Last Call

The boys laugh like they've been caught revealing trade secrets. Apparently, they discovered early on their father's theory about guitars and women giving a guy a second glance.

They've only been sitting a few minutes, but they're already shifting around nervously. At last Brian asks, "Can we smoke?" Permission granted, they immediately reach for the twin packs in their shirt pockets, each shake out a cigarette and light up in unison. That first drag comes out as a sigh of relief.

Looking at the cigarettes as if they don't know how those objects got there, the boys say they're thinking about quitting, especially considering what's happened to their dad, but they're not quite ready yet. They are already more like their father than they know.

Like Bobby, they are friendly and open. As they talk about him in smoke-husky voices, they seem older than their years. As though they've already seen it all, or most of it, and still, more than anything in the world, they want to play music. Preferably with their father.

Physically, they are very different. Brian resembles his uncle Floyd and grandfather more than his dad. He's husky, compact. His mother describes him as the more level-headed and easygoing of the two. He looks you in the eye when he talks. He's a respected bass player in town, a former member of the popular Underground Railroad. With his father sick and the Bob Hornbuckle Band for the most part on hold, he keeps busy filling in with other bands.

Michael is a younger version of his dad. His facial features are more like his mother's, fuller and more sensual. But he has his father's build and mannerisms. His shy smile, that sideways look, the same loose-jointed slouch, and he shakes hands like he's worried that damage might be done to his musical career. Although Michael's a talented guitar player, his father has had him banging the drums on stage with him since the boy was thirteen. ("Now I just need a grandchild so we have someone on keyboards," says Bobby.)

"You should have seen the bar managers freak out," says Brian.
"It was a privilege," Michael says. "People treat you different. My last name was Hornbuckle, and that meant something to people."

Brian nods. "For years I didn't even have a first name," he says. "It was 'Oh, you're a Hornbuckle,' or 'You're Bobby's son,' and suddenly you had respect."

Being the older of the two by seven years, Brian has more memories of the days when his father and mother were still together. He remembers Christmas in motel rooms and swimming pools where he swam with his father between gigs on the road. He remembers being left to play in club dressing rooms while his father was on stage, "and the keyboard player from Dreams 'doing' my babysitters."

Brian also remembers the fights and tears as his parents' marriage fell apart. "I guess she'd had it with the rock-and-roll lifestyle," he says, stabbing his cigarette at the ashtray. "She felt that all these people who were putting him on a pedestal didn't really know him. But she was from this white, middle-class background and didn't really understand.

"They just wanted different things. She got what she wanted."
But there is a feeling among some of Bobby's friends and family members that perhaps he got what he wanted, too. That, perhaps subconsciously, he sabotaged his own career. There were people who wanted to back him, bar owners who gave him chance after chance to play in the nicer clubs and be heard by people in the music industry who mattered. But Bobby would get drunk or stoned, have fights with his band or the club employees until only places like Ziggie's would have him.

The boys say their father got high so much because of a lot of unresolved issues from his childhood. Having to raise his brothers and sisters. The lack of love from his father. If Bobby has lectured them about avoiding drugs, the boys haven't listened.

"The rule when I was living with him," Brian says, "was 'I get half.'" The boys laugh and shake their heads as though Bobby were some crazy friend, not their father.

Brian has stopped using alcohol and drugs, in part because he was arrested for possession and drug-testing was court-ordered. "But I was ready, anyway," he says. "I knew it was a waste of my creative energy, and I saw what it did to my dad.

"But it's hard," he continues, lighting up another cigarette. "I've been in bands since I was a teenager, and it's just part of the lifestyle. If you have a weakness for booze and drugs, it's going to be there for you...every night. And there's no such thing as a strong support group in a bar."

Michael has slowed down, but not stopped. Don't do drugs, stay in school--"that's my mom's job," says Michael. "My father never encouraged drugs. He was more, 'Do what you're going to do, but learn from the experience.'"

The lessons have often been tough. One day, when Michael was staying with his father, he found Bobby passed out in his van, slumped over the passenger seat with his legs hanging out the door. He wasn't breathing.