MIGHTY RED

ONE SUMMER IN THE 70’s…we found out about the Longview, Texas “VooDoo-psychic -boggie-man-love-doctor-Jesus breather”…the most terrifyingly accurate clairvoyant who ever told you the appalling truth, "no holds barred"...the great Longview soothsayer...”Mighty Red”.

IF YOU had the courage to come calling on him for help...buckle up buttercup...he never failed to shock and shake.

HE HAD a tiny shed shack out back of his trailer house. The old colored fella was harsh, yet abrasive. He had a bad back and little patience for the rubes when they’d show up drunk…couldn't hardly stand the sight of these white pecker-woods and their drunken prom girls...However, he made money hand over fist telling fortunes to these white kids from the city, and didn't mind the perks of celebrity...therefore, my friends…in a lovely southern twist of irony…the old man suffered these fuckwits…as the cash and celebrity status…and the groupies, never ever gets old…when you do.

ONE NIGHT he took my money…sat me down in that shed…named off 3 of my dead relatives real fast, and named off the secret name my "girlfiend" called me, as well as a recent pregnancy scare… So, now having my FULL attention, he folded his hands on the table and asked me…”wadduwanna know man? I’m tired this evenin’ and my fuckin’ back is killin’ me” he looked up then and forced a smile through the sciatic haze and said “Aw, man you know I love ya…tell me yo’ question little brother…I already know the answer….and so do you…buts you gots to AXE me the question!”

THEN, he began to talk about our heavenly father...how people made it so silly and complicated...and then he'd say a little prayer, and, holding my hand, you could feel his power, and you could feel Jesus sit down right beside us...about the time the candles would start to flicker and sputter…straight up "Holy Ghost-buster" stuff...my hackles stood up to attention, and I had chillbumps that could have grated cheese.

HE MADE ME CRY that night…he knew my trouble…and he helped out my heart…and took a lot of my burden off my troubled little teenaged shoulders…it was as if he was reading my mail. He hugged my neck when he pulled the string and turned out the light bulb over the card table…and we both felt better.

MY BUDDY went in there too...and came out of that little shed white as a ghost, just trembling and speechless. He & I had just been baptized and electrified by the “Mighty Red”. On our way home, we pulled in the gravel and stopped under the yellow parking lot lights of the Liquor store/Bar-B-Q joint…in front of the minnow tank.

bought a six pack,

and drove Hwy 80 East back to Shreveport...

all the way home . . . 

                           without saying a word.


from the award winning new Vernon Rust book FAKE NEWS on Amazon  http://a.co/ctBGQiF

NEWS FLASH!

NEWS

FLASH! 

The Earth is billions of years old, and humans have ridden this little blue rock for millions of years. 

Everything under the sun has been before. 

Oh, and by the way,  Jesus’s name was “ISSA".

The great prophet Mohammed and ISSA are the biggest of buddies in the ‘Koran” and ‘Issa” is regarded as the true Messiah, to return and reign during the ‘end times’. (surprise!)

THERE IS NO DEATH or “Hell”...(that's church bullshit)...we keep coming into other meat suits, over and over, and over again...until we develop empathy. 

If you are having a hard time, suffering through something?...you must dive into the manure...if you want to find the pony...your greatest difficulty is your greatest opportunity...take it from an old manure diver from way back.

THE ONLY TRAGEDY in life...is suffering unpleasant circumstances............ without learning from it. 

Welcome to the “Karma Café"
there are no menus
we get
what
we
deserve.  (this is true, whether one chooses to believe it or not.)

Now, lighten the fuck up, cut yourself some slack and try to focus on the big picture.

YOU are ONE with the creator this very second. 

Relax, take a big deep breath and know this . . .

