The People's Poets: Literature Born of the Texas Singer-Songwriter Movement of the Last Forty Years

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The People's Poets: Literature Born of the Texas Singer-The People's Poets: Literature Born of the Texas Singer-

Songwriter Movement of the Last Forty Years Songwriter Movement of the Last Forty Years

Phyllis M. Dunham

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The People’s Poets:

Literature Born of the Texas Singer-Songwriter Tradition

of the Last Forty Years

A Thesis

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of

The University of New Orleans

in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

Master of Fine Arts

Creative Writing

Phyllis Dunham

B. A. Sul Ross State University, 2013

May 2016

Table of Contents

List of Figures .................................................................................................................... iv

Abstract ................................................................................................................................v

Foreword ..............................................................................................................................1

Part I: Why Texas?.............................................................................................................. 7

Introduction: The Fertile Ground .............................................................................7

A Brief History of Texas Musical Traditions ..........................................................8

Austin: Ground Zero for the New Poets .................................................................16

The Musicality of Texas-Speak, Honky-tonk Sociolinguistics,

and the Songwriting Culture of Texas ...................................................................27

Thus a Movement Began ........................................................................................35

Part II: The Practitioners and their Songs ..........................................................................36

Where Do They Come from Geographically? .......................................................38

Where Do They Come from Musically? ............................................................... 39

What Are They Writing and Singing About? ....................................................... 40

The Texas Trinity: Townes , Guy, and Billy Joe ...................................................44

The Dark Poet: Townes Van Zandt .......................................................................46

The Master Craftsman: Guy Clark .........................................................................57

The Poet Who Lived It: Billy Joe Shaver ..............................................................67

The Houston Kid: Rodney Crowell .......................................................................77

The Highway Minstrel: Joe Ely .............................................................................82

The Last of the Hardcore Troubadours: Steve Earle .............................................90

A Little Bitta Latin and a Whole Lotta Rock ‘n’ Roll: Alejandro Escovedo ......107

iii

Keepin’ It Real Country: Dale Watson ................................................................109

Down Deep in the Soul: Ruthie Foster ................................................................113

The Well-Rounded Wonder: Carolyn Wonderland .............................................116

Serious, Soulful, and Sardonic: James McMurtry ...............................................121

Road Scholar: Ryan Bingham ..............................................................................133

There’s Wit in Them There Words: Hayes Carll .................................................139

Unknown but Up and Coming: Chris McWilliams .............................................146

Conclusion: The Legacy Lives On ..................................................................................150

Works Cited .....................................................................................................................157

Works Consulted ..............................................................................................................165

Vita ...................................................................................................................................170

....................................................................................................................................

List of Figures

1. Map of Texas Musical Influences ..........................................................................13

2. Album Cover of Honky Tonk Heroes ....................................................................22

3. Album Cover of Viva Terlingua! .......................................................................... 23

4. Album Cover of Red Headed Stranger ..................................................................24

5. Map of Musicians’ Birthplaces ..............................................................................38

6. Musical Influences Chart .......................................................................................39

7. Subject Matters Chart ............................................................................................41

8. Photo: Townes Van Zandt .....................................................................................47

9. Photo: Guy and Susanna Clark ..............................................................................57

10. Album cover of My Favorite Picture of You .........................................................59

11. Photo: Billy Joe Shaver ..........................................................................................68

12. Photo: Shaver with Jennings ..................................................................................69

13. Photo: Rodney Crowell ..........................................................................................77

14. Photo: The Flatlanders ...........................................................................................83

15. Photo: Joe Ely ........................................................................................................86

16. Photo: Steve Earle in the Nashville Days ..............................................................91

17. Photo: Steve Earle Today.......................................................................................96

18. Photo: Alejandro Escovedo..................................................................................104

19. Photo: Dale Watson .............................................................................................109

20. Photo: Ruthie Foster ............................................................................................113

21. Photo: Carolyn Wonderland ................................................................................116

22. Photo: James McMurtry .......................................................................................121

23. Photo: Ryan Bingham ..........................................................................................133

24. Photo: Hayes Carll ...............................................................................................139

25. Photo: Chris McWilliams ....................................................................................147

26. Photo: Bridges, Lewis, and Paleschic ..................................................................155

Abstract

The People’s Poets of Texas: Literature Born Within the Singer/Songwriter Tradition of the Last

Forty Years is a creative nonfiction exploration of the poetry found within the songs of multiple

generations of modern Texas singer/songwriters and a case for the consideration of their work as

a genuine regional literature. Studying the roots of Texas music, the musicality of Texan

manners of speech and storytelling, and re-examining the Austin, Texas music scene of the

1970s that brought a national focus to the organic, reciprocal manner in which Texas music is

traditionally experienced, radically altered the ways in which the songs were written, recorded,

and marketed. An examination of this phenomenon allows us to understand that, first, a

proliferation of Texas singer/songwriters of unprecedented quality has emerged in recent decades

and that, second, a legitimate people's literature is emerging from their song-craft.

Keywords: ethnomusicology, Texas music, singer-songwriters, song lyrics, song lyrics as

literature, lyrics as poetry

Foreword

I’m not sure why all the great ones [songwriters] come from Texas, but they do.

– Keith Urban, Grammy-winning singer/songwriter from

Australia (Atkinson 33)

Texas is the only place I know of where little Billy Bob might come home from

school one day and tell Mom and Dad that he wants to grow up to be a

singer/songwriter, and Mom and Dad are likely to say, “Well, okay, son. Here’s a

guitar and a pad and a pencil. Get after it!”

– Pablo Menudo, singer/songwriter, Terlingua, Texas

It ain’t country. It ain’t rock. It’s Texas.

– T-Shirt Slogan

I’ve been absorbing live, original Texas music since my parents first took me to the Quihi

(prounounced Kwee hee) Gun Club dance hall in Quihi, Texas. I was about seven years old at the

time, and the Quihi Gun Club building was at least a hundred. The men were required to hang

their cowboy hats on pegs around the walls and to take off their boots if they were hob-nailed—

an attempt at protecting the nearly perfect hardwood dance floor. Little kids like me and my

brother, who tired fairly early in the evening, fell asleep on the piles of adults’ coats that topped

the tables lining the dance floor while our parents danced polkas, schottisches, waltzes, two-

steps, and the Cotton-Eyed Joe. Adolph Hofner and the Pearl Wranglers, a touring band

sponsored by the Pearl Brewery in San Antonio, played expertly—on steel, fiddle, guitar, bass,

and accordion—from the stage at the end of the building, and the kids occasionally sneaked a sip

or two from the longnecks that the dancing grown-ups left unattended.

A few months later, I learned to waltz and dance the Texas two-step, myself. My Uncle

Lester, my favorite cowboy, set me on top of the long table at a rodeo dance at the old Ranch

House Café in Sabinal and pulled my boots off. Then, in a common and time-honored rite of

passage for little girl Texans, he placed my socked feet on top of his cowboy boots and began to

whirl me around the floor. It was the most exciting experience of the seven and a half years I had

spent on Planet Earth until that time. I wanted more. For the rest of my life, I wanted more.

By the time I was in high school in the early seventies, Willie Nelson had famously left

Nashville to return to Texas to make what eventually came to be called Outlaw Country music.

He found some songwriters back home who weren’t doing it the cookie cutter way. Willie was

ready to take on Nashville and prove that there was a market for less manufactured and more

artistic compositions, or, as Texas music critic Rick Koster says, “Nelson didn’t give a rat’s ass

about the old-line Nashville establishment” (35). Willie proved the Nashville guys wrong. In the

process, he and a handful of others, most notably his buddy Waylon Jennings and a transplanted

New Yorker named Jerry Jeff Walker, began recording music in new ways and, in so doing,

inspired new generations of Texas singer/songwriters to become equally determined to make

their music their way. Manufacturing hits was no longer the principal objective, and commercial

success (although it certainly occurred for Willie and Waylon and a few others) was no longer

the primary goal.

These new generations of songwriters, no matter what genre or convention they write and

perform within, seem determined, as Texas singer/songwriter Hayes Carll has said, to “stay close

to the art and close to the song.” In Texas, these troubadours have found not only appreciative

audiences for their music, but also the traditional honky-tonks, dance halls, juke joints, and, in

some cases, folk clubs where they can hone their song-craft to perfection in the early stages of

their careers while possibly making enough money to quit their day jobs. In other words, there is

opportunity.

There is also inspiration. Texas traditionally was, and still is, a hotbed of rich musical

cross-influences that provides these artists with a plethora of genres and traditions to draw from.

Furthermore, Texans, who naturally speak rhythmically and musically and in simile and

metaphor, are often great storytellers, themselves, and they appreciate and expect genuine poetry

in the lyrics as much as they do a rollicking, diverse accompaniment. Songwriters have often

found that, when playing to a typical Texas audience, it is okay to throw in a cover song once in

a while, but it had better be a good one (Hank, Willie, Billy Joe, Guy or Townes, maybe). But,

for the most part, in the places where Texans traditionally gather to hear the real deal—if you

can’t create your own music, if you don’t have something fresh and original to say, get off the

stage. Or, as a crusty Texan might express it, “If you can’t run with the big dogs, son, stay on the

porch.”

What this particular segment of the Texas music-listening audience is longing for may be

best expressed by ethnomusicologist Manuel Pena’s separation of music into organic and super-

organic categories. According to Pena, organic music evolves over time within a community,

while super-organic music is quickly- and commercially-produced for the sake of display and

commodity. He makes the distinction between music-as-cultural-performance and music-as-

spectacle (3-7). An audience engaging in reciprocity by dancing to Dale Watson’s band while

hollering out requests for old songs not on the set list is a lived, organic experience. At Ginny’s

Little Longhorn Saloon in Austin, Watson once commented from the eight-inch riser that serves

as a stage how delightful the ladies’ perfume smelled as they whirled past the band. Evenings

like that are almost a contact sport.

A spoon-fed Garth Brooks concert, on the other hand, complete with light show and

super-graphics is a bought and paid for spectacle, even if the audience booty-shakes and claps

along. Not that Garth Brooks hasn’t delivered such spectacles in arenas in Dallas or Houston. He

has. And not that a Garth Brooks concert can’t be fun. It can. But that sort of over-produced

concert is not what Texans at the local dance hall or honky-tonk or folk club are looking for.

They prefer, instead, to engage with the singer/songwriter in a bona fide way that is a

participatory cultural event celebrating the authenticity, and often the diversity, of Texas music

roots.

Much has been made of the fact that Texas is a crucible where diverse forms of music

have encountered one another for the past two centuries, and it is often assumed that these

mixtures alone may account for the rich musical heritage for which the state is known. Latin

meets Czech meets African meets German meets Irish meets French, etc., seems to magically

add up to the splendid new mixes that have kept Texas music fresh and often at the forefront of

American music. Texas is, no doubt, a rich crossroads for seemingly incongruous musical roots

traditions, and at least three major Texas-born genres have bubbled to the top of this glorious

stew: Conjunto, Honky-tonk, and Western Swing. Other genres influencing any given

singer/songwriter might include gospel, blues, jazz, tejano, folk, country, bluegrass, rock, punk,

and surf among others. A musician raised in such traditions almost can’t help being ridiculously

versatile, and that makes for quality songwriting and musicianship.

A friend and I listened to a band a few years back at Antone’s in Austin while waiting for

Billy Joe Shaver to take the stage. I remarked to her that I didn’t think the lead guitarist was from

Texas, and she asked why. This is my recollection of our conversation.

“He’s a good guitarist, but listen to him. He can’t switch genres well, and he couldn’t

handle that Texas shuffle in the last song.”

“So where do you think he’s from?”

“If I had to guess, Appalachia somewhere. He seems kinda stuck in bluegrass mode.”

A couple of songs later, when the singer introduced the band, he announced the

musicians’ hometowns. They all hailed from Texas towns like Waco or Galveston or Amarillo.

Only the lead guitarist was from out of state. North Carolina, to be exact. My friend and I

weren’t too worried about the guitarist, though. He was talented, after all, and we reckoned that

if he stuck with the band long enough, he’d have to learn to hop genres.

Due, in no small part, to the diversity of roots influences and the resulting proliferation of

hybrid forms, defining the Texas music of the last four decades has been a difficult feat. In recent

decades, the music of the Texas singer/songwriters in its various forms has been called the

following: Outlaw Country, Progressive Country, Americana, Redneck Rock, Cowpunk, Alt-

country, Texas Alternative Country, and even the clever but still unsatisfactory “Y’allternative.”

No single term captures it all. No single term can or should. But this constantly-evolving, wide-

ranging music must be explored for its commonalities as well as its diversity, and among the

common threads are a dedication to individuality and an authenticity of voice that results in a

devotion to less commercial and more artistic expression, especially when it comes to what these

writers have to say in song.

Ya see, the trick to this writing thing has always been to use the conventions to

create an interpretation like no other. That day you and your songwriting buddies

don’t sound very much alike. Instead, you have ... a lot in common.

Vince Bell, Dallas-born singer/songwriter (Harris, 27)

The state’s musical tradition of cross-pollination doesn’t necessarily account for the

outstanding poetry of the Texas singer-songwriters’ lyrics, but it is a contributing factor. With so

many vibrant traditions and mixes at hand, the song-makers can write in a variety of moods and

modes that best express any particular lyric thought. The vibrant and critically-acclaimed music

they make is, in fact, often much more lyrically important and accomplished than it is musically

so, a subject about which astonishingly little has been studied or written.

