How I Got to State Street (or, Drunk in the Hot Afternoon)
by Bryce Martin

I rented a room for $30 a week in a big house on the corner of 18th and Blair just off 21st Street in Nashville’s Hillsboro Village area. Others rented rooms there too, mostly day workers who were drunks on the side, or vice versa.

A stupendous two and a half story tall foursquare style house built in 1928, it rested high on a long corner lot, with a basic box shape and tall, old trees in front.

The woman who owned the house was Patsy Austin of Patsy and Faye’s, a beauty salon on 21st near Jones Pet Shop, where you could purchase a baby alligator and any number of other furry, fuzzy, feathered and scaly creatures. Of the dozen or so rental rooms in the large house, I occupied the smallest room of all -- for which I paid the lowest rent. The section of the house I lived in was a build-on. It had a back entrance at the rear, east side of the house. The ground level addition had seven rooms in all. In the middle hallway, a small room provided a communal shower and toilet.

Outside and heading toward the front of the house, wooden stairs led to other rented rooms upstairs. In the house proper, singer Johnny Rodriguez often stayed. His once sparkling star on the horizon had dimmed, along with rumors of drug use. I would see him two or three times a week up the street where he had walked from Patsy's to the corner Jim Dandy convenience store while he would be buying a sixer of Coors Light Silver Bullet, and I would be cradling a sixer of Schaefer’s (hey, it’s the quantity that counts, not the quality). He always had a big smile, and always swore I was in a backing band at some place in California at some club he had sang in and used the house band. Each time I told him it wasn’t I, but noted that I had came here from California, and each time he smiled that much brighter and said, "It wasss you." After a time, I figured why not . . . it must have been I. He had his last major hit in 1988 with "I Didn't (Every Chance I Had)," which reached No. 12 on the country charts. By 1989, he and Capitol Records split the sheets.

"Have a Jim Dandy day," the clerk always said when a customer went to exit. I hated that. Maybe I didn't want to have a Jim Dandy day.

I once got seven weeks behind in rent and received a loud pounding on my door one morning around 3:00 a.m. by a drunken Patsy. I was a little besotted myself and not long under my bedcover, not even into my REM sleep mode. She wanted me out that very morning. I was concerned at first, then realizing she likely wouldn’t even remember it in the morning, I went back to sleep and managed in a few days to visit her front door and pay her in full – as if weeks hadn’t past since I had last seen her, and she had never pounded on my door and demanded I leave. I was told that was the longest anyone had ever gone without paying their rent. I chose to take that as a positive and I took a certain pride in that revelation. As long as I was living like a rebel outcast I might as well feel comfortable in the role.

Nick Fain was a sometimes visitor. Nick was roots rocker Steve Earle’s favorite uncle growing up in Texas. Steve Earle's birth name: Stephen Fain Earle. Nick was battling some personal drug and alcohol demons of his own and always looking for a handout. A few months back, I had traveled with him and a couple who came over from Murfreesboro on a jaunt to Chattanooga where Earle was touring as the opening act for Hank Williams Jr. The Murfreesboro married couple had made the trip exclusively to see Hank Jr. We arrived at the Chattanooga venue in time to see Earle and his band perform a final three songs. I considered myself fortunate that one of those was "Guitar Town," my favorite Earle song. We did have one other passenger on the way day, an odd duck named Lou. Nick, Lou and myself soon found Earle backstage in the hospitality room. A large table was filled with all types of cold cuts, bread and condiments for making sandwiches. Earle was there, relaxed in a sweatshirt with cutoff sleeves. He was cordial and pleasant and made small talk before announcing he was leaving. I thought he meant in the bus, but he said no, he was driving his car but the bus probably would leave soon. Nick, meanwhile could not find Lou. I told Nick he would have to look for his friend on his own because I was not taking a chance of being left behind if the bus left and I was searching for his friend on my own. When the bus was ready to pull out, Nick was with me and Lou was till lost. We left him in Chattanooga. Better yet, he did it without our help.

I rode back in the bus with Earle’s band. Once we arrived in Nashville, we debarked near the Hall of Shame lounge off Demonbreun. Earle pulled up alongside in his Mercedes. I asked if he was going my way and he offered me a ride home. He had with him his young son, Justin. That was when I lived at the Natchez Trace Apartments on Fairfax Avenue just off 21st. Nick had lived there, too, across and above me. Earle was friendly and said it was not even out of his way since his ex lived nearby and he was heading in the same direction to drop off Justin.

Earle quit high school in Texas about midway through and hooked up with his uncle Nick. Already proficient on guitar, he traveled around Texas and at age 19 landed in Nashville. His debut album, Guitar Town, came out in 1986 and the title track was a big summer hit that year.

