COPPERHEAD ROAD by STEVE EARLE. Story by Bill Arnott.

 
North America, late 1980s

Summer, warm and dry. Probably 1988, although it might’ve been ’89. The band I played in was three-piece: guitar, bass and drums. Music we called southern-country-rock. A hybrid of blues-forward rock, the occasional slide on guitar, with bourbon-smooth baritone vocals. Country music wasn’t yet mainstream, Nashville still small-ish. A music scene where artists were reliant on twang – vocals and instrumentation, lyrics most often about being wronged, or righting said wrongs, and invariably driving a ute, although around here everyone just called them trucks.

Steve Earle’s Copperhead Road was destroying radio playlists, cuffing the world to the fact that country music was no longer clichéd cheatin’ hearts and lost love. Suddenly it muscled straight into rock with distortion and meaty Les Pauls. Country was instantly, dare I say, cool.

A guy at uni said he was starting a band, sang and played bass, knew a guitarist, now he just needed a drummer. I’d never played, not really, but I tinkered in school, sneaking into the music room after class and bashing away on a kit they kept there. I’d seen enough music videos to know how to thump out four-four, do the blues in six-eight, even throw in a handful of fills. I’d ingrained enough Stewart Copeland by absorbing those five Police albums to make the simple stuff splash and give the impression I knew more than I did. If in doubt, play it loud.

The guy starting the band made it clear it was HIS band. Something foolish that does in fact matter when you’re young and you’re male and it’s all underwritten by ego. One look at this guy convinced me he was legit. Like meeting a sasquatch or yeti, as though he’d emerged from a life in the forest – North American outback – and only recently chose to start walking upright. I suspect he’d reached a point in his life when it was either live off-the-grid and plot conspiracy theories or start a band and write songs. He chose the latter, which made my life better.

I told him I’d join, he said that we’d practice that weekend. Did I have drums? I’d have them in time for our practice, I said. Bought the cheapest set I could find: hi-hat and snare, bass drum, three toms – two mounted and one on the floor. Plus two cymbals: a big ride and a small splashy crash. All that mattered was the kit was big enough it could hide me and withstand a good thrashing. It was silver and blue. It was perfect.

The next two years ensued in a mishmash of trials and sumptuous dreams. We laughed a great deal, we fought, we wrote songs. We even got rather good. Played paying gigs. That trio the most important relationship in my life, up to then. Most meaningful. Toughest, and most rewarding. Highlights are many: usually silent glances and smiles when you know, truly know, what your partners are thinking. Coalescence and creative euphoria, far greater than any artist can attain on their own.

We became a unit, a band in every sense of the word. You could even say like a beast with three backs. A musical one, that is. We bought boots as well. Proper shit-kicker, country and western boots: leather, patinaed and graphic. Each pair a statement. And called ourselves Three Pairs o’ Boots. Made tee-shirts as well, white on black, worn snug. Gigs got bigger, and better, til that warm summer night, ’88-’89, an open air venue, our stage up on risers, hot lights that showed insects in flight, swarming their own lofty dancefloors. A fifty (!) song set, including Copperhead Road, a raucous good crowd. Plus a hat getting passed. Money! Flowing in. For doing what we’d have done for pure pleasure, for those smiles and magic.

I still feel the heat off those lights, even now, with a sliver of late summer sun setting through evergreen trees. Beyond that, an ocean lapped shore, their own symbiosis and music. Sharing their own silent smiles.

Stereo Story 847