But for a long time I wasn’t interested in the lyrics. Once Uncle Lester taught me to

dance, I learned to feel the music and its rhythms in my bones. Only much later, in my early

twenties, did I begin to appreciate fully that quite a bit of this music came with a bonus. It didn’t

sound like Nashville music. There were few feeble hooks and over-stretched metaphors. Indeed,

at its very best, there was poetry in this stuff—poetry sprung mostly, but not entirely, from

working class dialects, speech patterns, and experiences to tell stories of heartbreak, love, the

road, the landscape, and the people. It didn’t sound like country music from elsewhere, and a

great deal of it wasn’t country music in the conventional sense of the term anyway. And while

the words might indeed be catchy, they were seldom merely catchy. The lyrics were at turns

profound and poignant, piercing and poetic, wise and witty, satirical and sometimes outright

funny. This, then, is an exploration of and an attempt at an explanation for the abundance of

outstanding poetry to be found within Texas music, specifically within the Texas

singer/songwriter proliferation of the last forty years, a constantly-evolving tradition through

which words have become at least as important as music, and a people’s literature has emerged.

Part I: Why Texas?

Introduction: The Fertile Ground

If means, motive, and opportunity are the factors needed to make a thing happen, then it

had to happen in Texas, where, when it comes to music-making, there exists an unprecedented

abundance of all three. The history of Texas music spans generations of mixed traditions, and

music-making there has long been recognized as a legitimate, and even honored, career path. As

if that weren’t enough, opportunities to perform are as common as dirt. The state seems awash in

legendary and innovative figures in an astounding array of genres: from rock pioneers Buddy

Holly and Roy Orbison to legendary guitarists Buddy Guy and Stevie Ray Vaughan, from

country greats Ray Price and George Jones to blues masters Leadbelly Ledbetter and Lightnin’

Hopkins, from Conjunto trailblazers Santiago Jimenez, Sr. and Lydia Mendoza to hip-hop

innovators Getto Boys and DJ Screw. As critic Rick Koster says, “. . . for every musical style

represented in my eclectic record collection, someone from Texas not only was damned good at

it, but had probably expanded and significantly enhanced the possibilities of that style. In fact, …

Texas has perhaps the most diverse and colorful tradition in American music history” (viii). But,

in order to understand why so many great singer/songwriters come from Texas, we must first

examine how a state that was relatively unpopulated 150 years ago became such a hotbed of

cross-cultural musical influences in the twentieth century.

A Brief History of Texas Musical Traditions

No state is more musical than Texas . . . a state of immigrants where the melting

pot is stirred to the sounds of Cajun waltzes, polkas, honky-tonk, conjunto, funk,

and jazz. The Hybrid State, Texas is where new variations were created when

Hispanics played German music, blacks played country, farm boys played big

band jazz, and everyone played the blues.

– Michael Corcoran, award-winning music critic, and

NOT a Texan (x)

Texas, in spite of its reputation for braggadocio and exceptionalism, does not exist within

a vacuum or on an elevated plain uninfluenced by its neighbors. Bordered by Louisiana,

Oklahoma, New Mexico, Mexico, and the Gulf of Mexico, Texas has experienced waves of

immigration over the last two centuries that flooded the countryside, towns, and cities with

diverse musical influences with roots on three continents.

When Spain ruled the land that is now Texas, the government was unable to attract

settlers to the wild and unpopulated (by Mexicans) territory. Once Mexico gained independence

from Spain in 1821, the situation immediately changed. Fearing an encroachment from the U. S.

settlements in neighboring Louisiana, Mexico sought colonists, and fast, for their far-flung and

sparsely populated state of Tejas. They granted land to potential new colonists, mostly Anglos

from the southern United States and Irish Catholic families fleeing British rule., and, eventually,

as Texas became an independent nation and later a state, even more land was granted to Czechs,

Germans, Poles, Bohemians, and Alsatians from Europe, most of whom entered Texas through

the new port of Galveston (Hartman 3-27).

Each wave brought successive new cultures, foods, farming methods, and music. The

Southerners brought traditional English, Irish, and Scottish folk songs and flings that later

morphed into bluegrass in the Appalachians. From Europe, came the schottisches, polkas,

marches, and classical influences (and the not-to-be-underestimated accordion) that were

incorporated into the stew. And, while Spanish and Mexican music were already in Texas,

successive influxes of immigrants from Mexico over the years continued to influence and refresh

the hybrids. Before the Civil War most Black Texans were slaves on the East Texas plantations.

After the Civil War, they began to settle in more urban areas. There was also an increase in the

number of Blacks migrating into Texas seeking land and a better way of making a living.

According to John Lightfoot, “Almost all early Texas bluesmen were born in these

[sharecropper] communities” of East Texas (95).

Figure 1: Map of Musical Influences

The gospel influence of African-American cultures thrived in the churches, especially in the rural

enclaves of East Texas, and gospel begat the blues practiced mostly in places decidedly other

than church. The porches and drink joints in the eastern part of the state were where some of the

blues masters of Texas first began to practice their craft. The undisputed Texas kings of the

genre were Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter, who divided his time, including his prison time,

between Louisiana and Texas, and Blind Lemon Jefferson. Both came from farming families in

rural East Texas, but the two met some time around 1912 in the Deep Ellum section of Dallas

where Jefferson was known to “perform almost daily at the corner of Elm Street and Central

Avenue” (Govenar). The two teamed up to play in Dallas and throughout East Texas, Ledbetter

learning about the blues from Jefferson and Jefferson learning much about showmanship from

Ledbetter. Most significantly, unlike many great bluesmen who may have lived and died in

obscurity in East Texas, both were “discovered”—Ledbetter by Texas folklorists John Avery

Lomax and his son Alan Lomax (Hamm) and Jefferson by a Paramount recording scout. As a

result, both were recorded and eventually heard widely by white audiences, thereby assuring that

their legacies and influences would live on, even far beyond the borders of Texas. Among later

musicians influenced by Jefferson were Carl Perkins, the Beatles, Elvis Presley, and Bob Dylan

(Hartman History 69) Other early Texas blues greats include Mance Lipscomb of Navasota who

was a major guitar influence on Stevie Ray Vaughn and who played the clubs of Austin in the

early to mid-1970s (Koster 159) and Centerville’s Sam “Lightnin’ Hopkins whom Rolling Stone

magazine rated number seventy-one on its all-time list of great guitarists (Govenar). Hopkins’

country blues style and songwriting greatly influenced a number of later musicians including a

young Townes Van Zandt (Hardy 3).

As gospel influenced the blues, the blues went on to influence jazz and, later, rhythm and

blues and rock ‘n’ roll. Some of the jazz innovators from Texas include ragtime pianist Scott

Joplin of Texarkana, keyboardist Joe Sample of Houston, guitarists Charlie Christian of Dallas,

Herb Ellis of Farmersville, and Larry Coryell of Galveston, sax men Ornette Coleman of Ft.

Worth and Illinois Jacquet, Arnett Cobb, and Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, all of Houston, and

trombonist Jack Teagarden of Vernon. Other Texans who have earned places of honor in the

rhythm and blues pantheon include pianist/singer/songwriter Ivory Joe Hunter of Kirbyville and

singer/songwriter Sippie Wallace, a major influence for Bonnie Raitt (Koster 305-319).

The waves of African American-based genres that influenced so many musicians in

Texas resulted in two innovative hybrids: Texas swing (jazz-based country) and honky-tonk (a

blend of Western swing, often with shuffle beats). The confluence of the Mexican ranchera and

corrida genres with the German, Czech, Bohemian and Polish music of Central Texas begat

Conjunto—songs sung in Spanish with Latin instrumentation (bajo sexto or twelve string guitar),

European instrumentation (mainly accordion), and lively polka beats.

The greatest contribution made to the Texas music tradition by the European settlers,

however, may have been their propensity to build and gather in the singing, gun, and

brotherhood clubs that eventually became the community dance halls of rural Texas. These

colonists were mostly Catholic. In Texas-speak, that means not Baptist. And that means they

could drink, and drink they did, or, as singer/songwriter Chris McWilliams says, “They didn’t

just drink beer, they made the beer, and they brought the beer.” The dances, usually held twice a

month in these halls, were lively affairs where courting took place, Grandma and the kids were

welcome, and a good time was had by all to the tune of a polka, a schottische, a waltz, and,

eventually, a Texas two-step, swing, or jitterbug.

The dance halls were the precursors to the honky-tonks which differed somewhat in

clientele and attitude. Dance halls were family places, and honky-tonks were for lovin’ and

brawlin’ and slippin’ around, but both places were where music of the interactive variety, that

stuff that folklorist Manuel Pena describes as organic music, organically-derived and evolved

within a culture and not manufactured as a commodity or spectacle, could be found (3). The

great innovators of Western swing like Bob Wills of Turkey and Milton Brown of Stephenville

played these joints, as did boogie country artist Moon Mullican of Corrigan. Later, country

greats like Lefty Frizzell of Corsicana, Tex Ritter of Murvaul, Ernest Tubb of Crisp, and Floyd

Tillman of Post played the dance halls and honky-tonks that kept them close to their audiences as

they blended genres and broached new subject matters in their songs. Some of the great dance

halls include a few named after the towns where they’re found: London Hall, Greune Hall, and

the Quihi Gun Club. Among the great honky-tonks are the Broken Spoke in Austin, Magnolia

Gardens in east Houston, and Ft. Worth’s Crystal Springs Dance Pavilion, considered to be the

birthplace of Western swing (Trevino 13).

Texas singer/songwriter Johnny Bush lamented the fact that venues of this sort weren’t

available for musicians elsewhere, even in Nashville where, “There was no dance clubs like in

Texas . . . In Texas, if I was off, I could go to Melody Ranch, Cloverleaf, or some other joint and

pick up ten or eleven dollars playing as a drummer. Get on the phone and call somebody: ‘Hey,

get your ass out to Melody Ranch. Yeah, I can use you tonight.’ Not in Nashville. When you

were off, buddy, you were off” (Bush, 95).

The availability of venues in Texas (and the inter-active culture within those venues) is

one of the many reasons that so many singer/songwriters find an atmosphere in Texas in which

they can thrive. When your audience expects a good time as well as innovation in the music and

lyrics, you have the ingredients on hand to keep you on your toes as a songwriter.

If you’re ever in Houston, you better do right.

You better not gamble, and you better not fight.

Sheriff Binford will arrest you, and his boys will take you down.

The next thing you know, boy, you’re Sugarland bound.

– Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter, lyrics from his blues classic,

“The Midnight Special”

I was about sixteen years old, sitting at my grandparents’ kitchen table while thumbing

through a book on the history of Houston when I first came across those lyrics. Already an avid

fan of the blues, I was astonished to discover that this classic blues song, “The Midnight Special”

was not a generic tale of strife and encounters with the law. It was written by Leadbelly

Ledbetter, who had grown up in Northeast Texas, and it was a very specific tale about a very

specific time and place—not just any sheriff, and not just any prison.

Sugarland was a prison farm just southwest of Houston, complete with field laborers,

chain gangs, and guards on horseback, and I had been there. My Great Aunt Bethyl took me

there when she and her Seventh Day Adventist minister ran the church services on Sunday

mornings for the prisoners. Aunt Bethyl played piano on hymns like “The Old Rugged Cross”

and “Onward Christian Soldiers,” and I turned the pages for her and set out the hymnals on the

convicts’ chairs. And now, seeing those lyrics in their original form for the first time, I knew that

Ledbetter had been there, too—years before me, of course, and under far less innocent

circumstances.

This was the first time I can recall that I really grasped that lyrics and music were

inextricable and intertwining elements of the whole experience. To this day, as much as I love

that song, “The Midnight Special,” I cannot stand to hear the homogenized, pasteurized versions

with their references to any old sheriff and any old prison. They lack the power of a true story,

and, for me, this reinforces the literary reality that the universal truths can often best be

expressed in the specific.

Seeing Ledbetter’s original lyrics was an eye-opening experience that catapulted me into

learning more about blues music, its roots, and the early blues masters from Texas, and that

exploration lead to a similar one regarding jazz. I began to haunt the clubs around Old Market

Square in downtown Houston while still in high school, and new worlds opened to me. Under-

aged as I was, I was still allowed into a basement joint called La Bastille where touring jazz

greats like Dizzy Gillespie often appeared. The club also featured a number of Texas blues artists

like Freddie King, T-Bone Walker, Gatemouth Brown, and Lightnin’ Hopkins. It was heaven.

That the folks who ran La Bastille let me in was probably due to my precocious interest in older

folks’ music. They took me under their kind wings, sometimes introducing me to the musicians

and educating me on the music, always letting me know who would be coming soon. There were

sometimes surprising artists that I might have otherwise missed like Roky Erikson and The

Thirteenth Floor Elevators, a seminal psychedelic rock band, another genre-bending Texas act

that is now critically hailed for their innovations and firsts, including the use of electric jug

percussion (Koster 101). Unbeknownst to me, just around the corner on Old Market Square,

young, folk- and blues-influenced singer/songwriters Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark were

playing and singing regularly at a club called the Old Quarter, and Townes was taking advantage

of the proximity to his mentor, Lightnin’ Hopkins, to spend time with him and learn the slow,

country blues guitar that he would later incorporate into his own style (Hardy 3). I was sixteen

years old and just beginning to appreciate my Texas music roots. Little did I know that my

interest in Texas music would become a lifelong passion.

“In most places,” according to singer-songwriter and Texas music history expert, Pablo

Menudo, “the singer/songwriter is the black sheep of the family, the guy who can’t get a real

job.” In Texas, however, singer-songwriters may be the family’s star, the one everyone gathers

around at family reunions as he or she picks and plays and stories are swapped. East Houston

singer/songwriters Johnny Bush and Rodney Crowell (though a generation apart) both recall in

their autobiographies that their daddies and mommas were always encouraging and proud of the

paths they had taken. Their fathers were both blue collar boys with families to support who could

not take the risk of dropping their day jobs to play in bands, although both had the desire to do

so. These parents, as many Texas families did, encouraged their children in pursuing music. Why

not? It was all around.

Growing up in Houston, particularly on the east side as Bush and Crowell had done,

offered a number of musical experiences. As a port city, Houston was a cosmopolitan place, even

back when it still had a small town feel. My father grew up in the teeming, immigrant-packed

neighborhoods near the Houston Ship Channel off Navigation Boulevard, and he took my

brother and me back there occasionally, especially when there was a Greek ship in port. That’s

when we’d go to Steve’s Athens Bar and Grill for the exotic music and the passionate dancing.

