The Legend of a Man Called Hoot
February, 2007
There aren’t many famous bus drivers in the world, and even if you include cartoon characters, you can probably count them on one hand: Otto Mann from The Simpsons, Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners, and James F. Blake, who ordered Rosa Parks off the Alabama bus in 1955 for not surrendering her seat to a white man. And then of course, there is Hoot Borden, the greatest rock and roll bus driver of all time. On this unseasonably warm November afternoon, Hoot is in the front lounge of his spotless 1998 Prevost coach, dispensing tasty nuggets of country wisdom and spinning colorful yarns from a lifetime on the road. He leans back, legs outstretched in front of him, and says in his trademark Southern drawl, “You know, it ain’t fair the way Britney gets hammered in the press. You reporters always trying to make a story where there ain’t one.” He coughs a bit of phlegm into a napkin and adds, “People forget she’s just a kid from Louisiana. She’s country folk. In the South, everyone drives around with their baby on their lap. She’s just doing what her momma taught her.” For the record, Hoot Borden is 70 years old, and while it may seem odd for a crusty septuagenarian to pontificate on the media’s treatment of Britney Spears, it’s even more shocking when he comes out swinging in support of the crotch-bearing pop star. But when you get to know Hoot, and you understand his loyalty to the artists he’s hauled over the years, his reaction makes perfect sense: He’s protecting Britney, just like any grandfather would. Then he leans forward, almost conspiratorially, and says in a low throaty voice, “I’ll tell you what, though. I didn’t like her husband one bit.” When I press him for a reason – and there are many reasons to dislike Kevin Federline – Hoot replies candidly, “Because of the way he wore his hat. That crooked cap pissed me off.” And then, as if speaking directly to K-Fed, Hoot growls, “You little son of a bitch. I’ll show you how to wear a damn hat.”
To call Hoot Borden a bus driver is something of an understatement, like calling Muhammad Ali a fighter or Tiger Woods a golfer. So what do you call a man who’s been part of the American music landscape since 1950, whose very name is the stuff of myths and legends? Singer Anna Nalick calls him “the rock star road daddy,” but I prefer to think of him as the Godfather. “Old Hooter’s driven more miles backing out of his driveway than most people do in a lifetime,” says Timmer Ground of Music City Coach, Borden’s longtime employer. “He’s an old road dog, and the last of a dying breed.” Over the last half century – and he’s never missed a week of work – Hoot has witnessed the birth of rock and roll, and the rise of the music touring industry. His contemporaries, many of whom he considers personal friends, include such heavyweights as Johnny Cash, Ernest Tubb, Bill Monroe and Willie Nelson – all members of the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, or both. And though he spent his early days on the country circuit, he’s hauled a wide range of artists from Megadeth and Cher to Patti LaBelle and Poison. In the last year alone, he’s driven for Bob Dylan, Rob Thomas, and Jack White and the Raconteurs. But Hoot Borden is more than a chauffeur who shuttles cranky superstars from one gig to another: he’s a symbol of a forgotten era, when a business deal was sealed with a handshake, people took pride in their work, and a man’s word was more important than his net worth. When I catch up with Hoot at the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa, California, he’s driving a crew bus for legendary singer Anne Murray. He greets me with a warm smile and a handshake and invites me on board. When we spoke on the phone a few days earlier, I’d offered to meet him at his hotel, since most drivers sleep in the afternoon so they can drive at night. “I’m more comfortable on the bus, if you don’t mind,” said Hoot. “This is my home. This is where I belong.”
