Then he starts to sing. It’s a high-pitched rasp that becomes an eerie wail as he launches into an improvised tune he says is based on an old song by Richard “Rabbit” Brown, a New Orleans songster known for celebrating killers, gunmen and mayhem.

“Because I’m evil,” the 74-year-old Robertson howls in the refrain. You can’t see his eyes for the shades, but his expression looks stern. After musically bragging for several minutes of how cruel and callous he is, Robertson, mindful of the clientele at this hippie-owned-and-operated landmark of New Age Santa Fe, he sings, “I’m gonna take all your organic sandwiches and throw ‘em in the woods and make you eat bologna/Because I’m evil!”

A few Oasis diners leave before finding out whether Robertson is serious about making them eat bologna. But others more interested in the music take their place, and soon the crowd is Robertson’s.

For the rest of the evening, he’ll enchant and enthrall with tales of lost loves, loose ladies, dusty little bars, demon highways, flophouses and the folk who flop there, five-day drunks, cold jail cells, cowboys, hobos, goodtime gals he’s loved, and guitar pickers he worships.

A poet and self-described “old drunk,” Robertson has lived the life he’s written about in his songs and poems. “I’ve always thought that my biography is in my poetry and songs,” he said during an interview at his home, a converted chicken shack on the property of a friend southeast of Santa Fe. Chain smoking and drinking the better part of a six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon, Robertson talked about his life.

He was born in 1930 in Codell, Kansas, the son of a saxophone player who abandoned the family when Kell was a toddler. His mother remarried a man who kicked Kell out of the house at age 13. He’s been rambling ever since.

He’s earned a living as an usher in a movie theater, a fruit picker, a dishwasher, a soldier in the Korean War, a disc jockey at country and jazz stations, a bartender, and an insurance salesman. At one point, he says, he took classes at a police academy in California before deciding against a career in law enforcement. He even cooked at Cafe Oasis a few years ago.

Robertson has been picking and singing and writing his songs for decades now, ever since having an epiphany as a youth when he saw Hank Williams play in Louisiana. “It turned my head around,” he remembers. “I realized that I don’t care what I do with the rest of my fucking life, I’m going to do that or try to do it. I’m going to do what he does, somehow.”

However, Robertson, a notorious mainstay of San Francisco’s North Beach scene in the 1950s and ’60s, is far better-known in poetry circles than he is in the music world. He published a mimeograph poetry magazine called Desperado in the ’60s and has issued seventeen books of poetry.

“I would say Kell Robertson is one fine cowboy-poet, worth a dozen New Yorker poetasters,” Lawrence Ferlinghetti once declared. “Let them listen and hear the voice of the real America out there.” Robertson cringes at the thought of being called a “cowboy poet” — though he did include Ferlinghetti’s quote on the back cover of his latest CD, When You Come Down Off The Mountain.

Though Robertson’s music always has been an important aspect of his art, he didn’t release an actual album until 2002, when some friends surprised him and put together twenty songs Kell had sent them through the years recorded on cheap cassettes. Despite its lo-fi quality, Cool And Dark Inside is timeless; it sounds like a long-lost field recording of some desert-rat minstrel.

The most memorable tune is the title song. Robertson got the phrase “Cool And Dark Inside” from a sign for a Phoenix beer joint called the Igloo Bar. As the song proceeds, “cool and dark inside” transforms from a promise of relief to a metaphor for death.

After that first album, a friend set Robertson up to make another. Though it was recorded in an actual studio instead of on cassettes, When You Come Down Off The Mountain retains the ragged quality of the first disc. It mixes original songs with a couple of covers — “Jole Blon” and “Have I Told You Lately” — and some spoken word tracks, including Robertson’s poem “A Horse Called Desperation”.

On the last track, “I’ll Walk Around Heaven With You”, the singer confesses, “I’ve told some stories, honey/Most of my stories aren’t true.” But on “I Always Loved A Waltz,” in which Robertson sings his own epitaph, the words have a definite ring of truth.

“Just write on my tombstone, Lord if I get a tombstone/Or maybe just a honky-tonk wall/That he was crazy for ladies, Lord, and guitars and babies/And a damned old fool for the waltz.”