Opa! Then, because our family lived mostly in Galveston County, we were exposed to the Cajun

and Zydeco tunes of the migrant Louisiana shrimpers whose celebrations were always about

food and music. There was also a German restaurant nearby with a dance hall in the rear where

my aunts, uncles and grandparents would gather on Saturday nights to eat sausage and kraut and

polka till the cows came home. And as if that weren’t enough, when I was thirteen years old, a

genuine Texas country star moved in across the street from us. I didn’t know who Floyd Tillman

was at the time, but my parents insisted that he was, or had been, famous in the forties and fifties.

As I rode my bike around the neighborhood, I often stopped in front of Tillman’s house,

straddling my Schwinn, and listened to the sounds of “Slippin’ Around” or “I’ll Keep on Loving

You” as Tillman and his sidemen practiced in his living room. I did not know at the time that

Floyd Tillman was one of country music’s first electric guitarists and credited with innovations

in singing and song-writing as well (Corcoran 30). When I left Galveston County for Austin

(with a side trip to Lubbock for college and exposure to the fabled singer/songwriters of that

windblown locale) I had little idea what a wide and wonderful window on diverse Texas musical

styles I had been lucky enough to peer through thus far, and I certainly had no idea what still lay

in store in the city that became ground zero for Americana music.

Austin: Ground Zero for the New Poets

What started in Austin in that fuzzy 1970 to 1973 period is still playing out.

There’s a continuity that you can’t say about any other regional music explosions

in the United States in the latter half of the twentieth century. And that ain’t

blowing smoke. The singer-songwriter tradition is linked directly.

– Joe Nick Patoski, Texas writer (Spong, 218)

It was Austin, and it was the early 1970s, no question. However, in the descriptions and

explorations of the Austin scene of the 1970s that I’ve researched, the most important part of the

tale is curiously missing. In Bill Malone’s Country Music USA, considered by many to be the

definitive history of American country music, he describes a town in which there was a huge

divide between the hippies and the rednecks who, seemingly inexplicably, began dancing to and

listening to country music together. So do Jan Reid in The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock and

Barry Shank in Dissonant Identities: The Rock ‘n’ Roll Scene in Austin, Texas. These authors

seem perplexed as to the reasons that hippies would suddenly want to be in on the country

music/honky-tonk party. It’s not that big a mystery. Certainly there was at the time in Austin a

mixture of cultures and countercultures all enjoying the same music in the same places. One

could see, on any given night in a number of venues like the Split Rail or the Broken Spoke,

hippie chicks dancing with grizzled cowboy types and the like, or gangly hippie guys whirling

blue-haired, elderly ladies around the floor, but what the experts above describe as a tension

between cultures was, in my opinion, no tension at all. And we didn’t necessarily need Willie,

welcome as he was, to bring us together.

I was there, and, like many people of my generation and upbringing, the tension, if there

was any in the first place, was entirely within ourselves and, perhaps, our families. We were not

new to country music. It was an intrinsic component of our culture. We had listened and danced

to it all our lives.

What was new to us was a hippie identity born of the Generation Gap, a split between

young and older wrought by the Vietnam War, the birth of second wave feminism, and the Civil

Rights movement. That divide had formed across kitchen tables around the nation. Our hippie

identity may have been the backlash result of our response to the War et al, but we could not

bring ourselves to abandon the music of our roots. We loved it. Many of us had flocked to Austin

precisely because it was the liberal oasis in a conservative state. When we got there, we went to

the places that played the music we loved, and we were comfortable dancing and mixing with

people of other ages and political ilks because many of us may have done just that the month

before at a family reunion or at a dance hall on a trip back home.

That some of the Austin musicians were mixing rock into their country was welcome

because that, too, was our music. The counterculture folks who gathered in Austin did not drop

fully-formed from the sky. We had come to Austin from cities like Ft. Worth or Houston or from

small towns like Luling or Floydada. Many among the Texas-born counterculture who weren’t

gathering in Austin had already left for the West Coast, and that migration included such Texas

music luminaries as Doug Sahm, Boz Scaggs, Roky Erikson and the 13

Floor Elevators, and

Janis Joplin, all of whom became major influences on the music of the San Francisco Bay area.

In other words, far more Texans were dropping in on the hippies of Haight-Ashbury than the

reverse, and their music was having an impact. But for young people like me who came to

Austin, let it be said that while I may have been wearing a halter top, cut-off jeans, and love

beads while I two-stepped at the Broken Spoke, I never traded in my Tony Lamas for sandals.

Still, according to Malone, “The mating of rock and country, so strongly displayed in the

music of Hank Jr. and Gram Parsons, was most strongly effected in Austin, Texas.” Malone

further states that the Austin musicians, “came close to accomplishing Parson’s other dream, that

of bringing youth and adult audiences together in a commonly shared musical environment”

(393). Had Gram Parsons been raised in Central Texas rather than Georgia, he might have

known that such mixes had been occurring in Texas dance halls for generations. It was only

natural that it all came together in Austin when the counterculture from around the state moved

in. With the exception of the Grand Ole Opry, all the venues listed in the index to Malone’s book

(among them Dessau Hall, the Broken Spoke, the Split Rail, and the Armadillo World

Headquarters) were located in Austin. And the rural areas around Austin abounded in old time

German and Czech dance halls, all of which packed in crowds of mixed ages. It would seem that

Parson’s dream of a mixed audience, admirable though it was, could have been accomplished

simply by playing a gig at Gruene Hall near New Braunfels.

Folklorist Archie Green, in his essay on the Austin scene, “Austin’s Cosmic Cowboys:

Worlds in Collision,” says that “Austin’s eclectic composer/performers . . . drew upon folk or

popular expression to mark contemporary social collision and convergence” (153). That’s true.

But it should be noted that, with the exception of migrants like Jerry Jeff Walker, a transplant

from upstate New York, most of these composer/performers were drawing upon their own

internalized and lifelong Texas musical traditions and blending the genres just as their musical

forefathers, bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson, Western swing pioneer Bob Wills, conjunto giant

Santiago Jimenez, and countless others had done before.

Not only were dance hall and honky-tonk cultures continuing to flourish in Central

Texas, but entrepreneurs in Austin were opening new venues like Soap Creek Saloon and the

Armadillo World Headquarters in order to promote and capitalize on the scene. The legendary

Doug Sahm, who had enjoyed hits in the sixties with “She’s About a Mover” and “Mendocino”

with the Sir Douglas Quintet, moved back from the Bay Area in the early 1970s and began

putting his original jazz-, blues-, and conjunto-influenced band back together in Austin (Reid

66). Simultaneously, Willie Nelson held the proto-type for what would later become his Fourth

of July Picnics outside the town of Dripping Springs just west of Austin. The festival, though a

bust from revenue perspectives, drew a mixed but enthusiastic crowd, due in no small part to the

fact that the lineup was a perfect Texas cocktail: a mix of the old and new, pure country and folk

and rock, established and emerging. Featured artists included Loretta Lynn and Tex Ritter (old),

Kris Kristofferson and Billy Joe Shaver (new), John Prine (folk or folk-ish), Leon Russell (rock),

Waylon and Willie (established), and Tom T. Hall (emerging) (Shaver 32).

In 1972, promoter Rod Kennedy and singer/songwriter Alan Damron held the first of

their Kerrville Folk Festivals outside of Austin, an annual event that has become wildly well-

attended and established as a venue for emerging singer/songwriters. In the decades since its

founding, the Kerrville Folk Festival, with its emphasis on quality songwriting, has sponsored

the New Folk Finalists songwriting competition where established artists judge new songwriters

competing for places on the various stages. Former finalists who have gone on to recording

contracts and fame include such now-established songwriters as Steve Earle, Nanci Griffith, Tish

Hinojosa, Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen, and James McMurtry. But even in its earliest days, the

ethos forming at the Kerrville Folk Festival contributed heavily to the Texas zeitgeist that the

song was the thing, and that the quality of music and lyrics, the authenticity of sentiment, and the

sincerity of performance were inextricable components of a good song.

Clearly, the Austin that Willie Nelson found himself in when he returned to Texas from

Nashville was a world with enthusiastic, mixed audiences, a talent pool of nearly unprecedented

depth and width, and an astonishing array of venues. Although Nelson had been a respected

songwriter in Nashville, penning such hits as “Crazy” for Patsy Cline, “Hello Walls” for Faron

Young, and “Night Life” for fellow Texan Ray Price, he was frustrated by the business itself and

the shackles of making prescribed, “cookie cutter” (as many of the Texans described the

Nashville process) music. That two seasoned pros like Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings

should bring their knowledge, talent and savvy to the Austin scene was one of those

serendipitous sets of circumstances that appear to make perfect sense in retrospect. They were

looking for a better way. Here it was.

In and around Austin were all the ingredients necessary for playing and recording music

that was more authentic, less-contrived and not over-produced, and drawn from a variety of

traditions, including jazz, blues, country, rock, folk, honky-tonk, Western swing, and conjunto.

Here were the audiences and clubs where interactive performance was expected and appreciated.

Here, too, was a loosely-formed and passionate colony of new songwriters that included the likes

of Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Gary P. Nunn, and Billy Joe Shaver, all

itching to get in on the action. As if that weren’t enough, a tidal wave of talented like-minded

singer/songwriters and musicians, known informally as the Lubbock mafia, rolled in from the

Panhandle to give Austin a new injection of spirit and sound. Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Butch

Hancock, Joe Ely, David Halley, and guitar man Jesse Taylor were among that auspicious group.

It was time to make music. It was time to make their music their way.

However, none of this music would have been taken seriously on a national scale during

its time if there hadn’t been some commercial success. That success came in the form of three

landmark albums produced during the early seventies: Waylon Jennings’ Honky Tonk Heroes

(1972), Jerry Jeff Walker’s Viva Terlingua! (1973), and Willie Nelson’s Red-Headed Stranger

(1975). In their own way, each of these three seminal recordings opened doors for the Texas

singer/songwriters of the time as well as those to come. The success of these recordings gave the

Texas songwriters permission to produce work that was not formulaic—that expressed the

artists’ individual tastes and worldviews without regard to what the record companies demanded.

The first groundbreaking album of the period was Waylon Jennings’ Honky Tonk Heroes

which showcased the extraordinary songwriting talent of Corsicana-born Billy Joe Shaver (all

songs on the album except one were either written or co-written by Shaver). While this album

was recorded for Columbia in Nashville, what is significant about it is that Waylon had

negotiated for complete creative control, or as Koster says, “Jennings grew tired of Nashville’s

cookie cutter mentality of record making and simply circumvented the bullshit by heading to

New York to negotiate his own deal with the label honchos” (38).

Jennings was the first country superstar to break out of the confines of the genre. Until

this time, country music impresario Chet Atkins had a lock on how everything at RCA in

Nashville was produced, and he demanded that everything be produced and recorded in the

formulaic way that had proved to be so commercially successful for the label: lush strings, rich

background choruses, and the general overproduction that kept it all sanitized and generic. He

even demanded wholesome subject matter. Honky Tonk Heroes delivered anything but the

generic and formulaic in style, production, instrumentation, subject matter, or even cover art. It

may have been made in Nashville, but this was unadulterated Texas music.

Figure 2: Album cover of Honky Tonk Heroes

Honky Tonk Heroes shattered the mold and launched the term and the genre “Outlaw

Country.” What’s also significant here, in addition to Waylon’s defiant delivery of such now-

classic songs as “Honky Tonk Heroes,” “You Asked Me To,” and “Black Rose” is that Billy Joe

Shaver’s writing explored and introduced entirely new themes and outlooks. Unlike the squeaky-

clean heroes of previous times and places, Billy Joe’s protagonists were drinkin’ and fightin’ and

lovin’ unabashedly and unapologetically such that he eventually came to be called “the original

outlaw.”

The second trailblazing album was Jerry Jeff Walker’s Viva! Terlingua!, recorded over a

two week period in August in Luckenbach, Texas, using a sound truck with wires running into

the dance hall. The two weeks culminated in an also-recorded live concert. Jerry Jeff’s record

label, MCA, took a calculated risk that his insistence on a loose recording style would pay off. It

did, both critically and financially. The album is significant for its simplicity, raucousness, low

budget, commercial success, audience participation, and for displaying the talents of some of the

other lesser known and just-starting-out songwriters of the Austin scene.

Figure 3: Album cover of Viva Terlingua!

Included on the album are Guy Clark’s “Desperados Waitin’ for a Train,” Ray Wylie

Hubbard’s “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother,” and Gary P. Nunn’s “London Homesick

Blues,” which, with its pure Texas lament about wanting to “go home with the armadillos,”

became the theme song for the Public Television series Austin City Limits. The album received

critical acclaim and sold like crazy. Heck, even my parents and their friends were buying it. A

new precedent had been established, and the guidance, wisdom, and budget of a major record

label were clearly no longer the only paths to success (Stimeling 87-90).

The third wave in the assault on the Nashville lockdown was Willie Nelson’s Red

Headed Stranger. Willie had experienced critical success as well as moderate commercial

success with two other post-Nashville albums, Shotgun Willie and Phases and Stages, both

produced by Jerry Wexler for Atlantic and recorded in New York and both of which display

Willie’s jazz- and blues-influenced vocal style. Red-Headed Stranger, however, was finally

Willie’s music done Willie’s way—a complete escape from Nashville. Recorded in Dallas for,

purportedly, less than $20,000 and with only a few members of Willie’s backing band, the music

is quiet, spare, unadorned and unembellished with hit-making bells and whistles.

Figure 4: Album cover of Red Headed Stranger

Red Headed Stranger included, surprisingly, a monster hit. “Blue Eyes Crying in the

Rain,” an old Fred Rose tune, was Willie’s first number one hit single (Hartman 168-170). Red

Headed Stranger made the music establishment sit up and take notice. By the old rules of how to

make a hit record, “Red Headed Stranger” simply shouldn’t have been a hit. Its subject matter

was sad, its instrumentation was simple, and it had no distribution network attached. It was a

surprise blockbuster. This was the record that said, “You can succeed without relying on

formula. Trust your gut.”

