Baby, Would I Lie?

33

Branson is an early town. That was a real jolt for some of the performers, who were used to the pace and timing of the road, where your two shows would usually begin at eight and eleven, or Vegas, where some of the shows on the Strip started at nine and midnight. In Branson, where the families and the retirees bed down early and rise early — PANCAKES! ALL YOU CAN EAT! — the shows begin at 3:00 and 8:00 P.M. Some of the performers have trouble for a while, getting up to speed in the middle of the afternoon and then being required to turn off in the middle of the evening. But eventually, even the most night owl of the show folk adapt to the slower rhythm, and even come to enjoy it.

Ray Jones was one who had the hardest time shifting gears. In the old days, he’d toured 250 to 300 days a year, sleeping by day in the moving bus, rising like a vampire as the sun went down to perform into the night for the people out front, then partying back till it was time for Cal and the boys to pour him back onto the bus; occasionally stopping a town or two away to eject a lady friend who hadn’t realized the party was over.

The last few years, in Branson, he’d grown used to sleeping in a bed that wasn’t traveling at sixty miles an hour, he’d grown used to the concept of being up and about in direct sunlight, and he’d even grown used to performing the three o’clock matinee — pretending, on the rougher days, that it was a rehearsal or a record date. But the hardest mental shift had been the idea that by 9:30 in the evening, the day was over — no more shows, no more people out front, and even the members of the band yawning and scratching themselves and looking bleary-eyed. By midnight, even Honey Franzen would have gone home to her little ranch style on Mockingbird Lane, north of the Strip, toward Roark Creek.

That’s why he’d set up his little videotape operation out at the house: to give him something to do on those long nights when there weren’t any shows to perform, there weren’t any people, and there wasn’t even any bus. (In fact, there was a bus, stashed at the farthest corner of the parking lot out behind the theater, and sometimes, in the deepest winter, when the Branson tourist business at last dried up, Ray still did a southern tour or two, mostly out of nostalgia, his as well as the customers. But it would be six months at least before he rode that bus again — or maybe, if things went wrong with this Belle Hardwick thing, a lot longer than six months.)

The Belle Hardwick thing had been a disruption in a number of ways, but now that the trial had started, the disruption was even more complete. Because he had to be in court all day long, showing his honest citizen’s face to the honest citizens of the jury, he couldn’t do a 3:00 P.M. show, only the 8:00 P.M. That had now become the first show, and his mind and body just craved a second show three hours later, just when everybody else in his world had gone to sleep.

God, it was tough. He was raring to go, ready to let performance soothe his shattered nerves and battered psyche, ready to let those hours under the lights on the stage clean out all the bad thoughts and bad vibes, fears and apprehensions, but the world was shut down. Meantime, with the trial going on and all, the pressure from the fans who wanted to see that one and only show per day was extreme. Flouting the fire laws, his people had put a row of folding chairs in front of the first row of regular seating and two more folding chairs at the top end of the aisles. They’d even dropped the Elvis gag so they could sell the Elvis seat; the girl reporter and her editor wouldn’t be able to get in at all these nights.

With all those people out front, laughing and applauding and approving and adoring, it was hard to stop. The shows got longer and longer. Songs he’d decided for reasons of personal image not to perform until the Belle Hardwick thing was over, he had begun to sing again. (Not all of them; “My Ideal,” for instance, he still wouldn’t touch, maybe never would again.)

But the fact of the matter is, the fans wanted Ray to be a rogue, if a lovable rogue. He was one of their outlaws, like Willie Nelson and David Allan Coe, and they wanted that whiff of brimstone they knew he could if he chose deliver. So that was why (in addition to the fact that he didn’t want to get off the damn stage) he was bringing back into the repertory songs like “L.A. Lady” and “The Dog Come Back.” The people who knew “L.A. Lady” was about his ex-wife. Cherry, liked that one, but just about everybody liked “The Dog Come Back”:

Oh, if that could only be the whole of life. To get up here and sing the songs, backed by the good old pals and terrific musicians of the band, with the cheering fans out front, everybody happy, everybody simple and clean, the good music flowing out, the good times happening, these are the good old days.

If only.