     

                                                 everything REALLY IS going to be all right.

from my best selling new book on Amazon "FAKE NEWS"  http://a.co/ctBGQiF )

"Beware the 'Inter-Web' from the groundbreaking new Vernon Rust book FAKE NEWS

I've seen the internet go . . . 
      
      from the hope of knowledge for everyone

          the nerve center of the people of planet earth

                connecting every woman, child and man 

                          on this tumbling spacerock
                               
                                to

                                     
                                        instant porn and trash for all ages

touring a sewer 

                    . . . in a glass bottom boat

seven second soundbites

for sharemonkey tricksites & misquoted memes

CLICKBAIT CLICKBAIT  do you no my name?

          newspapers closing cause nobody reads

                    fast breaking news....car-bombs & bleeding

                              murderers killing militants...revenging invasions

of camouflage Christians 

                        . . . and infidel nations

READ FAKE NEWS! 

(& go call your Momma)

FAKE NEWS by Vernon Rust available now on amazon.com http://a.co/ctBGQiF

MY GENERATION early rock memories from the Vernon Rust book FAKE NEWS

I watched Pete Townsend and Keith moon destroy the stage of the smothers brothers tv show after “my generation” completed it’s “BIG FINISH”

I watched the BEATLES singing ‘HEY JUDE” on ed sullivan . . . all on live Black and white TV.

Now, great songs make money for corporations outright. Songwriting income is an old wives tale.

Consider this: When one of my songs gets streamed 10 million times, that nets me 300 dollars.

If, by some divine miracle of nature, You Tube played my song 1 BILLION times?

That generates $3000 dollars.

If I had a “co-writer”? Cut that figure in half.

In the “old days” a hit country radio single, top 10 and above, made the writer 200K. An album cut on a platinum record made 60. Banks would loan against it. Hell, drug dealers and bartenders would too. (You too can make “dozens” of dollars in the exciting music business!)

How do you get a songwriter off your front porch?

                          (Pay him for the pizza.)

from the ground breaking new book FAKE NEWS (on Amazon) http://a.co/ctBGQiF

EARLY NASHVILLE..."Twang Town" from the book FAKE NEWS by Vernon Rust

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE in the late 1980's was a lot like Paris in the 1920's....except we had the syphilis, and body odor thing under control by then, not to mention cannabis horticulture and recording technology was really getting into high gear.....

MUSIC was burning & blazoning across the universe like never before, or ever again. An intellectual and spiritual renaissance the likes of, the world will never witness again was happening and in a very loud way for sure.

TO walk down 16th avenue in 1987, was to stroll among the streets of Gods, both real and imagined.

PUBLISHING companies, Record labels, recording studios, & restaurants....kitschy, corny, gift shops with cheesy promo-photos of even cheesier hillbilly wannabes...stores, bars, souvenir shops with Hank Jr ashtrays, or Barbara Mandrell bolo-ties, little Jimmy Dickens “cowboy hats” by the bowls of Nashville keychains, right next to goo-goo bars, with that picture of Heidi, the goo-goo heiress....

YES THE "Cars of the Stars" museum...the "Wax figurines of the Stars"..."So & So's personal museums" of personal nick-nackery, shrines of stupidity & the beautiful innocence and honesty of it all...

YOU COULD DINE in Shoney's, where a man could no shit, have breakfast with an ole gal whose ole man lived next door to an ole boy whose cousin knew the guy who used to drive Merle's bus!...

Everything a country fan on long weekend vacation could want to see. Sweaty camera straps cutting  pasty, lily white stripes across the crimson sunburned flesh of the ogling tourists as they punctuate the crosswalks in gaggles in their "gold nugget" jewelry and stupid cowboy hats fresh off the racks of Stuckey's or other fine Nashville Tennessee clothing establishments.  God Bless their souls & the records they bought back then…

I WAS quite sure, had my investor not backed out, my business model "TURDS OF THE STARS" would have really done well. I was going to mount toilets sideways on the walls, displaying the leavings of the holy among mortals.

FOR INSTANCE...Elvis...and "the King"..... Hank Junior's "Junior".... Johnny's "Cashews"...Charlie's "Pride" or...Minnie's "Pearls"...

However I wasn't quite what to do with the Oak Ridge Boys display....

But just like most of my other great ideas, like my mashed potatoes on a stick franchise, they soon took a big back seat to my new REAL job....

