independiente, capítulo ciento y seis
The Campaign
Chapter 20
A Christmas Tale
I was driving us home from…Utah, maybe?––I can’t remember now. Somewhere out west, for sure––I’d dropped us into New Mexico from Raton Pass, cutting across the bleak but oddly beautiful northeastern corner to get us into to Texas.
It’d been a long road trip, at least two months out. We’d been in Nashville and Boston, New York and New Hampshire, Detroit and Dayton. We’d crossed the Midwest, too––Chicago, Des Moines, Kansas City, all in the illogical scatter of a travelling band’s itinerary. St. Louis was in there, too, but we’d hit that fine town early in the tour, on our way east.
It was two days before Christmas. Chris and I had our wives and children to see (a considerable portion of our van had been given over to gifts by then), drummer Buddha Mills his loving and extended network of family and friends. I was therefore intent on the task of delivering us. I’m a long haul specialist, and I’m good at it: I focus on the road, refuse distractions, and drive. The main problem I have is lead-footedness. I’ve moderated somewhat, but back in those days I pretty much kept the hammer down all the time. We all drove that way. It fit with the band’s culture, and with the crazy distances we were expected to cover. I had a stopwatch we used to calculate our speed, since we were pegging the speedometer at 90 on the Ford Aerostar vans we rented. Lord, we’d ramp those poor bastards up to the shuddering edge of their capacity––one time in Wyoming I got a ticket for going 112 m.p.h. The cop said he was putting in his contacts when we shot by him, fast enough to buffet his car, and at first he didn’t believe what his blurry vision was telling him.
The band had a policy that did nothing to slow us down: we paid traffic fines out of the kitty.
That night in late December, I was slicing through the cold air on I-30. It was late, 11:00 or so. Home by dawn, maybe––we were out of the panhandle, crossing into Taylor county, 20 or 30 miles from Abilene. I wasn’t going flat-out––a sedate 80, 85 mph––when the familiar lights hit me.
Fuck me.
I pulled over right away, of course, gathered rental papers, insurance, driver’s license, rolled down the window, then put both my hands on the steering wheel.
Just the way cops like it. Shit, it’s a dangerous job, and I respect the people who do it, even if I have occasionally found myself at odds with them.
These cops––two, sharing a patrol car––were from a nearby little town called Merkel. My mom was born there. Cop #1 stuck his head in the van, took us in: a couple of fuckin hippies up front, a huge black guy lying down in the back. He gave a sniff: weed? Alcohol?
As it happened, we were clean.
ish.
––Hey, officer, how ya doing?
Do you know why I pulled you over?
––Oh, yes sir, I was driving way in excess of the speed limit, and I apologize.
No evasion, no bullshit. It’s the last thing they expect, and it always resets the cop/civilian relationship, so fragile in those first moments.
Still, the inevitable questions followed. Alas, each answer I gave ensured more scrutiny. It was inevitable. Musicians. Going back to Austin. Those two bare facts right there are taken as probable cause by every constabulary on earth.
I’ve done the popo dance so many fucking times. I’m nearly as good at it as I am at driving across the country––so good, in fact, that I knew the precise moment when this cop and his partner made the decision to engage in a full-on search of the van.
You fellers got any drugs in this van?
And my mind magically conjured a picture: it’s after a gig at the Off Broadway in St. Louis, back in October. We’re at a friend’s brownstone, a great local drummer named Jim. We have shared an illegal smile, and now we’ve stepped outside, saying our goodnights and fare-thee-wells as we walk to our van, and I realize I still have a tiny remnant of our fellowship between my fingers. Rather than throw it on the ground, I drop it into my glasses case––
––where it had languished, lo those many weeks, completely forgotten––
––until the very moment the cop asked me the ever-popular question. My memory flash was undoubtedly accompanied by the faintest of flickers on my face, but for these cops that work the highways and byways of our great nation in the throes of a drug war, it doesn’t take much. He saw it.
So I lied. Nossir, nothing like that. Admit or deceive? It was 50/50, honestly, and that time I went on the chance my tiny little remnant would elude detection. Worst case scenario was the same, either way: me, spending the night in jail.
Step out of the van, please.