Noteworthy, too, about these albums is the fact that, although only portions of Viva!

Terlingua! were actually recorded live (Stimeling 89), all three had the spare instrumentation that

gave Texas audiences a similar feel to the dance hall and honky-tonk and folk club and pickin’

circle experiences with which they were so familiar. In fact, Travis D. Stimeling says that, “The

spontaneity and audience-artist interaction that were characteristic of live performance in

Austin’s progressive country venues were essential . . . to the musical aesthetics of progressive

country music, which privileged the imperfections and idiosyncrasies of individual musicians

over the precise playing and overt technological mediation heard in much of Nashville’s country

music” (78). Honky Tonk Heroes, though recorded in a studio, feels like Waylon is actually

stompin’ the honky-tonk stage, Jerry Jeff is clearly having a free-wheeling barn party, and

Willie—well, Willie’s just singing directly to you and me. Judging from the sales of these three

important albums, a sizeable segment of the American music consumer market was more than

ready for a change and a musical movement, probably most correctly called progressive country

at the time and, later, Americana, was getting legs.

As a final word on the Austin scene of the 1970s, I should note that, although much has

been written about this extraordinary flourishing and the music created within it, I believe that

the scene itself is still largely misunderstood and misinterpreted by its chroniclers. The attempts

to define it at the time and shortly thereafter by such respected experts as Jan Reid, Archie

Green, and Bill Malone caught the scene too close to its birth and without the perspective that

time allows. Later interpretations by experts Barry Shank and, particularly by Travis D.

Stimeling, come closer, but neither writer was actually on the scene at the time, and neither

utilizes the perspective of a Texan (forgive me my chauvinism, but I do have a point to make)

familiar with the culture and spirit of the Texas music that came before. Some of the memes

developed during the 1970s and repeated in subsequent writing deserve a deeper investigation,

and in my opinion, a decent burial. Although Stimeling’s book from 2011, Cosmic Cowboys and

New Hicks, is a better assessment of the Austin 1970s scene than most, the title alone screams

misinterpretation, and Stimeling’s assertion that, “Michael Murphy’s song ‘Cosmic Cowboy’

was one of the most significant songs of Austin’s progressive country scene because it offered a

unifying name for the scene participants” (46) is particularly off-base.

I never met a single soul who referred to himself as a cosmic cowboy during, and

especially not after, the 1970s. It was an antithetical misnomer for the individuals, the scene, and

the music from the get-go. Terms like Cosmic Cowboy and Redneck Rock fell out of favor

almost from the moment they were coined and need not be repeated or revived except in

footnote. A superior, if still not thorough, assessment of the scene can be found in Koster’s brief

chapter “Progressive Country and the Austin Spirit” (35-49), but the definitive work on the

subject is yet to be written. The truth is that a convergence of musical styles was nothing new in

Texas, and the music derived from the scene lived on in newer, fresher forms. It is important not

to overlook what is the most significant consequence of the 1970s Austin scene: that it

bushwhacked new paths for recording more authentic music and that it spawned, directly or

indirectly, an extraordinary new tradition of songwriting without which the careers of such now-

prominent singer/songwriters as Robert Earl Keen, Lucinda Williams, Lyle Lovett, Nancy

Griffith, Hayes Carll, Ryan Bingham and dozens of others (some of whom have done little actual

time in Austin) would have been all but impossible.

The Musicality of Texas-Speak,

Honky-tonk Sociolinguistics, and the Songwriting Culture of Texas

“Country music is, populist ideology notwithstanding, not simple stuff,” asserts Dr. Aaron A.

Fox, in his book Real Country: Music and Language in Working Class-Culture (ix). I agree. Dr.

Fox studied the relationships between a particular working-class community (Lockhart Texas),

the residents’ manners of speaking and story-telling, and the country music they play and listen

to. He did so from several perspectives (sociolinguistics, anthropology, and ethnomusicology),

and he came to the conclusion that “country music is an authentic working-class art of enormous

value to its blue-collar constituency” (ix). Dr. Fox’s study is thorough, and his central assertion is

compelling, and when one expands such an argument to the other types of music and mixtures of

music to be found within Texas, a case can easily be made that the relationships between the

various forms of Texas-speak and the lyrics written by Texas singer/songwriters from traditions

other than classic country also constitute a legitimate art. The verbal art practiced in Texas-

speak, and which Texans appreciate in the spoken performance of conversation (widely practiced

in beer joints and honky-tonks, but in no way exclusive to them) has naturally made its way into

the songs of the Texas singer/songwriters. No doubt about it, Texans love a good story told in the

Texas way.

As an example of the Texan penchant for telling a good story in the vernacular of the

people, consider the following passages from Houston singer/songwriter Rodney Crowell’s

recent memoir, Chinaberry Sidewalks, of growing up in the fifties in a working-class

neighborhood east of Houston. First, read Crowell’s version of how this neighborhood on the

north bank of the Houston Ship Channel came to be:

[T]he story of the house on Norvic Street began more than a half century earlier,

in 1900, when Galveston was slam-dunked by the deadliest hurricane in recorded

history. In the storm’s aftermath, while its survivors pondered the rubble of what

had been an up-and-coming international seaport, a team of entrepreneurial

Houstonians was busy cajoling the special-funding branch of the federal

government into donating two million dollars for a dredging operation that would

convert a series of salt-marsh bayous into the world’s largest man-made shipping

lane. When the digging was done, the Houston Ship Channel stretched fifty miles

inland from Galveston Bay to the corner of Wayside Drive and Navigation

Boulevard, three blocks south of Avenue P. (10).

The passage above is straightforward, colorfully-rendered, and possesses a flow, rhythm,

and language choices that make it a nugget of well-crafted, creative non-fiction prose. Now

consider the same set of events as told by Rodney’s Grandpa Willoughby, a night watchman for

the Hughes Tool Shipping and Receiving Company:

After all them people died down there by the gulf, that crew of wildcatters jewed

the government out of a shit-pot full of tax-payers’ money and dug ‘em a ditch all

the way from Galveston up to Wayside Drive. If it weren’t for that bunch,

wouldn’t none of us be where we are today. (10)

The embedded ethnic slur aside, I much prefer Grandpa Willoughby’s version. While the first

passage displays the gifts of a talented wordsmith, and while both passages render the same set

of events and are much more enjoyable and readable than most journalism and pretty much all

academic writing, the second passage is shorter, more pithy, colorful, rhythmic, melodic, and,

well, just plain musical and poetic. Grandpa Willoughby also does a superior job of making the

point. He simply has a better conclusion, or as Texas singer/songwriter, writer, and ex-

gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman has said, “When someone takes something simple and

makes it complicated, we call him an intellectual. When someone takes something complicated

and makes it simple, we call him an artist” (Harris, 1). Grandpa Willoughby is skilled in the art

of Texas-speak.

Borrowing the techniques of ethnomusicologist Aaron A. Fox for capturing the nuances of

Texas-speak (italicization indicates a rise in pitch, capitalization indicates an increase in volume

and emphasis, and the transition between lines indicates pause), read the same passage as a

Texan might speak it and hear it:

After all them people died down there by the gulf

that crew of WILDcatters

jewed the government out of a SHIT-pot full of tax-payers’ MONEY

and dug ‘em a DITCH

all the way from GALveston up to Wayside Drive.

If it weren’t for that bunch,

wouldn’t NONE of us be where we are today.

Of course, Rodney Crowell wrote both versions, and, with the publication of his memoir, he has

proven that he is as skilled at prose as he is at writing song lyrics, but two points are significant

here. First, Crowell has a heck of an ear for dialogue, and, second, he can slip in and out of

Texas-speak, or perhaps more correctly working-class speak, with ease. Perhaps his ear for

Texas-speak has allowed him to express himself lyrically in a manner that is accessible to his

audience. No doubt, as we will explore in the section about his music, Rodney Crowell is

talented at expressing complex ideas in simple, musical language.

Dr. Aaron A. Fox suggests that the Texans he studied for over a decade in the community

of Lockhart have an ear for dialogue in their story-telling that is an innate part of the beer joint

culture in which they live. He observed that, often, the folks he studied broke into performing

dialogue, complete with separate voices for the characters, in the routine relating of a story. I had

recently noticed this same thing during an exercise in which I was required to write about my

writing. I, too, seem to have pretty good ear for dialogue. In trying to explain this, I noted that

my mother, a sixth generation Texan, simply cannot tell a story without resorting to dialogue of a

play-by-play sort complete with accents, dialect, and exaggerated variations in intonation,

volume, and pitch—all designed to relate the story while emphasizing and underscoring

meaning. I discussed my mother’s story-telling talents with a friend who pointed out to me that I,

too, speak in this manner when telling a story.

Most Texans I know do the same, in many cases utilizing sound effects. This manner of

story-telling is actually quite musical. This manner of story-telling is also essentially

performance art, and to its practitioners, it is as natural as breathing. We don’t think about it, and

we certainly don’t remark about it because, to us, it is unremarkable. I would suggest that this art

is not reserved for beer joints alone, although that is where Dr. Fox encountered it. Nor is Texas-

speak practiced exclusively among the working-class as we’ll discuss later in this section. Fox

may have made similar observations if he had attended just about any Texas family’s reunion or

backyard barbecue.

Dr. Fox also suggests that the story-telling and ear for dialogue that he encountered and

catalogued, with its punchy, spritely phrasing is one of the reasons that working-class cultures

respond to the stories, tropes and phrasing of classic country music. I would reverse that as well.

Perhaps Texas songwriters such as old-timer George Jones or newcomer Hayes Carll can write a

danged good song because song-writing is, for them, a natural milieu. Musical speech is what

they’ve heard and spoken all their lives.

The accents vary, of course, regionally across the state. I recently interviewed a Texas

comedian, and one of the first questions I asked him was, “What part of East Texas are you

from?” His lilting, honeyed accent is uncommon in other parts of the state, and he admitted that

he was, indeed, from East Texas. In the Midland/Odessa area, I have noticed an almost growling

sound on vowels that distinguishes the native accent from others. Facility with simile and

metaphor, however, seems to be widespread throughout the state.

I first thought about the Texas penchant for simile and metaphor while watching a

television interview with the actor Peter Coyote in the 1980s conducted when he was in Texas

for the first time working on a film. This interview from the pre-internet days has proven to be

impossible to find, but I can relate the gist of it here. Coyote was quite taken with the manner of

speech he encountered and called Texans natural poets. He described walking up to a couple of

fishermen on the banks of a Hill Country lake. When he asked them if the fish were biting, they

responded with something to the effect of: “Not now, son, but this morning they were bitin’ so

hard, we had to hide behind trees just to bait our hooks.”

Recently, I’ve begun to collect a few of these examples of expression. They are written

here utilizing, once again, Aaron A. Fox’s method for coding the emphasis.

A cowboy describing a fight he had seen:

That ol’ boy came at ‘im like a BALL-chewin’ PITBULL.

A construction supervisor talking about a particularly slow worker:

He can work all day alright, but he’s a TURtle. He’s a DAMNED TURtle!

A chef talking about politics:

I like the president alRIGHT I guess, but Obama don’t DANCE, and Obama

don’t rock ‘n’ ROLL.

That this last sentence mimics a line from a popular song says something in itself. The

musical and poetical patterns, born of the story-telling traditions that lasted over the course of

two centuries (and that began their slow fade only in the last few decades of the twentieth

century as the entire country’s manners of speech became more homogenized through radio,

television, and continued sweeps of migration) are deeply rooted in Texas speech and, one may

well presume, in Texas music. Like many practitioners of speech patterns anywhere else, Texans

are capable of slipping naturally in and out of dialect depending upon factors like socioeconomic

status or education or the company they are keeping at the moment (Look at the example of

Rodney Crowell’s writing above. He can definitely swing both ways). Some folks are facile, and

some are not.

A friend of mine who has lived and successfully worked in politics in Washington D.C.

for the last thirty years has never altered his Texas accent. He uses it to distinguish himself and

maintain a sense of authenticity. Another friend, a television producer in Austin, took elocution

lessons in order to shed her Panhandle twang, and she rarely dips back into it. However, most of

us fall naturally into our accents and patterns when around others who practice the genre. Thus,

the old speech patterns and means of expression linger as much in certain social situations as

they do in isolated geographic pockets, and as any sociolinguist can attest, being socially facile

language-wise is strongly tied to successful communication within the given groups one inhabits.

Then again, some Texans use Texas-speak outside of their normal social circles in order

to emphasize, occasionally through shock-value. One of my ex-husband’s college friends, an

East Coast-raised Dartmouth grad with a law degree from Harvard, had dinner with us while in

Texas working on a high-profile oil industry lawsuit. He was shocked by an associate from

Houston with a similar educational background to his own who had told him, “We got NOTHIN’

to worry about on THIS one. The governor and I are so close we piss through the same

STRAW.” My husband’s college buddy asked me, as a native Texan, what I thought of this

manner of speaking from the mouth of a well-educated attorney. I replied that I thought it saved

time. “How so?” he asked. I said, “He only used a handful of words to express it, and you’ll

never forget what he said.” That’s good story-telling. That’s effective communication that isn’t

taught at Harvard Law.

Politicians in Texas, as elsewhere, relate to the “folks” by generally speaking the way

they do. Former Governors Ann Richards and George W. Bush were both quite popular during

their terms in spite of their obvious dissimilar political viewpoints. But it should be noted that

both were able to relate to people across the state by emphasizing their Texan-ness through their

manners of speech. Former Texas Governor and recent presidential candidate Rick Perry

definitely speaks fluent Texan, exhibited for better or worse on the national stage, but his speech

helps him to maintain an air of authenticity back home. It is difficult to imagine that a suave-

sounding, accent-less governor will be elected in Texas any time soon.

