Normally we at Americana Unsung research and write our own profiles of alt. country’s lesser lights. Recently, however, we received an unsolicited auto-biography from former Bloodshot & Yep Roc recording artist Huck Paxton. Not that we necessarily want to encourage this sort of thing, we felt this story was simply too good not to publish. So with no judgment and only slight edits for clarity and punctuation (for the subject was, as he stated in the March 2023 cover email accompanying his memoir “a damn good story teller but a hack of a writer”), the editors of Americana Unsung have agreed to publish his story, pretty much verbatim leaving most of Paxton’s eccentric syntax intact.
The Troubadour Hustle aka ‘Dancing With The Devil’
I am not famous. Sometimes, when I talk to people, I can tell that they think I am famous. On any given day-to-day walkabout, I can stroll freely about town and not encounter what actual famous people tend to call their “superfans.” I only have about a dozen or so, and they can get ahold of me very easily on The Internet. None of my superfans live in Nashville, Tennessee, where I see bonafide celebrities at the local supermarket. You can find some of the best pedal steel players in the world just by standing around in the produce section of the Kroger’s. I have had several occasions when I found myself shopping for veggies alongside notable singer-songwriters like Gillian Welch. Once, once while her and I were both milling over some eggplants, I tried to make small talk by asking her, “How do I know which one is the best?” She looked up from under her big straw hat, rolled her eyes, and said, “I’m sure you’ll make the right choice.” I knew exactly what she meant.
Long ago, when I had a younger man’s moustache, things were going my way, i.e. the Music Business Machine was behind me and the doors for decent support tours seemed to open, but I simply made a mess of every opportunity. I wrongly assumed this “life on the road” would last forever; being in a new town every couple of days, eating from a never-ending backstage platter of cheese and grapes. I became lazy and complacent, and thought it would be a good idea to not settle down into a relationship back home just because a person may have really cared about me, and instead have sex with whomever I wanted, whenever I wanted, wherever I was.
I managed to get a truck load of songs out of that wayward path, but it was simply a way of life that did not have much sustainability in regards to stability and other things that I had no concept of in my twenties or thirties. Several rehabs later—three for booze and drugs, one for sex, and a few “retreats” for whatever else there is to get strung out on. Unsuprizingly, I found myself struggling to make ends meet.
I still toured Europe here and there, because, as true to cliché, I had a minor hit in Belgium with a song I wrote when I was 26 called “I Will Not Die For Rock & Roll (But I’ll Get As Close As A Blind Man Can)” which got into a cult French rockabilly noir film called Les Diables Rebelles.
Every now and then, because I am accustomed to hustling the good hustle, I will put a song up on my Instagram page. About the same 35 to 70 people seem to give a damn every time. The numbers rarely stray far from that zone. Mostly Europeans, and a few Australians. I do have a few elderly divorcee superfans in Texas and Louisiana that will buy anything I release, but other than that I simply have a hard time keeping the lights on with my music. I needed a regular source of cash, so I took a warehouse temp job after I got sacked from Amazon for crashing their delivery van when I was stoned one morning. Well, I didn’t crash it exactly, but scraped the whole right side of it along the corner of a brick wall that I didn’t realize I was parked that close to. Not one of my best days.
At one time you may know that I made a few decent records: the Plaid Reputation ep on Bloodshot, followed by two Yep Roc full-lengths, Principles Of Chaos and Greydog To Rockford. I was temporarily booked by MANAGE THIS! out of Philadelphia, but I kept sleeping with the wrong people or ingesting the wrong substance, and anyway all of that just sort of dried right up after I couldn’t put ten paying customers in any room in Chicago. I am Writing All of This Down in order to be a proper Cautionary Tale for some young creative that may come along. I don’t want them to make the same mistakes I have made, and then find out at 40 years old that you’ll never be invited to perform on the Outlaw Country Cruise even though you’ve done more actual time in jail than all of the headliners combined. Yes, I may have driven a few cars into the ditch, and I might have flubbed a few shows because I was drunk, and therefore ruined my chances to move up the ladder. The way I see it is that I just wasn’t able to make the Lucky Breaks work for me.
Here’s another nickel’s worth of free advice: maybe don’t take all the mushrooms that Chris Robinson offers you backstage. Maybe don’t sleep with the lighting rig person just because Win Butler did. Maybe don’t drink all of the Jonny Walker Red from The Jayhawks’ rider, several nights in a row on tour, therefore rendering yourself unable to play the mandolin during your cameo in their set. Maybe, instead of taking LSD while on a transatlantic flight, you could read a book or watch a movie. You can thank me later.
Once, while on tour with Jason Molina, who somehow managed to regularly outdrink me, I was so nervous before a show of bigwigs in Los Angeles that I drank far too much more brown liquor than I should have and ended up walking off stage mid-set to throw up behind the speaker column. It wasn’t a great night, and nobody wanted to take me out to dinner or help me get a lift back to my hotel, which I had forgotten to book in the first place, thinking that my manager had done it, but in fact I had forgotten that we had parted ways just a few weeks previous. I was basically homeless and slept in the back seat of my rental car, which was not a new thing. My drunken pleas from the merch table did not garner me any invites to crash on couches, and I did not have any merch to sell anyway, having left it all in San Diego at the venue from the night before. You see what I mean about making a mess?