Sill’s self-titled debut album was the first released on Asylum Records, David Geffen’s haven for L.A. singer-songwriters, virtually all of whom became more famous than Sill. (Jackson Browne’s debut was the second Asylum album.)

Although her two records received critical praise, neither sold well. Sill soon disappeared into obscurity. She died of a drug overdose, by most accounts, in 1979.

Heart Food, her last and greatest album, is full of dark shadows. Yet the record is distinguished by a sense of hope and longing fortified by a religious faith steeped in mysticism. Her melodies — some jazzy, some country, some almost classical — are fortified by an impressive battalion of musicians including banjo player Doug Dillard, steel guitar master Buddy Emmons, soulful keyboardist Spooner Oldham, Flying Burrito Brothers bassist Chris Ethridge, and session drummer Jim Gordon.

Heart Food opens with the bittersweet countryish song “There’s A Rugged Road”, featuring a sweet fiddle and steel guitar. “The Vigilante” is a more playful stab at country and western, with lyrics suggesting Christ as a cowpoke. “The Kiss” is a minor-key tune in which an unspoken pain counters the sweet, hopeful lyrics and a prominent string section; the song is even more powerful in the stripped-down bonus demo version included here. A strong gospel influence permeates some tracks, notably “Down Where The Valleys Are Low” and “When The Bridegroom Comes”, which features just Judee and her piano.

The masterpiece here is “The Donor”, a dark-night-of-the-soul meditation that sounds like what “Surf’s Up” would have been had Brian Wilson called on Leonard Cohen to write the lyrics instead of Van Dyke Parks.

Heart Food has been out-of-print in the U.S. and basically forgotten for three decades. But it hasn’t dated a bit. It’s still powerful medicine. This one should have been a classic.

Carter, daughter of June Carter Cash and granddaughter of Mother Maybelle Carter, took the rap in that case. Epstein, who was on the way to the airport to catch a plane to make a Petty gig, wasn’t charged.

But anyone who saw the jail mugshot that appeared on the front page of newspapers in New Mexico the day after the arrest knew that something was terribly wrong with Epstein. It showed a ghostly, weather-beaten face with eyes that had obviously stared into the abyss.

Epstein died February 23 at age 47 in a Santa Fe hospital. Although toxicology reports were not complete more than a month later, authorities said it looked like a heroin overdose.

The disturbing mugshot provided a grim contrast with another photo of Epstein that ran with the local news story on his death. Taken in the early 1980s, it showed a fresh-faced, curly-haired Epstein.

“He was one of the most talented, most generous, most wise people I ever met,” said Alex Magocsi, a Santa Fe drummer who had recently started a band with Epstein jokingly called the Bottom Feeders. “But he was also a very sick person.”

Epstein, a native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, played with some of the biggest names in rock ‘n’ roll. He appears on albums by Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, John Hiatt and Warren Zevon. Before hooking up with Petty in the early ’80s, he had backed up the late Del Shannon.

Although best known for his work with the Heartbreakers, Epstein also had talent as a producer. He produced two albums for Carter and one for Rosie Flores; most notably, in 1991 he produced John Prine’s Grammy-winning comeback album The Missing Years.

Epstein had lived with Carter in a house in Tesuque, a semi-rural village north of Santa Fe that also was the home of the late Roger Miller. “I loved him very much,” said Carter in a telephone interview from her home near Nashville the day after Epstein died. “My kids thought of Howie as their father. We had a good life together for 15 years.”

The Albuquerque heroin bust was the beginning of the end for the couple, whose lifestyle was taking a toll on virtually every aspect of their life. Their mortgage company was suing to foreclose on the Tesuque house. That case was dropped in late 2001, but a new foreclosure action was filed a month before Epstein died. And shortly after the bust, Epstein was fired by Petty.

Carter eventually pleaded no contest to a charge of heroin possession in Albuquerque and was sentenced to 18 months probation. She was released to the custody of her family to attend a rehabilitation program in Tennessee.

Magocsi said Epstein sometimes spoke of getting back into rehab, specifically a program in California that had helped him before. He also had told friends he would be soon be playing bass on the Rolling Stones tour, though this couldn’t be verified.

Epstein apparently had been ill in the days before his death. Friends said he was taking antibiotics and had recently suffered from flu, stomach problems and an abscess on his leg. The day before he died, his 16-year-old shepherd dog Dingo passed away.