Hoot Borden was born into an Oklahoma farming family, but his passion was always music. In 1950 at the age of 14, he dropped out of school and left the family farm to become a professional drummer. “I was pretty good, too,” says Hoot. “In those days, a recording session paid $42.30 – And that was good money back then.” Hoot’s knowledge of heavy machinery from his farming days ensured that he got plenty of work – he could play drums for a honky tonk band and keep the tour bus running. “Most musicians was so poor, they bought their buses off the scrap heap. So you weren’t trying to make it to the end of a tour, you was just trying to make it to the next town.” He eventually landed on the Nevada Circuit, playing for groups like Tex Williams & His Western Caravan, The Starlighters, and Orville Couch, who had five number one hits for Capitol Records. But his life forever changed when he quit drumming in 1959 to take a full-time job driving country music pioneer Ernest Tubb and his band The Texas Troubadours. “I played my very last show in Duncan, Arizona at a cotton gin that had been turned into a dance hall. And I been driving these buses ever since.” Hoot would spend the next 24 years hauling Ernest Tubb and his band, playing every honky tonk beer joint from Amarillo to Battle Mountain. This is the point in the story when Hoot’s adventures begin to sound like something out of Forrest Gump. His travels would introduce him to all the Nashville legends, including an unknown singer named Elvis Presley, who couldn’t get booked on the Grand Ole Opry until Ernest Tubb gave him a spot in his show. “I remember the first time I saw Elvis perform,” recalls Hoot. “I thought, that long-haired son-of-a-bitch. And then I saw how the crowd reacted to him. And I knew he was gonna be something special.” Hoot slides his calloused hands into the pockets of his crisp denim jeans, and adds, “Elvis was an enormous gentleman, right up until the day he died. My son and Lisa Marie are great friends – He’s even got a key to Graceland.” Over the years, Hoot would find himself in the company of four U.S. Presidents, with a standing invitation to Lyndon Johnson’s family barbecues at the 37th President’s Texas ranch. In perhaps his most Gump-like episode, Hoot crossed paths with controversial Governor George Wallace, who had fought against segregation at the University of Alabama in 1963. “We didn’t really get into the whole race issue,” says Hoot, “But in the deep dark of night, I do remember the Governor saying, ‘I didn’t really want to keep those people out of the schools. It was the people who put me in office who wanted it.’” Coincidentally, this is the same night in history when the terms “pass the buck” and “cover your ass” entered into the American lexicon. Hoot was also a first-hand witness to many of the technological innovations that would become standard in the music industry today. “I watched Shot Jackson and Buddy Emmons build the first Sho-Bud steel guitar in an auditorium in Witchita, Kansas,” says Hoot. “Heck, I remember when Leo Fender built the first echo chamber. It was a little box that sat up on top of your amp, and you’d hit it and it would go waa waa waa.”
Ernest Tubb’s band, The Texas Troubadours, spawned some of the most influential country musicians of the modern era, including Cal Smith, Billy Byrd, Tommy “Butterball” Paige, and a skinny young man with an awkward singing voice named Hugh Nelson, better known to his millions of fans as Willie. “In the early days, Hugh (Willie) would fill in with the Troubadours and play bass guitar. He didn’t look nuthin’ like the Willie Nelson everybody knows today – He looked like a banker. He wore a snappy suit with a skinny tie, and he had a buzz cut.” Hoot chuckles to himself, and continues, “Willie had a tough time in the beginning. He was writing all these brilliant songs – he wrote Crazy for Patsy Cline – but the world wasn’t ready for him as a performer. Back in ‘61, Willie was so broke he sold the song Hello Walls to Faron Young for $50 just so he could eat.” Hoot runs a hand through his whitish, close-cropped hair, adding, “He didn’t become the Willie Nelson everybody knows until he quit Nashville and moved to Austin, sometime around 1970. That’s when the outlaw movement was in its raw beginnings, with the long hair and the rebellion. He and Waylon (Jennings) kickstarted that whole scene. And the rest is history.”
Hoot’s personal life is just as colorful as his professional life, maybe even more so. Here’s a list of random Hooter facts: He’s been married five times, and he has three grown children. His sons are both bus drivers – one of them hauls Larry the Cable Guy, and the other pals around with Lisa Marie Presley and has a key to Graceland. His daughter is on a professional roller derby team out of Houston called the Burlesque Brawlers, and she skates under the name Ashley Juggs. The number on her uniform is 38D. Hoot swears he’s never had a drink of liquor in his life, and he lives on a street with a funny name (Tater Peeler Road). He also spent many years as a deputy for the Sumner County Sheriff’s Department in Hendersonville, Tennessee. He was a real officer with a uniform and a license to carry a gun, which he still does. And in between tours, he’d come home and help rustle up bad guys in the greater Nashville area. Sheriff Hoot. I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.
