(written by Allen Cote, as told by Jordan Burich and Tex Coyote)
In the vast deserts of the great Southwest, many small creatures may be easily lost - and sometimes found again - with very little effort of their own. Some years ago, one such creature was lost, with no one’s knowledge, including his own; and the story of his subsequent re-emergence is so utterly unbelievable that it is unquestionably true.
I first had the fortune (good or bad, I’m not sure) to make his acquaintance via my old friends in The Championship, a phenomenal band from Milwaukee, WI - in the year since, he has given me cause for much reflection upon my own nature. I find that even when he has disappeared into the wilderness to his occasional hibernations, he remains with me still: an indelible stamp upon my unconscious; a part of me (and many others) that cannot and should not be erased. He may be gruff, drunk, inexcusable and inexplicable; but it is in the midst of his storm that we find our own solace - in his hurricane we see our eye.
This is his story:
Many people believe that Tex was raised by wolves, but that simply isn’t true: all one has to do is watch him devour food with the starved speed of a scavenger to realize that his upbringing came from a family of coyotes. His personal hygeine and habit of scratching viciously behind the ears and under the beard are dead giveaways, as well.
Tex has few memories of youth - some speculate amnesia, others suggest drugs - but one recollection stands especially clear: inspired by peyote buttons given him by an Apache elder, Tex wandered into the White Sands desert, naked (as was his custom) but for a banjo he had crafted from an armadillo shell, dead wood and barbed wire strings.
He wandered those sparkling white hills for months, possibly years (for a mammal on hallucinogens, time often loses relevance), surviving on what he could scrounge from the fringes of civilization as it bordered his vast, empty interior world. Many nights, intoxicated by various desert flora, Tex would howl longingly at the stars; and they would howl back, embracing him in the promised comfort of the company of creatures more closely resembling his own physical features.
Though he had a few brief contacts with the natives of the land - who more closely resembled mystical desert spirits, ethereal and indescribable vapor, than anything like a six-foot tall, flesh-and-blood white man - Tex spent much of his time wandering the black of night, when no civilized person would be found braving the living desert.
As luck would have it, there are still a few uncivilized people left in the world.
This is where I enter the story: having spent a couple of days on the road with The Championship after they rolled through Austin on a national tour, I introduced them to a beautiful campground at the southern tip of the White Sands desert - the Monahans sandhille. For the sake of avoiding incrimination of myself and my friends, I won’t reveal what we were doing wandering through the seventy-foot sand dunes in the middle of the night, but what happened next surprised even the most experienced among us: crawling out of the blackness, stark-naked save for a makeshift instrument strapped across his back, came the hairiest and most fearsome (and fearless) creature any of us had ever seen. He sprinted up a sand dune on all fours until he reached the pinnacle where we stood, frozen in shock; then slowly rose on his hind legs to mimic our own stance, reavealing his full figure.
His instrument was very well strung.
Quickly discovering his musical prowess on the makeshift instrument he had spent so many years learning, I relinquished my role as sideman in The Championship and returned home to fulfill contractual obligations that would have prevented me from finishing the tour anyway. Tex continued on for the duration, and established himself as a quick learner, both musically and linguistically, supporting the theory that his entire upbringing had not existed solely in the wilderness (by Eugene, Oregon, the boys had even convinced him to wear a little more clothing). In Seattle, however, Tex disappeared again, and was not heard from for several months.
When he next reappeared - on New Year’s Eve in Milwaukee, of all places - it was discovered that Tex was proficient on almost any instrument you put in front of him, including lap steel, mandolin, guitar, harmonica, and countless others. Before he could disappear into the wilderness again, the boys in The Championship made him promise to return often and contribute regularly to the band’s performances and recording, hoping to harness some of the raw energy of which Tex seemed to have an inexhaustible reserve (this would prove to be a dangerous undertaking).
Over the next few months, minus a couple of brief evaporations, Tex toured with the band several times, proving himself not only an adept musician; but also a great lover of whiskey, weed and women (though when the three were combined, his judgement often proved to be more than questionable - at least one empty elevator shaft was involved). Thinking they had found the missing link - in more ways than one - the boys finally coerced Tex into sticking around Milwaukee long enough to start recording on their new album, "Midnight Golden."
Around this time I embarked on my own national tour, and upon arriving in Milwaukee to visit my old friends, my beloved Volkswagen van broke down, forcing me to cancel the next several weeks of tour through Canada, during which time Tex put his paws on my own recordings (for which I am forever indebted). When I was finally able to acquire a plane ticket to continue my tour through the great state of Alaska, Tex had obviously grown weary of his self-imposed stagnancy, and insisted on accompanying me: knowing the sheer amount of violence and chaos this often entailed, I accepted with much trepidation
