David Lynn Jones: Snapshot from 1988

Washington Post Logo

(Image from Washington Post)

I sent an old Baylor friend the link to my most recent blog entry on David Lynn Jones, and she thought that she recalled having "read an article in the Washington Post a year or two back on David Lynn Jones" that referred to his turn-around.

I was skeptical about that and suspected that she might have confused David Lynn Jones with some other country musician named "Jones," but I took the opportunity to search the Washington Post archives and thus happened across an old article from May 27, 1988 by Mike Joyce, "David Lynn Jones, Riding High," that offers a snapshot of David Lynn at a crucial moment in his career not long after his number one hit for Willie Nelson, "Living in the Promise Land," and at a time when he was trying to reach a larger audience for his own albums.

Apparently, he had recently played at the well-known music club "The Birchmere," which has launched many a music career, and Joyce begins by citing a humorous opening remark by David Lynn:

"You better be nice because we outnumber you," country-rocker David Lynn Jones told the audience at the Birchmere Wednesday night.

Nice line, for the audience was rather smaller than the capacity 500 seats, but David Lynn performed his best anyway:

Actually, the crowd was about five times the size of his eight-piece band, but Jones played flat-out anyway, turning in one of the most impressive shows staged at the club in recent memory.

Joyce goes on to say some things about David Lynn's voice and music:

Raised in Arkansas, Jones has a powerful, grainy voice that occasionally brings Guy Clark to mind, and one of his best known songs, "High Ridin' Heroes," bears a strong resemblance to Clark's "L.A. Freeway."

But that's all that the internet combined with the Washington Post archives offered minus a subscription or purchase. I'm curious what Joyce had to say about David Lynn in the other 60 to 70 remaining words, but perhaps some fan can provide the rest.

Meanwhile, it gives us something to reflect upon . . . maybe about life's opportunities that sometimes don't take us where we expect to find ourselves, but also -- given some more recent developments in David Lynn's life -- something about second chances.

UPDATE: John B has graciously provided the remainder of Mike Joyce's review:

Raised in Arkansas, Jones has a powerful, grainy voice that occasionally brings Guy Clark to mind, and one of his best known songs, "High Ridin' Heroes," bears a strong resemblance to Clark's "L.A. Freeway." But just as Clark's influence seemed obvious one moment, it vanished the next, as Jones and his band tore into some galloping, visceral rock tunes, including a couple of songs from an upcoming album. As rousing as these performances were, though, nearly every tune expressed a personal and often sobering viewpoint.

Local singer, songwriter and guitarist Dave Allen opened with a genial and crisply performed set of original material, rounded out by a couple of choice cover tunes.

Thank you John B.! David Lynn Jones fans owe you one. Have a beer on me sometime when you're in the neighborhood.

"David Lynn Jones . . . the real one"

David Lynn Jones

A High-Ridin' Hero

(Image from Batesville Daily Guard)

Some readers may have noticed that I like country music and have occasionally posted entries about this musical tradition, sometimes mentioning David Lynn Jones, a very talented musician and songwriter who grew up in my region of the Ozarks.

Jones seemed to have disappeared at the beginning of this millennium, and his fans have wondered what happened to him. Well, the story is one that deserves a country-and-western song of its own, and maybe Jones will write it.

Okay, I've never done this before, but I'm going to post an entire article that has recently appeared in the Batesville Daily Guard because this fine article doesn't seem to be available online at that newspaper's website, so if you're a David Lynn Jones fan, you'll appreciate this, and if you're a lawyer for the Batesville Daily Guard, I hope that you'll be understanding since I'm not posting this for financial reward but to draw attention to Jones and also to the excellent newspaper in which this article appeared.

I assume that the photo above is related to the Jones story because it appears on the website for the Batesville Daily Guard and asserts that this is "David Lynn Jones . . . the real one" (March 18, 2009). But it's attributed to Melanie Heath and has no story, just this caption:

David Lynn Jones performs on the Independence County Fairgrounds stage a few years back. Izard County’s Jerry Bone is playing bass guitar in the group.

The photo itself must be quite old, perhaps the mid-1980s, but perhaps we'll be seeing some more current photos of Jones someday soon. Anyway, let's read the story, which was sent to me by way of a Jones fan named "Di" who'd received it from a friend who works for the Batesville Daily Guard. The story is by associate editor Larry Stroud, but I don't have the title . . . unless it's "David Lynn Jones . . . the real one":

After fighting identity theft for seven years, country singer/songwriter David Lynn Jones is ready to take back his life.

