask it, I don't
know, right? And I, we were talking really nice guy, smart
guy, God, but I asked him, I said, Sunday morning coming
down,
how did it make you? What'd you feel? What, how'd you feel
writing that song?
And he looked me an eye, and I remember this, and it's been a
long time ago. He said, man, it's not so much how it makes me
feel. What does it mean to you
and to me,
if that's a songwriter? Yeah, he's was it? Am I relating to
you something in your life? And that's a songwriter. Yeah, he's
painting a picture for him nowadays. It seems to be
getting lost a lot. Yeah, it is a lost art now. It's just, you
know, let's party in the.
Yeah, truck, and throw a chair off the roof.
I'm an outlaw. My favorite guy, I won't mention name, but you
know who I'm talking about. He comes out and he slings a six
pack on stage. I'm like, okay, yeah, all right.
Did you ever experience David's being around the record company
execs? I mean, you know, he was on Columbia Records, you know,
major labels, so he had to deal with those people at some level.
Yeah, I him being such a kind of an anti-establishment kind of
guy. Yeah, I would be kind of surprised how
did he deal with the suits? Well, have you ever heard the
famous story about what he did when he was meeting with them?
No, I have not. Yeah, standing up on the table. Yeah, I've
heard it. No, I don't know if I can talk about that. Well, we
could probably clean it up a little. Well, when you get a
bunch of record executives and you're all in a meeting
and you stand up and jump up on top of this table, and
that's how he dealt with them.
He said, "You better not leave me.
I guess they left him waiting, didn't they? And he let him
know, and he said, "Next time y'all make me wait.
Yeah, he did that in Wichita, no, no, Wichita, somewhere up in
Canada. It was Newton, I thought, was Nebraska, maybe it
wasn't a corn, whichever one was the corn. Yes, that's Nebraska,
looking out the window. It was supposed to be a family show,
yeah, one of those old Opry houses. Yeah, yeah,
Mickey says in the book,
wailing, you know, instrumental opening up for him, right?
So we're about, you know, maybe 30 seconds into the song crowds,
you know.
Here comes David.
Well, he had just bought a new nudie suit, yeah, pink,
he had a pink hat on,
pink boots, and a pink nudie suit.
I'm sitting there like,
did he have the wig on? No, that was before the wig, and he comes
out, and you know, you got these people down here, then you got
those people up there,
and he comes.
I'll clean it up best I can,
but he comes out and he comes, his, you know, and useless puts
his guitar on him, and he goes, I'm David Allen Cove, and this
is my, oh Lord, and flash bugs, just I wrote in the book,
there's probably people now up in Nebraska, these little
country houses, and they got guest over, and they got his
picture of that up on their wall. I took a picture of David
Elling.
Well, you also had his story too about the Loretta Lynn tour bus.
The tour busses would come on their tours to tour the Country
Star zones, and you guys, I think, were on it once.
One, yeah. We,
we,
when David, we were off for a couple of weeks, and Warren and
I, David called us, he'd just gotten off parole, so he could
go overseas, so they'd booked us a tour on, uh, Sweden,
Stockholm, France, Spain, wherever, in London, England,
all over, but, uh, so he flew us in, and that's when she told me,
you know, I said, Where are you living now? She goes, he bought
a cave,
so beautiful Ruskin cave, Ruskin Cave. Oh, Dixon, Tennessee.
They was, they didn't know what was going on. Town folk would go
into town to the downer to eat, and they'd kind of,
but yeah, we flew over and did that. But hell, I forgot what I
was talking about. Well, we were talking about
it, was about the tour bus. Oh yeah, because they would go,
they would take them out to Loretta Lynn's dude ranch, and
then come by. Yeah, we were on the schedule, and we got
notified. So the first day the tour bus came, you know, and
it's got a lot of older people like us on it. Yeah, so we're
out there, and in the outlaws picked that day we had an
Olympic swimming pool. When you're coming in on the drive,
the swimming pool is on the left, so the bus is coming up,
and all the outlaws are out there with the old ladies,
skinny, skinny dipping in the pool, but there were a lot of
flashbacks. The bus comes by, and the flashbuck is going off,
and the next day, we were notified we were no longer on
the tour,
but you know, I was really blown away that
a few years before she died, Loretta Lynn suggested that
David should be put in the country Museum Hall of Fame,
should be, but you know, as well as I did, it ain't gonna happen,
it's a shame, because
just look at the magnitude of all those songs he wrote. Oh
man, I mean, that's a lot of them, but he did write. I did
bust him one day. We were at the house in the Keys at Big in
Marathon, in Big Pine Key, and him and Sherry and Mimi and
Grandma, she made the food and.
