Tales from the Tour Bus - The Vickery Family

Waylon Jennings Part 1

Narrator: Lonnie met Waylon Jennings in 1959 right after Lonnie's two children were born. Other siblings met Waylon a couple years later.

Gordon Payne: Everybody always says, "Man, when you gonna write a book about the Waylon years?" I say, "Not as long as my mama's alive."

Jerry Bridges: There you go. There you go.

Narrator: Gordon "Crank" Payne and Jerry "Jigger" Bridges spent the better part of their careers on stage with Waylon Jennings. Crank played guitar and harmonica. Jigger played bass. Both of them got their nicknames from the man they knew as Hoss.

Jerry: I remember we had a Canadian tour with Willie, and Waylon warned Willie, he said, "You've got to do something with this bus." There's so much pot that was smoked. You've got to clean it up."

Tom Bourke: We were high 24/7. I don't know how to tell people that, but, you know, how do you think you do 200 dates a year? You can't unless you're on something. We ran around this country with a sign on our head. It said, "Look at us, we're stupid," because we were high all the time.

Narrator: Tom Bourke was the road manager for Waylon Jennings from his start as a solo artist to super stardom as a country music outlaw.

Tom: Willie's bus was in front of Waylon's, and you could smell the smoke.

Jerry: So Willie sent it in, and he had it steam cleaned and everything that you could do to the bus, but it didn't work.

Jerry: We got to the crossing, the guards, they came on his bus. And you know how dogs sniff around? This dog sat down. Just sat there and just looked around. He didn't know where to bark or where to sniff. He had no idea what to do.

Tom: And they took everything out of Willie's bus. They were looking underneath the bays and everything. The dogs were going crazy, you know, and they couldn't find nothing.

Jerry: Anyway, they let Willie go, and he gets away with everything. We thought that after he got through that it was smooth sailing for us, you know. Then when our bus got there, they took Waylon, they wanted to do a strip search. The funny part at that time is there was six of us, I think we were honorary deputy sheriffs, so when they took us into the little room, we just all threw the badges on the table. And the guy said, "Oh shit. Just go on."

Tom: He was a cowboy. Some people are born that way. I was scared to death of them guys, but they were cowboys. You know, to me they were real cowboys.

Narrator: He was actually part Native American on his mother's side, Irish and Dutch on his father's side. Terry Jennings says that his dad played up both sides of his heritage, while growing up in a tiny West Texas town called Littlefield.

Terry Jennings: My dad and Uncle Tommy would play Cowboys and Indians. Well, Dad, when he was five years old when he was walking on a split-rail fence, and they have a thing they call a sand fighter, which is basically a bunch of spikes, and it's dragged through the ground, turn the dirt over so the wind don't blow it away. Well, he fell off that fence and stuck one of those spikes right above his ankle in the left leg, so it stunted the growth in his leg. A lot of people ask me how tall Dad is, and I'll tell 'em, "He's six-foot-one, six-foot-two, depending on which foot he's standing on." When you watch him play and you seen him all leaning over to the left, that's 'cause he's over there leaning on that short leg.

Narrator: His disability - didn't stop him from dreaming with his brother, Tommy, about playing music on the greatest stage of all, the Grand Ole Opry.

Terry: Grandpa had a guitar. Grandma played piano, taught him the first three chords. Him and Uncle Tommy, they would get out there and get broomsticks and Coke crates, stand on those, pretending like they were Hank Williams and Ernest Tubb.