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STEVE EARLE is a singer-songwriter, actor, activist, and the author of a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year, the story collection Doghouse Roses. He has released more than a dozen critically acclaimed albums, including the Grammy winners The Revolution Starts Now, Washington Square Serenade, and Townes. He has appeared on film and television, with celebrated roles in The Wire and Treme. His album entitled I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive was produced by T Bone Burnett. He often tours with his wife, singer-songwriter Allison Moorer.

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Doghouse Roses

Mariner Books

Excerpt

DOGHOUSE ROSES

Pick any means of transportation, public or private, over land, sea,
or air. No matter which direction you travel, it takes three hours to
get out of L.A. Yeah, I know there are all those folks with a head
start for the Grapevine out in Northridge and Tarzana, but hell, to
those of us in the trenches, the real Angelenos, those places are
only luminescent names on big green signs seemingly suspended in
midair above the 101 Freeway. Yeah, yeah, I know all about the good
citizens of Encino and Toluca Lake who are always bragging about the
convenience of friendly little Burbank Airport, but let"s get real -
they"re not going anywhere anyway.
I"m talking about the other side of the hill - Downtown,
Hollywood, Santa Monica, Venice, and Silver Lake - the transient
heart of the city, the L.A. of Raymond Chandler, Chet Baker, and Tom
Waits. A place where folks come to do Great Things - make movies and
records, write screenplays and novels, which they hope will become
screenplays someday, because that"s where the money is. And every-
fucking-body"s got a "treatment" that they"re working on, including
half of the L.A.P.D. Most of these folks only wind up as minor
characters in the work of the fortunate few. You"ve seen them -
aging bit players with tough, brown hides, mummified from years of
sitting around motel swimming pools waiting for the phone to ring.
The drug-ravaged former rock stars in raggedy-ass Porches and Saabs
on an unending orbit of the downtown streets. Even the lucky ones
only get as far as the Hollywood Hills or maybe Malibu, where they
live out their lives with their backs to the world"s widest and
deepest ocean, waiting for wildfire to rain down from the canyons
above. And should they decide to get out? Well, like I said, it takes
three hours, and most people simply don"t have the resolve.
Bobby Charles certainly didn"t. He left L.A. in disgrace, low-
riding in the passenger seat of his soon-to-be ex-wife"s BMW. Not
that he wanted to go, but this town kicked his ass so thoroughly
there was simply no fight left in him. Kim West (she had never taken
Bobby"s last name, for professional reasons) had finally given up on
her talented but troubled husband of five years, and now she just
wanted him out of her town.
When Kim and Bobby met, he was a country-rock singer whose
first marriage had already begun to buckle under the stress of
constant touring, the distance alone taking a considerable toll. His
wife and two kids were back in Nashville, but his real home was a
forty-foot Eagle bus he shared with his band and crew. At age thirty-
five Bobby was somewhat of a cult figure, the kind of recording
artist who, thanks to a loyal following, sold one hundred thousand
records per release, although this was barely enough to recoup his
recording costs. The critics loved his work, however, and he lent a
certain amount of integrity to a record label"s roster. Before Kim
came along, he had always considered L.A. a nice place to visit, at
best.
Bobby had always avoided strong women like the plague, but
something about the diminutive, up-and-coming producer fascinated
him. Kim came out from St. Louis to attend the UCLA film school,
switching to a business major midway through her second year. She
went on to an M.B.A. and a job at a major studio. When a mutual
friend introduced the pair at a party after the Grammy Awards, Kim
thought Bobby was cute, in a primitive sort of way, like Crocodile
Dundee or something. She was bored to tears with dating
other "industry" types, who saved all the receipts from dinner and
talked shop in bed. Bobby was a little loud, a little reckless, and
she knew her mother would hate him.
They left the party together in a rented 5.0 Mustang
convertible. They wound up parked somewhere way up Mulholland Drive
with Kim"s panties hanging on the rearview mirror, breathlessly
gazing down on all those lights. From that moment, L.A. had Bobby
Charles by the balls.
Bobby didn"t discover heroin in L.A. Hell, he grew up in San
Antonio, Texas, 150 miles from the Mexican border. Despite the much
publicized efforts of the U.S. government, brown heroin steadily
seeped across the Rio Grande like tainted blood from a gangrenous
wound. Bobby first tried it at an impromptu party at a friend"s house
when he was fourteen. For years he managed to get away with his off-
and-on habit. He always managed to detox in time for this tour or
that record, and even if he was dope-sick he never missed a show. By
the time he met Kim, though, it was starting to catch up with him.
Once Bobby left his family and moved to L.A., cheap, strong dope,
guilt, and a long, nasty divorce combined to provide him with all the
excuse any addict needs to bottom out.
At first it was just a matter of L.A."s dependable supply of
heroin, but pretty soon Bobby discovered speedballs - deadly
intravenous cocktails of heroin and cocaine. It wasn"t long before he
had two habits to support. In L.A. time passes in its own surreal
fashion - too subtle to even be detectable to folks who are used to
four seasons. So if you asked Bobby, he couldn"t tell you exactly
when his habit got to be too much work. He only knew that at some
point, in what passed for a moment of clarity, he enrolled in a
private methadone program. He woke up early every morning to line up
at the clinic with the other "clients" to take communion at the
little window - a plastic cup of the bitter powder dissolved in an
orange-flavored liquid, chased by water from the cooler. Bobby was
then "free" from the need to run down to Hoover Street to buy heroin
twice a day. So he took up smoking crack.
Because he no longer used needles, Bobby told himself and
anyone who would listen that he was back on track. He"d get smoked up
and rattle on for hours about the "next record." Kim listened
dutifully, but she knew it was only talk. Bobby hadn"t written a song
in more than three years. How could he? All of his guitars (along
with a few that didn"t belong to him) were in the pawnshop.
Kim knew Bobby was a junkie when she married him. She just
didn"t know he was a junkie junkie. At first she saw dope as part of
Bobby"s "thing," his mystique. It made him seem more dangerous, and
after all, she was slumming. It stopped being cute when money began
to turn up missing from her account. Or when he called her at work,
whacked out of his skull and thoroughly convinced that their little
craftsman bungalow in Larchmont Village was surrounded by police.
Kim, having little or no experience in such matters, immediately
called her lawyer and rushed home to find Bobby hiding in the hall
closet with a loaded shotgun and a crack pipe. When she opened the
door and stood there in tears, Bobby only stared back indignantly.
"What?"
That was the day that Kim decided to bail, but she couldn"t
bring herself to simply leave. After all, she really loved the guy;
she was just at the end of her rope. She decided...