                                            and the metaphysical task at hand....songwriting. 

 from the bestselling new book FAKE NEWS on Amazon http://a.co/ctBGQiF

 

"Jesus gets jealous of Santa Claus" by Me & Keith Urban recorded by Toby Keith

Jesus Gets Jealous of Santa Claus
   

Layin' back in my easy chair
Late last Christmas eve
Silent night, twinkling lights
Presents 'round the tree
I heard my little girl's two bare feet
Comin' down the stairs
She was sad as I looked over
Draggin' her teddy bear

     She said, now daddy, I had a dream
     A little angel came down to me
     She wasn't happy like angels ought to be
     She was cryin' when she gave me the message
     For all the world to hear
     You know that Jesus gets jealous of Santa Claus
     Sometimes this time of year

So, with her head on my shoulder
And her tears mixed with mine
I thought how little baby Jesus
Gets left out at Christmas time
It ain't about the money
Oh, money can't buy love
And I saw the light that Christmas night
With help from up above

        written by Vernon Rust & Keith Urban
        recorded by Toby Keith

From the Blockbuster new Vernon Rust book FAKE NEWS 
available on  AMAZON http://a.co/ctBGQiF 

"THE KANGAROO & I" from FAKE NEWS by Vernon Rust

THE KANGAROO & I DID'NT SEE EACH OTHER before it was too late.

The impact was respectable...our mutual surprise, instant and lingering.

HE WAS about 7 foot tall, a "BIG RED" in a big hurry.

Me? a fallen from grace American expat wanna be, running from Australian Federales at 5 AM, dancing down a hill so fast, my legs almost running out from under me....

Yes, you're right , the odds would be against such a collision in the middle of the Queensland bush, at this particular hour . . . but somehow, sometimes . . . the universe fulfills its true comedy quota.

And  BOOM!

Both of us flat on our arses, catching our breath.

A Koala gives a sleepy look down from it’s gum tree.

Somewhere in the distance . .  .

                                                      . . .  a Kookaburra laughed.

from the bestselling new book FAKE NEWS on Amazon  http://a.co/ctBGQiF

SHELBY COUNTY JAIL Vernon Rust, from FAKE NEWS

MEMPHIS 1990...FRIDAY NIGHT...8 PM. ME, BARELY OUT OF ARKANSAS, JUST ACROSS THE BRIDGE, JUST ACROSS FROM THE PYRAMID...BEING HANDCUFFED ACROSS THE HOOD OF THE CRUISER.

ALL MY SHIT scattered out on the side of the highway...being searched & picked through...when HERE COMES the MAN!... the biggest black cop I've ever seen...there must have been 7 feet of him stuffed in his uniform, the buttons straining at the thread . . . he looked rather like a giant burned sausage . . . in a smoky bear hat.

 His hands were big as baseball mitts. Picture a gigantic chocolate soft serve ice cream cone, with a Bo Diddly’s head hurriedly stuck on top.

Either I was in a great deal of trouble . . . or guest starring in a twilight zone. Neither would serve me happiness.

THERE HE WAS, the posterchild for “black men with badges who turn on their own kind once they put on a uniform”…acting all joyous & joke crackin’...holding my huge bag of weed and the 357 magnum way up in the strobing blue lights for his little sheriff buddies to see...EUREKA!...BINGO!!

He has…

 “LOcated the EVidence in the suspect’s    “VEEchle!”...”HEEHaw!”

He was doing a little jiggy victory dance...like some idiot on the price is right......(he got so excited, he even had to put down his family size bag of “hot fries” he was goin’ at when he got the call on the radio…)

I WAS literally 5 minutes away from me mates house...who were literally having a "Let's cheer up ole Vern" party....I'd make it there alright , just a short four days later...but hell, I'm getting way ahead of myself....

WILL: "Hello?"

            ME: "Will! Man I'm............."

WILL:" Verrrn! Where the hell are you man? Everybody's waitin’ on you!"

ME:  "Will, I'm in JAIL! Let me talk to Clay right NOW! PLEASE!"

WILL: (hollerin’ over his shoulder to the rambunctious crowd awaiting me, their guest of honor) "Vern sez he's in jail! Ha ha ha ha oh, buddy...heh heh…whew! No kidding Vern, where the hell are you?"

