This is the story of Joe West: the guitar slingin' local hero who takes your preconceived notions of country, folk, gospel and rock, and turns them upside down. No longer will we be forced to lump in country and folk with toothless weirdos or faux cowboys; West is for real, and he is more handsome than you.

West is a beloved fixture and institution in our scene, whether it's The Joe West Show, The Santa Fe All-Stars or the ongoing saga of Xoe Fitzgerald, the Time Traveling Transvestite. Whatever the band and whatever the style, one thing remains constant: West owns you! Big plans are in the works for more chapters in the tale of Xoe Fitzgerald, some Santa Fe All-Stars performances, as well as a variety-style radio show - not even to mention his myriad solo appearances, gospel brunches and whatever other amazing-ass stuff he's got hidden up his sleeve.

West has lived and performed all over the country, most notably in New York and Austin, yet he holds Santa Fe very near and dear to his heart. "There is such an incredible pocket of talent in this town," he says. "It's hard to stay away." True, my friend. And forgive me asking you this favor: Don't go away . . . or I will cry.

Here's a recipe for great music: Take some of the most talented and varied artists from around town and have each of them bring their own personal influences together for a slice of country, bluegrass and rock perfection.

I speak, of course, about The Santa Fe All-Stars. How could you possibly go wrong with the likes of Joe West, Sharon Gilchrist, Susan Hyde Holmes and Ben Wright? Obviously you can't, Santa Fe, because here we are. West is a born country troubadour, with a slight air of rock about him; Gilchrist is a mandolin champion; Ben Wright is just a straight musical genius; and Susan Hyde Holmes is a bassist like no other. More of a fall and winter outfit due to summer touring schedules with their full-time projects, the All-Stars has released a self-titled EP on Frogville Records. "I'm glad it's only an EP. That way people will want more from us," Hyde Holmes says.

Since the band is, in reality, a side project for all members, shows are rare and not to be missed. Don't forget Santa Fe has musicians just as good as anywhere else. Better even.

The interviews I've botched, the drama that surrounds local radio and the busload of bad music I've endured over the last year got me thinking that it's about time to do something I've been hankering to do: See Xoe Fitzgerald.

Ben Wright and Joe West put on their alter-egos and fly through a killer set. Time Traveling Transvestite. Because after spending the best Christmas ever at a gay nightclub watching a killer drag show, I learned that I am down with dudes in nylons lip-synching Mariah Carey songs and other such camp. A power outage on Sept. 29 crippled The Mine Shaft Tavern for the majority of the day and shut down its kitchen, so the protein for the evening came from the fermented food group; getting plowed like a turnip patch was a happy consequence.

"We're the Joe West Situation," West said of the "opening act." "We're warming it up for Xoe." Both of West's bands are made up of Ben (Bacon) Wright on lead guitar, Paul (Feathericci) Groetzinger on drums, Noah (Neegs) Baumeister on bass and West (Xoe) on rhythm guitar and lead vocal. The Situation plays original tunes and covers such as Glen Campbell's "Rhinestone Cowboy." Perhaps West and the boys were attempting to be ironic and funny by playing a schmaltzy country song about a cowboy in the city, away from his family and his familiar surroundings, but I didn't buy it, especially when the band kicked into Merle Haggard's "Okie from Muskogee." These two songs express a sense of alienation and a search for identity in both foreign and familiar places.

The Situation set the tone for the evening and, perhaps, gave a little insight into West as an artist and his performance as Xoe. I know. It sounds like some touchy-feely humanities seminar, but considering Xoe Fitzgerald is essentially a dystopian performance about the issues of exploration and other worldviews, it ain't no co-inky-dink. Compound this revelation with Xoe's wall-to-wall rock opera style, largely influenced by David Bowie's 1976 film, The Man Who Fell to Earth, (filmed partially in Madrid) and you're ready to rock.

The Situation breezed through the set and allowed enough time for The Mine Shaft to fill with a mix of locals and West supporters. We were all waiting for Xoe, like handsome prairie dogs waiting for the wafts of twilight; Xoe has only performed a handful of times so it was, indeed, a special occasion. Three pints of beer into my evening and I saw West on stage wearing a gold lamé pantsuit and a blonde wig. He talked with his bass player, Neegs, who wore tight leather pants; they both twisted knobs and set the smoke machine just right. Feathericci wore what can best be described as a French schoolgirl outfit. He walked around the bar in total comfort, an unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth, like a character in some wayward schoolgirl B-movie.

