Coming Live in Concert:

David Allan Coe
with special guests:
Roughstock

Thursday 20 November 2003

Let's Dance
Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Tickets $17 in advance $19 at the door

Information & Tickets available at Marion Fitness & Health
(formerly Gold's Gym)
80 Twixt Town Rd. Marion, Iowa (Behind the Best Western Longbranch)
319 373 2822

Or online at www.TicketCrusher.com

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He's a rebel - David Allan Coe.

Of course, Coe is the country singer least likely to bow out gracefully. He first impressed himself upon Nashville by donning old rhinestone suits and a Lone Ranger-style mask; he'd park in front of the Ryman Auditorium in a hearse with his name painted in big letters along both sides. On weekend nights in the late '60s, as the Grand Ole Opry commenced inside the Ryman and crowds gathered around the building, Coe would hide in a shadowy corner, running in place so that he could work up a good sweat in his rhinestone suit. Then he'd stand on the back stairs and talk to a security guard. The perspiration and the fancy suit gave him the look of someone who had just performed in the Ryman, which wasn't air-conditioned in those days. Inevitably, someone would see him coming from the stage-door steps and would ask if he had just been on the Opry. Before long, a throng of country fans would circle him, and he'd start signing autographs. Eventually, someone in the crowd would begin asking questions--who was that masked man? Thus was born the Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy.
Coe did perform around town, becoming a regular at Tootsie's Orchid Lounge and the old Linebaugh's. He became the subject of a colorful article written by Jack Hurst, then the country music reporter at The Tennessean and now a veteran staff member of the Chicago Tribune. Record producer Shelby Singleton read the article and signed Coe to a contract, putting out a couple of derivative blues-rock albums on the SSS and Plantation labels. Once the outlaw movement started to stir, Coe found his natural niche: After all, he had spent nine years in the Ohio State Penitentiary for robbery and possession of obscene materials. He owned something that elevated him above most other outlaw singers--he had an honest-to-God criminal record.
Well, mostly honest. Early on, Coe liked to tell how he'd spent three months on Death Row after he killed another inmate who had made sexual advances toward him. The story got repeated for years--Coe even wrote about it in his premature autobiography, For the Record. Eventually, however, a news reporter for a Dallas television station decided to call the Ohio State Penitentiary while preparing a story on Coe. He found out that there was no record of Coe ever killing anyone. Rolling Stone both corroborated the reporter's story and elaborated on the holes in Coe's tale.
For his part, Shelby Singleton said, "I always figured David's stories were about 92 percent bullshit, but it made for good promotion."
The more intriguing question about Coe remains his choice to focus so much of his creative energy on writing songs that tout his sexism, his racism, and his criminal past--not to mention the endless songs in which he positions himself as one of the leaders of the outlaw movement and as an heir to the entire country-music tradition. At times, he has proven capable of truly good work: After all, he did write Tanya Tucker's hit "Would You Lay With Me (In a Field of Stone)" and Johnny Paycheck's "Take This Job and Shove It." But in the end, Coe's reputation as a bad-ass seems to have superseded any talents he has shown--although, as his new live album and his interview comments suggest, he's no longer even capable of keeping up a threatening veneer.
These days, the once avowed polygamist lives alone and travels without the large entourage that once shadowed his every move. Jody Lynn Coe, the last and longest-lasting of his wives, left him last year. "She just woke up one day and decided she didn't want to be married anymore," he says, showing emotion for the first time during the interview. "I'm a single man, running up and down the road trying to make a living. It's hard to live like I do and have a relationship with anybody. It's a very lonely thing."
From: http://weeklywire.com/ww/09-22-97/nash_music-lede.html

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