ME: "GODDAMMIT Will…Listen! this is my one phone call...I'm, no shit, downtown, in jail...no kidding, I'm in some real trouble...now, would you please...very kindly, put Clay on the FUCKING PHONE!?"

 WILL: "Vern says he wants to talk to Clay"...(trailing off)

 CLAY: "heh heh heh....VERRRN! Where the hell are you man?"

ME: (banging my head on the payphone now) "Clay! Listen man........"

 from the bestselling new book FAKE NEWS from Amazon http://a.co/ctBGQiF

"Your Honor" you be the Judge! from the Vernon Rust book FAKE NEWS

CONWAY TWITTY & I shared the same attorney.

 HE DIED a week before my court date.

With no will. With a new wife...and a few "Twitty Kids" running around. Estate hell. My little marital failure was dwarfed in size and attention...small potatoes in the break room at the law firm...(note to self: when your lawyer wont make eye contact when you're on the witness stand...you are profoundly & utterly screwed)...DAMN YOU CONWAY! Damn you back to Arkansas!

THIRTY DAYS! BAILIFF LOCK HIM UP! Downstairs to the holding cell. The bailiff was a skinny cat with big bug glasses and an ill fitting suit...he had just locked me in and to lie down…to crash on the luxurious chrome bench when he called out…"Rust! Rust!”

               “…the judge fucked up! She got so mad, she forgot to give you ability to purge! “(Funny thing was, that's exactly what I did in my pants when those handcuffs went on)

 . . . continued

from the new Vernon Rust book FAKE NEWS! on Amazon  http://a.co/ctBGQiF

CHICKEN FRIED & CERTIFIED just a little 'Fake News' Vernon Rust

let me tell you about the 'Country'

MY BARE COUNTRY FEET know the coolness of the fresh turned Earth behind a mule in the spring garden......seeing a fat black snake make a run through the high grass...the smell of the thick, funky, sweet rot of the Louisiana soil...rabbits zig zagging thru the weeds and briars...the huge old plantation bell starts to ring back and forth…bong…bong…bonnnng…3 notes ringing for supper…just the one…

                      when supper was getting’ ready.

NOW DON'T GET ME wrong, we took algebra and wore shoes and listened to Hendrix & Cat Stevens & all but our farm was so far out in the sticks . . .

we had to head towards town . . .

to go hunting . 

from the Vernon Rust book FAKE NEWS   from Amazon!  http://a.co/ctBGQiF Fake News 

GHOSTS IN A MEAT SUIT

excuse me..EXCUSE ME!...a quick word people...ok, just a few things . . .

WE ARE ALL ETERNAL SOULS...inside a meat suit...riding an iron rock...going eighteen miles per second around a small dying star...in a galaxy containing 500 billion other stars.

THE IRON IN YOUR BLOOD...in your guitar strings...in the automobile you inhabit...came from a star that fizzled out somewhere...out yonder.

THE STARLIGHT you see has been traveling to your eyes for millions of years...THE MILKY WAY is pretty big ok but we KNOW there are at least 500 billion OTHER galaxies.

 The Bible you read has been edited a hundred times from the original scripture. Edited by the “Church” and an evil king.

NEWSFLASH! The Earth is billions of years old, and humans have ridden this little blue rock for millions of years. Everything under the sun has been before. Oh, and BTW, Jesus’s name was “Issa”. Mohammed and he are the biggest of buddies in the ‘Koran” and ‘Issa” is regarded as the true Messiah, to return and reign during the ‘end times’. (surprise!)

THERE IS NO DEATH or “Hell”...we keep coming into other meat suits, over & over, & over again...if you are having a hard time, suffering through something?...you must dive into the manure...if you want to find the pony...your greatest difficulty is your greatest opportunity...take it from an old manure diver from way back.

THE ONLY TRAGEDY in life...is suffering unpleasant circumstances............ without learning from it. Welcome to the “Karma Café”…there are no menus… we get what we deserve.