Regarding Texas music, Texas-speak is significant for two very important reasons. First,

a songwriter steeped in the soup of Texas-speak may inherently possess a way with words, an

aptitude for emphasizing through tune, and an innate ability to craft the turns of phrase, simile,

and metaphor that naturally lend them-selves to musical and poetical expression. Second, a

substantial number of Texas consumers and audiences seem to expect a high level of art and craft

as well as authenticity in the music they pay to hear. For this particular segment of Texans, a

song like Nashville country singer Trace Adkins’ “Honky-Tonk Badonkadonk” won’t do. And a

country singer who speaks with an Australian accent may as well go home, even if he is singing

a Rodney Crowell song.

You know what the secret is to making it rock? Lyrics touch the mind. Melody

touches the heart. Rhythm touches the body, and harmony lifts the spirit. Most

people are lucky if they can do three of those things, but the ones who can do all

four – from the Beatles to the Allman Brothers – well those are the ones who

rock!

– Eddie Beethoven, Lubbock singer/songwriter

Music rots when it gets too far from the dance. Poetry atrophies when it gets too

far from music.

– Ezra Pound

The idea that music, lyrics, and performance are inextricable from one another in song-

craft is one that I first learned when listening to the blues. That idea, expressed far more

poetically by Eddie Beethoven, may be at the heart of how a good song affects us. We all hear

music in a way that engages more portions of our brains than just about any other activity

according to musicologist Daniel J. Levitin (14), and when good music is combined with

authentic poetry, the experience can be transcendent. Whether we’re speaking of a simple song

about life on the road (Hayes Carll’s “It’s Hard Out Here” comes to mind) or a complex song

freighted with social meaning (James McMurtry’s “We Can’t Make It Here Anymore” fits this

bill), songs can be literature. And, if, as American poet Ezra Pound said, “Literature is news that

stays news” (84), then certainly a number of the songs written in the Texas singer/songwriter

tradition of the last several decades qualify as literature. Many of these songs cover old stories

and subjects in new ways, some of them are wildly inventive and fresh, but all of them combine

music and lyrics, and often performance, to tell stories that are relatable and, at their very best,

evocative and enlightening.

Thus It Began

Undoubtedly, some of the singer-songwriters profiled for this project were attempting to

make marketable, commercial products, but they were not making commercial product alone.

The art of the song is important, usually foremost, in this particular vein of songwriting. As well,

delivering the song in a sincere, uncontrived manner is crucial to these writers as they perform

their work, and it is crucial to their audiences as well. These performers may want their

audiences to have a good time, and their performances, both live and recorded, can be

celebrations, but they are not hollowly so. For at this level of song-craft, music and words and

performance are indivisible, and the resulting work can be a perfect little gem of truth and art.

From the interactive Texas musical traditions of the corrida, the blues, and jazz, and the

interactive forums of the dance halls and honky-tonks to the continuous blending of musical

conventions and the customs of Texas-speak and story-telling, to the counterculture convergence

and the return of Texas’ most famous prodigal son, Willie Nelson, all roads lead to a new

awakening in Austin. Some of the songsters went to Nashville and stayed, now able to make

music more in keeping with the Texas ethos. Some remained in Austin. Some scattered to more

remote Texas towns to escape what became, for them, a too-chaotic setting as Austin figured out

how to cash in on the party and began to bill itself as “The Live Music Capitol of the World.”

Still, others continue to rotate in and out. But the die was cast. There was an established national

audience and market for a more artistic expression in song, and in Texas there was a

concentration of talent to meet the demand. The singer/songwriters profiled here represent a

remarkable diversity of influences and traditions and an adherence to a level of outstanding

quality that is rare. The sheer quantity of excellent singer/song-writers that Texas produces is

nothing short of astounding on the one hand while perfectly understandable on the other.

Part II: The Practitioners and Their Songs

Rather than asking Texas songwriters who their favorite songwriters are, it would

be far more interesting to ask them each to name fifteen books that meant

something to them.

– Butch Hancock, singer-songwriter from Lubbock

Scratch a given Texas singer-songwriter, and you’ll find a host of inspirations below the

surface—some personal, some musical, and, not entirely surprisingly given their love of the

English language, many literary. Most, it turns out, are readers. The names Frost, Melville, and

Poe come up, as do the names McMurtry, McCarthy, and even Philip K. Dick. They toss the

word poetry around quite a bit, and you’re likely to hear them refer to themselves as poets. In the

interviews that I’ve conducted and read, I don’t think I’ve ever heard any of the singer-

songwriters refer to themselves with the high-falutin’ term “artist.” And, as they reach back into

meta-memory to explain what they do and how they do it, you’re more likely to hear the name

Dylan (referring to both first name Bob or last name Thomas) than you are Hank Williams,

although Williams surfaces, too. Important as the generalities discussed heretofore are, only

more in-depth study of some of the individual works of the practitioners can illustrate fully that

their work does, indeed, form a people’s literature.

I have selected a representative field of the Texas singer/songwriters, fourteen in all, to consider

in-depth. This is not a list of those who I think are definitely the very best of the practitioners,

although some of the very best are included here. It is, instead, a representative cross sample of

the important time periods, styles, genres, ethnic inspirations, geographic areas, levels of success

and exposure, and genders (yes, some of them are women) that represent the depth and breadth

of the Texas singer-songwriter explosion of the last four decades.

Townes Van Zandt, the only one who is no longer living, has continued to grow in

popularity and critical acclaim since his death in 1997. Some, like Hayes Carll and Ryan

Bingham, are experiencing a wave of financial success and fame relatively early in their careers.

Many, like Carolyn Wonderland and Ruthie Foster have caused critical head-scratching and

incredulity, given their monstrous talents, at their lack of conventional success. Chris

McWilliams was chosen, for example, to represent the ultra-talented, but just-starting-out and, as

yet, unknown. He is also representative of the trend toward self-production and self-distribution.

My choices of singer-songwriters are, admittedly, subjective and arbitrary. I could have

chosen Tish Hinojosa to represent the Latin thread, but choosing Alejandro Escovedo instead

allowed exploration of his body of work in rock, punk, and cowpunk as well as his Latin-

flavored pieces. So, sincere apologies to Lucinda Williams, Marcia Ball, Lyle Lovett, Jimmie

Dale Gilmore, Willis Alan Ramsay, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Butch Hancock, Vince Bell, Delbert

McClinton, Jimmy LaFave, and a couple of hundred others and their fans, here, in the order in

which they are profiled (more or less chronologically in terms of when they began to write) is the

complete list I chose for the purposes of this project.

Townes Van Zandt Steve EarleCarolyn WonderlandHayes Carll

Guy ClarkJoe ElyRuthie Foster Chris McWilliams

Billy Joe Shaver Alejandro EscovedoJames McMurtry

Rodney CrowellDale WatsonRyan Bingham

For each singer/songwriter on the list, I’ve chosen a song or several songs representative of

various aspects of their work. Again, the chosen songs may or may not represent a particular

artist’s very best lyrical or musical work, but the selections do encompass the diverse musical

genres and subject matters, tropes and styles of the group overall.

Where Do They Come from Geographically?

Of this collection of singer/songwriters, two (Ryan Bingham and Dale Watson) were not actually

born in Texas, and not all of them still reside in Texas, but all have spent formative years within

the state and have drawn inspiration from the land, the life, the music, the people, and, in many

cases, from each other. All have found ready audiences in Texas, and some have found audiences

far beyond the state line and even outside of the U. S. Depending on where they were born and

raised, they may have had early access to enormously different musical traditions: East Texas

blues or Western swing, perhaps, or south Texas conjunto. Below is a map of their birthplaces.

Figure 5: Map of Musicians’ Birthplaces

Where Do They Come from Musically?

1. Townes Van Zandt

2. Guy Clark

3. Billy Joe Shaver

4. Rodney Crowell

5. Joe Ely

6. Alejandro Escovedo

7. Dale Watson

8. Carolyn Wonderland

9. James McMurtry

10. Ruthie Foster

11. Ryan Bingham

12. Hayes Carll

13. Chris McWilliams

14. Steve Earle

Gospel

Blues

Jazz

Latin/

Conjunto

Western

Swing

Honky

Tonk

Folk

Country

Rock

Punk

Surf

Van Zandt

●

Clark

●

Shaver

●

Crowell

●

Ely

●

Escovedo

●

Watson

●

Wonder-

land

●

McMurtry

●

Foster

●

Bingham

●

Carll

●

Mc-

Williams

●

Figure 6: Musical Influences Chart

The chart above is illustrative of the different genres in which this group of singer-

songwriters write and perform. It is, of necessity, a somewhat false construct. How can one say,

for example, that a given artist influenced by blues was not influenced by the gospel from which

blues sprang? Or that an artist influenced by Western swing was not influenced by jazz? As to

the assigned influences, I pulled the information from interviews with the artists, themselves,

where I could, and from what I hear as influences in their music when such interviews were not

available. For brevity’s sake, I restricted the number of influences charted to eleven different

genres. Cajun/Zydeco and classical music, for example, though relevant, don’t appear, but the

chart gives some broad indication of the depth and breadth of musical conventions that the Texas

singer/songwriters of the last four decades have utilized.

What Are They Writing and Singing About?

You can leave Brownsville, but you’ll never get the music of Matamoros out of

your soul. --Kris Kristofferson, Texas singer-songwriter

The Texas heart is as vast as the Texas sky, and from the plains and hills and

rivers and mountains, Music is how we get there.

--Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Texas singer-songwriter

There’s some sort of story-telling tradition in Texas, I think, always has been,

coupled with music, and probably sort of an attitude that you can do anything that

you want to do . . . There aren’t any rules.

– Guy Clark, Texas singer-songwriter

As with the chart on musical influences, the chart representing themes and tropes utilized by the

chosen artists is, of necessity, an oversimplification. The general themes, as with most poetic or

literary works, are not earth-shatteringly new. These talented songwriters, however, employ fresh

approaches of expression within the conventions they utilize. Several of these categories—

triumph songs, road songs, songs about the land—are worth noting for their peculiar Texas

twists.

Triumph/

Redemption

Love

Heartbreak/

Loneliness

The

Road/

The Biz

Dissent/

Social

Com-

mentary

Unworthi

-ness

The

Land

Portraits/

Stories/

Ballads

Van

Zandt

If I

Needed

You

Rake

Marie

Pancho and

Lefty

Clark

L. A.

Freeway

Anyhow

I Love

You

Dublin Blues

Maybe I Can

Paint Over

That

Desperadoes

Waiting for

a Train

Shaver

I’m Gonna Live

Forever

Hearts

A-

Bustin’

I Want Some

Georgia

on a Fast

Train

Crowell

Beautiful

Despair

Fate’s

Right Hand

Ely

Honky

Tonk

Mas-

querade

All That

You Need

Me and

Billy the

Kid

Escovedo

The

Ladder

Ballad of the

Sun and the

Moon

Chelsea

Hotel ‘78

Watson

You Don’t Care

Nashville

Rash

Wonder-

land

Feed Me to the

Lions

Annie’s

Scarlet

Letter

McMurtr

Choctaw

Bingo

We Can’t

Make it

Here

Anymore

Levelland

Ruby and

Carlos

Foster

Prayin’

for Rain

Bingham

Yester-

day’s

Blues

The

Weary

Kind

Depression

Carll

She Left Me for

Jesus

The Letter

KMAG

YOYO

Willing to

Love Again

Mc-

Williams

All Alone One

and All

Meth-

Makin’

Mama

Figure 7: Subject Matter Chart

Triumph and redemption are natural subject matters for a state full of people whose

culture is built around second chances. The volatile but constant booms in land, oil, gas, fishing,

farming, ranching, mining, and tech have generated back to back waves of emigration to and

across Texas for the last two hundred years. In spite of evidence to the contrary, there is a sense

among many Texans of all ethnicities and social levels that one can risk and rise and lose and

risk again and still succeed. No matter how badly you wipe out, you can jump back in the saddle

and ride off to victory again. It’s only natural that a ragtag bunch of try-try-againers and their

second and third generation Texan progeny are possessed of a certain gratuitous optimism.

According to his letters, when Davy Crockett quit the Tennessee legislature in disgust over

politics, he declared to his colleagues, “You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas!” Although

the decision didn’t work out so well for Crockett, who died at the Battle of the Alamo, the spirit

remains. It’s the same spirit that inspired songwriter Billy Joe Shaver to write that while he may

be “an old lump of coal, … I’m gonna be a diamond someday.”

The motherlode of road songs, which includes songs about the business of making music,

runs deep and strong through the Texas singer-songwriter milieu. There are more miles of roads

in Texas than any other state and more gigs out on the road, too. Long distances between

roadhouses, dance halls, and honky tonks are common, and the particular kinds of music that the

Texas singer-songwriters create lends itself to more touring time than studio time. The road and

the darker sides of the business of making music unintended for the masses is seldom far from

the minds of these troubadours. As we see in songs like Ryan Bingham’s haunting ballad “The

Weary Kind” or Hayes Carll’s poignant “The Letter,” lamenting a life spent on the road, and thus

the near impossibility of maintaining domestic relationships, is a common theme. So, too, is

disdain for the business of cashing in. The independent-minded singer-songwriter naturally rails

against the fetters of packaging a look and sound to the detriment of artistry, and such is the

thesis, as we’ll see, of Ruthie Foster’s “Prayin’ for Rain.”

The vast and varied landscape that is Texas leaves its mark on the music as well,

particularly in the works of the songwriters exposed to the deserts of far west Texas or the high

plains of the Panhandle. As Panhandle poet Joe Ely says, “anybody that ever came from there knows

that feeling: that big ol' sky and that kind of lunatic desolation; what the wind does to you…”

Apparently, what it does is inspire strong emotions and profound art. Pound for pound, the Texas

Panhandle generates more high-caliber songsmiths than any other part of the state. Perhaps it’s

the music of the wind, or perhaps as Ely says, “…there was so much emptiness out there to fill

up that you had to reach out extra far to find the source where things came from.” Similarly, the

dryland farms of North Texas and their dependence on the erratic whims of nature are often

woven into James McMurtry’s ballads, and the searing highways of West Texas deserts are

burned into the lyrics of one-time hitchhiker and rodeo hand Ryan Bingham’s road songs. The

land, after all, has its say.

