by Bruce Craven Willie Nelson’s band on the road in the early days, with Bush, Day, Nelson & English, rode in a ’47 Flxible Flyer bus. Surly Paul had tooled saddles, racketeered, showed he would learn drums, but still pimping — a Waco bad-ass. The drum secret? “Don’t count”, Willie said, “just feel it.” Paul kept drumming, carried a blade, guns. Willie sassed idiots, stole a few wives, popped speed, hit back if he had no choice, but, Paul said, was “given to a lot of tolerance.” Needed protection. “The club business was rough,” Willie claimed, “…you went in… with…

by Bruce Craven

“Pack up all your dishes,
make note of all good wishes…”

sang the Texan, Guy Clark, talking
about leaving Los Angeles for a more simple

life. “Don’t cry now,” he reminded Susanna, love
is a gift, perfect, hand-made. The tune? L.A. Freeway.

Clark got a song-writing contract, left for Nashville.
His L.A. landlord had chopped down a grapefruit tree with deep roots.

by Bruce Craven

I didn’t strike the law, didn’t brawl, but fall, 1980, I did rebel: “No Nukes!” The right kind of coup d’état!
Summer ‘81, I’d break rocks in the hot sun, dig ditches; choose pay-days as my right kind of coup d’état.

After that freshman year, my political rage would fade. I played Ultimate, smoked weed, eyed love,
but at Lawrence-Livermore Labs in 1980, I grabbed at a chance to fight in the right kind of coup d’état.