Fumin' Emotions

Fumin' Emotions
David Allan Coe

by Don Allred
August 4 - 10, 1999 Issue 31

Impending tattooed dues-payin' motorsickle dust
photo: J. Clark Thomas
David Allan Coe
Recommended For Airplay (Sony/Lucky Dog )

Some people seem most at home in crowds. Not necessarily happiest, but that's
not necessarily what home is for. It's about having your own slot—on this jaded cratedigger's
crowded record shelf, for instance. "Can't you see?" David Allan Coe asks his followers at 
big-ass Billy Bob's in Fort Worth on 1997's brickhouse Live—If That Ain't Country.
"Ah'm a desperate man." And on his latest album, Recommended for Airplay, 

he's still throwing tasty songhooks to the wolves.
He first appeared in end-of-the-'60s/ earliest-'70s morning after fog, on a crispy cusp.
Fresh outta prison, he was the kind of country singer who slept in a hearse
parked in front of the Grand Ole Opry, when he wasn't touring with Grand Funk
Railroad. The kind of country singer who rashly meant to bumrush Nashville, 

where he surfaced near a bandwagon of convergent,

 finally trending Outlaws, whose coattails he soon had to ride.

Born in Akron in '39, he was considered a little old for a potential music
star. So were several of the newly-Biz-tagged Outlaws, but they never claimed to do time on or near
Death Row...Willie and Waylon and Jessi and even Tompall Glaser drove 

Wanted! The Outlaws to become the first album of any kind of country to go platinum

---when that designation was new, as the record market reached Boomtown, 

leaving Coe at the station for a while, just not that in with the Out-crowd.

So, mebbe that's one reason  he always has seemed a bit grizzled, 'n' frazzled,

—a bitten bit anxious. But he's prowled around enough to guess the
most likely, bearably bumpy ways to get his money made, and his 'maker shaken.

 Even more than most Outlaws, Coe can come off as a deadpan baggy-pants character actor,

 and he's the one who still makes the gigs like an underdawg independent contractor,

 semi-tucking those cuffs into some hungry boots.

As you might guess from the Grand Funk connection, he had audiences who
crossed from grassroots radio rock---smokin' gold---to country long before radio program directors did.

 "Living on the Run" (from 1976's Long-Haired Redneck) was one of the earlier (listenable) melds of
tunefully exclamatory, Allmanesque guitar with fiddles, steel, and as replenishing a mountain spring of
female vocalitude (thoughtfully subdued on the subsequent polygamy song "The
House We Call Home") as you could find, east of Tupelo Honey-era Van
Morrison. (Coe refers in passing to the Confederate Mormon persuasion.) 

He even drew balm for his aching being from Caribbean rhythms deeper than
Jimmy Buffett's. But this was no happy-hippy blend; it was effective contrast with 
Don't Tread On Me principles and mood swings, malcontents under pressure, 

shipping themselves all the way down through the ever-smoldering Lower 48.

Despite some performances behind a Lone Ranger mask and a debut concept album
about life behind bars, his early vibe was more ominous than blustery. 1974's
The Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy is snowbound Southern Gothic.

 Mickey Newbury's psyche-in "The 33rd of August"  eternally pushes against its impossible date stamp

—when Coe finally bleats "Looks lahk rain!"

 at the very end, it actually comes as welcome comic relief, each time I dare listen.

 It didn't sell, and, like another David, he had to take another step out, going full-on Glam,

 matching the glittery (cowboy) suits with
more macho music. Y'all want theatri-cull? His most notorious (nonbootleg)
number (proffered by the aptly named
Human Emotions) is "Suicide," actually about shooting his unfaithful wife and
her lover—but he yowls like a parody of Hank Jr. with a mouf-ful of pills 'n'
beard, the music's ZZ Top as carnival ride, and basically this here's his
Slim Shady moment, in 1978. 
Well kind of:  close as a cautious parolee/sane person
can get to rootin'-tootin' revenge, via the creative coup of clapping on a mask of comical psychodrama---it's not a leap to the top of the
critical-public-commercial heap 'o' real trouble's acclaim,  a la Eminem,
but, whatever the attorneys think, not bad for someone who just found out his
 real-life wife was cheatin/, while this very album was still in the works
 (so he said later).  At least as effective as/much more enjoyable than Dylan's "Idiot Wind,"

this track is a stage blood steam whistle showdown, with sufficient Realness to 

satisfy judges of such in the drag doc Paris Is Burning, probably.

You could say DAC's Permanent Glam, still running gender-convention

redlights, unashamedly and frequently asking, in effect, "No, Will You Still Love Me
Tomorrow?" But isn't this actually a certain Country Male Tradition? Especially
if you leave out "Country"? (On Rides Again, he slips right from "Under
Rachel's Wings" to "[She Was] Greener Than the Grass We Lay On," not so much
confessing or boasting as, via juxtaposition, spilling so many Male Psyche beans just like that—Securitahh!)

One thing that helps him get over (musically, at least) is the way he manages

to take just the right elements of other, more inherently distinctive voices.
He often sounds like Waylon, even without W.'s trademark vibrato. There's
also a drying and drawing out of mawkish phrases, which tendency I still identify
with Merle Haggard, when he's not sagging: those long Coe-Hag whitefolk-nostrils 

spear excess sentiment, but the residual warmth of both artists (and DAC's slightly-fogged-windshield Waylon-tones) guarantee love's left enough sediment for pipedreams and homefires.

Coe's 1999 Recommended for Airplay is actually, in its autumnal cool, and even
(initial) political correctness, a seeming curveball for those expecting
vintage-style outrage. Despite the usual dry runs, "The Price We'll Have To Pay" manages
quite the reproachful undertone (yes, he's picked a trick from wimmen!), "She's
Already Gone"'s pedal steel breathes unearthly joy (Joy might even be the
backup singer, exuding her own inscrutables), and "Drink My Wife Away" is so fun
it's almost Bubblegum. Yet "Let Me Be the One You Turn To" is the soulfullest,
r'n'b–est thing I've ever heard him do, his "In My Life" moves me like the
Beatles', "We Can Talk" (rhymes with Billy Swan's "I Can Help") somehow sustains
insinuation via epic guitar, and "Sweet Rebecca" is convincing just cos it's
so concisely (yet Skynyrdly!) in love. Okay, so it's got his ol' heartshaped
tattoo beating like a question mark. So what? And why not? As he 

(and Steve Goodman and John Prine) started testifying long ago, 

in "She Never Even Called Me By My Name":

"Ah was drunk the day my Mama/Got out of prison." Also vice-versa, most likely.

Things come to those who wait (just) long enough.

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