First published in a limited edition in 1997, Richard J. Dobson’s memoir The Gulf Coast Boys is a tale of adventure and mayhem on the road with Townes Van Zandt and a band called the Hemmer Ridge Mountain Boys. Interspersed with the tour tales are accounts from offshore drilling rigs and boats where Dobson went to raise money to support his music habit.“An existential dharma bum’s look at the birth (and afterbirth) of what we now refer to as Texas music.” —William Michael Smith, Houston Press “A picaresque novel in its finest form.” —Kathleen Hudson, Schreiner University, author, Telling Stories, Writing Songs; Director, Texas Heritage Music Association “Perhaps his most significant contribution to the canon…The Gulf Coast Boys, a rambling series of adventures that, among other things, provides invaluable documentation on the 1970’s heyday of Townes Van Zandt.” —No Depression, May-June 2000 “These are…true stories to be laughed at and suffered through. ‘It’s a miracle we survived,’ a sober Townes says to Richard Dobson before his death. That miracle is what this book is about—no less.”
