Have you ever wondered about the offstage world of a professional musician? Every month in this column, bluegrass now will provide a glimpse into the lives of some of your favorite bluegrass stars. To see captions, just move your cursor over the photos!

It's one of the most outrageous and memorable bluegrass album covers ever, its shenanigans and irreverence surpassing even the wildest John Hartford-Dillard collaborations. There's a dead chicken on the table, a half-eaten loaf of bread and a bottle holding the last lonely inch of tequila. Sitting 'round the table are the members of the Country Gazette, wielding cards, cigars, and gunbelts. Draped across their laps is a comely señorita in jodhpurs and long riding boots, her shirt unbuttoned down to there. And in the foreground, clutching a fat roach in an elaborate clip, is banjo player Alan Munde, staring dolefully into the distance.

“Vinyl is made from petroleum, and when the oil crunch came in 1973, things really tapered off,” Alan says. “I started with the Gazette in '72, so for a year and a half, it was big fun. The record label had more money than brains, and they rented a soundstage in Hollywood and built that set. We all went over to Western Costume, a ten-story building of props and costumes of every imaginable variety.” The art directors wanted a riverboat gambler theme, but when they saw the bandito costumes, they changed direction. A new classic was born: A Traitor In Our Midst, the United Artists album that would delight comic-book loving bluegrass fans the world over. “The collar in the shirt I wore had Charlton Heston's name! He had worn it in some movie. Just to be on the edge of that was pretty fun.”

The Country Gazette was very popular in Europe, and Alan has various ephemera from their tours, including posters, records, and newspaper clippings. He also has an interesting collection he amassed for a year or two sometime in the 1980s. “From everyplace we played, I would write myself a postcard. It wound up being a little journal. I tried to find cards with landmarks from each town. I've got a hundred or more, with comments about the places I played.”

Originally from Norman, Oklahoma, Alan has lived and taught at South Plains College in Levelland, Texas, 30 miles south of Lubbock, for 17 years. He works in the school's creative arts department as an associate professor. He gives private banjo and guitar lessons; he teaches ensemble classes, in which students are organized into performing groups; and he also teaches the history of bluegrass music with material from his own extensive and eclectic collection.

Alan has been married to Kitty Ledbetter for about two years, and they have an unusual living arrangement, necessitated by the locations of their jobs. “My wife lives and teaches in Wimberley, near Austin, about 400 miles away. She's an English professor at Texas State University. We try to get together every other weekend. Southwest has a direct flight from Lubbock to Austin; it takes about an hour.”

Though his place in Lubbock is small and nondescript, his wife has a unique house on six acres in Wimberley, in the Hill Country. “It's close to the Blanco River, and is really spectacularly beautiful and unique. It was started back in the 1970s by a hippie character. He built what was essentially a rock room with a loft. The upper story has sort of a treehouse. People who've owned the house since have added other rooms. It's mostly organic, built of native rock and timbers.”

Alan stays busy teaching, and also does 15 or 20 dates a year with his own band. “Let's see, there's Phill Elliott on guitar, Bill Honker on bass, Glenn Mitchell on mandolin, and I play banjo. We have a group called the Alan Munde Gazette, and we're spread out all over Texas.” Yep, that name is a spin-off of the Country Gazette. “I'm not very creative,” he quips mournfully.

Each year Alan plays a major role in Camp Bluegrass, the college's summer workshop. “It's a five-day event. We teach the traditional bluegrass instruments, and we also have a vocal instructor, so we cover the bases. We get between 100 and 150 people from all over the U.S. and a few from foreign places.” Past instructors for the series include Lynn Morris, Scott Vestal, Byron Berline, Rickie Simpkins, John Moore, and Chris Jones.

Most of what Alan does is somehow related to bluegrass, but in 1994 he embarked on an adventure that had nothing to do with music: a cross-country ride from Texas to Carbondale, IL. His friend, Louie Kaplan, joined him on the excursion. Alan rode an ancient British bike, which he still has today. “Some days we did 100 miles; some days we did 40. You never really have a sense of how fully committed America is to the automobile until you try to travel any other way.”

Visit Alan online at www.alanmundegazette.com.