J.C joined the Texas Rangers and visits Afghanistan but is shipped home after trading his firearm for some hog roast and some fahn smoke. Also for buffing a Swedish diplomats wife & breaking the jaw of a CIA operative.
Later in Vietnam J.C evades the draft by escaping to Canada but then returns to New York with Joan E. Mitchell (‘coyote’) and decides to bring the ‘Sound of Texas Road Show’ to the troops. Back in Vietnam J.C is abducted by the Vietcong and joins a wayward band of renegades, smoking opium, fathering three children and building geetahs. He organises a Viet Cong benefit gig in a river town – Bob Dylan plays alongside Willy Nelson, Jimmy, Keef, etc, but J.C falls off the stage at the climax into a sampan belonging to a break-away Viet Cong Group, a Hell’s Angel V.C gang influenced by the writings of Rimbaud. J.C was eventually snatched by a rival Cuban guitar band and returned to the U.S via Miami. J.C then spent time in Miami playing in a titty bar called ‘Melons’ and DJ’s out of his cousin’s garage.
In subsequent years John E. spent time in Rykers Island, inspired The Clash to write ‘Johnny Is A Garage Man’ and took active part in community relations in the Notting Hill and Paris Riots.
Recent years have seen a number of projects falter but in 2004 J.C met Freaky Frank (AKA Frank E. the Lonely Woodsman), his estranged cous/son/keeper in Peckham and reformed the Lonesome Cowboys.
The band debuted in December 2004 in a performance featuring Rand E. Andy, a set fuelled on Mescal, Amyl Nitrate and Hi-Grade Skunk. J.C and the Cowboys have continued to perform despite the death threats and ASBO’s, with Blind Jk-ee, J.C’s ex-wife Jo-lean and baby Bubba in attendance.
Frank E. the Lonely Woodsman is a clown, occasional thinker and full-time angel dust fiend. He ran away from a circus rodeo in deepest Hunstanton at the age of twelve. He was a child prodigy, able to identify 74 favours of custard pie before he was six. He then roamed the deserts of Deptford for 40 days and 37 nights (although some claim he was locked in the ‘big house’, a ten year stretch for impersonating a musician). In a desert bar he met John E. who was trying to extract a tooth from a local politician at the time. After a brief scuffle, in which John E. dislocated both Frank E’s thumbs they became best of friends. However, from that moment Frank E. had to use prosthetic hands to play his busted selection of keyboards. Frank E. has since inherited a large menagerie from the estate of Siegfried and Roy. When not performing with the Cowboys or spinning plates on his nose, he walks around his 7 bathroom bed-sit in East Cheem listening to Goth rock and tending to the multitude of creatures in his head. He possesses the one thing that scares John E, that he occasionally reveals to stop yet another savage beating. His only significant other is Honey (the Bunny) who gets the entire estate on his immanent death. Never shake Frank E’s hand even if he pays you to.
Blind Jk-ee was born in the Louisiana swamps to poor folk who abandoned him to be brought up by crocs and 'gators. He was rescued by well to do New Yorkers out on a hunting trip and taken to New York. His knowledge of the Wild West came through the landscape paintings of Church Moran & Bierstadt. This fired him up to run away at the age of sixteen and head out West and find one of those Indian pioneer folk. Out on the prairie he saw something - what he saw no one rightly knows. We do know he fell in a pool of oil and was hung up on a tree by the Klu Klux Klan. He was rescued and lived on a nearby farm after playing around with the local boys he started to turn white again but had lost his sight. He made a living, gambling, shooting and playing the guitar & accordion, but he wasn’t good at any of that so he joined the Lonesome Cowboys instead with the motto ‘better a Dillenger than a Colt 45’.