The songs within the Dissent/Social Commentary column have something significant to

reveal about the songwriters as artists. Some of these songwriters work solidly within or on the

edges of traditional country music—a genre that typically eschews overtly political themes

(Loretta Lynn’s ground-breaking 1970s songs about “women’s lib” and the pill notwithstanding).

I bring attention to these specific artists and their songs for two important reasons. First, I think it

is important to note that such commentary can have the effect of making the industry

establishment squeamish and can crush the singer-songwriter’s ability to land a deal, unless, of

course, the artist has already established himself or herself as a proven money-maker. That a

songwriter is willing to take on such subject matter is courageous. Second, willingness to

comment on America’s short-comings is not unpatriotic although it has often been seen that way

by record company execs, Top 40 radio stations, and Top 40 audiences. Yet, songwriters like

Carolyn Wonderland, Steve Earle, and James McMurtry deliberately refuse to pander—refuse to

manufacture unquestioning, flag-salutin’ music as commodity or spectacle. Instead, they offer

thoughtful commentary on what they see around them, whether it sells or not. Songwriters like

these while often political, are not merely so. Like Sandburg or Steinbeck, Guthrie or Seeger,

they sometimes question America—in the best tradition of American literature.

The Texas Trinity: Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, and Billy Joe Shaver

The three were friends, cohorts, and carousing buddies who helped each other out during the

hardest times in the early years. They managed to eke out a living in the same venues around

Austin and Houston where they honed their stagecraft. They were thoroughly schooled in the

Texas-speak that infuses their songs with poetry. They were influenced by the distinct but

overlapping genres at the heart of Texas music. But they don’t sound like each other. A Townes

Van Zandt song doesn’t sound like a Guy Clark song. A Townes or Guy song sounds nothing

like a Billy Joe song. Each of these poets is an original, but they belong together in an

exploration of the movement as a whole.

What Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, and Billy Joe Shaver represent is the next wave and song-

writing ethos to emerge from what Willie, Waylon, Jerry Jeff and others had wrought only a few

years before. In the early 1970s, as has been discussed, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and

Jerry Jeff Walker had bucked the Nashville music-making factory and proved that they could

write, produce, and perform non-formulaic songs, record them their way, and still make big

money. Van Zandt, Clark, and Shaver espoused creating great songs whether you made money

or not. In turn, they inspired other Texas songwriters like Lucinda Williams, Lyle Lovett, Nancy

Griffith, and Steve Earle, not only with their craft but also with their philosophy of creating the

best song possible with little regard for marketing or spectacle.

Van Zandt, Clark, and Shaver were often in Austin at the time of the early 1970s explosion, but

they were not necessarily of that scene, especially as it has been described in the numerous

interpretations and misinterpretations of what happened there—particularly the “cosmic

cowboy” aspects. They were neither “cosmic cowboys” nor “redneck rockers,” but all three were

extraordinarily gifted wordsmiths. None of the three experienced the great fame or financial

success of a Nashville superstar or even a Texas superstar, but they have been consistently and

almost universally critically acclaimed across the years, and rightfully so. Their songs are for the

ages.

All three tried their hands in Nashville and found the experience frustrating and sometimes

infuriating. Only Guy Clark remained there for long (he still lives there), having snagged an

RCA songwriting contract early. After some lean years, he eventually garnered respect for his

unusual songs while still maintaining his songwriting integrity. It helped that Jerry Jeff Walker

had already scored a minor hit with Clark’s song “L.A. Freeway.” Van Zandt and Shaver, on the

other hand, continued to scramble for a while longer before receiving their breaks, each in his

unique and befitting way as we’ll see. Van Zandt and Clark were also accomplished guitarists,

both of them highly influenced by their time in Houston with Texas blues guitar legends

Lightnin’ Hopkins and Mance Lipscomb. Billy Joe Shaver, who had lost three fingers in a

sawmill accident in his youth, was unable to rely on guitar prowess but ultimately found a guitar

muse in his son, Eddy Shaver, many years later.

Their backgrounds, though thoroughly Texan, are dramatically different. There’s really no such

thing as an authentic blue-blooded family from Texas, but if there were, it might be the Van

Zandts. Townes Van Zandt was the son of a wealthy and influential founding family of Texas

and grew up in Ft. Worth. He was expected to become a lawyer or senator. Until he reached the

third grade, Clark was raised mostly by his grandmother who ran a boarding house cum hotel in

the oil patch town of Monahans in West Texas. His was a marginally middle class upbringing

characterized by exposure to the colorful wildcatters who populated the town and the hotel. His

mother worked away from home, and his father was away in the army. Shaver, too, was raised

by his grandmother. He grew up in poverty among the fertile cotton farms of Corsicana seventy

miles southeast of Dallas and sometimes went barefoot and hungry. His father had beaten and

abandoned his mother before he was born, and his mother abandoned Shaver and his sister

shortly thereafter.

I’ve grouped them here not only because their songs have continued to influence subsequent

generations of songwriters over the last forty years, but because they epitomize the the spirit of

the the Texas singer-songwriter-as-poet tradition they helped, perhaps unknowingly, launch. To

each of them, the song was the thing, and although all three eventually made a living from their

songwriting, it was hardly the primary goal. To them, songwriting was a calling rather than an

enterprise. Van Zandt, Clark, and Shaver are regarded as the Texas Trinity, the progenitors of the

most important legacy of the era: the Texas singer-songwriter as people’s poet and the formation

of a literature through song.

The Dark Poet: Townes Van Zandt

Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world and I'll stand on Bob

Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.

– Steve Earle, Grammy-winning Texas singer/songwriter

(Hardy 3)

I grew up with crazy drunk people who were poets, but he [Townes] was plugged

into a different light socket.

– Rodney Crowell, Grammy-winning Texas

singer/songwriter (Atkinson 36)

There’s only two kinds of music: the blues and zippety-doo-dah.

-- Townes Van Zandt

Townes preferred the blues. “Troubled” is the word most often applied to him by those who

knew him, but they also describe him as witty, charming, funny, fun, and intelligent. Many, if

not most, of his songs, however, tend toward dark themes. His biographer, Robert Earl Hardy,

says of him, “For thirty years, he wrote beautiful, deeply inspired, brilliantly integrated lyrical

and musical evocations of his inner life. He gave sometimes magical performances in his

engaging, insouciant Texas folk-blues style for what must be described as a cult audience, even

though a couple of his songs reached the commercial heights” (2).

Figure 8: Van Zandt with friend and neighbor, blacksmith

Seymour Washington, Clarksville, Texas, 1975

Although I never saw Townes Van Zandt perform, I am a member of the cult who considers him

to be one of the greatest songwriters that Texas and America have ever produced. His is not

necessarily the music one listens to with friends. His is the music of moonlit solitude. Even for a

devout fan like me, a little Van Zandt goes a long way, partly because his songs can be so very

sad, and partly because they inspire almost too much thought and reflection. This stuff definitely

ain’t zippety-doo-dah.

Van Zandt’s uncompromising attitude toward his music and his struggles with alcohol, heroin,

and manic depressive illness added up to years of couch-surfing, playing dives, three difficult

marriages, and the general mismanagement of his career. When Townes died on New Year’s

Day of 1997, he left behind a legacy of truly great music that serves as a poetic touchstone for

the singer-songwriters who continue to be inspired by his work.

When I ask other fans what their favorite Townes Van Zandt song is, their answers run the entire

range of his opus. I seldom hear the same song mentioned more than once or twice. Such varied

responses are a measure not only of how deep the catalogue runs, but also of how profoundly

personally people respond to a Townes song. Selecting only five songs to represent his work

wasn’t easy. How does one leave out “Mr. Gold and Mr. Mudd,” the story of a card game

brilliantly told from the perspective of the cards? How does one bypass lines like, “legs to walk

and thoughts to fly/eyes to laugh and lips to cry/a restless tongue to classify/all born to grow and

grown to die” from “Rex’s Blues?” I forced myself stop thinking about it and settled on the five

songs here that display a range of subject matters, styles, and emotions. Anyone’s guess is as

good as mine as to what constitutes Van Zandt’s finest work. Personal response is inextricable

from art, and these songs are art.

Robert Earl Hardy says of the song, “Marie,” that it is “as harrowingly good as anything

Van Zandt ever wrote” (213). It is the story, sung in first person and minor key, of a homeless

man and his pregnant woman as their already dire lives further unravel. In its emotional rawness,

though not in structure, “Marie” is evocative of some of the best and most wrenching blues songs

of the 1930s, probably traceable to Van Zandt’s tutelage with Lightnin’ and Mance. What also

makes this song so provocative and effective is that, with each verse, the listener feels hope

dissipating just a beat ahead of the protagonist as he tries desperately to hold his life together and

protect Marie. Considered this way, such songs are akin to the dramatic monologue. We see

through the narrator’s brief, hopeful moments. We anticipate the failure just ahead of the

narrator, and that may be even more painful to us than his rapidly-ensuing despair.

Marie

– from the album No Deeper Blue (1995)

I stood in line and left my name

Took about six hours or so

Well, the man just grinned like it was all a game

Said they'd let me know

I put in my time till the Pocono line

Shut down two years ago

I was staying at the mission till I met Marie

Now I can't stay there no more

Fella 'cross town said he's lookin' for a man

To move some old cars around

Maybe me and Marie could find a burned-out

Van and do a little settlin' down

Aw, but I'm just dreamin', I ain't got no ride

And the junkyard's a pretty good ways

That job's about a half week old besides

It'd be gone now anyway

Unemployment said I got no more checks

And they showed me to the hall

My brother died in Georgia some time ago

I got no one left to call

Summer wasn't bad below the bridge

A little short on food that's all

Now I gotta get Marie some kind of coat

We're headed down into fall

I used to play the mouth harp pretty good

Hustled up a little dough

But I got drunk and I woke up rolled

A couple of months ago

They got my harp and they got my dollar

Them low life so and so's

Harps cost money and I ain't got it

It's my own fault I suppose

The Pocono's down but the Chesapeake's runnin'

Two freights every day

If it was just me I'd be headed south

But Marie can't catch no train

She's got some pain and she thinks it's a baby,

Says we gotta wait and see

In my heart I know it's a little boy

Hope he don't end up like me

Well, the man's still grinnin' says he lost my file

I gotta stand in line again

I want to kill him but I just say no

I had enough of that line my friend

I head back to the bridge, it's getting kinda cold

I'm feelin' too low down to lie

I guess I'll just tell Marie the truth

Hope she don't break down and cry

Marie she didn't wake up this morning

She didn't even try

She just rolled over and went to heaven

My little boy safe inside

I laid them in the sun where somebody'd find them

Caught a Chesapeake on the fly

Marie will know I'm headed down south

So's to meet me by and by

Marie will know I’m headed down south

So’s to meet me by and by

Considered by many to be Townes’ most beautiful love song, “If I Needed You” was a

number three hit for Emmy Lou Harris and Don Wilson as a duet in 1990. The lyrics and the

melody are simple, and the key is, unusual for a Townes song, major. It is a plainspoken

sentiment stripped bare of Townes’ characteristic mystery, and it is lovely both lyrically and

melodically. Townes abandons rhyme briefly in the second verse, and the effect of the surprise is

an underscoring of the line “that would break my heart in two.” The Loop and Lil, referenced in

the third verse, were, by the way, Van Zandt’s parakeets. Both Doc Watson and Don Wilson

substantially altered the lines when they covered this song, purportedly feeling that the reference

would be confusing to the listener. I agree with Hardy, who finds the song more effective with

the reference included. Even though the listener has no way of knowing that Loop and Lil are pet

birds, in this instance they don’t need to know the writer’s personal references. Hardy feels that

the listener is “brought closer to the song through a kind of conspiratorial personal inclusion”

(166). Van Zandt’s choice to include the parakeets feels poetic and quirky rather than

commercial.

Van Zandt claimed that “If I Needed You” came to him, melody and lyrics, in a dream

that was so vivid, he recalled it complete when he awoke. He happened to be staying with Guy

Clark and his wife Susanna Clark at the time and performed it for them in the kitchen that

morning. Others claim that some parts of the song, at least, were composed long before. Van

Zandt may have been trying to burnish his own reputation as a songwriter from whom inspiration

sprang whole as opposed to his friend Clark’s craftsman-like discipline. In the end, it doesn’t

matter. The point is that Van Zandt was, as Rodney Crowell suggests, “plugged into a different

light socket.” His songs do seem to have come easily to him, and this one feels characteristically

poignant yet effortless.

If I Needed You

– from the album Live at the Old Quarter (1977)

If I needed you,

Would you come to me?

Would you come to me

And ease my pain?

If you needed me,

I would come to you.

I’d swim the seas

For to ease your pain

In the night forlorn

The morning’s born

And the morning shines

With the lights of love.