During that time, Jones, on paper, was three people -- and at times, four.

"Two guys were playing me," Jones said. "It's unimaginable, until you go through it . . . that someone who doesn't even look like you can steal your identity. The damage," he said, "is incalculable."

Jones may be ready to sing "I Feel A Change Comin' On" again. That's the title of one of his singles from his heyday.

During better times, Jones released four acclaimed albums -- "Hard Times on Easy Street" (1987), "Wood, Wind and Stone" (1990), "Mixed Emotions" (1992) and "Play by Ear" (1994).

His charting singles include "Bonnie Jean (Little Sister)" which was also a popular music video on television, "High Ridin’ Heroes" (with Waylon Jennings), "The Rogue" and "Tonight in America."

He may be best-known for writing "Living in the Promiseland," a No. 1 hit for Willie Nelson.

While Jones kept writing songs during the past seven years, he could not release them because the identity theft culprits were getting his royalty checks by having the checks sent to their address. Much of the time, that address was in Colorado.

Now, Jones and his wife, Illa, who live east of Cave City, are looking forward to teaming up to record and release a new album.

He also has unreleased albums from the past that can now be put before the public.

"There's five (previously recorded David Lynn Jones) albums that never were released," Jones said. He plans to make those available to buyers on the Internet within the next few months.

Fans should be patient, though, because it may take quite awhile, he said.

In February, Baxter County sheriff’s investigators arrested Danny James Sullivan, who was working at a McDonald's in Mountain Home under the name David Lynn Jones.

Sullivan was also drawing disability checks from the government under his own name while working at the McDonald's under Jones' name. His aliases include Danny J. Bass and Danny J. Rader.

A day later, acting on a tip, the alleged mastermind of the plot, Janis Rae Wallace, was arrested at a home in Fayetteville. Wallace is also known as Janis French and Janis Rae Jones, the name she used while posing as the real Davis Lynn Jones' "wife."

She's even booked into the jail as Janis Rae Jones.

Wallace and Sullivan, both 51, remain in jail -- she, on a $500,000 bond and he, on a $200,000 bond.

They are each charged with nine counts of felony financial identity fraud, according to an affidavit filed with the charges and signed by sheriff's Sgt. Bob Buschbacher.

The information filed with the charges and in arrest reports matches the story told by Jones -- the real Jones.

"Those are all federal charges," Jones said.

The theft started, Jones said, when Wallace stole his driver's license while working for him.

"At the time, my Social Security number was the same as my driver's license number, and with just that information, they infiltrated my life," Jones said.

Soon, he was getting no mail. It was all going to the fake David Lynn Jones' address via an address change. The mail included preapproved credit card applications that the thieves filled out; after they maxed out the cards, they reported them stolen.

"Among the stolen items via mail were personal checks and business checks from music royalties the victim had earned as a songwriter and musician," Sgt. Buschbacher said.

"They had 'me' moved to Colorado; my phone was shut off," Jones said. "This was back in 2002 . . . . By the time we realized what was going on, we couldn't get it stopped. They wound up with my royalty checks from publishing music," including royalties from "Living in the Promiseland."

Buschbacher said that in the beginning, to further the identity theft scheme, Sullivan, posing as Jones, filled out an identity theft passport request victim information sheet and submitted it to the attorney general's office. Then, he obtained an Arkansas driver's license in the victim's name.

Meanwhile, Jones' elaborate and well-known recording studio at Bexar was stripped of all its expensive equipment.

"I still own the studio," Jones said Saturday. "It's for sale and has been for some time. These people had gone out there and took down the for sale sign and put up no trespassing signs. They were drawing money out of my checking account, which eventually caused me to be overdrafted," he said. His interest rates were doubled because of a bad credit rating.

And to add insult to injury, Wallace convinced people who dealt with Jones financially that someone was trying to steal her identity ("She was speaking as my 'wife,'" Jones said). So, those who could have helped would not even listen to the real Jones.

"When we started talking to credit card companies and banks, they didn’t believe it (was me)," Jones said.

The crowning portion of the identity theft scheme was yet to come.