Now, lighten up, cut yourself some slack, try to focus on the big picture...YOU are ONE with the creator this very second . . .

       . . . and everything IS going to be alright.

OH, and take better care of your meat suit

you'll wish you had later.

 from the groundbreaking new book on Amazon FAKE NEWS http://a.co/ctBGQiF

BEFORE NASHVILLE GOT SICK . . .

BEFORE NASHVILLE got sick . . .

WE USED THESE big boxes with pulsating membranes and buzzing devices called "speakers"...they relayed electrical impulses from atomic impressions off magnetic "tape" after it ran electrical gauntlets thru glass "tubes" filled with inert gasses that would spank their insides with love and fury...through a thousand patched wires and gadgets before finessing, teasing & coaxing the bass and treble vibrations...pushing, bumping, & smashing the air...bathing the eardrums with natural analog born reproductions of the original sounds.

JUST PICTURE 2 people in a studo somewhere...at 4 AM...concentrating with all their hearts...unabashedly weeping from a song so good, so beautiful…

it leaves you thrashed, trashed, and baptized......

WE LISTENED thru boom boxes...we listened through speakers that cost more than our cars...

we listened so loud, sometimes . . .

                   the airport called up and complained about the noise. 

(from the bestselling new book FAKE NEWS available on Amazon http://a.co/ctBGQiF )

TRUE GHOST STORY

TRUE GHOST STORY

I GREW UP with straight up authentic voodoo enchanted haunted ghost story graveyard campouts by railroad tracks with so many ghosts of murdered old souls...the two ribbons of steel gleam in the moonlight...from  them dragging their toes…

...ask anyone who’s been down...and waited for midnight, parked on the tracks just off Forbing Road.

WE HAD a graveyard way back of our house…a hundred yards behind the barn. The graves were robbed a hundred years ago, and one night my buddy Doug and I got drunk and climbed down into .one of the brick lined grave holes.

JUST ABOUT the time we are about to get bored and go home, we heard a low guttural moan…like an old woman sobbing and wailing on the wind, when just about that time we hear something thrashing and crashing around in the bushes behind us.

Something hairy, huge and black just burst up out of one of the other graves in a shower of leaves and branches, shot up the crepe myrtle trees and made a deafening, shrieking sound as it flapped it’s giant wings and flew away into the foggy night like a pissed off pterodactyl, so big, it blacked out the full moon overhead.

(Ok, I’ll admit I made that last bit up.) 

from the groundbreaking new book...FAKE NEWS on AMAZON http://a.co/ctBGQiF

AN EYE FOR AN EYE

an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind...

EYE FOR AN EYE

Well, we've tortured our planet…choked out the sun…

built so many roads… there ain't nowhere to run

The Earth will be fine…long after we go

they keep sayin' they care, but it's all just a show

Oh, people...time to wake up

before the Angels start to walk off the job

ain't never no reason…to be unkind

an eye for an eye makes the whole…world…blind

When you see someone beggin' on the side of the street

well' he didn't get there on some winning streak

Ain't no way to tell…the pain that he’s in

well, you can't feed the world…but you could sure feed him

Well, the sins of the father, passed down to the son

we raise him up good and we give him a gun

We keep makin' more weapons to stay in the game

what if they gave a war…and nobody came?

from the book FAKE NEWS  available on Amazon http://a.co/ctBGQiF

ALCOHOLICS UNANIMOUS!

Alcoholics Unanimous!!

YEARS AGO, I started attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

Oh, I still drank on occasion . . .  

. . . I just used a fake name.

from my bestselling new book FAKE NEWS available on Amazon http://a.co/ctBGQiF 

LIFE ON THE INSIDE

Life on the inside....from the book FAKE NEWS

 . . . I FINALLY got tired of sleeping crooked necked in the wheelchair and slobbering all down my new smock, so I let "Tourette Dude" wheel me down to my room...I liked him...he screamed "SHIT COCKSUCKER!" at the top of his lungs a lot, but he always had cigarettes and would always gave me his chocolate pudding.

