Black Tooth Grin

The latter was the Clubhouse, an all-nude strip bar in northwest Dallas. The Abbotts, along with a handful of investors (including Rex Brown), opened the club in 1996. The idea came from Vinnie, whose original vision was of a rock-and-roll golf course, with “a strip club at the nineteenth hole.” Building an entire course proved too expensive. Building that nineteenth-hole bar—that they could do.

Though it isn’t located anywhere near an actual golf course, the Clubhouse has a links-based motif. Its logo is a silhouette of a naked female golfer using a flagstick as a stripper pole. The platforms on which the women dance are fashioned to look like putting greens. The walls are filled with paintings and photos of renowned courses and famous golfers. It sounds like an odd concept, but it worked immediately. Even without the benefit of alcohol sales—Texas Alcohol and Beverage Commission rules state that all-nude clubs cannot have a liquor or beer license—the Clubhouse quickly became one of Dallas’s most profitable adult-oriented businesses. Which is saying something, since Dallas has more than its fair share.

Considering how much time the Abbotts already spent at various topless (and more) establishments in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and around the country, it was a bit like a hard-core drug addict taking a job with a pharmaceutical sales company. But in other ways it was a smart decision for everyone involved. While the Clubhouse may not have had a liquor license, with its celebrity owners it had something almost as powerful. Vinnie and Darrell continued the act they began at the Basement, escorting every hard-rock and heavy metal touring act that hit town through the doors at the Clubhouse. A visit to the club became a part of many bands’ itinerary. It wasn’t just musicians, either: NASCAR drivers, members of the local sports teams (and their traveling counterparts), and—appropriately—pro golfers also made the scene. The famous names brought normal ones with them, since on any given night there was a chance to see anyone from a movie star to a Dallas Star. The worst-case scenario was a room filled with naked women.

Visitors could (generally) expect to at least find the Abbotts at the Clubhouse. They didn’t really run the day-to-day operations, but when they were in town, they could have. They were certainly there enough. Beyond investing in the business, and rustling up some prominent clients, their role at the Clubhouse was the same one they played to much acclaim everywhere else: having a good time. Around Halloween, they’d host a top-of-the-line haunted house upstairs, and on New Year’s Eve, the Abbotts would play there with Gasoline, their classic-rock “good time band” (as Vinnie referred to it), which mixed in self-explanatory originals like “Get Drunk Now” and “This Ain’t a Beer Belly, It’s a Gas Tank for My Love Machine” alongside Pat Travers and Ted Nugent covers. When one of their new records hit stores, no one had to ask where the release party would be held. That said, they never needed a reason to party or to do so at the Clubhouse. Most nights, they’d come in late and set up shop in a corner booth to the side of the main stage, where they had a view of all of the action and enough room to accommodate the empty trays of shots.

Besides for postconcert soirees or Pantera-related shindigs, the Clubhouse’s biggest turnouts happened after local sporting events, specifically Dallas Stars hockey games. It makes sense, as a Venn diagram depicting the relationship between hockey fans and metalheads would have a huge overlap. The Abbotts were right there in the middle, big supporters of the team, and close friends with many of the players. In 1999, the brothers—and their band—would become more formally involved.

Once again golf provided the inspiration. Vinnie was playing a round of golf with Stars defenseman Craig Ludwig when he asked what he could do to help the team, apart from providing the players with a place to relax after games. The answer, it turned out, was obvious: The Stars were missing a kick-ass theme song, something that would get them, and their fans, fired up at games. Since most of the team were already fans of the group, Pantera was the clear choice to provide one.

The result was a short (but not too sweet) sample of the band’s trademark “power groove,” an instrumental save for its chanted chorus: “Dal-las—Stars! Dal-las—Stars!” The song quickly became an integral part of Stars games; the team played it over the PA system before every period at home games, beginning with the playoffs that year. As the Stars stayed alive in series after series, the song started getting airplay on local radio stations. The team took a copy of it with them on the road, playing it in the locker room prior to road games, except when Ludwig left it behind during a trip to St. Louis, where the team was playing game six of the Western Conference semifinals. The disc was airmailed to the arena, and it arrived as the Stars were leaving their locker room to begin overtime. Refusing to take the ice until they listened to the song, their song, the team went out and won the game on a Mike Modano goal. The Stars were on their way to winning the Stanley Cup, and Pantera’s place in Stars history was secured.

