ABSTRACT

The Corner-Pub-Messiah

The first time I heard David's music, I was in North Carolina with a boyfriend (now my husband and my Director of Photography), a "local" who was going to show me where he used to sneak a drink when he was still a teenager. The place he took me to was a backwoods fantasy. A simple cinder-block building by the side of the road lit only by a flickering street light and the occasional fire-fly. We walked together under the dark sky hearing little but the damp rustling of grass. Only when we came up close did I hear the first notes of fingers plucking guitar strings and the twang of country music escaped, barely audible, from the cracks between the cinder blocks. My friend opened the door and I stepped in.

All of a sudden, my senses are blasted. Images and sounds overwhelm me. To my left is a woman smoking, her baby stretched out on the pool table beside her. On the bench to my right is a biker, slumped over. The first one to greet us is a man sitting at the bar flashing a huge toothless smile. He wears a baseball cap pulled over his eyes that reads, "Lee surrendered but I didn't"

Here is the archetypical dive; every stereotype is in attendance. The bartender is so unaccustomed to Indian girls in his establishment that he offers me a free beer and a suspicious stare. I accept both graciously. My friend leans over the juke box. There are so many songs to pick from. Mostly songs I've never head. There is a large selection of David Allan Coe songs. I don't even know who David Allan Coe is. No? Never heard of him? And one quarter in the juke box produces that quintessential hard-country song, "You Never Even Called Me By My Name"

The people around me suddenly come to life. The biker salutes with his beer and I notice drunk tears rolling down his face. The man with the toothless smile nods his acknowledgment and the woman by the pool table begins to dance. It is amazing. Faces light up. Everyone knows the words. The music speaks directly from the juke box into our hearts. This is no poster boy country musician. Hell, David doesn't even have a steady record label! The corner-pub-messiah is belting something great from that little juke box and there is a charge in the air that makes my hair stand on end.

I find that I relate in the margins and with all those who inhabit it. I get it. You crave a place of your own and you want a mascot too. One who speaks your language, preferably screams your language out on stage. A language that has its ugliness and sadness but its beauty too. The more I found out about David the more interesting it all became to me. The controversy surrounding his music. Thirty years in jail? And even death row? How did he get out of that one?

So I find I'm in the midst of making a documentary about him. By now I've spent several hours with David. Toured on his bus with him, become friends with his fiance and hung out for hours at his house hoping he'll "get into the mood."

I've been told that the richest idea is the one you first have. The one that makes your hair stand on end. I struggle always to keep the feeling alive that I felt that first day in the backwoods tavern.

-shambhavi kaul
 

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