Nashville is awash in bedazzled bad boys that wear their so-called outlaw status like a poorly knocked-off Nudie suit. And not one of them is fit to polish David Allan Coe’s belt buckle.
From reform school resident to prison inmate to biker to Country singer/songwriter, Coe is the living definition of surviving and thriving regardless of bad breaks and hard living. In the '60s, he experimented with his Country style (his sophomore album, Requiem for a Harlequin, was a psychedelically tinged concept album) and in the '70s, his songs were No. 1 hits for others ("Would You Lay with Me in a Field of Stone" for Tanya Tucker, "Take This Job and Shove It" for Johnny Paycheck). During the '80s, he cracked Billboard's Top 10 on his own ("The Ride" in 1983, "Mona Lisa Lost Her Smile" in 1984) and, in the new millennium, he's released eight studio albums and two live sets and played with the Country/Metal project Rebel Meets Rebel, a band comprised of Coe and Vinnie Paul, Rex Brown and the late Dimebag Darrell from Pantera. Range doesn't come any broader than that.
David Allan Coe plays the Madison Theater Friday with Dallas Moore. Go here to read Brian Baker's full Sound Advice.
