I still remember the day the Knitters' LP Poor Little Critters On the
Road landed on the desk holding my outstretched legs in a Southern
California newsroom in the mid-1980s. “What in tarnation is this?” I asked myself
while ogling the cover illustration of a lady raising her arms with alarm at the sight of four guys who'd just been run over by a station wagon. Then I
flipped it over, scanned the black-and-white mugshots, and said, “Hey, what
are John Doe, Exene and D.J. of X; handsome Dave of the Blasters; and this
other dude doin' on this dad-gum thing?”
]
Giving it a spin once I got home, I discovered what they were doin': drawing their fans and anyone else who'd give it a listen closer to the roots of X and the Blasters' setlists. I was so blown away by John Doe's take on Merle Haggard's “Silver Wings” that I loaned the album to a country-and-western aficionado, demanding he agree with my contention Poor Little Critters On the Road could play on redneck radio. He returned the album to me with a sneer–then admitted he had appropriated the title track for his own country duo. For months on end, I'd pass by his desk and still hear him bellowing, “Poor little critter on the rooooooooooooooooad . . .”
As a solo or guest artist, Doe has often X-posed his country-fried side, as you'll hear should you duck into Detroit Bar Sunday night. He'll no doubt pluck material from his latest, Country Club (Yep Roc Records), which paired the punk icon with the Sadies. Something to do with a promise Doe and the Canadian roots rockers made to one another at a post-gig booze-a-thon.
What resulted from the collaboration is a collection of ripping covers of classics and near-classics written by the likes of Roger Miller, Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson. Country Club also features three originals composed by the Sadies, as well as “It Just Dawned On Me,” which Doe co-wrote with Cervenka. I must admit that while listening to Doe harmonize with his daughter Veronica Jane Doe on that song, I was imagining what it would have sounded like with his ex- in the recording booth.
If Doe's taking requests, ask for:
Doe and the Sadies transformed the Hank Williams ballad into a Buck Owens-style romp. But Doe's mournful voice maintains the pain heard in the original.
Patsy Cline popularized this tune by Carl Belew and W.S. Stevenson in the late 1950s, and Haggard and Waylon Jennings went on to cover it. But the Doe/Sadies version borrowed more from Dwight Yoakum's Bakersfield-tonky take, with Doe's world-weary voice proving to be a perfect fit.
Undaunted by Sammi Smith having years ago turned the Kris Kristofferson song into a country classic, Doe's new storyteller-like reading only amplifies the subject's yearning for sexual intimacy.
Doe comes as close as anyone can to making Porter Wagoner's murder-ballad classic, written by Bill Anderson, his own.
It's not on the Sadies record, but expect shivers inside Detroit Bar if just Doe and his acoustic take on Merle Haggard's weepy.
John Doe with special guests at Detroit Bar, 843 W. 19th St., Costa Mesa, (949) 642-0600. Sun., 9 p.m. $15. 21+.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.