Ring the bell to let us know. Go eat,
and we were there, and
it just.. I don't know,
you have to really know him to know how to understand where
he's coming from and where he wants to go,
and we had a lot of discussions. Sometimes we'd end up cussing
each other out,
you know, David. What the whole down the road crew quit last
night because you're a butt.
Screw you, Hayes, screw you back.
That's kind of relationship we had. Yeah, love one day, hate
the hell out of you the next day, you know. Well, he had to
be kind of tough to
work with, he had a tough skin layer, and once you got to know
him, let's see, we were right around for several months, when,
when they got me down there,
him and I would just go out on the limo, of course, he would
drive, he wouldn't let me drive,
and we go out and do acoustic shows, yeah, and I'd just play
acoustic with him and sing harmony, you know, I'm just, you
know, and we just be two of us riding around on the limo.
He wrote, he wrote, we were in Canada, man, he, and he things I
noticed about him, how he writes, and we were passing this
big sign said, "Drink Canada Dry.
He says, "Drive. I'm like, "What? He said, "I want you to
drive. I'm gonna write a song. I said, okay. He started writing,
I drink Canada Dry. Yeah, I remember the song.
He has a great song with you, riding down the highway, and as
a song, that's what I liked about him too. When he would
write, they said he just kind of went into, uh, you did mess
with, yeah, you don't even paper, yeah, leave him alone,
yes, yeah,
but
you just think of all those albums, and he wrote all that,
oh yeah, he did, I mean, Buzz helped him, no Buzz,
oh Buzz Cason, yeah, him Buzz Raven, Buzz Raven, yeah, Buzz
Raven, and he hung out at Ruskin Cave with us
for the short two weeks I stayed there.
You got seven people in the band, six guys on the road crew,
and hangers on, and we had an old two-story Civil War house,
no insulation, one old bathroom, one decrepit kitchen, and y'all
can stay in that house.
Thanks for nothing. Well, I like this story in your book too,
about when you first got Ruskin Cave, and they were doing all of
this, oh Lord, maintenance work, and Mickey decides to go up to,
uh, oh yeah, well, he wanted us to go out.
He had this one really big building, had 234, floors on it.
He wanted to make it into a million dollar muse, David Allen
Cole, million dollar David. So he said, I want y'all to go out
and scout for arrowheads and old Indian artifacts on the grounds,
I'm thinking,
so I took one play bass, yeah, he bought these two kabuki golf
carts, or whatever, yeah, but he took and put Warren and the rest
of the guys in that, and I said I'll drive this one, and they
took off, and I went the other way,
and there was a ridge right above the old the rock house.
Yes, there was a ridge back behind it. So I went up there
and played Johnny Appleseed, except they want apple seed
when I come. We came back off tour, and I got these six foot
plants over
Dave. Oh. I remember too that that that
was
fact I saw him right after it happened was when the flood hit,
think it was an 84 yeah, because right around the time Mona Lisa
Lost Her Smile came out, oh yeah, and great song, I saw him
because I just moved back to Nashville. He was not. He was
always nice to me. I mean, he saw
us, you know, over in the corner, and he recognized he
came over, and I could tell he wasn't in a great mood. And I
said, "What's going? I said, "You should be really happy.
This record's gonna do well. It's gonna be huge. He goes, "Oh
man. He said, "I'm just dealing with a flood. He said, "I lost
everything. I said, well, man, surely insurance. He said I
didn't have any. I went, oh no, insurance. Yeah, he wasn't big
on buying insurance, was he? No, he was big. He was big.
He had money. Oh yeah, I won't get into that because I arrest,
but he had money. I'm not. He just spent it quickly, and he
showed me at one time, and I'm like, because he kept cash,
yeah, that's how he dealt, yeah, that's one of the ways he tried
to elude the IRS,
yeah, you get cash, you know, you write a check, get back to
you, give me cash, but, uh,
he was a good guy, he just had that side to him, and you knew
I.
Knew when I could and when I couldn't, you know.