WHEN I’d pass out in the wheelchair, he was happy chauffeuring me around, up and down the halls, my thorazine generating a constant stream of drool . . . leaving a shiny trail on the carpet like a slug, wherever we rolled . . .

from the bestselling new book FAKE NEWS...available on Amazon  http://a.co/ctBGQiF 

FAKE NEWS ON AMAZON http://a.co/ctBGQiF

(Me & William Casey Davis...takin' 5)


BACK in the days of “tweeking twang”, we recorded on giant spools of 2 inch magnetic tape, spun around 2 giant reels like hubcaps on a washing machine, that started with a low shooluck! . . . whu,whu,whuuuurrrrr, back and forth like demons, for months and months without ever stopping. We cut that tape sometimes with razor blades at just the right spot, to fix a glitch in a valuable session. Nashville, Baby.

WE WENT to unbelievable lengths to do preposterous, murderous, impossible things with mikes, amps, and guitars. The peeps I worked with were legend. Drugs were done in copious, irreverent excess. We were very hard on our bodies back then . . .

                  . . . especially when we were not asleep.

 please order a copy of FAKE NEWS today! here's the link! http://a.co/ctBGQiF

read FAKE NEWS on AMAZON http://a.co/ctBGQiF

on the 8th day...God made the songwriter

I HAVE TAXIED around in helicopters and limousines, and pushed a grocery cart around under a bridge.

I'VE SLEPT IN PALACES and dumpsters...walked a thousand roadside miles...kickin' rocks with a hand full each of matching luggage...two Kroger shopping bags.

IV'E BEEN the esteemed musical guest of elite circles in Chateaus in France. I’ve also been incarcerated in three foreign countries…including Memphis.

SOME OF US ARE COWBOYS & CARPENTERS, some of us are chefs, artists, mothers, programmers, doctors & musicians…but then, on the eighth day…God made the songwriter.

WE ARE the silent observers, the ponderers, the psalmists…the prophets…the tear conjurers…the hailed, feared and noble soul warriors…the “poets”. We can fly high…and we can get very, very sad.   

BUT THE great songs, you see…the GREAT ones live near the fire...too hot for most Angels even…so close sometimes, the human messenger gets hurt doing his job...a really lonesome messed up gig it is.... being born to eat the sins of the common man, and
   burp
      them
         up
            in musical form.

 please order a copy of FAKE NEWS...here's the link   http://a.co/ctBGQiF 

CRAZY? I doubt it! read FAKE NEWS! be somebody!

WHEN I WOKE UP IN HOSPITAL, I COULD'NT move my arms or legs.  Oh, I wasn't paralyzed or anything . . . I was in four point restraints flat to the bed on my back.

 OBVIOUSLY a victim of mistaken insanity...as this only happens to crazy people, and after all, I, Vernon Rust of mediocre and fleeting songwriter fame, was a lot of things...but insane?

Really? I don't think so...me?

Insane? Mentally incompetent? Honestly?

That's just CRAZY talk! (however, several Doctors and judges seemed convinced enough otherwise to keep me a month or so, ...just to make sure)

BUT WAIT A MINUTE HERE! The last thing I remember was kissing a beautiful woman goodbye at the Sydney International Airport.

There were children laughing.

Her children.

Her husband was really getting pissed off.

There was a struggle.





here's the link to my book FAKE NEWS on Amazon         http://a.co/ctBGQiF      thanx!

A QUICK WORD FROM MY BOOK "FAKE NEWS"

Watching the news now days is like frying bacon naked. 

The flavor of the month is bullshit.

                                                

                                           THE BEWILDERED masses are so shell-shocked and punch drunk from the news and whiplashing world events…they stagger around like cattle…astonished, besmirched, disheartened, unsettled and very irritated. Tapping their precious little devices…ear-buds in, nature out…the biggest lie is played the loudest, and gobble, gobble, gobbled up…over and over and over…and then…there’s a side that’s not so cheery and optimistic. . . 

from the book FAKE NEWS 

                                                                               

(I dare & implore you to click the link below, and peek at the first free pages...thanx)

FAKE NEWS by Vernon Rust available now on amazon.com http://a.co/ctBGQiF