The Outlaw Trail

I will miss that Outlaw trail that I rode for 2 years to write "Outlaws Still At Large!"  Don't use that exclamation point some people said.  Why not? The original Outlaws did. "Don't listen to that old roots music," others said.  Why not?  The original Outlaws did.

I was saddled by expectations and driven by a dream.  A lost art in some parts of society.  But so were the original Outlaws.  And the road took me through fogs of cannabis smoke and alongside rivers where whiskey and rum flowed and people on the banks cheered for their heroes.

I knew what it was like to be an Outlaw artist in a life set not to a musical score but etched in my own mind by the prose of experience, memory and fantasy.  The honky-tonk came alive, and I danced as I never had before.--Neil