Well, he marched to the beat of his own drummer, basically. But
he was not. I would like to cover this, because I've gotten
this a lot from people that don't understand him. But I
always got the, how can you like that guy? He's a racist, and I
said, man,
not that I know him, but I've met him, and you know, I've
really gotten into his music, and I said, I don't see the guy
that could be racist that writes a line like, you know,
I've got black blood rolling through my veins, and black
blood you can't control,
and that, and plus, with the music that he,
you know, was inspired by it, was all inspired by black
people. Yeah, we do sometimes we wouldn't open with that. Willie
Weller to me was usually our standard opener, but sometimes
he'd go back to that and we'd come out and just do like 20
minutes of nothing but blues. Yeah, I mean, and it was good,
it was good blues, yeah, because he can weigh all this, yeah, he
can feel it, he can feel he's got it, man, he's got that
feeling, yeah, and we just 20 minutes, and I'm like, oh yeah,
because it was, he's getting into it, so that means you're
getting into it, you know, and you feel it instead of just
playing it well, and that's why I liked when I first saw it,
well, when I saw you guys together in Birmingham, that
whole show blew me away, because it was David's stuff. He did
Allman Brothers,
he did blues, he did rhythm and blues. Yeah, I mean, I was like,
these guys are playing everything, playing my girl, I
mean, it, you got a yeah, and that the one we did on Austin
City Limits, man, that was good. That was because I changed it. I
didn't do James Jameson's party at all. I stayed completely.
He's like an old black guy I used to play with. He built
himself his 500 pound of blues. Yeah, I was the white boy in the
band. I was playing all those metal buildings, you know, yeah,
I'd be the little white boy and little girls on the front, and
the black girls like, oh, look at that white boy, he's cute,
scared the hell out of me, but you know, he started doing that,
and I'm like, going back to what I used to do, you know, yeah,
because we play hardcore blues, and I'm like, yeah, I know that
stuff, he'd tell me, man, you know, I played blues, I said,
yeah,
well, that had to be what drew him to Warren as well. Yeah,
Warren Hayes, a lot of you are, you know, you know him from
Government Mule, but and Almond Brothers, but he got to start
with David, and thanks to Mickey.
Yeah, I still have old blackmail pictures of Warren.
So, Warren, if you're watching,
Warren's a good guy. He's got a good heart. He's built a lot. He
works with a Habitat for Humanity. Yes, and he's built -
they've got a whole community over there, and they renamed it
Warren Haynes Boulevard in Asheville, and there's like 4550
houses there. Wow, contributed to him doing the Christmas jam
every year. Yeah, we started that one in
Tony Kiss was a local newspaper guy, did the entertainment for
Asheville Citizen Times, and we always laugh at it because
Warren put it out. It started in 89 it started in 88 Yeah, but
the place called 45 Cherry, Asheville, Northern, we did it
first one for the veterans,
and then it just progressed and kept progressing. Then we moved
to a bigger one, went over to a bigger slot, and we got Derek in
there and Susan in there, and and then it went from
be here now, which was a larger venue, over to the civic center.
So he does a civic center every year now it raises,
he raises several $100,000
every year for Habitat, you know, and yeah, that's gone two
or three, four houses,
good for him, great thing, you know, yeah, and they renamed,
they have a Warren Haynes day, really gave me Keechin City,
wow, I neglected to tell him, I said, 'Call me. We still had the
house
in Nashville, and he called me.
Well, I saw him. Yeah, we.. I'll start it off. We drove this old
1953 Plymouth, broke down, that's all we had to drive. He
wouldn't drive, I had to drive. He never drove. So one day he
comes home after Garth cut the song, and Warren comes home.
We got to go to Asheville for the jam. I said, "Okay, I go
check on the car. He said, "No, I'm gonna rent a car. I said,
"Oh, okay. So, what does he do? We go to rental place. He picks
out the biggest Lincoln he could find, White, and I drove all the
way to Asheville. Right before I got to Asheville, he said, 'Pull
over.
I said, 'Okay. So I found a little service station, pulled
in, said, 'I'm gonna drive
what you. So I let him drive to Lincoln, big long stretch.
Lincoln, what does he do? He pulls into the main street of
Asheville, rolls his window down, and everybody we pass.
Spot on the street,
you made it, Warren. Yeah, but later that night he called me
the next day, where he had to go back to Nashville. He calls me
the next day, and it's in the paper. He got pulled for pot.
Oh man, I said, he said I told him who it was. I played with
Almond Brothers. I see you told them you played with Almond.
Yeah, there
it is in the paper. Yeah,
man, you got pulled over for pot. Yeah, Warren, you may want
to, you may want to keep that out of the car at certain times.
Yeah, he's a good guy, man. I enjoyed playing with we when we
first quit David,
and we got that house over in Antioch, and we were playing all
these little dives over by the Vanderbilt,
and you know, just playing little pizza joints, a little
pizza joint that used to be across the street from that exit
end. Yeah, that old.. I remember, though, if it's still
there, but there's a little pizza, Sam
Bush, and all them boys be there, and
Billy Joe's boy, what a guitar player, boy, he was Eddie,
Eddie was something, he was, but we'd all go over there and play,
you know, for pizza,
that was some good, see,
I don't really, Nashville has changed too much for me. It's
not what it used to be. Sure, it's back in those days, man. It
was so cool, especially Elliston Place. That was, oh yeah, yeah,
the Rock Block, what they call him. What was that? What was
that music store over there?