An hour later, we were still outside the van, seated well off the shoulder of the freeway in the cold north wind. A couple of more units had shown up, county and state, and together these intrepid law enforcement officials had taken everything out of the van. Everything. Amps, guitars, drums, Christmas presents. They didn’t have any dope-sniffing dogs available––it was a meticulous hand search. They frisked us, as well, even going so far as to check my glasses case––it was in an inner pocket of my winter coat––but it was a soft, black case that had had my regular and sunglasses pressed in and out of it countless times, mashing the little nubbin of contraband deep into a dark corner, so they missed it.
Finally, one of the cops came over to me and said, I know there’s something here, and we’re going to find it, and even though they were already giving up on the van, I believed him.
They’re going to search us, I thought, and this time, they’ll be frustrated and embarrassed, so they won’t miss a thing. So while they were futzing about with the gear, I decided to make a move, and I slowly and carefully pulled out my glasses case, removed the glasses, and shook out the inoffensive little clump of paper and organicism, planning to grind it into the dirt and winter-yellowed grass.
YOU SONUVABITCH! I GOT YOU!
He was crowing, so delighted with himself, so silly in his triumph, that I had to laugh in spite of my predicament. They’d had all three of us facing forward, and unbeknownst to me, one cop had stayed in the car with the sole job of keeping an eye on us while the rest searched.
Foiled again, my evil plans for the destruction of traditional American values uncovered! Fuck! It really was kind of funny, though––the young cop, a rookie or close to it, holding up his tiny and ridiculous prize for the others to see.
Well of course I took the rap––it was mine, no one else’s, my bandmates had no idea I had it (true enough; neither did I until the fateful question). I even apologized, to everyone, band and policemen alike: man my age, trying to get home to his family for Christmas, wasting everybody’s time, holding up my comrades, wasting taxpayer dollars…
…I was sincere. I felt like shit. Not afraid of jail, or possible penalties––even in Taylor County, Texas, 1/20th of a gram of dried up goof in a mangled shred of paper isn’t going to get much of a rise out of the legal system. Just–––
Shit. Fuck me. What an idiot.
Off I went, handcuffed in the back of County’s car, to be processed at the Taylor County facility. Chris and Buddha, bless them both, promised they wouldn’t leave my sorry ass in the hoosegow and pledged to bail me out as soon as they could get to a judge.
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I want to pause right here and tell you: believe it or not, this entry is about the Kinky Friedman campaign. Furthermore, this story is true in every particular. Thank you.
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So it was probably close to 2:00 AM by the time I was being processed at County. I was looking forward to inked fingers, a couple of flattering photographs, and a cellmate that smelled like piss. My near future held plenty of humiliation, but it’d be low grade, as those things go. I was philosophic, mainly just feeling the extra hours away from my daughter and my lovely wife––I’d get through all this just fine.
But other forces were at work, that night.
The cop checking me in to this particular hard rock hotel didn’t pay me much heed, at first––another dumbass on another Friday night, whatever, but when he finally looked up, he took in my still-handsome mug and said,
Hey, I KNOW you!
I was a little startled. My mom was born nearby, but she’d barely even lived there, and there were no connections––
You play bass with Ted Nugent!
At this point I felt like I was dreaming.
I seen you play with him, two, no, three times! Ted-motherfucking-Nugent, man!
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It was true. Ted, enamored of both Chris’ virtuosity and the band’s ferocity, had sort of taken us under his wing. A summer or two in the future would find us out on the road with him and Bad Company for four months, but for now, we’d done some random shows with him here and there, he’d loved us, and over my strenuous objections, the decision was taken to allow the association.
Ted lives in Texas now (a natural fit), but at the time he still lived on a big spread (or whatever it is they call it up there) up in Michigan. We had a mutual friend, a businessman and occasional concert promoter in Abilene––that’s how Nuge heard about us––who was also a bow hunter, and Ted liked to come down to Texas and kill shit––javelinas, mainly, I think––with his old pal. Well, one thing led to another. At first we opened for Ted, who folded a concert into his hunting trip. Later, we became his backup band when he ventured down.
