Wednesday To-Do? David Allan Coe
DAVID ALLAN COE
8:30 p.m., the Village. $15-$25.
David Allan Coe has never been wary of extending the middle finger. When he first came to Nashville — after nearly 20 years in jail, with tattoos, earrings and wild, long hair — he lived in a hearse in front of the Ryman Auditorium, the ex-church that then housed the Grand Ole Opry. His first albums, the bluesy “Penitentiary Blues, Volumes I and II,” exclusively featured songs based on his prison experiences. Coe toured with Grand Funk Railroad, and took to wearing a rhinestone suit and a Lone Ranger mask onstage, calling himself the “Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy” and regularly mounting the stage on a motorcycle. Surprise, surprise, mainstream success didn't follow. But after Tanya Tucker scored a No. 1 hit in 1973 with Coe's “Would You Lay with Me (In a Field of Stone)” (Tucker, who was 15 at the time, almost makes Britney and her ilk look tame), he became one of Nashville's most in-demand singer/songwriters. He also released two X-rated albums in the mid-70s filled with deeply misogynistic and racist lyrics that he sold exclusively in the back of Easyriders magazine. He's since defended the albums as “bawdy fun.” “I've got a black drummer who's married to a white chick,” he told Country Standard Time in 2000. “I've got Leon Spinks' pictures all over my bus, pictures he took with my family. My hair's in dreadlocks. I'm the farthest thing from a white supremacist that anybody could ever be.” Today, only his beard is in dreadlocks, his hair's a wig that he might've borrowed from Dolly Parton, and he's still repping Confederate imagery to the fullest
8:30 p.m., the Village. $15-$25.
David Allan Coe has never been wary of extending the middle finger. When he first came to Nashville — after nearly 20 years in jail, with tattoos, earrings and wild, long hair — he lived in a hearse in front of the Ryman Auditorium, the ex-church that then housed the Grand Ole Opry. His first albums, the bluesy “Penitentiary Blues, Volumes I and II,” exclusively featured songs based on his prison experiences. Coe toured with Grand Funk Railroad, and took to wearing a rhinestone suit and a Lone Ranger mask onstage, calling himself the “Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy” and regularly mounting the stage on a motorcycle. Surprise, surprise, mainstream success didn't follow. But after Tanya Tucker scored a No. 1 hit in 1973 with Coe's “Would You Lay with Me (In a Field of Stone)” (Tucker, who was 15 at the time, almost makes Britney and her ilk look tame), he became one of Nashville's most in-demand singer/songwriters. He also released two X-rated albums in the mid-70s filled with deeply misogynistic and racist lyrics that he sold exclusively in the back of Easyriders magazine. He's since defended the albums as “bawdy fun.” “I've got a black drummer who's married to a white chick,” he told Country Standard Time in 2000. “I've got Leon Spinks' pictures all over my bus, pictures he took with my family. My hair's in dreadlocks. I'm the farthest thing from a white supremacist that anybody could ever be.” Today, only his beard is in dreadlocks, his hair's a wig that he might've borrowed from Dolly Parton, and he's still repping Confederate imagery to the fullest
