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He fired his managers and turned his business affairs over to his wife, who became a self-taught music mogul. In 1985 she helped Walker become one of the first major artists to successfully record, market, and distribute albums on his own label, Tried & True Music, using mailing lists. She further cut overhead costs by pushing Walker to go on solo tours. He toured the country with nothing but a guitar, playing small venues that he wouldn't have considered in his heyday. Fans were thrilled, but more than a few wondered if their musical hero was on his way to becoming a has-been on the Holiday Inn circuit.

Susan Walker's business plan, though, was well crafted. The solo tours allowed Jerry Jeff Walker to stay in touch with his core fan base and to develop new fans, who were encouraged to sign up for the mailing list. Susan Walker sent them a monthly tour schedule and newsletter and sold them cassette tapes through the mail. Later, Jerry Jeff would become one of the first country artists to release his music in the fledgling c.d. format and to develop an internet web site. "You don't have to go up there and beg some record company to take all your publishing and change all your music to make a living," Jerry Jeff said. "If you think you're making good music and people want to buy it, you can make it and press it and take it out and sell it."

With managers and middlemen out of the way, the bulk of the money stayed in the Walker bank account, which grew. Even former guitarist Inmon, who quit Walker's band earlier this year after clashing with Susan Walker, praises her sharp business sense. "Susan has always tried to be fair," he said. "She is hotheaded but a good business person. Susan is not a phony."

A strong-willed West Texan, Susan Walker says and does what she wants with the same fervor as her famous husband. "I don't care if I'm accredited or not," she said about her planned school. "I'll make up my own diploma if I have to. I just want these kids to learn. I don't want the state telling me what I have to teach. I don't want the federal government telling me what to teach, so I'm not going for federal or state education grants. I'm just trying to raise the money privately so these kids really have an opportunity to be creative and to learn from some really great teachers."

The effort to start a pop music school doesn't surprise Green, who was guided early in his career by the Walkers. "That's their family; you never walk in the Walker house when someone doesn't have a new idea," he said. "I've never been to their house when we didn't sing songs and talk about the business. If Susan Walker opens a school, I don't think you are going to have any shortage of teachers." Or students.

The Gruene Hall gig is set to begin at 9 p.m., and, unlike the old days, the bar staff has no doubt Walker will arrive on time and play the two hours he promised. Walker's days of missing gigs or showing up late and too drunk to play are distant memories. Sure enough, at 8:59, he comes walking through the front door and makes his way to the stage. People say hello and offer high-fives. He nods and smiles but keeps moving until he is "backstage," which is actually the entrance to the men's restroom. He straps on his guitar, tunes, and within 60 seconds of walking in the bar, he is standing on stage with his band as they begin the familiar strains of "Getting By," the opening song on Viva Terlingua: Boomp, boomp, boomp, boomp - "Hi, buckaroos," Walker sings. "Scamp Walker time again."

Six hundred people crowded into a century-old dance hall erupt in a unified holler.

For the first dozen songs, the crowd is pumped. Midway through the set, however, the energy fades a bit. Walker kicks off a perennial favorite, "London Homesick Blues," and, for the first time this evening, the crowd is distracted, with people talking among themselves instead of giving full attention to the stage. Walker has played thousands of gigs and can spot even small shifts in mood. He knows which buttons to push to get a crowd back in his camp. His voice notches up an octave, he yodels, and people begin yodeling back. Then he veers into an old '50s rock song before returning for the final verse and chorus of "London Homesick Blues." At song's end, the crowd is on its feet, yelling and singing. The energy doesn't wane again for the rest of the evening.

After the final encore, it's 11 p.m. Walker steps offstage and heads through the crowd, past people standing on benches and chairs and waving their hats and tipping their beers, and yelling, "Jerry Jeff! Jerry Jeff!" He smiles and walks briskly to the front door and into the night. His show the following night at Gruene Hall is already sold out.

Once Walker is gone, the crowd thins until only the three band members, the bartenders, and a handful of resolute beer drinkers remain. Walker's drummer and lead guitar player are new to the band, but the bass player, Bob Livingston, is an original member of Walker's Lost Gonzo Band. On Viva Terlingua, Livingston is the guy who spells out the title word on "Redneck Mother" -- "M is for the mudflaps you give me for my pickup truck, O is for the oil I put on my hair. ..."

At midnight, Livingston sits down at a picnic table outside the dance hall and reminisces about spending much of the past 30 years touring with Walker. He describes his own plans for 2003, when he'll spend fewer dates with Walker and more doing his own thing, which includes playing overseas and performing in an acoustic duo with ex-Gonzo guitarist Inmon.

When asked to compare a 1970s Jerry Jeff concert with the current version, he laughs and says, "We play more in tune. We play better now." He can recall hundreds of crazy stories about life on the road with Walker, especially during the time when the hard-drinking frontman was tearing his way across the country and leaving carnage in his wake. "I couldn't stay up for days like he could," Livingston says. "After a gig, I eventually had to go to bed. Jerry Jeff was meeting a new friend."

One freezing winter night in Minneapolis during the Outlaw heyday, the band was invited to a party after a show. Livingston arrived at an upscale private residence, and everyone kept asking him, "Where's Jerry Jeff? Where's Jerry Jeff?" Anticipation for Walker's arrival built to a frenzy. When Walker finally sauntered in wearing a large cowboy hat, people began crowding around him. An urgency seemed to fill the room, an expectation for Walker to do something Walker-esque. "He walked over to this big aquarium and began whooshing his hat around in the water, knocking fish out on the floor," Livingston said. The party hosts were unimpressed and told Walker to get the hell out. Someone plucked the cowboy hat from the aquarium and threw it out the door into the snow.

"The band stayed there and kept partying," Livingston said. "When we finally left, we walked out the door and his hat was lying there, frozen solid in a block of ice. We picked it up and took it back to the hotel and dropped it there in front of his door. The next morning, he found the hat and went, 'What the hell is this?'"

Booze and drugs were eventually pushed to the background as times changed, bodies aged, and common sense prevailed. "Back around then (1970s), cocaine didn't fry your brain, and sex didn't give you HIV," Walker said. "It was pretty innocent when it started. We came out of the psychedelic period of the '60s, we were dropping acid and mescaline, and here comes cocaine and drinking. It did kind of tear out a path. It's kind of like what heroin did to the jazz guys in the '50s. From our perspective, first it was pot, and we were all protesting the war, then it was psychedelics with mind expansion, and the next thing that seemed to be on the rise was cocaine, and we slid into that. Cocaine didn't keep you up as long as a tab of acid."

The diminishing quality of drugs brought the trip to an inglorious end, he said. "It was getting to be pretty bad," he said. "You'd pay a lot of money to get crap that had been stepped on about eight times and was shitty. You used to not have to spend any time thinking about it. Somebody just said, 'Hey, I got something,' and it was, 'OK.' Now you go, 'Where has this been?' But about that time we were getting to the point where we were cleaning up our acts -- '79, '80. A lot of us started jogging, playing golf, and getting sunshine."

Friends say Walker still goes on a bender once in a while, but he is more settled than he has ever been. Despite the lifestyle changes, or perhaps because of them, the ideas keep flowing. The songwriting remains vibrant, the albums strong, and the live shows captivating.

"That's the great thing about Jerry Jeff; he's still writing really good songs," Hubbard said. "He does 'Redneck Mother' and 'Bojangles,' but he's not a nostalgia act. He's still got that creative spark. He's contemporary and very valid."

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