What was that, Corner Music? Corner Muse,
I can't even remember now, I don't think so. I used to go
there and do my business. I like them, but yeah, in the comedy
club I used to go over there on
Zanies. Yeah, Zanies, yeah, yeah, because I saw
when a guy named Carson Chamberlain, and he's the
producer in town now, I guess. I didn't know that Andy Buckner is
a friend of mine, and he's producing Andy Buckner, but, uh,
Carson was my steel guitar player and Leon Everett band, so
yeah, many nights on the bus in the back, you know, talking,
he's the one that turned me on the Keefe, actually, he had a
demo Whitley, yeah, he had a demo tape, and he said, man, you
got to listen to Scott sing, and I'm like, okay, he put that on.
I'm like,
damn, that got his voice.
That's what Billy Sherrill told me one time. I asked, we were
talking, I said, why did you, when you found David, why did
you sign him? Is it because of his voice?
Yeah, David had a great voice, and women love it. Oh man, they
did. I've never met a woman who didn't love his voice. They
might hate his guts. Oh, yeah,
that's how he got all those wives.
That was bad when he was Mormon.
Ask me about the pirate getting stuck out on the waves and
sinking on the 50 foot,
oh, that's right, yeah, the Coast Guard came out and they
brought this boat out, they had a crane on it, yeah,
no insurance,
no insurance again, 50 foot, we had just refitted it, I did the
whole wheelhouse and teak wood and rubbed it down, we bought
all brand new Loran
Sea Farron Cibarand Electronics, and
the biggest thing, though, is
on the back it was an open spot,
and he had us build,
you remember the old Cleopatra movies? Oh yeah, her bedroom, oh
yeah, Cheer Kirk, oh yeah, that's what we build on the back
of the boat. I'm saying, well, the first down big wave comes
by, that thing's gone.
Took it out, had
an actor, I forgot his name now, Jan Michael Vincent, Jan Michael
Vincent took it out,
and as we later found out, clearing the until we got into
the channel, and the channel also has got all that hard coral
in it, because big boats can't come through there, and
useless runs up, had two twin three eight teams in the motor,
on under, under, under, and useless comes up, David
Wheelhouse is half full water,
like, oh, okay,
it hit one of those coral reefs, and it broke the beam, and it
was leaking bad. So they radioed, Coast Guard came out
and rescued everybody, and when they put the crane on
it, it broke. Wow.
And then when they got it back to the shipyards down there, we
still had pirates, yeah. It won't, nothing. They stripped
it. It won't nothing left on that boat. So that was the end
of that.
Well, and to you guys,
you know, the because David was a member of the Outlaws, the
Outlaws Motorcycle Corps,
and I always remember this story you told.
About when they didn't know who you were, they thought you were,
then they think you were worried a critic or something, that it,
yeah, they well, we did that show in Florida, and that was my
first show playing,
so I came back and I was laughing because I was driving
the damn tour bamboo, so I was the last one, and it's old
Holiday Inn, you know, three floors and all the doors are on
the outside, yeah.
So I didn't have a gig jacket because I was new, I just had my
street clothes
and suitcase, and I was got up the third floor and I was
walking down the highway, and I noticed it was like five or six
or seven, a bunch of outlaws out on that was before they outlawed
the dummy dust, so they were all having a good time. Yeah, and
they saw me coming,
and I got up on mr. Will, you, what do you think you're doing
here? And they grabbed me,
and they hung me over the railing by my ankles. Oh man,
yeah, I'm staring down at asphalt three fours
down, and I hear this big voice, let him go. I'm thinking, don't,
don't let me go.
Hang on tight. He follows that he's in the band. They pull me
back in, and I think I'm safe. Yeah, no, no, I gotta go to
their room. Oh, and do what they're doing. Oh
no, oh, did I.. well, it got so bad. I got up the next morning,
I had to have Big Al. He's only like five foot five.
We called him Big Al.
I said, 'Man, my whole face is frozen on the right side. I
can't griddle, you know. So he takes me to the emergency room
and wrote a song about that one too,
he takes me to the emergency room, and yeah, this whole
side's gone. Yeah, and the doctors at me say, "What were
you doing last night? I said, "Well, we were partying. He
said, "With what? Now, I told him, and I did my share in
somebody else's. Yeah, he said, "Well, you got it's short term,
it'll be okay in a week, you know. But for that whole damn
seven days, everybody in the band decided, well, man, can't
you chew your fruit? What's that?