On the ride home, I told Earle that I had joined a record club but of the five choices I received free for joining, the one they didn't send was his second album, Exit 0. They suggested I name a replacement for it. I mentioned how that riled me enough to send back the ones they did send and a nasty note telling them to shove their bogus offer.

Earle was first thought of as country but soon more aptly designated as a roots rocker. His third album, Copperhead Road, came out in 1988.

On the bus, I had kept feeding Nick beers from a cooler in the middle part of the bus. Nick asked me to and I figured why not. It's rough being cut off from the hootch, I knew firsthand. I'd slip one inside my jacket and take it to him in the back bedroom where he was watching movies on an overhead TV with Justin. The band must have been instructed to 86 Nick because pretty soon guitarist Richard Bennett approached me. "Nick is not drinking, is he?" That caught be a little off guard. I wasn't aware anyone was keeping track. I was glad I had been acting as if I was aware. "He's watching movies back there. Seems okay to me." Maybe a few beers was the gateway to worse things from Nick. I made a short trip to the back a little later to inform Nick he was on his own. Meantime, I hiked myself another beer and conversed with Bennett about his part in the guitar trifecta I had witnessed earlier onstage in Chattanooga, especially on "Guitar Town."

At my Blair lair, Nick was wanting to borrow some money from any of us and promised he would pay it right back. Ha. What gall. He also needed a place to stay -- temporarily, he stressed. To back up the paying the loan right back part, he said was getting ready to meet his nephew Steve Earle at Brown’s Diner in just a few minutes. "Steve will stake me some cash," Nick said. That was doubful. It was a Sunday, and we all knew, except obviously for Nick, that Brown’s Diner was not open on a Sunday. It could have been a parking lot meet, but it sounded bogus as hell. Nick finally left, realizing he was running a bad con. He was getting no takers at the Blair House. As he walked on, a dinner knife could be seen protruding from the top of one of his back pockets. It was a regular one with a rounded point and just enough teeth indentations to make minor food cuts. It was hardly a weapon, but that seemed the obvious reason Nick was carrying it. I guessed he was afraid someone was after him and that is why he was looking for a place to hole up, and the knife was the only weapon he could get his hands on.

A little down the hall, a large man who went by the name of Shannon Dale had lived there for years. His walls were totally covered with Playboy Magazine centerfolds. "No, I don't jack off to them," he said, as I scanned the spread-out pages (no pun intended). I figured that was his ready response when a first-timer such as myself eyed his flesh collection. He was one of the many who had came to Nashville to make it in country music, got lost in the shuffle, aged and gone to seed. He showed me an old 45 rpm record where his name was listed as songwriter under the song’s title. It was from an obscure singer on the King label.

Slender and with wild, stringy long hair, Dwayne Leftridge lived in a room across from me. He once sang on stage at the Bluebird Café on talent night. With the hair, jeans, and overall appearance, he reminded me of a 60s California hippie, then again, that was a common look everywhere that had spread well beyond California. He didn't toke though, as far as I could tell, and probably didn't even consume much alcohol, either. He had spent some time in California, plying his seasonal trade as a palm tree trimmer (really) on occasion in my stamping grounds of Bakersfield.

In my small office in Nashville on Music Row where I served as editor of the Nashville Inquirer, I often walked to the Burger King down the street on 21st Avenue. That's where Burger King Betty kept order on the lot of the Whopper. Next door and directly south of Burger King's parking lot was San Antonio Taco Co. Behind it and downstairs was Bobby's. It was a bar owned and operated by a hefty fellow who was said to have won a lottery in New York and this was what he had to show for it. It was Betty's job starting at about dark to when Burger King closed to keep anyone from parking, and leaving their vehicle unattended, anyone who wasn't patronizing Burger King. After Betty would run someone off, a favorite thing was for them to open a car door, place an empty beer bottle upright on the asphalt and drive away. "Is Rolling Rock beer?" Betty asked. "I can't keep up with what these rich Vanderbilt kids drink."

There was a little shop area just to the north of Burger King and on the corner where a man did the same thing as Betty. He was looking out for the convenience store that sat back from the street. Young people came in, mostly Vanderbilt students who lived in nearby dorms, for beer and cigarettes. Those who lingered too long in their cars or around the entrance he asked to leave. "Get a real job," those asked to leave would shout to him.

Nashville singer-songwriter Owen Davis wrote the song “The Other Side of Nashville.” It was the title tune of an acclaimed 1983 documentary film in which he appeared alongside such luminaries as Kris Kristofferson, Bobby Bare, Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris and Hank Williams Jr. Throw in Donnie Qualls, too. I didn't know Davis, any of the "luminaries," although I had spoken with Cash and Bare on occasion, but I knew Qualls.

Among Davis' other notable compositions were “Border of the Quarter,” recorded by Leon Redbone, and “Play Me or Trade Me,” which became a minor 1982 hit duet by Mel Tillis and Nancy Sinatra.

