Rocker Robbery

When John Evans came back to his Montrose-area apartment after a recent gig in Victoria, he looked at the spot where his equipment trailer used to be and thought there had been some kind of misunderstanding.

"At first I thought maybe the lady across the street had gotten mad and had it towed," says the tall, bespectacled rockabilly/honky-tonker. "I went and asked everybody on our street, and they all said, 'Naw, that trailer never bothered us.' So I called the police and asked them if they towed it and gave them the VIN and the plates, and they said, 'No, it's not towed,' so we reported it stolen."

Before the Victoria gig, Evans had played the Hideout at the rodeo. Evans left his trailer at the rodeo that night and picked it up the next morning. He drove the trailer to his house and parked it there before he and his guitarist sped off down Highway 59. "We were back by noon the next day," says Evans. "And the trailer and the whole nine yards was gone."

Over the last 12 months, the Derailers and Eleven Hundred Springs also have had their trailers stolen. It seems that the Texas alt-country movement is plagued by a ring of professional thieves. Evans thinks that whoever stole his trailer, at any rate, is no rank amateur. Evans washes his truck once a week, and a few days after the heist he noticed something odd. "I looked down at the rear tire rim, and there's what looks like one of those balancing weights on the side of the tire, except there was a piece of two-way tape on it and it was placed on the inside of my rim. A week ago I had washed my truck and it wasn't there then. Somebody just put it on my tire.

"I don't know what it was; it could have been somebody running a trailer scam at the rodeo," Evans theorizes. "Maybe they had a bug inside, an electronic device where they could track where you go after you leave. So that's my conspiracy theory. But there was no reason for that thing to be on my rim. It's really odd."

Evans estimates his losses at $10,000 worth of equipment, including a stand-up bass, a drum set, numerous amps and speakers, and various road cases. (He is happy to report that the miscreants didn't grab his guitars, as those traveled with him to the Victoria gig.) He says the bass and drum set are both distinctive, so if you see a big bass fiddle that's burned on one side in your local pawn shop (his bass player routinely sets the thing alight during their shows), call the cops. The same goes for the drum kit; the bass drum is emblazoned with a John Evans Band logo bordered in painted flames. The snare drum is also unusual. It's made from a rack tom and is eight inches deep and fitted with an extrawide band on the bottom.

And if any thief is stupid enough to pull Evans's trailer around in public, we'll know that Mr. Darwin was wrong. Someone dumb enough to sport a stolen trailer that's painted black with Holstein steer markings on the door surely isn't fit enough to survive.

The theft capped an awful week for Evans. "Ann Parsons [a.k.a. Mrs. River Oaks Redneck] died, and then my good friend who used to come to all of my shows -- 'Tequila Dave' Willis -- died the night after Ann's funeral," Evans says. "He went home that night and didn't wake up in the morning."

Evans was shaken up, but he hoped that an awards ceremony later in the week would cheer him up. In addition to being a musician, Evans was a star athlete, Lamar University's all-time leading passer, in fact. The Beaumont college decided to put him in its Hall of Honor, but fate rained on that parade too, in a pretty horrendous way. "My good friend who was gonna present me couldn't make it because his sisters were killed in a double murder," Evans says.

Evans remembers being at Austin's Mardi Gras celebration later that week and wondering if the sky was falling. "With all the cops in riot gear and on horseback, it looked like Beirut," he says. "So there we are three blocks from the state capitol in Austin, and we got a cowboy in the White House, and I was thinking maybe this is The End. I thought, 'We're gonna live it up tonight, and if we survive, we survive.' "

As the old Fats Domino song says, "(Blue) Monday is a mess." There is no day more blues-racked than Monday. Five long and hard work days loom ahead. One scarcely dares dream of the weekend to come. So why not continue last weekend instead?

For many years that's just what many blues musicians have been doing. Photographer James Fraher and local author/ Press contributor Roger Wood's new installation at Project Row Houses celebrates this tradition with words and photos and hopes to win new recruits to the tradition along the way.