So I got that for the whole week. Yeah,
got that. But yeah,
they hung me over, man. Scared the hell out of me. Oh, I bet
I'm sitting there looking at them, and I knew they would do
it. Yeah, that was the scary part. But thank God David saved
me.
Yeah, but I mean, that's like it got to be like that's what I
expected. Yeah,
I'm like I'm here, I'm not going anywhere, so I gotta get used to
this. Yeah, I've had the picture of us doing the show at Ruskin
Cave. Yeah, we had a big party after that evening. Daughter
saved me. He was a road manager, also, but he's a fellow MC
outlaw. But one
of them had done too much of that dummy dust, yeah, not
cocaine, but he'd done other stuff. And
when you got a pistol this far in front of you, and the guy's
hand like this. Oh Lord, and Darty came over, and
he took him away, and probably, yeah, took care of it. But I
learned how not to answer, ask questions. Yeah, you don't ask.
Just mind your business. How to ask? I asked one time, I asked a
hot law. I said, "Well, what? What? He said, "You don't need
to know. I'm like, why isn't you don't know, you can't testify.
That was the world, that was the world of David Allen Co. band.
How old were you when you started with 30? Oh, okay. So
you weren't like some young kid. No, I've been on the road, yeah,
since I was 1514,
Okay, yeah, so, but I never experienced
that level of insanity.
I mean, insanity, but still there was a motive,
that's what I dug about it. He was fucking act like a craziest
person you ever met, but he had a purpose, he knew what he was
doing, you know.
You got to give it to him. He stood up and did his thing, and
he pulled it off, and he pulled it off. Yeah, he's a legend, you
know. Whether you want to admit it or not, he look at who else
has wrote
a volume of songs like that. None that I know, a few, very
few, and songs that will stand the test of time. Well, yeah, I
mean, they'll be singing "Would You Lay with Me" to feel the
stone, for
they might not be doing Little Susie.
Well, yeah,
but the rod, Gary. Oh, yeah, I told I was telling John,
I told Gary, I said, "Man, I just want to, because Gary kept
calling me, thanking us for cutting the ride, and I said,
"No, man, thank you. He said, "Why you thinking me? I said,
"Because when that ride came out, my level of traveling on
the road got a lot easier.
No more hamburgers at Crystal,
except for one time in Oklahoma.
Five straight days of nothing but Kentucky Friday. Oh
Lord, we had good, we had a good time, man. And I just kept
telling the stories like I'm doing now, and everybody just
kept pushing me to write a book. So I finally, it took four
years. Luckily, I had partial diaries, you know, because I
wanted it to be honest, and it took me two months after I got
it finally finished, and the editor had it. I wrote all of
that. None of it was written. That's why I was probably got
some grammatical errors, but I was always good in English, and
you know, I'd get up. You know, you have to do an essay on
Fridays, and everybody write their little thing, a couple of
sheets, whatever. I never thought about it, and she called
my name. I just go up on the way up, I'd make something up.
You could do so much better. I'm like, I'm making A's, yeah, but
you could be
okay. But I've had,
I interpret how I lived, what I've been through, people I've
met, I write songs about women, of course. Well, yeah, got 15
ex-wives, and
only got 215
between you and me. There you go,
yeah. I just write what I lived. I learned that from David, you
know, and watching some of these other old guys, artists that
write their own songs, you know, and I appreciate a good
songwriter that gets up there and sings his song, and he's
singing it from something he's lived that way. I can look at
him, go, yeah, I've been there, you know, and that means a lot
to me. Yeah, I mean, you know, Haggard was that way, yeah, it
was, you know, Waylon, yeah, all those guys. I still love the
Billy Joe shows he was gonna Waylon's butt. Oh, that was a
great story. And Waylon, Waylon was promised Billy Joe he was
gonna do an entire album of his song when they were in Texas.
Yeah, when they were in Texas, then I guess Waylon didn't get
around to it fast enough. So Billy Joe shows up in Nashville.
Well, he was there while he was cutting, and what he didn't do
any Billy Joe songs, so he was getting Whadlands, getting ready
to leave, and Billy Joe bought him. See,
the horse, Hoss, you promised me you're gonna cut my songs, and
you ain't getting out of here without me, and you going for
it, unless you cut some. I'm gonna whip your ass right here
in front of everybody, and thank you. That's what honky tonk
hears came the whole album. Yeah, it was, yeah, because
Waylon said, I'm gonna tell you what. He pulled him into an
office and said, you play me, you play me two or three songs.