If there was any doubt of that fact, the Abbotts demolished it during a party at Vinnie’s house over the summer, which featured a number of players, a few dancers from the Clubhouse, and a special appearance by the Stanley Cup itself. There’s no telling how many black tooth grins were consumed out of Lord Stanley’s cup that day, but judging by the fact that it ended up dented at the bottom of the pool, the smart guess would be “quite a few.”

As for the song, it’s still a fixture at Stars games. “It was just the right song at the right time,” Ludwig told the Dallas Morning News in 2004. “I know every Stars fan knows and loves that song, and they’ll remember it for the rest of their lives.”⁵

The pairing of the Stars and the Abbotts was natural, but their partnership with country outlaw David Allan Coe was inevitable. It should have happened sooner, though they were separated by genre, since both sides were blessed with hands that contained nothing but middle fingers, which they regularly flashed to the music industry. Darrell and Vince grew up with Coe’s music in the house, since their parents were both fans. Over time, they became converts as well, using Coe’s “Jack Daniels If You Please” to warm up the audience before Pantera went onstage. Still, they had never met the man until Coe played a gig at Fort Worth’s Billy Bob’s Texas in 1999.

After the show, Darrell patiently waited in the autograph line for almost half an hour. That sentence alone sums up the disconnect between who Darrell was and who he acted like. He could very easily have had one of his flunkies send word to Coe’s road manager and skipped the line altogether. He probably could have watched the show from backstage. But Darrell didn’t really have flunkies and he didn’t mind waiting. He thought Coe would have no idea who he was.

He was right. Coe figured the long-haired guy with the pink beard was somebody; he just didn’t happen to know who or why. When Darrell finally reached the head of the line, Coe asked him what he did. He usually didn’t make much small talk at these postshow signings, but this was different for some reason he couldn’t quite grasp. Darrell told him about his “little band” and how they had used one of Coe’s songs as intro music at their shows. He left behind copies of Pantera’s home video collections and his phone number. Coe was dumbstruck by the brief encounter. He couldn’t believe a guy like Darrell had heard of him, much less be a fan of his music. There wasn’t much metal about Coe’s act, save for his eccentric, beaded-beard appearance and his history of hard living.

After watching the videos, Coe wasn’t puzzled anymore—he was embarrassed. How could he not know who Pantera was? There were thousands of kids screaming the name in city after city. He asked around and found out he actually knew Jerry Abbott. He used the number Darrell gave him and called to apologize for making him wait in line. While they talked, they realized they had more in common than just a fondness for Coe’s music. Darrell invited Coe to come and hang out at his house.

The first part of that initial visit was spent doing what most first-time (or second-time, or third-time, or fourth—) visitors did there: drink. One of Coe’s crew got so drunk he fell into the pool with his cell phone in his pocket, and Coe’s oldest son, Tyler, puked on Darrell’s couch. In other words, it was business as usual. Eventually they made their way to the studio out back. By the time Coe said his good-byes, they’d written and recorded a song (“Nothin’ to Lose”). It was the start of what would become Rebel Meets Rebel, a full-length collaboration between Coe and three-fourths of Pantera (the brothers drafted Rex Brown to play bass). Recording would continue in fits and starts between 1999 and 2003, whenever Coe’s and Pantera’s schedules coincided.

After Pantera’s demise, the plan was to release the album after Damageplan issued its follow-up to New Found Power. Since there never would be a second Damageplan album, Vinnie released it on his own label, Big Vin Records, in 2006. Unlike most posthumous releases, it was completely finished long before Darrell’s death. Rebel Meets Rebel is by no means essential listening, and the pairing of Coe and Pantera (more or less) sounds less like collaboration and more like coexistence. But much like many of Darrell’s Halloween costumes, it doesn’t quite make sense and yet still, somehow, it works.