"They started telling everybody I'd been in a horrible accident in Colorado and I was in a wheelchair and I couldn't play and sing anymore," Jones said. "She even wrote a letter and sent it to all of my family saying that."

Since he had been busy with his work during the earlier part of the problems and hadn't been in touch with family members regularly, several of them even believed the accident story, he said.

"My mother (Verna Jones) passed away during all of this and we were trying to make funeral arrangements," and a check his brother mailed to help with those expenses went to Colorado into the thieves' hands, Jones said. "Even my own brother didn't understand what was going on. I told him I never got the check . . . . It's so crazy when you're actually experiencing it."

The investigation revealed that Wallace and Sullivan obtained a Social Security card, a Colorado identification card and the Arkansas driver's license, all in the name of David Lynn Jones. Wallace then obtained power of attorney over Jones, claiming he was mentally disabled due to the fake "accident."

Wallace and Sullivan were even filing joint federal income tax returns as Mr. and Mrs. David Lynn Jones. Those returns were filed in 2006, 2007 and 2008.

Jones said as soon the investigation revealed the first name of the suspect, he knew who was behind the scheme even though she was giving her last name as Jones. Still, the identity thieves stayed one step ahead of authorities for a long time.

Before being arrested, Wallace and Sullivan were trying to get the title to some land Jones owns in Baxter County, authorities said.

A break in the case occurred 15 months ago when Wallace, as Mrs. Jones, and Sullivan, as Jones, applied in person for an identity theft passport at the Arkansas Attorney General's Office.

As soon as Wallace and Sullivan were arrested, investigators obtained search warrants for their houses. Jones said several items found in their homes could only have been obtained by their breaking into his home east of Cave City, where he and his wife have lived for five years.

"We've known for years things were being pilfered, things moved around. They were hanging out in the woods, watching for us to leave (so they could get into the house)."

Investigators found pictures and other items taken from inside Jones' house, as well as photos of the house taken from the driveway.

Jones said officers on the trail of the crooks had been advising Jones for months to be alert and stay well-armed, because one possible logical next step could be to eliminate Jones and his wife, so the identity thieves "could become us. That could have been the last (planned) step," particularly with them applying for the identity passport, Jones said. "Who knows what would have happened next?"

He has high praise for the attorney general's agent who felt something was wrong when Wallace and Sullivan approached him about getting that passport.

"That's what got them caught," Jones said.

The agent was suspicious enough to go into another room and look for pictures of Jones on the Internet. The pictures did not match the man claiming to be Jones.

"If it had not been for the attorney general's office, it'd still be going on," Jones said. "The attorney general's officer said it was the worst case he'd ever seen in all his years of investigating identity theft."

Baxter County Sheriff John Montgomery said the investigation involved personnel from the attorney general's office, the Social Security Administration's Inspector General's office and the sheriff's office.

Jones said he expects he still has years to go to clear the damage to his name.

When asked what the identity theft has cost him, Jones did not give a dollar figure. Instead, he said quietly, "It's cost me seven years of my life."

Well, that's quite a story. I knew something about it before this story broke because in the comments to my first blog entry about David Lynn Jones, a 'discussion' took place concerning the 'real' Jones. Based on what a couple of my brothers who know Jones personally had told me, I stated that Jones was living near Cave City. But a man in Mountain Home posted a comment stating that he had met the real Jones there in Mountain Home. I had my doubts and asked another friend, Herschel Ducker of Melbourne, Arkansas, to check this out. Our 'private' investigation was operating parallel to the official one, though we didn't know about that. The authorities were aware of my blog and were, apparently, concerned that the fake Jones might be alerted by Herschel's inquiries. At any rate, Herschel and I quickly concluded that the Mountain Home 'Jones' was a fraud, but we had no absolute proof and left things at that. We were both enormously relieved to learn that the law had caught up with the identity thieves. Herschel found out before I did because the authorities contacted him to let him know that they were investigating the man in Mountain Home who was claiming to be Jones. Soon after that, the story broke.

Now that the real Jones has his life back, maybe he can get on with his life and give us some more great music . . . like "High Riding Heroes," which he sings with Waylon Jennings and which you can now enjoy on You Tube:

Daylight or midnight,
red eyes and that old hat,
whiskey-spent and busted flat,
and a credit to his faults.
He's a bad risk and a good friend,
small change and loose ends,
and he only regrets that he might've been
a little faster on the draw

Hey, those old high ridin' heroes,
they're anywhere the wind blows.
He's been to hell and Texas
and he knows how it feels
to be ridin' that hot streak,
drunk on some back street,
fallin' off the wagon,
and under the wheels.