You will miss sunrise

If you close your eyes

That would break

My heart in two

The lady’s with me now

Since I showed her how

To lay her lily

Hand in mine

Loop and Lil agree

She’s a sight to see

And a treasure for

The poor to find

Van Zandt’s best-known and best-selling song is “Pancho and Lefty,” released on his album, The

Late, Great Townes Van Zandt, in 1972 and later recorded as a duet by Merle Haggard and

Willie Nelson in 1983. As an aside, the macabre title Van Zandt chose for the album that

precedes his death by twenty-five years was a bit of a joke but probably also stems from his

characteristic fatalism. Willie and Merle had a number one hit with “Pancho and Lefty.” Willie’s

daughter Lana had played the song for him, suggesting that he record it, and “Willie liked it so

much that he immediately learned it, then, late that night, woke Haggard up to come to the studio

to record the song. The recording was done on the first take” (Hardy 190-191). Exactly when and

how Townes wrote the song is up for debate, Townes having related several versions of its

inception at various times over the years. He was insistent, however, that “Pancho and Lefty”

was not about Pancho Villa, even though its setting is Mexico. Robert Earl Hardy speculates that

the presence of the mother in the song “reinforces the closeness that Townes felt toward his

mother,” and insists that the narrator is Townes, himself, speaking to himself (125). The lines in

the first verse would seem to bear this out, reflecting the complicated nature of the triangle

between Townes, his mother, and his brother. The song, with its vaguely Spanish melodic

elements, is a poetic fantasy tale of two characters on the frontier, perhaps alluding to the good

and bad character within Townes, himself—his two sides—the one that survives and the one that

perishes.

Pancho and Lefty

– from the album Legend (1972)

Living on the road my friend

Is gonna keep you free and clean.

Now you wear your skin like iron.

Your breath’s as hard as kerosene.

You weren’t your mama’s only boy

But her favorite one it seems.

She began to cry when you said goodbye

And sank into your dreams.

Pancho was a bandit boy

His horse as fast as polished steel.

He wore his gun outside his pants

For all the honest world to feel

Pancho met his match you know

On the deserts down in Mexico

Nobody heard his dying words

Ah, but that’s the way it goes.

All the Federales say

They could have had him any day

They only let him slip away

Out of kindness, I suppose.

Lefty, he can’t sing the blues

All night long like he used to.

The dust that Pancho bit down south

Ended up in Lefty’s mouth.

The day they laid poor Pancho low

Lefty split for Ohio

Where he got the bread to go,

There ain’t nobody knows.

The poets tell how Pancho fell,

And Lefty’s living in cheap hotels.

The desert’s quiet, Cleveland’s cold,

And so the story ends we’re told.

Pancho needs your prayers, it’s true,

But save a few for Lefty, too.

He only did what he had to do,

And now he’s growing old.

A few gray Federales say

They could have had him any day

They only let him slip away

Out of kindness, I suppose.

Duality is a common theme in Townes Van Zandt songs, not surprising for a man as torn as he

was between light and dark, survival and annihilation, and family and the road. In what is my

personal favorite of all Townes’ songs, “Rake,” that duality is expressed utilizing the symbols of

sun and moon, and day and night. Like many who suffer from the demons of addiction and

manic depression, the Rake thrives by night and withers in the light. The first two verses seem to

celebrate the condition, but the twist in the third verse lets us know how judged the Rake feels

and how certain he is that the situation cannot endure. In the final verse, the duality twists back

upon itself, and the night and day meld. The effect is unearthly and disturbing, and the final two

lines are haunting. “A more vivid rendering of the manic depressive state is hard to come by in

modern verse,” says Hardy (104).

Rake

– from the album Delta Momma Blues

I used to wake and run with the moon

I lived like a rake and a young man

I covered my lovers with flowers and wounds

My laughter the devil would frighten

The sun she would come and beat me back down

But every cruel day had its nightfall

I’d welcome the stars with wine and guitars

Full of fire and forgetful.

My body was sharp, the dark air clean

And outrage my joyful companion

Whisperin’ women how sweet they did seem

Kneelin’ for me to command them

And time was like water, but I was the sea

I’d have never noticed it passin’

Except for the turning of night into day

And the turnin’ of day into cursin’

You look at me now, and don’t think I don’t know

What all your eyes are a sayin’

Does he want us to believe these ravings and lies

Are just tricks that his brain’s been a playin’?

A lover of women he can’t hardly stand

He trembles he’s bent and he’s broken

I’ve fallen it’s true but I say unto you

Hold your tongues until after I’ve spoken

I was takin' my pride in the pleasures I'd known

I laughed and thought I'd be forgiven

But my laughter turned 'round eyes blazing and

Said my friend, we're holdin' a wedding

I buried my face but it spoke once again

The night to the day we're a bindin'

And now the dark air is like fire on my skin

And even the moonlight is blinding.

Townes Van Zandt’s controversial life, his death at the age of fifty-two, his music catalogue, the

questionable post mortem releases of his material, and who among his several families owns the

rights to his oeuvre are still being debated. The critical estimation of his work as a poet and

songwriter, however, grows with each passing year as his songs continue to be covered and

reinterpreted by the artists they inspire and new critics and audiences discover his work.

A couple of years ago, as I sat talking with friends at a beat-up picnic table outside a West Texas

roadhouse, I heard some familiar chords being played by the band onstage inside. The tempo was

entirely too rapid for the song to be what I thought it was: Townes Van Zandt’s “Lungs.” The

instrumentation was different, too—spangling and blue-grassy. As the music usurped my

attention, my companions’ voices faded into the evening. I left the table to lean in the doorway

and listen. The song was, indeed, “Lungs.” The youthful members of the band had pumped up

the tempo and the energy and had added the mandolin and banjo that made the song sound as if it

had sprung straight from a Kentucky coal-mining camp. It worked. Another generation inspired.

An old song imbued with new life.

Lungs

-- from the album Townes Van Zandt (1970)

Won’t you give your lungs to me?

Mine are collapsing

Plant my feet and bitterly

Breathe up the time that’s passing.

Breath I’ll take and breath I’ll give

Pray the days not poison

Stand among the ones that live

In lonely indecision.

Fingers walk the darkness down

Mind is on the midnight

Gather up the gold you’ve found

You fool it’s only moonlight.

And if you stop to take it home

Your hands will turn to butter

Better leave this dream alone

Try to find another.

Salvation sat and crossed herself

And called the devil partner

Wisdom burned upon a shelf

Who’ll kill the raging cancer?

Seal the river at its mouth

Take the water prisoner

Fill the sky with screams and cries

Bathe in fiery answers.

Jesus was an only son

And love his only concept

But strangers cry in foreign tongues

And dirty up the doorstep

And I for one, and you for two

Ain’t got the time for outside

Keep your injured looks to you

We’ll tell the world that we tried.

Songwriter Pablo Menudo says, “It ain’t good for you to listen to more than two or three Townes

songs at a time.” With the exception of a few songs like “If You Needed Me,” Pablo’s probably

right, but there are times, when I’m in a certain lonesome mood, that no other songwriter will do.

I wrote that my favorite Van Zandt song was “Rake,” and that was true when I wrote it, but

sometimes my favorite is “Lungs” or “Rex’s Blues” or “Nothin’” or “Snowin’ on Raton.” My

actual favorite, as it probably is for many, is the last Townes song I listened to, the one that will

be playing in my mind for quite a while.

The Master Craftsman: Guy Clark

I don’t think I discovered Guy Clark. I think I knew his music the same way I knew Willie

Nelson’s music and the same way I knew English.

--Jack Ingram, Texas singer-songwriter

I was transported to warmer climes like Monahans, Texas in 1947, a place and time I never

knew, but now thought I could see vividly, or a hot, gritty Dallas sidewalk in the company of a

wine-soaked elevator man. Guy’s voice will take you somewhere else every time you hear it.

--James McMurtry, Texas singer-songwriter

No bullshit means no bullshit. Know what I mean?

-- Guy Clark, on how to write a good song

Figure 9: Guy and Susanna Clark, 1975

Guy Clark may have grown tired over the years of being called a craftsman, but he is

that—a meticulous tunesmith and wordsmith as well as a luthier who builds and repairs guitars

in his basement studio. His well-known method of writing his songs on graph paper in pencil,

using each square for a letter or space, seems evidence enough that he is an exacting, tactile man

of precision. Guy believes that “A good song’s lyrics work on paper, independent of the music

and melody that will eventually fuse them into song” (Koster 213). Of his music, Clark says, “To

me, the melody is just a vehicle to get the words out” (Spong Pitch). Maybe so, but Clark is one

of the most respected songwriters in the business, penning hits for the likes of Rodney Crowell,

Emmy Lou Harris, Lyle Lovett, and Ricky Skaggs. Even the Nashville machine loves him

because he offers their superstars a chance to stretch themselves by including a Guy Clark gem

or two on their otherwise committee-created albums. Country superstar Kenny Chesney’s 2012

hit cover of Guy Clark’s “Hemingway’s Whiskey” is a case in point. According to Clark, he

writes a few, sells a few, and then, when he has enough songs stacked up to make an album, he

hits the studio. Thus, some of his songs are already hits before he ever records them in his own

voice.

Since his good friend Townes Van Zandt’s death in 1997, Clark has become the elder

statesman of the Texas singer-songwriter tradition, esteemed as no other by those he continues to

inspire. Lyle Lovett says of him that "Guy's first record helped tell me what a song should, what

a song could be." As an example, Lovett cites Clark’s “Texas 1947,” a song about a small town’s

citizens gathering at the tracks to watch the fastest train ever zoom by. “Immediately,” says

Lovett, “you're in the middle of a scene with a 6-year-old boy in West Texas, and you know

something is happening…and you're waiting for that next line" (All Things).

Clark is chiefly a literary nonfiction writer in song. He excels at the finely-burnished

memoir—an experience from his life depicted in precisely enough detail to thrust listeners smack

into scene and just enough left out to let them fill what blanks they will. The memories can be

light and lively as in the case of two of his odes to food: “Texas Cookin’” with its punchy

rhythm and lyrics in pure Texas-speak (“It’ll stop yo’ belly and backbone bumpin’”) and “Home

Grown Tomatoes” with its spot-on tagline (“only two things that money can’t buy, and that’s

true love and home grown tomatoes”). The memories can also be poetic and piercing as in his

tribute to Susanna Clark, a songwriter and artist and his wife of forty years. Susanna died in

2012. His song “My Favorite Picture of You” is a posthumous tribute to her about a Polaroid of

her taken many years ago in a moment when she was angry with her husband. Clark and Van

Zandt were “obnoxiously drunk,” and Susanna got up, put her coat on and left. Outside the

house, a friend snapped her picture. In the photo she stands with her arms crossed, mouth grim,

glaring directly into the camera. Clark sees Susanna’s strong, defiant, self-reliant character in the

portrait. He sings, “…you were so angry/It’s hard to believe we were lovers at all/There’s a fire

in your eyes/You’ve got your heart on your sleeve/A curse on your lips but all I can see/Is

beautiful/My favorite picture of you/Is the one where you wings are showing” (My Favorite).

Figure 10: Album cover of

My Favorite Picture of You

I could name Guy Clarks’ song “L.A. Freeway” in three notes, maybe two. The iconic

opening guitar notes, the first one drawn out, the next four rapidly descending, presage a song

and sentiment that can choke up any fish-out-of-water Texan. It was written in the days when

Clark was just making up his mind that he definitely wanted to write songs for a living and that

L.A. was not the place to do it. A freshly-penned contract to write songs for Nashville’s Sunbury

Publishing allowed Guy and Susanna the opportunity to make a break from L.A., buy some land

and a home outside of Nashville, and receive a regular paycheck while he honed his craft and

figured out how he fit into the business (Sudbrink). “L.A. Freeway” is an exhilarating escape

song but not without a few notes of regret and anxiety. For listeners, it brings out all those

feelings that emerge with the need to get the hell outta Dodge. Skinny Dennis, but the way, was a

bass player. It didn’t take Dennis long to follow the Clarks to Nashville.

“L.A. Freeway”

-- from the album, Old # 1 (1975)

Pack up all your dishes.

Make note of all good wishes.

Say goodbye to the landlord for me.

That son of a bitch has always bored me.

Throw out them LA papers

And that moldy box of vanilla wafers.

Adios to all this concrete.

Gonna get me some dirt road back street

If I can just get off of this LA freeway

Without getting killed or caught

I'd be down that road in a cloud of smoke

For some land that I ain't bought bought bought

Here's to you old skinny Dennis

Only one I think I will miss

I can hear that old bass singing

Sweet and low like a gift you're bringing

Play it for me just one more time now

Got to give it all we can now

I believe everything your saying

Just keep on, keep on playing

If I can just get off of this LA freeway

Without getting killed or caught

I'd be down that road in a cloud of smoke

For some land that I ain't bought bought bought

And you put the pink card in the mailbox

Leave the key in the old front door lock

They will find it likely as not

I'm sure there's something we have forgot

Oh Susanna, don't you cry, babe

Love's a gift that's surely handmade

We've got something to believe in

Don't you think it's time we're leaving

If I can just get off of this LA freeway

Without getting killed or caught

I'd be down that road in a cloud of smoke

For some land that I ain't bought bought bought.

Pack up all your dishes.

Make note of all good wishes.

Say goodbye to the landlord for me.

That son of a bitch has always bored me.

In the early days, the kitchen table at the Clarks’ country house outside of Nashville

served as a salon space for some of the very best Texas songwriters-to-be. Townes Van Zandt

came for the wedding and then seems to have forgotten to leave for a year or so. Rodney Crowell

and a teen-aged Steve Earle were frequent guests. Clark says that he thought a great way to write

was to get together with some good songwriters so they could play their songs for each other,

and the scene functioned something like a workshop. In the documentary, Heartworn Highways,

there is footage of one of these gatherings on a cold Christmas Eve—the songwriters eating,

drinking, taking turns sharing their newest songs. Clark still enjoys working with other

songwriters and sometimes collaborates as he did in the heart-rending “Maybe I Can Paint Over

That,” co-written with Shawn Camp and Verlon Thompson. In this one, as in “My Favorite

Picture of You” and “L.A. Freeway,” he seems to be singing, once again, directly to Susanna.