He said, if I like them, I'll do the album. He said, if I don't,
you never bother me again. And
the story went that he played, he did three, and Waylon wanted
to hear more to hear more. Yeah, well, it pleases me, because
Waylon can.. I work with his grandson, Way, a lot now. Way's
a good guy. Dad was a good guy. I love Terry. Terry, I never got
a chance to meet Terry. Oh, it's a shame. I think you guys would
have gone along great. You might remember back in those days,
Willie's Row crew and Whalen's Row crew, they do these little
films on the road, and they turn them into the public TV station,
but little we did one, me and Warren did
one over at Wayland's warehouse,
set it up, it's everybody's addicted
to helium, yeah, so everybody's walking around. We went to the
Goodwill store and bought all these little.. I had a madras
jacket with striped pants, you know. We're looking, and
everybody's walking around with a little tank of helium,
and Warren's got his little cheeky little straw hat on,
that's got the little sun shade right. Yeah,
he's walking around when
I got that video, and that was one they would put it into the
local public stations, and they'd play it, you know, doing
crazy stuff like getting to the show, or whatever. Back then,
they were some good, his crew was good guys. Yeah, that I
still got that video. Me and Warren did the soundtrack, we
just went in studio on, and Lauren plays drums pretty good
too, so he played guitar, I played bass, and he did the
guitar.
Wow,
but, uh, that was pretty cool.
That was my youngin. Oh, okay.
I told him not to call me. He did anyway.
Well, he can. He's got car blind, yeah. But yeah, it was a
lot of fun. Back, we did a lot of crazy stuff, man. We just,
you name it, we probably did it. Oh, yeah, I know this, like this
automatic
many times. We did that on the bus. We got rated once. One of
the crew members had taken a female home, and I don't think
she was of age. Oh, so 7o'clock in the morning, they're pounding
on the door, and we got like 10 or 12 cars downstairs.
Well, I remember one time you guys, it was the last time you
played the Rusty Spur in Birmingham,
and I went into the station the next day, and the salesman who.
I had sold the whole package,
man. We got a problem. I said, 'What's wrong? And he goes,
'Well, he
said there's a waitress that worked at the restaurant. Said
she's still living at home with her parents.
Said she took off on the bus.
He said she's wondering when she's holding us responsible. I
said, How are we responsible? We didn't, we didn't set it up.
Yep,
we had the first time that happened. I took care of it. I'd
already trained a guy we had, we hired, we called him Big R,
because he's big. So I taught him how to drive the town band
bus. I was tired of it, and we were out west at some
fair state fair. Yeah, that's when I still had to.
David pawned him off on me. I had to take care of him. He was
a Black Panther.
I remember that he had a black because he always had these
exotic cats. He had a tiger once, and yeah, I was accused, a
friend, my front of house guy had sent me a letter last year
that man,
David gave you the tiger, so you put it in the car, went to the
club, and you partied all night long, and you come back the next
morning, and tiger had ripped the whole damn car,
didn't even have a stairwell, it's all still, oh man, I'm
like, well, I thought he'd be all right. I
thought it'd be okay. Well, we had monkeys,
monkeys,
two or three, we had tiger, black panther. I had to be black
panther in
state fair we did out in Oklahoma, I think it was. Yeah,
you had to walk him around. I walked him around, you know. I
walked back to where the food area was. No cop standing there,
and I'm thinking maybe I might not want to take him in there
with all that food. Oh yeah, the cops like looking
here in Oklahoma, and I'm walking up with a Black Panther,
so I turned around, took him back to bus. We finally donated
him, I think, to a zoo, because he was - it was in the summer.
Yes, and our lack of air conditioning, it wasn't - he
gets a little rowdy, and his claws were coming out, and he'd
nip at you, and you know, yeah, we had to get rid of the
panther. I think we, my register is one of the only touring bands
with a panther on your bus. Oh yeah, I don't know. I think you
were the only ones. I didn't like the monkey. He starts stuff
at you.
I can only imagine. Yes,
everybody's a critic. A little monkey, every day was like it's
like a movie, you know? You want to get out of it? No,
you got to be seeing some of the stories these days, and just
laugh, and just be like, really, you think that's you think
that's newsworthy?
No idea. I just, you know, there's a lot of good stuff
coming out of Nashville, but it's not mainstream, no, it's,
it's on the second tier, maybe call it, I don't know, but
there's a lot, there's still a lot of good songwriters, still a
lot of good singers in this town, but they're not getting,
they're not getting attention, they're not getting what they
deserve. No, I listened to our group on the road a lot with
David, I got to know all those old Texas songwriters, man,
Jerry Jail. We had a.. oh, I love Jerry. We did a show in
Oklahoma, and Jerry Jeff was on the bill, and I was talking
backstage to the row crew. See, man, we finally did it. I said,
"What'd you do?