Then there was Bacon, who sported a stripped ankle length skirt with a vest. Like survivors of nuclear fallout, the band looked like a cross between a Mad Max film (before that terrible one with Tina Turner) and the New York Dolls. The smoke filled the stage as I began my fourth beer. For the next 1 or two hours (I can't quite remember) the band wove a story of time-travel-laden tunes paired with the David Bowie classics, "The Man Who Sold the World" and "Heroes." By the time I started on the Booker's whiskey, someone in a robot costume was on the dance floor. This, I felt, was totally reasonable. West then changed into a Jean Paul-Gaultier-meets-GI-Jane number, complete with helmet and Barbie-rocket tits. The remnants of Americana have largely ceased by this point and have been replaced by a '60s or '70s T Rex and Iggy Pop raw simplicity with a Ziggy Stardust glam foundation. For the crescendo, West threw on a frilly red number, complete with butterfly wings. I was, by then, thoroughly fucked up, shaking my ass on the dance floor, watching a grown man wearing a camisole and butterfly wings sing about alternate universes, unity and life-after-physical death. The guy dancing next to me wore a hot-pink-and-black cat suit with extremely high heels, makeup and a wig to match; he was having fun too.

The rock spectacle is dying art, save for the pageantry of the aforementioned drag show. Costume changes, smoke machines and even pyrotechnics have sneaked out the back door. I blame this largely on television and the exultation of the mundane in favor of live theatrics. So what can you really say about a rock opera performed at a bar on a Saturday night in front of a modest crowd? You don't have to say anything. Being swept up in the performance is all you really need.

Music, not unlike sex, dope and humiliation has healing powers. Its creation and appreciation is as instinctual as laughter. We use that same innate joie de vivre to create the places where we listen to music environments where our love of rhythms, beats and melodies can be unleashed. Whether it's an outdoor amphitheater like Paolo Soleri or the inky hues of Evangelo's, where we listen to music says as much about us as the music itself.

The Santa Fe All-Stars have a gig at Tiny's Restaurant and Lounge every Wednesday during August. The band's recent show at the Santa Fe Bandstand (where they killed it) solidifies my desire to see them twice in one week and write a profile about the band playing at one of Santa Fe's most beloved venues. But my purpose is trumped by something I never expected to happen.

The $3.75 bottle of Budweiser I'm nursing and admittedly bought because in my own deluded sense of reality I thought it would help me "blend in" with the crowd, leads to the bigger realization that I've never been inside Tiny's, even though I have a vague recollection of its décor and clientele. I expect to walk into a stygian room with gnarly red glass candleholders on café tables, vinyl lounge chairs and creepy older people on the prowl for sketchy car sex. I get none of that; it's bright, convivial and there's not a pinky ring in sight. Elvis liquor decanters sit beside Laurel and Hardy decanters, which are beside the hundreds of other decanters that line the wall. And there is, of course, the music from the All-Stars. The band is quite literally flawless in its delivery, though the name still drives me bat shit every time I hear it because it reminds me of a Little League softball team. The band meanders from Tom Waits and Townes Van Zandt covers to slow waltzes and foot stompers. The room fills with local musicians as the night goes on.

"This can be any place," local drummer Mark Clark says about the bar/restaurant, noting the deliberate absence of all things Santa Fe. He's right. Tiny's doesn't resemble anything else I've seen here. The place even has a disco ball and bordello-style watercolor prints on the walls above the booths. "It could be New Orleans," I think to myself, and realize that this is the thing that has been eating at me for three weeks and the reason I have what professional psychologists call a mild freak out or a "monkey falling out if its tree" episode.

Aug. 29 marks the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall in Waveland, Miss., which subsequently sparked the floods that destroyed my home in New Orleans; it's the reason I moved to Santa Fe. I had gone for a run on the morning of Aug. 27, 2005. When I returned to my house, my wife had packed my bags.

"Walk through the house and take anything else; we're leaving," she said. I laughed and entertained staying home through the storm. We had gone through this before. Every year for five years we had evacuated because of a hurricane threat. We had even attended a hurricane party at one of our favorite bars and got hammered while the wind and rain ravaged the trees outside. So I left everything. By the time we finally returned (two months later) more than 500 hundred books, three acoustic guitars and my entire music collection had been soaking in toxic water for more than three weeks.

The reminders of the flood are beginning to appear everywhere in opinion pieces, editorials and the recycled television footage from 2005 that shows the mayhem at the convention center in New Orleans and at the Superdome. So now I'm at Tiny's listening to four of the finest musicians in Santa Fe (Joe West, Susan Holmes, Sharon Gilchrist and Ben Wright), hoping that listening to some music and putting some ink to paper about a stellar band in our midst will realign my head.