* * *
One of Anne Murray’s sound engineers climbs onto the bus and tells Hoot that dinner is ready in the backstage catering room. Hoot nods, and asks me if I’ll join them for dinner. Never one to turn down a free meal, I accept his offer and follow him into the building. As we move through the buffet line, various band and crew members greet Hoot with the warmth and respect generally reserved for the patriarch of a loving family. Everyone calls him Pops or Granddaddy Hoot, and he seems to relish every moment. They save him a seat at the head of the table, and then gather around like children pining for a bedtime story. Hoot sops a piece of white bread in some gravy on his plate, and launches into the following tale:
“When I was with Ernest Tubb back in the 1960’s, we’d always play this old beer joint in Austin, Texas called the Wagon Wheel. They had the best chicken-fried steak anywhere. And every time we’d play there, this little Mexican kid would come banging on the bus door. So we’d let him on, and Billie Byrd would sit there teaching him chords on the guitar. That kid didn’t know what notes he was playing, but he could play the Hell out of that thing. Yes sir, that little kid could play guitar. His name was Stevie Ray Vaughan.”
Hoot also witnessed the evolving cultural landscape through the turbulent 1960’s and swinging 1970’s, and didn’t always embrace the changes. “I was a typical, hard-headed Tennessee boy, and I resented the free-spirited nature of the hippie scene – the Haight Ashbury and the Grateful Dead and all that,” says Hoot. “In Nashville, Wanda Jackson couldn’t go on the Grand Ole Opry until she put a shawl over her shoulders because she had a strapless dress on. But out there in San Francisco, those hippies could walk around completely nekkid, smokin’ their dope and doing whatever they wanted. Talk about two different worlds.”
After driving Ernest Tubb and the Troubadours on the honky tonk circuit for 24 years, Hoot’s own world was about to turn upside down. On September 6th, 1984, Ernest Tubb died in a Nashville hospital at the age of 70, and Hoot Borden was without a job for the first time in a quarter century. With a wife and kids to support and the country music scene struggling (it would be another five years before artists like Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood reinvigorate the genre), Hoot made the big leap to rock and roll. His first tour was with Bruce Hornsby and the Range, followed by stints with Foreigner, Journey and Jefferson Starship. The differences between the Nashville honky tonk circuit and the world of 80’s arena rock were staggering. “In country music, everybody had one tour bus, and they stowed the music gear in the bays underneath. There were no trucks in those days,” says Hoot. “But on a rock tour, there might be thirty or forty buses and trucks. It’s like the damn carnival comin’ to town.” He laughs and says, “I didn’t even know they had concerts in arenas. I thought they was just for basketball and the circus.” But it wasn’t just the size of the venues that was different – it was the entire rock and roll touring culture. “With Ernest Tubb, we didn’t have tour managers or runners or even road crew,” says Hoot. “We’d set up our own instruments and I’d sell the t-shirts. The band would do the show, and then we’d load the bus, swallow a handful of pills and drive 800 miles to the next town. It was like that every night.” I ask Hoot about the technical differences between the over-the-top stadium concerts of the 80’s and the old beer joint shows held in dusty saloons. “There were no pyrotechnics on the honky tonk circuit,” says Hoot. “If you wanted fancy lights, we’d run an extension cord from the bus to the stage and plug in a lamp. That was our light show.”
It didn’t take long for Hoot to adapt to the world of rock and roll touring, and he hauled some of the biggest names of the 1980’s, including Poison, Billy Joel, and Michael Jackson. “I drove Michael’s family on the Victory tour, all his aunts and uncles,” says Hoot. “Michael and his brothers, the Jackson 5, those boys could really sing. They’d stay up all night working on their dance steps. Nice boys, all of them. I drove on several Janet Jackson tours too. That’s one talented family.” Hoot adds, “Most singers nowadays are making millions of dollars and they got no talent at all. If you’re gonna sit there and tell me Tim McGraw can sing, you’re full of shit. Tim McGraw can’t carry a tune with a bucket.”
I arrange to meet with Hoot the next morning at his hotel in a quiet suburb of San Jose in Northern California. It’s a day off from the Anne Murray tour, and when I arrive, he’s out in the parking lot changing the oil in his bus. He waves me over, yelling, “Come here, I want to show you something.” I follow him around to the rear of the coach where he lifts an enormous panel, revealing a shiny and spotless engine. I run my finger along the top of the big diesel motor and not surprisingly it is completely clean, without a trace of grease or grime. “She’s a beauty, huh?” says Hoot with a wide grin. Then he adds the following kicker: “Not bad for having half a million miles on her.” Not bad indeed, and perhaps a little depressing since the engine is cleaner than my kitchen. This attention to detail, however, is what makes Hoot a great driver and has contributed to his longevity in the business. “He’s in love with his equipment, and he’s in love with his job,” says Joe Jackson, tour manager for Anne Murray and Bryan Adams. “And he never places himself first. It’s always about the bus or the artist or the crew. Everybody loves old Hooter.”