Ted Nugent has certain message, as you may know, and it’s fair to say that I find it repellent. In point of fact, all the big, good words––abhorrent, anathema, like that––fall short of expressing the revulsion I feel for the evil shit that pours out of his mouth. But I don’t have to agree with you to play with you, and I have to admit playing with Ted was a hell of a lot of fun. Say what you will (and I will, too), that motherfucker rocks. And the association had put us in front of some of the largest crowds we’d seen in those early days, teaching us valuable lessons about making big gestures and playing to the cheap seats.
Ted himself was a kind of Rock Yoda to us. One time, after we’d played just a couple of shows opening for him and Bad Company on the shed circuit, Ted came into our dressing room in Cincinnati. He’d watched us come out and play confused 30 minute sets and made the decision to intervene.
We didn’t have opening-opening band shed experience, you see. We were a four-hour-a-night roadhouse blues machine, and we didn’t understand how to represent ourselves in a half hour for a corporate-sponsored shed quarter-full of people who almost reflexively wish you were dead simply because they’ve never heard of you. It takes a different approach, let me tell you, and honestly, we were foundering.
So Ted walked in, swung a chair around to sit in backwards, naturally, and he prefaced his rock advice thusly:
Boys, I may not know everything, but I know all things Ted.
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Cops and Nugent love each other. The wherefore of that is surely self-evident, but that night––by then, it was Christmas Eve––the full measure of cop/Nugent love was revealed to me.
No fingerprints, no picture. Cuffs taken off. The policeman that was supposed to process me instead jerked another guy out of a cell so I’d be alone, and told me, Wait here. The guys are gonna flip.He walked away, then hurried back. Hey, you want a coke or something?
I am not making this up.
Forty-five minutes, maybe an hour went by, and the cop comes back and takes me out of the cell, and leads me into county copland, a scatter of desks in a big room. He must’ve put out an All Points Bulletin, or something––fifteen, twenty cops hanging around, their pink, shiny faces turned towards me, and I proceeded to answer questions about Ted.
Ted Nugent, the Justin Bieber of the Taylor County popo.
I am not shitting you. I answered questions for twenty minutes easy:
What’s Ted like?
––Well, he’s a real funny guy, and a helluva guitar player.
Does he carry a gun?
––Oh, yes, he’s got a Glock nestled against the small of his back. And that’s just the one I know about. [Laughter all around]
Have you seen him shoot his bow?
––
Well, it just went on and on. I knew my audience, and spoke only in the most glowing terms about the guy, leaving certain things out–– like the fact I’d fought both Chris and the record company tooth and nail about having any association whatsoever with Ted the Bile Spewer, and lost. It’s possible I made some shit up, even––I saw Nuge kill a bear with his teeth––I had a roomful of law enforcement officials eating out of my hand.
And that was it. I was outta there, no record, no penalty, no fines, nothing. Off the books, like it never happened. Somehow I found the boys, or they found me––this was well before cellphone ubiquity––and we were on the road again by sunrise, home for Christmas.
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I still haven’t sorted out all my reactions to Kinky’s …what to call it, even? His acquiescence to Rick Perry? His betrayal of all of us who worked for him? His pandering to a bad guy? How do I reconcile the generous, funny, sharply intelligent guy I know with a man who could commit such an act of destruction?
I can’t.
That’s the way of it, sometimes. If you can’t support a duality––at least––you’re barely human. If you love somebody (okay, I fucking admit it) and you see them do something awful, do you quit loving them? I’ll grant you maybe it depends, but mostly, for your sake, I hope your answer is no.
Once upon a time, there was a guy named Ted Nugent, so opposite me in my beliefs that we might’ve been from different species. I detested everything he stood for. I never wanted to play with him, or meet him, or get to know him. Then, despite all my strenuous objections, all that happened anyway.
And despite myself, I liked him. I still do. If he walked in that door right now, I’d laugh and try to give him an awkward man hug. He’d say some sarcastic shit about my bald head and show me a picture of a llama with one of his arrows sticking out of its eye or something, and I’d hate it, just as I hate his far-right-of-Rush-Limbaugh bullshit––but I’d still be glad to see him.
Once upon a time, there was a guy named Kinky Friedman.
