He was the kind of artist whose fingerprints were everywhere, even when his name wasn’t. From the dusty nights with The Flatlanders to stages shared with Tom Petty, The Clash, and Springsteen, he carried West Texas with him like a compass, pointing always toward honesty. He never chased the charts; he chased the truth inside a song, even when it cost him comfort or fame.
In Taos, as his health faded, the noise of the industry fell away, leaving what had always mattered most: family, old friends, and the quiet work of making meaning out of memory. Love and Freedom arrived like a final letter, unpretentious and unafraid, a summing-up without sentimentality. His passing closed a life lived entirely on its own terms, but the music refuses to end; it lingers in the air, asking the rest of us to be just as brave.
