"There's a way of rebelling without just doing it through the tempo and the volume," John Doe told me following Friday's show at Live, and this exactly what the 40-odd people who showed up for his acoustic performance witnessed that night. With an easy smile and simple hello he opened with Merle Haggard's haunting Silver Wings and during the next hour and a half he passionately traversed through his years with X to his latest solo release, Dim Stars, Bright Sky.

While Doe sings the praises of George Jones' work from the late '50s and early '60s on Starday Records, don't call him a country boy. "At heart I'm an urbane person who likes the country for what it is, who really detests country people and provincial attitudes. I'm much too progressive to think country-boy stuff." He may be a rock 'n' roll outlaw, but he is also a politically astute family man who is willing to share his opinions on the ills of society, and he's actively involved in fighting the FCC's new media-ownership rules.

Doe gave a tongue-in-cheek nod to his acting career by including Buck Owen's 1963 honky-tonk hit Act Naturally in his set. He described his recent stint portraying a villain in an episode of USA Network's western series The Peacemakers in Canada as "a breath of fresh air," literally and figuratively. When asked about his 1992 film, Roadside Prophets, he realized I was the one who had requested the tune Beer, Gas, Ride Forever. "That was a great motorcycle I had," he recalled. "That was one of the movies I wish I could do over again. I would have had more time to prepare for it. Both of my parents had died within 6 months of doing that movie, I had been on tour for two months, and I started flying back to Los Angeles to learn to ride better, I'd ridden a motorcycle like once or twice, and the very first day we started shooting our second daughter was born. It was like, 'Holy shit -- can I just do one thing?'"

Speaking of Live, let's set the record straight. Tom Anderson does not own the club. Tom Anderson Presents is only in charge of booking acts from Wednesday through Saturday. The August 8th show was an exception. An outside promoter had already booked it and it ended up becoming the venue's Grand Opening due to construction delays.

An edited version of this story was published in Las Vegas CityLife on August 21, 2003.