Roky didn't play a show for 18 years. The resurrection started in March 2005 when Keven McAlester's engrossing documentary You're Gonna Miss Me premiered at SXSW. Days later, a clean-shaven and cordial Erickson played three songs at Threadgill's to great acclaim. "It was advertised that Roky would do only one song, 'Starry Eyes,'" said Peyton Wimmer, a longtime mental health counselor and family friend. "So, when he played a second and a third song, we were pretty shocked." Four years of anti-schizophrenic medication and a new set of teeth, paid for by Henry Rollins, had given Roky the confidence to get back up in front of people. Six months later, he played to a crowd of well over 10,000 at the Austin City Limits Music Festival, tears of joy and disbelief streaming down the faces of fans. The next year, Erickson and his band, featuring Cam King on guitar, played Coachella and first-ever appearances in New York, Chicago and London.

"Guys like Roky make music that's an amazing place to go," Rollins told the Austin American Statesman as the comeback roared. "Coltrane and Miles and Hendrix were able to do this. It becomes more than the music and more than the lyrics- a total environment."

On Christmas Day 2006, Erickson weaned himself off Zyprexa, his final medication. "I've seen some pretty remarkable recoveries," said Wimmer, "but none as dramatic as Roky's. It's very rare for someone to come completely off meds and do so well."

Sumner Erickson has to laugh. "It turns out Mom was right about Roky not needing medication." The family reconciled after the screening of You're Gonna Miss Me, with Evelyn telling her sons that she had no idea how much stress she'd been under.

Roky Erickson is the way he is because of the weird and lovely Evelyn, who could've been played by Ruth Gordon the day I met her. I think she was about 80, but you could see in her the 24-year-old. She was the kind of woman that might get up and dance to the jukebox at a bar. At 80. "He was babied and babied and babied by his mother into total helplessness," Clementine Hall told writer Paul Drummond in the exhaustive bio Eye Mind: The Saga of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators. "But I'll say for her that she also made him an extremely loving and generous person."