Perhaps the greatest testament to Hoot’s staying power in the music industry is his relationship with the people he hauls, whether it’s a temperamental pop star or a grungy road crew. Regardless of their position, social status, reputation, or background, Hoot treats his passengers with dignity and respect. In 1988, Hoot drove the much-maligned and oft-troubled Bobby Brown at the height of the bad boy singer’s success. “I have nothing bad to say about Bobby Brown. I hauled him and six bodyguards, and we had a fine a bus. We cooked food every night, and had a good old time,” says Hoot. “You can take a guy with all kinds of troubles, and you can teach him your way of life and he’ll think the world of you.” In one of his most fantastic stories, Hoot recalls the night of a St. Louis concert when a rival of Brown’s fired a rocket launcher at the bus, exploding part of the rear panel. “It was a real rocket, like the ones they’re using Afghanistan, and it blew up the back of my bus. One of the crew guys wrapped the smoldering shell in a blanket and took it home for a souvenir.”
Hoot has also worked with difficult road crews, and he uses his unique brand of country psychology to manage unwieldy situations. The ZZ Top road crew was legendary for their foul behavior and bus drivers kept quitting in the middle of their tours. One fed-up driver unloaded the crew’s belongings at a hotel in the middle of the night and left them stranded. Another driver dropped their personal effects at a 76 truck stop and went home. So the band’s management called Hoot for the impossible job. “Now these crew guys had been with ZZ Top since day one,” says Hoot. “Their production manager was being sued by the city of Houston because his front lawn was infested with rats. That’s the kind of degenerates we were dealing with. These guys were animals. They could totally destroy a bus, with puke and piss and God knows what.” Hoot knew he had to take control of the situation from the outset, so he put an old Roy Rogers movie on the TV, and got out the loaded pistol Ernest Tubb had given him. “And I was sittin’ right here when they first got on the bus, cleaning this gun so they could all see it. One of the guys asked me what we were doing, and I said we’re watching Roy Rogers and cleaning this fucking gun in case I need to use it. And I never had a single problem with them after that.” Hoot developed a great relationship with the ZZ Top crew, dubbing them The Filthy McNasty Boys, a name they still proudly use today. “I got the swag guy to make up some ball caps and t-shirts, and I had giant letters put on the side of the bus that said Hooter and the Filthy McNasty Boys,” he says. “After two weeks, the crew started cleaning their own bus, and they’d make you take your shoes off before you came on board. Because it was their bus.”
These days when he tours, Hoot prefers to drive the road crew instead of the artist. Perhaps it’s because he’s tired of hauling cranky divas, but more likely it’s because he enjoys the blue-collar sensibility of most roadies. “I love my little crew guys,” says Hoot. “They always say, Pop, you’ve got to meet my lady. She’s the most perfect thing. So his lady comes out, and she’s about six foot tall, weighs about 88 pounds. Got on sandals, with about 15 pounds of steel in her tongue and her nose. Tattoos all down her body. But that’s their lady. That’s their pride and joy, so you’ve got to treat them with respect. And that’s really the secret to this business: Keep a good bus, don’t have a wreck, and treat people with respect.”
Hoot Borden has touched many people’s lives over his fifty some-odd years in the music business, and their affection for him becomes tangible when you walk through the long corridor of his bus to the back lounge. The walls are lined with custom-made plaques given to him by the artists and crews he’s hauled over the years, including Megadeth, Billy Joel, and yes, ZZ Top’s Filthy McNasty Boys. He puts his arm on my shoulder and walks me through each one, reading me the personal inscriptions and explaining the stories behind the stories. “And this one’s from the Elton John crew – they called me the Warden, and they all were assigned prison numbers. Nice boys, yes they were.” And that’s when it hits me: This isn’t just a tour bus. This is a man’s home, and I’m standing in his living room. The people represented on these walls are not merely a byproduct of Hoot’s profession, they are his children and his grandchildren, a sprawling lineage from a lifetime of labor and love. Singer-songwriter Anna Nalick, who rode with Hoot last summer says, “He’s very protective of me. And every night before I go onstage, he always says, I love you, Baby Girl. Now go out there and sing your tits off! Only Hoot could get away with that because that's his way, and I love him for it.” I thank Hoot for his time, and climb off his bus. And when this magazine hits newsstands, I’m going to frame the cover and have it mounted on his wall with all the other lives he’s touched. Now go out there Hooter and drive your tits off.