We taught Jerry Jeff, that we drinks too much and passes out
on stage to fall backwards instead of
mess up his guitar
feeding a dog. I like this story about Jerry Jeff. I forget where
it was, but I think it was in Texas somewhere. But he had been
in the swimming pool, he was late for the gig, and they had
to go get him out of the pool. Jerry Jeff shows up on stage
with wet swimming trunks goes on stage, man. Those days are gone,
them old boys, Diamond Jim and Fred Spears with the Tennessee
Hat. Yeah, that was that was a good band gum, good band. It
was. They're all still friends. Billy the kid died. He took my
place for a little while.
I might as well mention I hold the record for quitting David
five times. He'd always called me back. He surprised me when he
called me back one time, because I got really mad, and I bought
this old Dodge van from Mater, our truck driver. It was old,
like early 70s,
and it had four slick tires on it, and the spare was slick, and
I quit David, and I had the van, and I'm going to North Carolina,
and I'll say, well, I can't go on those slick tires, so I went
down to our service station that did all the cars, and blah blah
blah, I said I need four tires, and I put one on that spare too,
he said, okay, so he redid, and I all four brand new tires.
Was a brand new spare, he said. What are you gonna do with Bill?
I said, he sent David,
so he sent it, and I never heard a word about it.
He never would come up. I do like that stuff. I mean, you go
in a music store, and he gave me $10,000
and I went to the music store in Miami, and Mater drove me up on
one of the equipment trucks,
and I walked in, and that's where all those sun amps, the
amp wall, yeah, came from.
They had a whole row of sun amps, they suck, but
they look good when you stack them up six, seven foot high
down wall, but that's where the amp wall came, and the guy was
talking about, we were talking about David, you know, and
which one of his amps he was, and all of them. He said, "Okay.
I said, "Trucks pulling up out back, just load them in it. And
we were talking, I said, "Yeah, you know, if David ever comes
in, if you really want to sell him something,
just kind of go, 'Well, man, that costs a lot of money. I
don't know if you can afford it. He'll give you whatever you
want.
That's just.. we were starving on the road, and we eating at a
truck stop. We not a lot of money, right? I got paid. What
does David do in front of all of us? He gives the waitress $100
tip.
I ain't got no money,
huh? was like one time, too. You said that he bought a parrot. Oh
God, I could talk the green chicken. Yeah, and yeah, we
were, yeah. And he talked about how much he paid for it, $6,000
Yeah,
but you can't pay your band members. Yeah, I'll give you a
back. Yeah, he had to go back to Nashville. We were in the middle
of filming Lady Gray over there, yeah.
So he had to go to Nashville, and he had just bought the
chicken and told us to take care of
it. So what he tore the chicken, the parrot knew 400 words. So
I'm thinking, okay, so David's rolling was Big Big Don, Big
Jack Donovan, or something like it was BJ,
that's right, like Black Jack Donovan, like Jack Donovan.
Yeah, so I went on the bus, and they only took a couple days,
and I talked
the chicken
how to say big jerk, big jerk.
So David comes back, and we go over to the bus. He's getting on
the bus, he opens the door, and the parents right there in the
front, he sees David, big jerk.
David looks, you taught him that, didn't you?
Somebody else is no. Well, I loved also the movie because
Earl Owensby, if people don't know who Earl Owensby was, he
was a big B movie, C movie, whatever,
he put these kind of movies out, 4o'clock in the morning, you
might see it, yeah, Black Jack Donovan, all they did was they
had like David Allen Co, like greatest hits, but somebody that
just put tape over David Allen Co, but Black Jack Doc. Oh
yeah, you're seeing that one. We got that film in that little
barbecue outside. Yes, they introduce Ginger, you know? She
gets up, yes, Panama, and you know, playing a song. She was a
sweetheart, and I didn't notice it, but then we did a shot in
the studio of her cutting song at what's that guitar picker out
of Charlotte. He had him and his brother had a TV show, can't
remember his name, but we were doing, and they had a shot close
up of me and her. She's on the mic, standing up, and I'm
sitting right behind her.
We had the same damn haircut,
and David, that's where David got the idea.
She's a sweetheart, though, man. But
because of her, I got the lowdown on what happened that
night to Elvis.
I can't talk about it. She swore me, her mom got on me too. Boy,
they had the lawsuit because Elvis had promised her a house,
and sure, but she told me what happened when she woke up that
morning, and she told me what led up to it, but you know, I
don't want to be called in to testify, so I don't know, yeah,
you don't know a thing, who
it
was, John Lennon, that's
well, man, what, how do you,
because you know, losing David recently, a big thing, and how
do you think he'll be remembered by
the majority of the Nashville community?