Time was, when he was king.
Now the rodeo's just an old man's dream,
and the highs are few and far between,
and the lows get the rest.
But these old hard times ain't nothin' new.
Once you've done the best you can do,
You just tip your hat to the wider blue,
Ride off to the west.

Hey, those old high ridin' heroes,
they're anywhere the wind blows.
He's been to hell and Texas
and he knows how it feels
to be ridin' that hot streak,
drunk on some back street,
fallin' off the wagon,
and under the wheels.

Maybe Jones can finally get out from under those wagon wheels, back onto the road again, and those five albums released.

UPDATE: From Jerry Bone, I have a correction concerning the photo above, which I had mis-dated around the mid-80s: "I would say 91 was the correct time frame. The other two band members in the pic are Rick Richards on drums who lives in Houston Texas and on percussion Richie Albright former drummer with Waylon for 15 plus years. Richie played drums on all those old hits of Waylons. In fact he was back with Jennings when Waylon became ill and passed away. Richie was our road manager in those days . . . . I think he is working with Jessie Colter now Waylons wife."

David Lynn Jones

David Lynn Jones

"Mixed Emotions"

(Image from Amazon.com)

I'm not finished with Blumenberg, not by a long shot, but abstract thought, despite its aeyrie heights, can get a bit heavy, perhaps from the thin air up near the aetherial realms where eagles and epicycles still wheel about in their majestic circles. Today, I'm bringing it all down to earth and back home -- or maybe back to earth and down home, 'cause I'm posting on a country musician from my neck of the woods (not Porter Wagoner this time). David Lynn Jones, whose photo you see above, grew up in the tiny Ozark village of Bexar, Arkansas, around where my own maternal Grandfather Perryman did many, many years earlier. Jones, whose father was a farmer and mother a preacher (if I recall), was born a few years before me -- in 1950 if we can believe Answers.com (but that site usually borrows from Wikipedia) -- so I didn't hang out with him, but he was a nephew of my step-Grandfather Archie Dillinger and sang at Grandpa Archie's funeral (or so I'm told, for I was living abroad at the time), and like Archie and me, Jones is part Cherokee. I don't recall ever meeting Jones, who would be about seven years my senior, until we were both grown men and my my brother John, who was pastoring a church in Viola, Arkansas, introduced us after a Sunday sermon. Jones seemed like a humble fellow despite his good looks and musical talent, and he must have settled down a lot from his youth, for I recall hearing a lot of wild stories that would seem to cast him as someone in the mold of such Outlaw Country Musicians as Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, or Jerry Jeff Walker. My wife Sun-Ae met him as well back when she was still my fiancée, and at our country wedding in an abandoned old church on a country road not far from Bexar, we played his song "Nightingale Waltz" immediately after the (in)formal ceremony. I like what music of his that I've listened to, but I haven't heard much of it because it's difficult to find the albums despite his 1986 hit "Living in the Promiseland," which was covered by Willie Nelson and went quickly to number one on the country charts. For a few photographs of Jones, go to one or more of the following websites:

Ron Newcomer's Celebrity Photos: David Lynn Jones (as a young man) Amazon.com Site: Wood, Wind and Stone Image (from 1989) Michael Buffalo Smith, "2006 Americana Music Conference and Awards," Swampland.com (for a recent photo of an older Jones)

For the interested and intrigued, here's David Lynn Jones singing a song about his grown-up little sister, "Bonnie Jean." UPDATE: Larry Saidman has asked that I link this blog entry to a more recent entry on David Lynn Jones, and as I told him: "Sure, I can link to that blog entry of June 6th, 2008: 'David Lynn Jones: here in our hearts, too.' At that entry, I've linked to David Lynn's My Space site, where he sings his song 'Here in My Heart.'"

UPDATE as of December 2020:

Below are over 200 comments in what became an investigation of identity theft, with this blog entry playing an important role through comments that set some of us off in search of the real David Lynn Jones - was he living in Mountain Home, Arkansas, or Cave City, Arkansas?

When you reach the 200th comment, you'll have to click on the link "newer" to read comments 201 and up.

For greater ease, here is that link now.