Hurd’s band operates like a grand honky-tonk revue. Hurd shares vocal duties with band members Justin Trevino, Cody Nicholas and Blackie White, as well as guest singers including honky-tonk icon Johnny Bush and the sultry Marti Brom. Hurd’s records (the latest titled Song Of South Austin) frequently include guest instrumentalists such as fiddler Howard Kalish (of Don Walser’s band) and noted pianist Floyd Domino.

But bubbling beneath this serious, disciplined musicianship are some truly twisted songs.

Much of Hurd’s material reveals a healthy sick sense of humor. His new album features tunes like the entendre-laden “Rubboard Playin’ Man” (dedicated to band member Danny Roy Young, proprietor of the Texicalli Grille, a South Austin institution) and a heartwarmingly gross tune called “Don’t Wipe Your Face On Your Shirt”, featuring an introduction by Hurd’s two grade-school-age sons.

His repertoire also includes songs such as “It Wouldn’t Be Hell Without You”, “Your Ex-Husband Sent Me Flowers (’Cause He Feels Sorry For Me)”, White’s surreal “People Are Sleeping, Dreaming Of Cheese”, and the shockingly hilarious “The Genitalia Of A Fool”.

But even though one of his early bands had a hit on the Dr. Demento show back in the 1970s, Hurd wants to make it clear that he’s not just Weird Al in a cowboy hat. “My songs are not satires,” he says. “I’m not celebrating white trash; this isn’t goober stuff.”

Rather, Hurd is following a time-honored C&W humor tradition in the same spirit as Buck Owens’ “Big Game Hunter” or Merle Travis’ “Divorce Me C.O.D.” As he puts it, “Real country music used to have a sense of humor.”

A good percentage of the Hurd songs that make you chuckle are grounded in authentic life experiences that weren’t all that funny until they made it into rhyme. Which brings us to the Miserable Ex-Wife.

Just as the best Fantastic Four comics were the ones where they fought Doctor Doom, the most memorable Cornell songs are the ones with the Miserable Ex-Wife. Such a creature might seem mythical, but this is a real live woman, not a composite or a comic device.

“Other girlfriends I had were fine,” he says. The only lingering hard feelings — and they’ve been lingering for about a decade and a half — involve the former Mrs. Hurd. “When you wake up some morning and you realize that you’ve been betrayed by the one person in the whole world that you’re supposed to be able to trust, it’s just devastating,” Hurd said.

David Cornell Hurd was born in 1952 in Northern California. The music bug didn’t really bite until 1968, when he joined “the jug band that changed my life.” The group, known as the Milpitas Submarine Band, performed the song “Blues In The Bottle” (learned from a Lovin’ Spoonful record) at a talent show. “I can still hear the applause,” he says. “After that, I went from being a geek to someone that the tough guys wanted to talk to.”

Hurd graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1972 with a degree in sociology. He’d transferred to Berkeley to be closer to Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen, who, along with Texas’ Asleep At The Wheel, introduced western swing and honky-tonk to a new generation. Hurd’s band frequently opened for both Cody and the Wheel.

Hurd kept active in bands throughout the ’70s and early ’80s, but things fell apart in the mid ’80s. In addition to his marital woes, he was suffering drug and alcohol problems of his own. “My house was foreclosed and my car repossessed,” he recalls.

Hurd moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1986. “And the third person I met when I got off the plane was Miss Debra.” A graphic artist and piano player, Debra Davidson married Hurd in 1988.

While in Florida, Hurd encountered his childhood friend and former bassist Frank Roeber, which led to the revival of the Cornell Hurd Band. In 1989, the Hurds relocated to Texas, where they were joined by Roeber and longtime guitarist Paul Skelton.

Starting out as a five-piece, Hurd’s band eventually doubled in size, picking up members who originally came just to sit in, such as fiddler Vanessa Gordon, a native of South Africa.

Unless you live in Texas, the Cornell Hurd Band probably won’t be coming to a beer joint near you. “We don’t tour,” Hurd says. “I don’t take this mob on the road. Most of us have children and jobs, and it’s too expensive to bring all of us to your town.” Hurd says he’s happy performing at home — he’s played a Thursday night gig at Jovita’s in South Austin for six years — and putting out a CD every year or so.