Well,
you probably know, you probably, everybody probably knows how
this business works. Yeah,
they,
they don't give a lot of credit to someone like that when
they're alive, right? Once they die, they're gonna try to figure
out how to make a book. Well, they're putting out an album. I
heard that's Kim. Was that Kim?
Okay, let me talk about that. No, so.
She's, it's, it'll be an album of her,
mostly. Oh no,
I hope no, no, it's not. But
I mean, I'm sorry, but I mean, I'm hoping it's not. I'm hoping
it's like I said, I'd rather buy a Yoko Ono album, I think. No
offense, Kim,
I would say her nickname, but
you tell us when we get done,
so it would be something if you changed her name to something
familiar with Yoko. Oh, okay, gotcha. Keep your K, okay. It,
yeah, many nights with that woman,
she was a casino waitress, but he, yeah, he loved her
well. They seemed to make each other happy, I guess. That's
all. My hat's off to her for keeping, you know, taking care
of him, yeah, for all those years,
and just putting it out that I mean, when they had the flag on
his casket, so many people didn't know he's in service. Oh
yeah, my friend Dave Pommery over here at the Union, he
called me because they had a CSAC check for him, and she had
called him checking on the checks, and he said she said he
was in his service. I said, yeah, not for long, but he was
in service. In fact, didn't he go in underage? Didn't he? He
went in under age, so he qualified for a pension. So he
gets his service pension. Well, good for most people don't know
he was in service, you know. Yeah, you know, he volunteered
at a young age. You gotta give it to him. Hell, just got out of
jail, you know. Yeah,
yeah.
Well, I just hope that people will
check out his Columbia catalog, because that stuff's just
classic. I mean, he made some great records. Yep, and check
out the early stuff, the songwriting on that early.
That's what I was hoping would happen in the end of his life
was that he would get
a like what cash got done for him? Yeah, at the end, that's
why I was hoping for David, but it didn't work out that way,
unfortunately. Yeah, it was
he passed away, or it was on the 29th around 5o'clock when I got
to where he passed out. I mean, he passed away around 5o'clock
and luckily they got in touch with me.
It takes a little while to digest. We were, you know, we
were close for a long time.
Well, and I would stress to everyone to pick up the book,
especially if you want to know what it was like on the road
with David Allen Cohen, and you know, brace yourself, because
it's some of it's
what you would think. My life on the road with David Allen Co.
Mickey Hayes. Is there anywhere else people can check out stuff
on you?
Yeah, I guess everybody's got me here and there on social media
and movies and
shows. We did Austin Sea of the Limits was probably the best
show we ever did on.. Oh, that was great. It was like
when David, if you haven't seen Austin See the Limits, when
we're doing my girl, yeah, and David does the freeze, yeah,
while Warren plays the, yeah, so I'm sitting over there, good,
what's he doing? Just freezes, yeah, he's just standing there,
he's got his friend Jonah, yeah,
I'm like, well, what I really loved was when you guys did
Willie Whalen and me, yeah, and I swore to somebody, I said
somebody said gland instead of band, you got it, yeah, as rodeo
on the far left,
and I tell people that she, what, listen to it really cool,
oh yeah,
and you can tell by David's place, because
David kind of
smiles. You guys are on me. Oh,
national TV. Well, man, it's been a treasure. This one thing,
go ahead, show you how smart David is. We were doing, you
know, preliminary, you know, that they do 230 minute slots,
they came, and then they put them together, and you don't
have any say so over that. They put them together, yeah. And
David knew this, so we went in the first 30 minute show we did.
He cussed every song,
cussed, and
then we did the show, and he didn't cuss
until the last song, darling, darling, yeah, and they tickled
me, they were so bad, they put the, and they put the X's on his
mouth, yeah,
but he cussed on the, and they kept it in, they just, but I
figured out he did that because he didn't want that one, he
wanted the one he wanted, so he cussed all the way through the
first 30 minutes, then we filmed the second 30 minutes, and
that's the one they used.
Well, Mickey, thanks so much for coming, man. And you came in,
uh, yeah, this is really cool, man with us. And Gary Gentry, I
mean, we waited for you, but it's cool, brother. Gary, we
still looking.
Him another time, by the way, Gary. It's get the right circle
in the drain podcast with you, Sharon. And Gary, I know where
you live. I'm coming to see
here, Harley, at 12 o'clock at night. It's me, I'm coming with
him, buddy.
Jay, tell folks where they can catch us. Yes, Johnny B, of
course. Our social media platforms, Facebook, we try to
get it on Twitter, where X, whatever, when it cooperates, of
course, our YouTube channel and the website Circling the
drain.net
and check that out, because you can also get some cool stuff.
Yep, and we'll join us next time on Circling the Drain.