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wall listening to Dylan’s latest, Highway 61 Revisited .

    And Dylan, it seemed, sure had gone electric. That thin, wild mercury sound right through until morning, the September sun blazing back up and creeping down the alley between my house and the next, the light and the heat and the fierce music charging out of the speakers for just a moment almost one.

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    He woke up with money all around him, nickels, dimes, quarters, and even a few crumpled dollar bills, all of it surrounding him on the warm morning mattress, a few of the smaller coins sticking to his arms, the imprint of their designs only now beginning to fade as he sat up at last, allowing them all to slowly fall away.
    Open-stage Saturday nights at The Steer mean Sunday morning hangovers so intense that blinking equals wincing and not all that much you can do about it but gently close your eyes and try not to breathe too hard and lie there silent and still until extreme thirst, hunger, or the need to urinate absolutely necessitates getting up.
    But worth it, though.
    Easing himself back down on the mattress, rolling over out of the line of direct sunlight pouring through the window, Thomas manages a sliver of a smile.
    Oh yes, worth it.
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    The toughest, shit-kickingist country and western bar in the state of California circa 1965 is the Steer, located in the city of Industry, California. The sign on the highway states that Industry is twenty-four miles east of Hollywood, but it’s actually approximately 100 million miles away. This is Redneck Country. Work, death, and then, the Good Lord willing, heaven.
    Sitting by himself at the back of the club drinking his own pitcher of Budweiser with only his guitar on the chair next to
him for company, Thomas Graham waits for his turn at the microphone. Thomas Graham in blue satin bell-bottoms, white rattlesnake-skin cowboy boots, and a genuine Nudie jacket from Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors decorated with hand-sewn sequins in the shape of acid cubes, a woman’s ripe bosom, a green marijuana leaf climbing up each arm, and a flaming red cross emblazoned across the back.
    Finally, after the guy in the wheelchair singing “I Walk the Line” and the trio of grandmothers doing an a cappella version of “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town,” the bored MC in the white Stetson chewing away at his Redman with a clipboard in one hand and the mike in the other announces, “Okay, next up, Thomas Graham. Are you out there, Thomas?”
    The long walk from the back of the bar to centre stage gets the hooting and wolf-whistling and calls to “Get a haircut!” started. By the time he’s settled himself on the wooden stool and tuned his instrument and adjusted the microphone, it’s hard to hear the guitar introduction to his first song over the noise from the crowd.
    Not waiting for the audience to quiet down, Thomas sings the opening verse, then another, then goes into the chorus, but with about as much luck at being heard as before. A couple of people think they might actually recognize the song this faggy long-haired hippie is playing, though, and slow down their ruckus long enough to place what it is.
    It’s all the opening Thomas needs.
    One or two, or maybe even a few, actually begin to really hear him now, but most quit their cackling and hollering just to identify “More and More,” the Webb Pierce song barely audible just below the clamour of the crowd. Webb is pure Nashville, one of the big boys, a fat white guy in a crewcut with eight Cadillacs and a guitar-shaped swimming pool. At least this Graham guy knows enough to know a good song.

    But before the next number is even halfway over, no more hooting or hollering and all eyes and ears aimed at Thomas singing a Hank Williams song and letting everyone in the universe know he’s so lonesome he could cry. And he could, too, any fool could hear that. Just listen to that boy sing.
    Like a back rub on the