“This unto itself is a goal: to have a band and make records. Is my goal to have a Top 40 hit? Absolutely not. If someone offered me a record deal on a big label, or even an established small label, I would have to question that person’s sanity.”

Long before he was known for his poetry or music, Trudell was a leader of the American Indian Movement. His life story was immortalized in song by Kris Kristofferson: “Johnny Lobo” tells how, after Trudell burned an American flag at a 1979 protest (on the steps of the FBI Building in Washington, D.C.), a fire at his family home in Nevada killed his wife, three children and mother-in-law.

In 1986, Trudell, backed by guitarist Jesse Ed Davis, recorded the first version of what most consider his best work, AKA Grafitti Man, which featured Trudell reciting his poetry over a mix of basic rock ‘n’ roll and traditional Native American music. (The album was re-recorded in the early ’90s, using the late Davis’ original guitar parts.)

Bone Days features the same basic ingredients, including many of the same musicians. There are “political” songs about the plight of the red man (”Crazy Horse”, “Hanging From The Cross”) but also several love songs, (”Takes My Breath”, “Sorry Love”).

The songs that work best are the bluesy ones such as “Hanging From The Cross”, “Carry The Stone”, and the title song, in which a raunchy slide guitar (played by Mark Shark) plays off traditional chants by Quiltman. One of the most satisfying tunes is “Lucky Motel”, a melding of East Indian and American Indian sounds, with Shark trading his slide for an electric sitar. Quiltman wails and Trudell sounds almost stately in reciting his subtly lusty lyrics.

Several songs — “Undercurrent”, “Ever Get the Blues” and “Takes My Breath” among them — seem to slip into a MOR/lite-jazz sound reminiscent of late-era Doobie Brothers, heavy on keyboards and sappy vocals.

One constant, though, is Trudell’s voice. He can sound authoritative, full of righteous anger, and even vulnerable in the course of one line. “All we need now/Some nice days in a row,” he says on “Sorry Love”. The way Trudell says it, a listener can believe this is not only a solution for a dying love affair, but for the world situation in general.

But I’ll remember Dave Van Ronk as the man responsible for my choice in career. He was my first interview.

Van Ronk, who was being treated for colon cancer, died February 10. He was 65.

Born June 30, 1936, in Brooklyn, New York, Van Ronk dropped out of high school and joined the Merchant Marines as a teenager. Moving to Greenwich Village in the mid-1950s, he became a regular performer at Washington Square, famous then as a folk mecca. Folkie matron Odetta urged a young Van Ronk to go pro; by 1959 he was recording for the Folkways label.

Van Ronk was an established force in the New York folk scene when a young Minnesotan came to town. Van Ronk befriended Dylan, often giving him a place to stay, and ultimately turning him on to several songs, such as “House Of The Rising Sun”, Dylan’s arrangement of which is pure Van Ronk.

The folk scene became a national craze in the early ’60s. And then it became a punchline. Dylan went electric, but Van Ronk, except for a brief stab at rock ‘n’ roll (with his band the Hudson Dusters) and one horribly overproduced album (Van Ronk on Polydor), stayed true to his rootsy troubadour vision.

In February 1980, Van Ronk played a gig at the old Armory for the Arts in Santa Fe. It was a classic early ’80s Van Ronk set with songs such as “Would You Like To Swing On A Star”, “Hootchie Cootchie Man”, his pal Tom Paxton’s ode “Did You Hear John Hurt?”, the Weill/Brecht Three Penny Opera classic “The Alabama Song”, “Cocaine Blues”, and a bone-chilling musical arrangement of Yeats’ “Song Of The Wandering Aengus.”

After the show, Van Ronk made good on his promise of an interview by inviting me to join him in the lounge of the downtown hotel where he was staying. It was soon obvious this wouldn’t be a formal interview, but a rowdy party and lively series of discussions with various friends, fans and locals. Nobody could keep up with Van Ronk, who downed countless rounds of Irish whiskey, tequila shots and Dos Equis.

A proud member of the International Workers of the World (the Wobblies!), Van Ronk talked politics. “It’s us the working people who make things run. We make the factories run,” he said. “We make the government run, we keep everything in the whole damned country running!”