After a brief set break, local musician Pete Williams joins West and Wright onstage to play the upright bass for "House of the Rising Sun." Their rendition is so sparingly beautiful, it causes something I've never experienced in Santa Fe: complete silence from the audience. The scene and the sound dig deeply into the confines where I've stored the memories of those fucked-up days after the hurricane and flood: The violent sounds of gas generators, the rotting-food smell that permeated the city and the mountains of warped and muddied lives draped in front of houses in ruined heaps. I have to leave the room before breaking down and making a scene.

It's been a year since I moved back to Santa Fe and the outsider feeling is almost gone. My first evening at Tiny's won't be my last. The term "locals' hangout" is mentioned often in casual conversations; I wonder how many of us at the bar are truly local and why it matters to qualify ourselves or any place in Santa Fe in this way.

This is home and the sound it creates spills through the bars and the streets like a new flood, replacing the damage from the one before.

First let me start off by saying as a disclaimer that I opened the show solo as Lone Monk playing a set of originals and covers. I would like to thank Joe for giving me a chance to play in such a cool place.

The Mineshaft has to be the best place in NM for a live show. It has that wild west anything can happen vibe that is very exciting and it is the perfect atmosphere to take in the honky-tonk bard and his exceptional band. Incidentally the bar is under new ownership and this was one of their first nights and it was door to door with thirsty customers ready to soak up the great music. I would like to wish the ladies best of luck and hope that this auspicious night would be the first of many successful evenings to come. The Joe West Situation started the evening off with a set of country classics which included 'Okie From Muskogee' and Rhinestone Cowboy,' as well as fan favorites like 'The Human Cannonball' and '$2000 Navajo Rug,' and also a chicken fried version of 'Shake Your Booty' thrown in for good measure. The band is real tight and guitarist Ben Wright plays acoustic with wah-wah pedal, occasional e-bow lines, and lots of good taste and economy, not crowding a single measure with over-playing. The rhythm section of Noah Baumeister and DJ Paul Federici on the drums were locked in tight and hot all night. After about a 45 minute set they took a break and got ready for the fiesty, always radiant Xoe Fitzgerald to take the stage. The crowd could only imagine what they were about to become part of. There were a couple of dudes in dresses milling around in anticipation. I over heard some grumbling about the fact that there were going to be trannies in the bar. I must admit I saw none, well not done up nice.

When she took the stage with her band they were now transformed into no shirt, leather pants wearing rock and roll animals. DJ Paul looked like a scary Kabuki zombie and played like he was a man possessed- they all did. Ben Wright was wailing like Mick Ronson or Steve Hunter the whole show- amazing!!! Xoe was wearing a gold lame outfit with nice tan platform boots and a white wig that Andy Warhol would have died for. She was radiant and eloquent telling her story with total "I don't give a fuck what you think" attitude and it practically made me weep and streak my mascara. She told of her birth in Madrid, being the love child of an alien Ziggy Stardust who knocked up her mom while in town filming a movie.

Borrowing two songs from her "father's" repertoire "The Man Who Sold The World" and "Heroes", I must honestly say that her own compositions were as strong and comforting and blended well with the Bowie tunes that were their impetus. The crowd was packed, writhing, dancing, copulating, breathing in every word of the songs heard for the first time and all knowing this was a magical rock and roll spectacle and that they would speak of this occasion for many years to come. Xoe made a couple of wardrobe changes throughout the evening. Once coming out in a camouflage dress w/ plastic army helmet. She ended the evening with white fishnet stockings and a red negligee, adorning red butterfly wings. Mike the Can Man was wearing the amazing robot costume and dancing with the ladies as his x-ray eyes glared out at the crowd which was now oozing as one symbiotic organism. This story was very sad and symbolizes to me the effectiveness of guitars and drums in overcoming sexual identity confusion. Some of Xoe's outfits were auctioned off at the end of the show to help raise money for her home for homeless time-traveling transvestites called 'Fallen Angels of the Galaxy' or F.A.G. The show was recorded and all I can do is pray for it's DVD release so I can enjoy this experience again and again. Rock-on Xoe!!!

Joe West recently experienced a "One of Our 50 Missing" moment. During an interview on Scottish BBC during his Fall 2005 tour of the British Isles, a radio host was praising West's song "Trotsky's Blues," a surreal little rocker in which the singer sees the Russian revolutionary at Santa Fe's Bert's Burger Bowl.

The interviewer stated that Leon Trotsky had been killed in New Mexico and asked whether there was a "Trotsky visitor center" in Santa Fe. (Trotsky was assassinated near Mexico City.) At first West thought he was joking. "By the time I realized what he was saying, I had to play a song," West says. Maybe it's just a testament to West's songwriting. Even his funniest numbers ring true. A listener is tempted to believe even his wilder fantasies.