Bobby's dream of making a killing selling New York style pizza to poor souls in Nashville who had been deprived of such heavenly bliss failed to catch on to any great degree and his Bobby's went out of business. Jerry Seabolt, former record producer ("California Sun" by the Rivieras, and others) and promotion man for Smash Records, took over with his own place he called Duffy's Tavern, and it went out of business in about a year's time. I had paid to see Pat McLaughlin perform at Duffy's on a Saturday night and I had seen Tara Moonshadow sing for tips during the week, she and Dwayne Leftridge, who had spent the past few days making and copying fliers to staple on area telephone poles residing along the sidewalks to announce the engamement. I thought I had found my hangout. When Duffy's folded, San Antonio Taco bought that portion of the building (it was all connected) to use for storage.

Ron Holmes moved in later, upstairs somewhere. He had lived there before and knew all the long-timers and wondered where others had landed who had came and went over the years. One who came by occasionally that he knew was Vince Matthews, a Tennessee boy from Waverly who had co-written "Love in the Hot Afternoon," a BMI award winner and big hit for Gene Watson. Matthews was wild, but in a put-on sort of way, and loud.

LOVE IN THE HOT AFTERNOON
(Kent Westberry - Vincent Matthews)
© '70 Songs Of PolyGram, BMI

From somewhere outside I hear the street vendor cry "filet gumbo"
From my window I see him going down the street and he don't know
That she fell right to sleep in the damp tangled sheets so soon
After love in the hot afternoon

Now the Bourbon Street lady sleeps like a baby in the shadows
She was new to me full of mystery but now I know
That she's just a girl and I'm just a guy in the room
For love in the hot afternoon
[ fiddle ] We got high in the park this morning and we sat without talking
Then we came back here in the heat of the day tired of walking
Where under her breath she hummed to herself a tune
Of love in the hot afternoon


Matthews may have just came from a few blocks over on Belmont Boulevard visiting Harlan Sanders, a songwriting friend of his who lives on that street. Sanders, from Bakerfield, Calif., is a also a friend of mine. Matthews and Sanders have written songs recorded by Johnny Cash. They also have in common that they were friends with another songwriter who wrote for Cash, Glen Sherley, who took his own life in 1978 in California. Matthews is a survivor who could write about his bad times in song and later prosper for it, "Wrinkled Crinkled Wadded Dollar Bill," and "Melva's Wine," as recorded by Cash as evidence.

Shannon Dale Holmes knew from years past. Dale had once worked as a night clerk at a little store on Music Row where he shot and killed a young black male he said was shoplifting. That according to Holmes, who said Dale once pointed a gun in his face and pulled the trigger. "I saw the bullet," Holmes said. "I saw it and felt it, just as it went by my face." Holmes said Dale was knee-crawlin' drunk at the time. "He had a thing for my wife June," Holmes said. "I got him on the floor and was pounding on him. June was yelling and pulled me off. We took him home that night. When we got to where he lived, I pushed him out and rolled him so he rolled down the hill to his place."

Holmes, from Anniston, Alabama, had written no hits but he had songs published he had written with the likes of Billy Swan and Mack Vickery. His self-written songs included one titled "Nam Was Easier Than Nashville."As a vocalist, he had a recent release, "Take a Chance on Love," on indie label Fawn Records. It received a nice review from Music Row magazine. Holmes had written songs and recorded at times using the name Ron DuVall (doo-VAL).

We paired on a shift working together in the Village at the Mobil gas station, facing a side street and across from Cotten’s Music on 21st, pumping gas and pushing oil and anti-freeze to customers. On December 22, 1989, it was 10 degrees below zero as I worked the islands. A radio weather report said the coldest temperature ever recorded in Nashville was the 17 degrees below that shuddered the city January 21, 1985.

A fellow gas jock named David Hadley said he was quitting and going back to Oklahoma. He said he lived in a condo on State Street with floor-to-ceiling mirrors, washer and dryer and the works. He left and I moved in. I paid Shane $20 to help me move. Shane, as I understood it, was Faye's (of Patsy and Faye's) son and he lived there as a roomer. I didn't know where Faye called home. I really didn’t need any help in the actual moving, but Shane had access to Patsy's van and I had no vehicle. While we were loading, Shane told me I set the record for having the most stuff in that little room of anyone who had ever lived in it. When I came back around in a week or so to see if any mail had arrived for me, Patsy scolded me for not giving her a notice before moving.

The condo was on the second floor and the woman who owned it lived in Hermitage. Some recent brain surgery had left her disoriented to the point she was no longer able to make it up and down the stairs very well. The house in Hermitage was her childhood home she had inherited when her parents passed on. She had bought the condo to be nearer the hospital. The guy who went to Oklahoma had left me her phone number, and he told me before leaving that he had told her I would be there. I never called her. It was a full six weeks before I ever saw her.