To which someone quipped, “We’re sure keeping this barmaid running.”

Sharing laughs and Irish whiskey with one of my musical heroes — and getting paid for it — seemed somehow right, even though my share of the bar tab far outweighed my freelance check from the local weekly.

So I thank Dave Van Ronk for his music, and I thank him for my job — even though few if any of the interviews I’ve done since were as fun as that one.

But what a novelty they are. Beneath the Hawaiian trappings (which they sometimes forsake in favor of cowgirl clothes when they decide to do a country act), Petty and Booka exude enough raw sweetness to disarm the cynical. What’s so wrong about pretty girls singing pretty songs anyway?

This eight-song EP (subtitled Petty Booka Rain Songs Collection Vol. 1) is a concept album — yes, hula-soaked versions of songs about precipitation. Included are Dee Clark’s oldies-radio staple “Raindrops”, Brook Benton’s “Rainy Night In Georgia”, the Carpenters’ “Rainy Days and Mondays” (featuring steel drum and steel guitar), and a Hawaiian song, the spirited “Rain Kilikilhune”.

Petty Booka also does two rainy tunes by ’50s rock icons: a reggae-rhythmed “Crying In The Rain” (made famous by the Everly Brothers) and “Raining In My Heart” (recorded by Buddy Holly). The fadeout of the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Rain On The Roof” contains a sly nod at a rain song Petty Booka has yet to record: a ukulele version of the signature lick from the Cascades’ early ’60s hit “Rhythm Of The Rain”. Perhaps a hint of what’s coming on Petty Booka Rain Songs Collection Vol. 2…

But the highlight of this EP is the title song, which is so simple, so sweet, so sonically gorgeous, my first reaction was that there must be a part of Brian Wilson’s brain where this song plays all the time.

Eat your heart out, Gene Kelly.

Hag’s first version of that song, recorded with Willie Nelson on a 1987 duet album, caps off the latest volume of a series of tribute albums for Foley, who was shot to death during an argument in 1989.

Merle and Willie are the biggest names on the album (runners-up being Gurf Morlix and Ponty Bone), and “If I Could Only Fly” indeed might just be Foley’s greatest song. But this is not the emotional highlight of Blaze Foley Inside. That honor goes to Jimmy Lee Jones’ quietly riveting performance of “Someday”. And runner-up would be “Anything Less”, moaned gorgeously by Jon Emery. Like “If I Could Only Fly”, these cuts feature slow, sad, penetrating melodies, easy to sing along with, hard to forget.

Foley had his lighter moments, such as his infamous “Girl Scout Cookies”. An ad-hoc, all-female group called the Blazettes do it here (featuring a different singer on all six verses). The cut is fun, but lacks the underlying lecherous leer Foley’s version intended.

Like his pal Townes Van Zandt — or, for that matter, Haggard and Hank Williams — Foley may have sounded country, but his life and music were drenched in the blues. And like any decent bluesman, much of his work mixed humor with the tragedy of his world. So when Elliott Rogers of the Ramblers sings Foley’s lines, “Been gettin’ my supper in a bottle/Get my breakfast in a can,” or when Alan Smithee sings “Sittin’ in a barroom countin’ my dough/Runnin’ out of money and places to go,” you can laugh, but only because it beats crying. Blaze probably would want you to laugh.

One night in May 1999, on a visit to New Mexico, record producer John Wooler stayed at La Fonda and happened to stop by the bar when the veteran country-folk duo was playing.

“He heard us do ‘New Mexico Rain’,” said Bonnie, referring to the couple’s signature tune, written by Bill’s nephew Michael Hearne. “And he heard us do ‘18 Inches Of Rain’ and he bought our best-of CD.” (Most Requested Plus, on Dallas label Poor David’s Records).

And the next thing Bill and Bonnie knew, Wooler had secured them three tracks on The I-40 Chronicles, the first of several planned compilations for Back Porch, the new Americana imprint of Virgin Records.

In addition to the two “rain” songs named above, the couple do a vibrant version of a song written by Guy Clark and popularized by Jerry Jeff Walker. “John asked us if we knew ‘L.A. Freeway’,” said Bonnie with a giggle. “We’ve been doing that song for about 25 years.”