Many of West's songs are down-to-earth tales of real-live working folks-"Mike the Can Man," about a neighbor of West's who earns a living recycling trash: "Anita Pita" a single mom who cleans art galleries; "Rehab Girl," who works at a substance-abuse treatment center and "likes her men shady." Many of his songs are strong on social commentary, such as "$2,000 Navajo Rug" which lampoons Santa Fe excess. Then there's a whole body of Joe West "Jamie" songs, dealing with West's mythical composite lost-love muse, who has survived domestic violence, alcoholism and untold stupid love affairs. "But the truth of the matter is I Ain't never loved a girl like her before," West sings of Jamie on "Reprimand." And in his live show, you'' be treated to West versions of cheesy '70s pop-country hits. At his CD release party for HUMAN CANNONBALL at Santa Fe's Tiny's Lounge last year, he had the crowd singing along with every word of Glen Cambell's "Rhinestone Cowboy."

West, 38, the son of Santa Fe artist Jerry West, has deep roots in Santa Fe. After his parents' divorce, he split most of his school years between Santa Fe and South Dakota, where his mother had moved. "I went to a different school almost every year," West says. He graduated from High school in South Dakota. Then he graduated from the University of South Dakota, where he majored in theater. After college in 1991, he went to New York City to pursue a career in theater. There he hooked up with a gaggle of bluegrass musicians. "I started playing in subways," he says. "I evolved from being a theater person to being a musician full time." West had dabbled in music much earlier. "When I was in junior high I got very much into punk rock and tried to start a punk rock band, which sounded very much like an alternative folk country band," he says. "As hard as I tried I never quite became a punk rocker." West moved to Austin, Texas, in the late '90s where he formed a band called Joe West and The Sinners. But before his move to Austin, West was hanging out in Santa Fe. He befriended members of a band called TheMuseMeant and recorded his first proper CD, Trip to Roswell, New Mexico.

When West moved back to Santa Fe in 2001, ThaMuseMeant introduced him to a whole community of musicians including bands like Hundred Year Flood and Goshen, who formed the nucleus of what became Frogville Records. West has recorded two albums for the label, South Dakota Hairdo and Human Cannonball. But he's got outside projects as well. He's a member of a Santa Fe gospel group called Bethleham and Eggs. And for more experimental music he's got his contraption called The Intergalactic Honky Tonk Machine, which West says is a "time traveling music device," which includes a drum machine, electronic tape loops and a smoke machine. And he's talking about doing a concept album about an "androgynous time-traveler space character' who claims to be the love child of a glam-rock star, conceived in New Mexico during the filming of The Man Who Fell to Earth. Now that's alternative country!

Joe West is such a class act that he even wears a white Colonel Sanders-type suit, although it seems a little incongruous considering the proletarian, white trash images some of his songs convey. If Lou Reed's roots were in New Mexico and Texas, he'd probably sound like Joe West.

There's a sparse, economical quality to West's songwriting style. The lyrics often deal with alcohol and drug-laden characters. As with West's past albums, the production allows the singer's melodies and intriguing lyrics to stand out; the rhythm section is funky and the electric guitar understated but sharp. "Cold Canadian Love" is a haunting song that features very effective use of Dobro. "Reprimand" and "Jamie III" seem to be sequel songs to "Jamie Was A Boozer", the title song of a previous West album. Jamie also shows up in "More Than You'll Ever Know", a song that alludes to the heyday of the Sex Pistols, and in "Video Taping Our Love." With South Dakota HairDo, Joe West proves once again that he deserves to be a cult figure, if he isn't already one.

It would require a couple of promotions for Joe West, now back home in New Mexico after an acting stint in New York and some musical success in Austin with the band The Sinners, to reach the position of cult artist. (It's telling that the musicians West most immediately brings to mind-Terry Allen, Ronny Elliott, Thomas Anderson, Michael Hall- are all cult figures in the music world or. like West. aspiring cult figures.)

But that's not from lack of trying or from lack of worthiness. It's more like a healthy lack of convention. Granted, the sound created by West and his backers-keyboards-and-guitar led folk-rock with a honky-tonk heart and a satirist's soul- isn't all that off center. Nor, for that matter, is his narrative writing style, although the engrossing "Reprimand" is a whiplash threat as it moves from relationship story to original passion play and back again. But combine the two into what might be a song cycle and add a whiff of mystery- just who is this Jamie character who keeps popoing up?- and it might be a tough sell.