The next night, in San Francisco, after missing soundcheck because I couldn’t find a parking spot near The Bottom Of The Hill, an audience member loudly barked out the word “yawn” in the middle of my set, which caused a decent amount of titters through the crowd. I got into it with the audience and said something like, “If you’re so G-d damn special let’s hear your songs!” Nobody took me up on it, and I stormed off stage.
At one point after leaving the dressing room to begin my set, somebody had snuck a tie-dyed bandana into my guitar case backstage. Inside it was a crucifix hung on a chain. Some blind instinct made me immediately drape the chain over my head. The silver crucifix hit my chest like a pile of bricks. At first I thought I’ll just stop drinking right now, but a few hours later I was at The Hotel Utah ripped out of my mind.
The tour carried on to Portland and Seattle, and I felt a certain heaviness lift from me that I could not quite explain. I had strolled into a small bookstore outside Medford and found a bible. To my surprise, I read it from start to finish in a very short time. I couldn’t wait to read more and more. I went on line and read the manifestos of David Koresh and Theodore Kaczynski. I subscribed to websites I had never seen before that were telling me the Real Truth. A light was turned on inside me. I did not feel afraid anymore, but I was also still drinking hard cider.
At one point I reckoned that if I just quit trying to make records and slowed down and got a job driving for Uber then maybe I could find myself in a revival position some day. Five years later, nobody had come knocking. I had been Officially Forgotten. I also gained a bunch of weight and contracted Hepatitis-C. I was able to make rent and car payments, but that was about it. I had no ambition; I had nothing. The local Church Of Christ told me I needed to clean up my act or find another congregation.
I was sick and tired of being sick and tired, as they say. I decided to come back to the 12-step rooms and just lay it all out there. A year and some change after that, I have found full-time employment down in the windowless basement of the Nashville Public Library, sorting out the never ending truckloads of books that arrive for me to put into the outgoing boxes to different branches. Some people think that Public Lie-braries are the greatest source of Misinformation and Legalized Pornography going, which may or may not be right. Let’s just say I’m in the belly of The Beast. They tell me that soon I can get promoted to janitor, which will come with a few more responsibilities and a lot more keys. I have wondered if perhaps I should apply to be a janitor at Calvary Hill Church Of Christ because at least there I would be in one of G-d’s many houses. I have also asked myself “now just how many houses does G-d need anyway? Wouldn’t it be easier to keep just one house clean?”
I found a girl that loves me for me. Her name is Cindy. We met in the Program. She only had two weeks off the sauce when I asked her out, much to the chagrin of our local home group. We eventually had to quit going to AA after we encountered one too many loose screw heathen Atheists who believed their Higher Power was a doorknob or the ocean or some other woo-woo cult shit. We found Jesus and that is our story and we are sticking to it, by G-d.
Cindy is four months pregnant and we are going to start a family. If there is one thing I know, this child will not be reading the terrible books they offer in the Nashville Public School system. This child will be 100% home schooled. This child will not be going to college where they clearly teach the Devil’s words.
For a short time I had taken to wandering onto the campuses of Belmont and Vanderbilt and testifying. Students would gather and sunbathe in front of me while Cindy, or “Sister Cindy,” as the students named her, would preach when I needed to sit down. They love when I call marijuana “the Devil’s cabbage,” or tell of my LSD mishaps–like the time I tried to go from NYC to Philly in the undercarriage luggage storage of a Greyhound bus. Neither school will let us preach on campus anymore, or within a one mile radius of campus, so we have taken my preaching over to the Five Points area and Germantown, where we can get a decent crowd on a weekend night.
You can write to us. Please do. We are looking for like-minded people to start a family-based organization called G-d First and we would love to hear from you. If you are struggling, please tell us your story. We want to help you. If you run a record company and want to take a chance on a Born Again man who sings songs for Jesus, I am your man! I have pawned all my gear but I still have my “Beulah,” which was my Grandfather’s Martin D-76. I lost it once in a dice game but the Dutch promoter took pity on me and gave it back the next morning. If any of you European promoters want to take a chance on a guy who may or may not have stolen money from you in the past, or left a few bar tabs unpaid, I’d like to make it up to you. I swear on my Mother’s Name that I will pay you back, I just gotta get over there and sing some of these new songs first. Cindy will help me sell the merch.
Reach out please.
G-d First
PO Box 409
Nashville, TN 37210
- Huck Paxton, a stage name, was thought to be a combination of the Mark Twain character and Tom Paxton the folk singer. Presently, Timothy Patrick Ptovsky is named in a cease and desist lawsuit from both the Mark Twain Estate and Tom Paxton.
- The editors believe that the once noted singer-songwriter is attempting to start his own cult.
Americana Unsung 