Those three songs sidle up against songs by Willie Nelson, Joe Ely, Charlie Musselwhite, Buena Vista Social Clubber Eliades Ochoa, Counting Crows singer Adam Duritz and fellow Santa Fe area singer Cherokee Rose.

From that compilation, which came out in March, sprang a new Bill and Bonnie Hearne album on Back Porch. As with The I-40 Chronicles, Wooler co-produced the Hearnes’ Watching Life Through A Windshield with partner Randy Jacobs.

The Hearnes are not strangers to the recording studio, nor even to large record companies. In 1997, the Warner Brothers subsidiary Warner Western released the couple’s Diamonds In The Rough, recorded in Austin and Nashville with guests including Nanci Griffith, Lyle Lovett, Jerry Jeff Walker and Tish Hinojosa. That album rose to #5 on Gavin magazine’s Americana chart, but Warner Western fell by the wayside during the Great Recording Industry Implosion of the late ’90s.

In addition, before Warner Western evaporated, Bonnie came down with colitis, a digestive ailment she believes she developed from the stress of touring. For several months Bonnie stopped performing altogether, leaving Bill as a solo act.

Wooler and Back Porch came along at a very opportune moment for Bill, 50, and Bonnie, 52, right as they were getting back on their feet. Recorded in Los Angeles, Watching Life Through A Windshield features several familiar songs — Bob Dylan’s “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”, Clark’s “L.A. Freeway”, Butch Hancock’s “She Never Spoke Spanish To Me”, and James Taylor’s greatest country song, “Bartender’s Blues”. But the real gems are the lesser-known tunes, such as Chuck Pyle’s “Drifter’s Wind” and “Dare of An Angel”, Bonnie’s only solo song on the album.

As on their previous album, Bill and Bonnie are joined on Windshield by an impressive bevy of guest stars. Emmylou Harris sings harmonies on “L.A. Freeway”. Chris Hillman joins Bill and Bonnie on “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” (which he recorded with the Byrds three decades ago) and several others, as does Hillman’s frequent musical partner Herb Pedersen. The Cousin Lovers back the Hearnes on “Lookin’ At The World Through A Windshield”. Even Buck Owens chimes in, trading verses with Bill on “The King Of Fools”.

“I always have idolized Buck Owens,” Bill says. “Back in high school when everyone else was really into the Beatles, I was the same way about Buck Owens & the Buckaroos. I just loved them.”

Bill told Wooler that he’d like to have Owens sing on the album. The producer sent a tape of the Hearnes’ version of “The King Of Fools”, and Owens agreed to add his vocals. Bill’s only disappointment was that Owens recorded his part in Bakersfield, so Bill did not get to meet his idol.

Bonnie’s primary disappointment is that she sings lead on just one and a half of the 13 songs — “The Dare of Angels” and “Fools For Each Other”, a duet with Bill.

“John [Wooler] is really enamored with Bill’s flat picking and his voice,” Bonnie said. “This album really focuses on that.…I’m not saying I wanted it to be 50/50, but 75/25 would have been nice.”

Bill and Bonnie, both native Texans, have been singing with each other for nearly a third of a century. Bill hails from Dallas, while Bonnie was born east of there in a town called Corsicana.

Both are severely sight-impaired. Bonnie has been completely blind since she was 9 years old, while Bill is legally blind. He can see well enough out of one eye to play golf, but you won’t find him driving a car — though he poses in the driver’s seat of a convertible on the cover of Watching Life Through A Windshield.

Bonnie learned to play piano as a child at the Texas School for the Blind in Austin. Her early influences were gospel and folk music. Bill, meanwhile, was into what he calls “hardcore honky-tonk” — Owens, Ernest Tubb, Ray Price and the like — though he also is partial to folk singers such as Ian Tyson, Chuck Pyle and Gordon Lightfoot.

The couple met through a mutual friend in Austin in 1968, soon after Bonnie got a degree in sociology at the University of Texas. Bill had enrolled at the university. They got together and sang a few old Ian & Sylvia tunes. “I was trying to play guitar then,” Bonnie recalled. “It wasn’t cool to play piano at that point.”