I'm buying ,though, especially if West continues to dream up songs as catchy ("More Than You'll Ever Know" and the Tex-Mexy "Sometimes Lovers"), witty ("Frank's Jealous"), and subtly sinister ("Video Taping Our Love" and "21st Century Garbage Man", (the latter a semi-rehabilitated "Psycho Killer" paroled to Santa Fe) as the ambitious gang gathered here.

One of the most original recordings to come along in some time arrives courtesy of Joe West on his Frogville Records release, SOUTH DAKOTA HAIRDO. Seemingly taking his cues from equal parts Warren Zevon and John Prine, West displays a knack for the offbeat, whimsical storytelling spread over startling, rich musical styles that cover the breadth and depth of European and American influences and history. Good ole honky tonk fuels the straight foward "Reprimand", and the twang driven Dylan-like slide guitar stomping title track sets the tone for West's visionary slice of Americana. "Frank's Jealous" is a standout piece that echoes through the ages as it coyly takes playful stabs at the modern world. Joe West's SOUTH DAKOTA HAIRDO is a joyously weird and transfixing wonder from a brave new voice in American music.-B.W.

When hearing a band for the first time, one of the natural things to do is compare it with other similar groups or to try to fit it into a certain genre. So along comes Joe West and the Sinners, a band for which an entirely new musical category might have to be created. A press release descibes the band as "country-punk singer-songwriter based rock." If that leaves you scratching your head, all you have to do is put the group's latest album,"Jamie Was a Boozer" on your CD player and you'll discover why the band is given such a wide-ranging desciption. While leaning more toward the country/roots direction, Joe West and the Sinners does dabble in many genres. and you'll find that the lyrics often cross the line into the offbeat. This is evidenced simply by glancing at the back of the CD case and seeing titles like "Trip to Roswell, N.M." and "Trailer Park Liberal". The group likes to keep fans guessing during live shows, performing covers of anything from the Sex Pistols to Hank Williams. As one review of West goes,"that boy is bound for rehab." Joe West and the Sinners perform tonight at Automatic Slims. 302 N. Commercial St. in Neenah. West, who once wrote music for and performed in off-broadway theatre productions, started his band in 1998 after moving to Austin, TX. The group quickly became well known in the city and has opened for such acts as Jon Dee Graham and Mojo Nixon.

Seeking common ground between Jerry Springer and Woody Guthrie may turn some folks' hair whiter than prime-time TV, but if music doesn't adapt to its times, it winds up on life-support alongside Sousa marches, Shaker hymns and (some would argue) jazz. Thus, Joe West and the Sinners are all about taking folk music into the are of Elian. "Roll over Fat Boy, I'm trying to find NPR," orders the hero of TRAILER PARK LIBERAL, who goes clubbing with his gay friend and whose girlfriend buys the beer when he's broke. West is precisely the type of foward thinking local folkie who'd follow the sneering, slightly psychotic dream tractor (the tractor of your dreams? Paging Dr. Freud...) with the breezy REHAB GIRL, about a staffer at "that place where you stay up on MLK" who "likes her men shady". But it's hardly all inebriated UFO chasers and girls sweeping West under $2000 Navajo rugs. ARE YOU STILL MY GIRL is the best first dance wedding song to come out of Austin since Mike Nicolai's CATCH YOU ALIVE, with PITTSBURGH,PA and JUDA ISCARIOT not far behind. All told, west and the Sinners more that atone for any lingering debt to Dylan, Neil Young or even Jimmy Buffett. This witty, wistful tip of the gimme cap to the margins of millenial America revels in the same flip-flopped pluck as that bottle blond behind you in the express lane, balancing her checkbook as she leafs through the Star.

OK, officially Joe lives and works in Austin but his Santa Fe ties are legit. His dad, artist Jerry West, lives here. And Joe frequently pays tribute to Santa Fe in song, such as $2000 Navajo Rug, a sarcastic toast (with an authentic Santa Fe $5 cerveza) to the ricos who keep our cost of living so high. Joe has a knack for writing funny tunes such as Trailer Park Liberal but the main streangth of the album is a core of songs, some funny, some not, related to alchohol and the abuse thereof. The title song is an unflinching tribute to a friend who drowned in liquor. The Ballad of Terri McGovern, about a woman who got drunk and froze to death, is even more startling. Rehab Girl, about a guy with a crush on a lady who works at a rehab center, is lighter but has an edge.

West isn't really a local, but he recorded this wonderful album here in Santa fe (with David Tiller and Jeff Susman of ThaMuseMeant among others). The title cut is a talking blues about the Roswell phenomenon-not the UFOs as much as the marketing folk art. But the most amazing thing about the song is that he talks about coming to Santa Fe and eating at Furr's Cafeteria. Maybe he is a local after all.