But as Jones’s career launched, he was disappointed not to find artists who looked like him. “I didn’t have too many other skinfolk to relate to, honestly, in the mainstream country realm,” he told me, “until I started really digging.”

The grill guys sometimes dance around the flames to the soundtrack of this garagelike restaurant.

Karli shook himself, drove home the last nail with a flat stone, straightened up.

The Moocher was a dip in a dilettante sort of way, and his particular graft was boarding street-cars with his papers and grabbing women's pocket-books.