The couple became regulars at the Chequered Flag and other small clubs. It was soon after this, in the early ’70s, that Austin emerged the epicenter of “outlaw country.” Willie Nelson moved from Nashville to Austin and released Red Headed Stranger; Jerry Jeff Walker sang Ray Wylie Hubbard’s “Up Against The Wall Redneck Mother” (which Bill and Bonnie also covered in the mid-’70s); Michael Murphey fashioned himself as a “cosmic cowboy.”

Amidst the outlaw uprising, Bill and Bonnie first played Santa Fe before a large, appreciative and inebriated crowd at the Bourbon & Blues. This was the same bar (long closed) in which Jamie Brown, the Santa Fe kid who someday would be known as Junior Brown, played with local band the Last Mile Ramblers.

Although they never got as famous as many of their Austin peers, Bill and Bonnie were part of that landscape. During those years they influenced then-unknown youngsters such as Nanci Griffith — who has recalled in interviews how she used to sneak into bars to hear Bill and Bonnie when she was too young to be there legally — and Lyle Lovett, who once opened a show for the Hearnes.

But even though they were well-respected by fellow musicians and future musicians, the Hearnes — who don’t drink or smoke and never considered themselves outlaws, much less “cosmic” — didn’t quite fit in with the wild anarchic Austin scene.

The gentler atmosphere of the Kerrville Folk Festival was more their speed. They played at the first festival in 1972 and have returned just about every year since.

By the late ’70s, outlaw country seemed to be sinking out of sight. Bill and Bonnie were ready to move. They chose the ski country of northern New Mexico.

The Hearnes first settled in Red River, where they became favorites of the ski crowds, many of them Texans. Even if they were unfamiliar with Bill & Bonnie, they personally related to the Texas-ness in the music.

After the oil bust of the late ’80s started drying up the number of tourists staying at ski resorts, the couple moved to Santa Fe in 1991. They have lived there ever since.

Between 1977 and 1993, the couple recorded six albums (some released only as cassettes) on small labels such as Poor David’s and B.F. Deal. Bonnie recorded a solo album in 1995, the cassette-only Saturday Night Girl, consisting of autobiographical songs.

In the wake of Diamonds In The Rough, Bill and Bonnie started making inroads to audiences far beyond New Mexico and Texas. They opened for Lovett in New England and at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. They played Merlefest in North Carolina and the National Folk Alliance convention in Nashville. Bonnie’s colitis hit her hard at a festival gig in Central City, Colorado, leading to her decision to take a sabbatical.

Bonnie says she is completely over her illness now, and both she and Bill are eager to start touring to promote the album.

Meanwhile, they still play every Wednesday and Thursday night at La Fonda. You never know who might stop in and hear the music.

This is how The Legendary Stardust Cowboy is introduced at the outset of this album, recorded live at the Lounge Ax in Chicago in 1998. As his band is going full-throttle on a galloping, surfadelic version of “Ghost Riders In The Sky”, the Legendary One plays a few moose-in-heat notes on his battered bugle and baits his audience: “What are you so happy for? What are you so happy about?” Another bugle solo and the song comes to a halt.

By this time, the audience probably is ready to believe that Mars stuff. And by the end of the next song — The Ledge’s signature tune, “Paralyzed” — everyone present is surely convinced the man is possessed by aliens. The song is a thunderous Bo Diddley-on-trucker-crank blast of twangy mayhem, with the Cowboy sputtering incomprehensible tuneless lyrics punctuated by wild whoops and animal-like screams.

“Paralyzed” today doesn’t sound any less strange than it did when The Legendary Stardust Cowboy played it for an unsuspecting and unprepared nation on Rowan & Martin’s “Laugh-In” 30 years ago during his first brush with fame. But don’t buy that Martian crap. The Ledge’s wild cries and spontaneous “wooo-hoooo” declarations are those of pure Earthly joy. Billy The Kid probably made near-identical noises while escaping from the Lincoln County jail.

To this Cowboy, rockin’ in the free world means celebrating your freedom by shouting insane boasts that the First Lady of the United States was “knockin’ on my door” like some lust-crazed, middle-aged Gloria. It means turning workaday drudgery like driving a tractor into a breathtaking amusement-park ride. Don’t worry about “understanding” whatever it is The Legendary Stardust Cowboy says or does. Just bask in the freedom he represents.