She came by one day and introduced herself. She was a pleasant and well-mannered woman. I expected to be given ultimatums about rent money and so forth, but before I knew it she was gone and such subjects never surfaced. I had a phone. The condo was a two-bedroom with a large bed in the master bedroom, outfitted in its queens’ accessories. Louvered Dutch-doors opened to an outside view. Granted, it was to the front parking lot of the enclosed facility, but in the background you could see the skyscrapers. The rooms were clean and fresh and painted in bright whites and light blues.

Hadley was still there for about a day after I moved in. "Let's burn one he said." He sat cross-legged on the floor and I joined him. He rolled his own, but it was sage that he smoked. An empty box of cigars he had ordered by mail sat on a nearby table. They were Lord Beaconsfield Rounds. The box of 50 maduros sold for $25.30 and came from T.J. Boggs, a tobacconist in Joplin, Mo., next door to my own home town in Kansas.

I had caught a break. Or, had I? It would be hell to get used to this and go back to where I had been. Well, maybe more in the vein of mental hell. I no longer worked for the publication on Music Row across from the Alamo Church where I was the editor, as well as doing all the writing, for the Nashville Inquirer. It was a monthly tabloid that exposed the crooked dealers and dirty dealings on Music Row.

When I first started with the publication, it dealt solely with the independent country music business. The publisher even threw an awards show at the Maxwell House and invited as special guests Stonewall Jackson, Sheb Wooley and Jack Greene.

I quit that job. It was before working at the Mobil station. The publisher didn’t like to pay people, including his editor, me.

The Mobil gas station owner sold the place and all new people came in. Too bad, too. A regular customer was John Prine and his red Corvette. He left his car once for some work and one of the two mechanics lifted a cassette tape from his car of test songs he had recorded. I lifted it from the mechanic with the idea of returning it to Prine. I still have it somewhere. Perry Baggs, the drummer for Jason and the Scorchers was a regular. I saw Jason once at Jim Dandy wearing his cowboy hat and spurs.

I told Baggs he looked like Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers. He said he didn’t know what Phil Everly looked like. If it had been Don Everly, no problem. I could have shown him. Don Everly was a regular a couple of blocks up at Brown’s Diner. Don was the dark-haired one of the Everly Brothers and Phil the blond-haired brother. I always felt they were never the same after leaving Cadence Records and going to Warner Bros. There was something about "Cathy's Clown" indicating to me that they had crossed the line of innocence, I guess you might say, and the baby fat along with their appeal was now gone.

I had my condo but not much money until I landed a cook’s job at Steak ‘n’ Egg Kitchen, a 24-hour restaurant on West End Avenue nearly identical in setup and menu to a Waffle House.

I still made the rounds on Music Row during my off time. I had made many contacts due to my previous job with Nashville Inquirer. I had interviewed and written about Mickey Gilley, Ray Price, Crash Craddock, Jo-el Sonnier, Robin Lee, and a long list of others. I introduced Holmes to Willi Beery, a girl who ran an office for a man in Texas, Overton Lee, who had a Nashville record label and publishing company. She released a CD album of singers and songs on OL Records and included Holmes’ "Take a Chance on Love" as the only cut by someone not on her employer’s label. She had recorded an album a few years back for Wedge Records, owned by a rockabilly singer from the 1950s, Ralph Johnson. Her full name was Nelda Willene Beery.

Born in 1920, Mel Holt lived in Hendersonville and owned Step One Records in Nashville. He wrote songs and published them with his Lyn Pen Publishing. Owning SOR helped get him cuts by The Kendalls, Dawnett Faucett, The Geezinslaws, Curtis Potter, Southern Reign, Cal Smith, Ray Pennington, who managed the label for him, and others.

He wrote "It's Too Soon After Too Late Last Night," a song he got Beery to record. It came out on Wedge SR-1039 in late 1988.

Holmes and me walked Music Row with Willi's place as our destination. We decided to check out the secondhand store across from Belmont Church, which was a little out of the way. Holmes spotted a black and white 1958 Alabama license plate for a dollar and had to have it. "I remember these," he said. Willi's place was an apartment on high ground. You left the sidewalk to walk up concrete steps. Nearly all the apartments here served dually as living quarters and music offices. When you entered Willi's apartment, it had a reception area that included a desk, couches, tables, chairs and lamps and looked like most any Music Row setup.

As I knocked on the door, Holmes snickered at the sign on the adjoining door -- Hunka Burning Love Music Publishing. It was Pat Murphy's place. He was from Shreveport and had an album coming out on OL Records titled Every Heart. The title song was written by Mae Boren Axton ("Heartbreak Hotel") and one that Murphy said was written years ago for Elvis Presley but was misplaced over the years and he was now getting a chance to record it for the first time.

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