Maybe I Can Paint Over That

-- from the album Somedays the Song Writes You (2009)

I've smeared my heart on my sleeve

I've tagged my name on the wall

It's prob'ly time for me to leave

Actin' big and talkin' small

I've tracked blood in on the floor

I put my first through the wall

I've dragged trouble through the door

And I've spilled wine on it all

Maybe I can paint over that

It'll prob'ly bleed through

Maybe I can paint over that

But I can't hide it from you

I've got some ink beneath my skin

A good idea at the time

I won't be doing that again

Not with any arm of mine

And I have stumbled in my time

I left my footprints down the road

And the part of me that shines

Ain't the part of me that's showed

Maybe I can paint over that

It'll prob'ly bleed through

Maybe I can paint over that

But I can't hide it from you

I just like the song “Dublin Blues.” Perhaps it’s the imagery of sitting in the familiar old

Texas Chili Parlor in Austin, an image evoking the sounds, smells, and sights that can certainly

beckon an ex-pat Texan home. As the song skips around Europe, from Dublin to Rome to

Florence to Paris, and then back to Nashville, we hear a tale of lost love told by a road-weary

narrator. The narrator is, as he says, “just a poor boy.” Yet the work he has chosen, and which he

dedicates himself to, has sent him travelling. The upside is that he has been able to see wondrous

things. The presumed downside is that love is difficult under such circumstances, and, if he must

be sitting in a bar at the moment, he’d rather be back in Texas. Note how the numerous locations

cited play off one another to evoke the magic and splendor as well as the gritty, wearying side of

a poet-musician’s life.

Dublin Blues

- from the album Dublin Blues (1995)

I wish I was in Austin

In the Chili Parlour Bar

Drinkin' Mad Dog Margaritas

And not carin' where you are

But here I sit in Dublin

Just rollin' cigarettes

Holdin' back and chokin' back

The shakes with every breath

Forgive me all my anger

Forgive me all my faults

There's no need to forgive me

For thinkin' what I thought

I loved you from the git go

I'll love you till I die

I loved you on the Spanish Steps

The day you said goodbye Lyrics from:

http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/g/guy_clark/dublin_blues.html ]

I am just a poor boy

Work's my middle name

If money was a reason

I would not be the same

I'll stand up and be counted

I'll face up to the truth

I'll walk away from trouble

But I can't walk away from you

I have been to Fort Worth

I have been to Spain

I have been too proud

To come in out of the rain

I have seen the David

I've seen the Mona Lisa too

I have heard Doc Watson

Play Columbus Stockade Blues

Forgive me all my anger

Forgive me all my faults

There's no need to forgive me

For thinkin' what I thought

I loved you from the git go

I'll love you till I die

I loved you on the Spanish steps

The day you said goodbye

Guy Clark is not known for having the best voice in the business, but I’d rather hear him

sing “Anyhow, I Love You” than anyone else, because (and this is where I disagree with Guy

about extricating the poetry from the music and performance) he puts the passion and the just-

right vocal twists into this song, and nobody else seems to be able to do it quite like him. A case

in point: at the end of the line, sung to a skittish lover, “When you feel like runnin’ for the back

door,” Guy draws out the pause and then speaks rather than sings the word, “don’t,” in a

plaintive plea. That’s the kind of craftsmanship that constitutes the magic melding of

lyrics/music/performance and elevates the song to art.

Anyhow, I Love You

– from the album Old #1 (1975)

I wish I had a dime for every bad time

But the bad times always seem to keep the change

You been all alone so you know what I'm sayin'

So when all you can recall is the pain

Just you wait until tomorrow when you wake up with me

At your side and find I haven't lied about nothin'

I wouldn't trade a tree for the way I feel about you

In the mornin', anyhow I love you

Everyday it gets just a little bit better

And half the gettin' there is knowin' where I been before

I'm sure you understand 'cause I ain't your first man

So when you feel like runnin' for the back door...don't

Just you wait until tomorrow when you wake up with me

At your side and find I haven't lied about nothin'

I wouldn't trade a tree for the way I feel about you

In the mornin', anyhow I love you

While nothing beats listening to Clark sing this song himself, there is yet one other pretty

fantastic way to hear “Anyhow I Love You,” and that’s when a naked, golden-throated, guitar-

strumming cowboy croons it to you from the far end of your bed early in the morning. Trust me.

Guy Clark has said of his song, “Desperados Waiting for a Train,” that, “It’s just as true

as you could make it. It’s about a guy who was like my grandfather. And when I started writing

songs, that was one of the songs I knew I was gonna write at some point.” The guy was Jack

Prigg, a well driller who lived at Grandma Clark’s hotel back in Monahans. Grandma Clark was

a pretty interesting character herself, a one-armed former bootlegger, and Jack Prigg was her

boyfriend. The song captures the swelling childhood feeling of being in the presence of your

hero as well as the subsequent creeping sadness of sensing that your hero may be only human

after all, perfectly expressed in the description of “brown tobacco stains all down his chin” and

in the line, “why’s he all dressed up like them old men?”

Desperados Waitin’ for a Train

– from the album Old # 1 (1995)

I played the Red River Valley

He'd sit in the kitchen and cry

Run his fingers through seventy years of livin'

And wonder, "Lord, why has every well I've drilled gone dry?"

We were friends, me and this old man

We's like desperados waitin' for a train

Desperados waitin' for a train

He's a drifter, a driller of oil wells

He's an old school man of the world

He taught me how to drive his car when he was too drunk to

And he'd wink and give me money for the girls

And our lives was like, some old Western movie

Like desperados waitin' for a train

From the time that I could walk he'd take me with him

To a bar called the Green Frog Cafe

There was old men with beer guts and dominos

Lying 'bout their lives while they played

I was just a kid, they all called me "Sidekick"

Just like desperados waitin' for a train

Like desperados waitin' for a train

One day I looked up and he's pushin' eighty

He's got brown tobacco stains all down his chin

Well to me he was a hero of this country

So why's he all dressed up like them old men

Drinkin' beer and playin' Moon and Forty-two

Jus' like desperados waitin' for a train

Like a desperado waitin' for a train

The day 'fore he died I went to see him

I was grown and he was almost gone.

So we just closed our eyes and dreamed us up a kitchen

And sang one more verse to that old song

(spoken) Come on, Jack, that son-of-a-bitch is comin'

We're desperados waitin' for a train

We’s like desperados waitin' for a train

For the uninitiated, Moon and Forty-Two are domino games, and the mention of them lends an

authenticity to the song that, for me, calls up the clicking sound of them being shuffled on a bar

table and the low murmur of old men’s voices. It’s that just-right amount of detail that allows the

listener to be part of the experience without, as Clark says, “delineating every stitch in your

jeans” (All Things). There are obvious reasons why Bob Dylan claims Clark as one of his

favorite songwriters and why Dallas singer-songwriter Michelle Shocked refers to him as “God”

Clark. His advice to fledgling songwriters: “Write every day. Listen to and read good poetry.

Read Dylan Thomas poems. That’s what Townes and I used to do every time we would think we

were pretty smart. We would put on a tape of Dylan Thomas reading his own work and it was

like, ‘Oh Mercy!’” (Awaiting).

Like Jack Prigg, Clark is now pushing eighty, and although he has slowed down, he hasn’t

stopped writing. He plans to keep at it, or as he says, "I haven't written my last song, for sure.

Nor my best one" (All Things).

The Poet Who Lived It: Billy Joe Shaver

Some people write perfect songs, and Billy Joe Shaver’s one of ‘em. He writes

perfect songs.

– Robert Earl Keen, Texas singer/songwriter (Shaver A

Tribute)

Billy Joe Shaver is the greatest songwriter alive today.

--Willie Nelson

I’m listening to Billy Joe Shaver, and I’m reading James Joyce.

-- Bob Dylan, from his song “I Feel a Change

Comin’ On” (2009)

Simplicity don’t need to be greased.

– Billy Joe Shaver

Figure 11: Billy Joe Shaver

One of the first things to note about Billy Joe Shaver is how many singer/songwriters from Texas

and elsewhere cite him as one of their influences. The second thing to note about him is just how

many, from a variety of genres, have covered his songs—about 200 singers and bands in all.

From Willie and Waylon to the Allman Brothers and Bobby Bare to Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan

to Kris Kristofferson and Elvis Presley, a heck of a lot of songwriters and performers are fans of

the Corsicana-born folk poet.

Shaver, on the other hand, only records and performs his own material, and when he does it, you

know he lived it. Like Guy Clark, Shaver specializes in writing memoir in song. His sincerity of

delivery and the facts of his life speak for themselves, and as wrote in his autobiography Honky

Tonk Hero, “I’ve lost parts of three fingers, broke my back, suffered a heart attack and a

quadruple bypass, had a steel plate put in my neck and 136 stitches in my head, fought drugs and

booze, spent the money I had, and buried my wife, son, and mother in the span of one year.” But,

as he also says, “I’m not proud of my misfortune – I’m proud of my survival” (viii).

Since he wrote his book, Shaver has also been acquitted of an attempted murder charge

stemming from an incident at a bar near Waco where he shot a man (in self-defense after being

threatened with a knife and shot at three times, according to Shaver and other witnesses) in the

face. He even wrote a song, a duet with Willie Nelson, called “Wacko from Waco” about the

incident. Listen to the songs that come from Billy Joe Shaver’s experiences, and you know that

you’re hearing the unvarnished truth. Shaver’s first album, Old Five and Dimers Like Me, was

produced in 1973 on a shoestring by his friend and admirer, Kris Kistofferson, who also paid for

everything. Kristofferson’s own label, perhaps out of concern that the recording might compete

with Kristofferson’s work, bought the album from him and failed to promote it (Parker). Five

and Dimers mostly just sat there, beloved for many years by critics and a cult following of fans

and songwriters, but never selling many copies. What put Shaver on the map was, of course, the

release later that year of Waylon Jennings’ Honky Tonk Heroes. The story about how that album

came to be is the stuff of Lone Star legend.

Figure 12: Shaver (left) backstage with Jennings, 1973

According to Shaver (and Waylon Jennings never denied the story) Jennings had

promised him at Willie’s 1972 Fourth of July Picnic in Dripping Springs, Texas, that he would

record one of his songs. Shaver, hungry and desperate after the shenanigans with Five and

Dimers, took Jennings at his word, so when times got tough enough, he tracked Jennings down at

his studio and demanded to see the man. Jennings sent a lackey out to hand Shaver a folded up

hundred dollar bill and tell him to take a hike. Shaver was “pissed,” and thought, “He’s from

Texas, I’m from Texas. He’s supposed to do what he says.” So Shaver sent the lackey back to

Jennings with the still-folded bill and the counter-message to “shove it up his ass and twist it”

(Parker). Jennings came down with two biker bodyguards to talk to Shaver who explained his

desperate situation, “It’s do or die for me.” When Shaver threatened to kick Jennings’ “ass right

here and now” in front of the bikers, he had Jennings’ attention. “Hoss, you could’ve gotten

yourself killed.” Whether Jennings was more impressed with Shaver’s chutzpah or his

desperation, we’ll never know, but he made a deal with Shaver. He told Shaver to sit down and

play one of his songs. If Jennings liked it, he could play another. Shaver started with “Ain’t No

Gods in Mexico,” and Jennings was apparently pleased. He nodded, then Shaver played another

and another. About five songs in, Jennings “knew what he had to do”—record a whole album of

Shaver’s songs (Parker). They were that good, and here was Jennings’ chance to break away

from the Nashville formula. Honky Tonk Heroes was born, and Billy Joe Shaver was on his way

to becoming a legend.

The first time I heard Billy Joe Shaver’s “I Want Some More,” I was driving down a West Texas

highway alone at night. I was stunned. I pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the car to

listen to it several more times. Songs about heartbreak, the woman who left, and the wreckage

left behind are straight out of the country music playbook, but this one is different. In illusorily

simple language, this song just rips the heart and makes the listener believe—it is the

embodiment of that authenticity that is essential in good lyrics and such a critical element in the

Texas singer/songwriter tradition. The arrangement is stark. It begins with a quiet bass line, a

reverberating guitar line, bass drum thudding on first and third beats topped by high hat counter-

beats, and a subtle organ counter-melody weeping in the background. Billy Joe may not have the

best voice in Texas music, but he has perhaps the most evocative. As he launches into the first

line, “Every day I face the lonesome morning,” you can hear the cry in his throat as his voice

never quite breaks. The hovering guitar and organ mimic that cry. After the first chorus, a

mournful guitar solo bursts forth, played by Billy Joe’s son, Eddy Shaver. As the second chorus

fades, so does Billy Joe’s voice plaintively singing that he wants some more. The fadeout

continues with the bass, then the organ, then the guitar, and we’re left with only the punctuating

percussion as it slowly lingers, wrenching the last emotional drop from the song. The marriage of

restraint in the general instrumentation and the raw emotion in the lyrics, vocal line, and guitar

solo is powerful. This is not “cryin’ in your beer” music. It’s cryin’ all alone in the dark at two

a.m. music. The recording of “I Want Some More” from Billy Joe Shaver’s album Tramp on

Your Street is a rare accomplishment—a damned near perfect song, perfectly done.

I Want Some More

– from the album Tramp on Your Street (1993)

Every day I face the lonesome morning

I try and get my feet back on the floor

I can’t recall the reason why you left me

But I still hear the slamming of the door

Like a child whose mama left him cryin’

Like a miser who cannot hold his gold

I ain’t been worth a nickel since you left me

I can’t get enough of you, I want some more

I want some more of what it is you gave me

I wanna feel the way I felt before

I tried and tried but I just can’t forget you

I can’t get enough of you, I want some more

You came to me the same way that you left me

You played your game and evened up the score

It’s best to leave the party when it’s happening

Or stop the show and leave ‘em wanting more

I want some more of what it is you gave me

I wanna feel the way I felt before

I tried and tried but I just can’t forget you

I can’t get enough of you, I want some more

Among his own influences, Billy Joe lists songwriters Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, Rodney

Crowell, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Mickey Newbury, and Dickie Betts. But he

also says, “I think the best songwriter is the one who makes you feel like you are in the best

place in the world when you are listening to his or her songs. The one who makes you

understand yourself a little better when your ears hear their words. At that moment, that

songwriter is the best. That’s the beauty of the song” (Shaver 72). Billy Joe can make you feel

that way. He is a master at writing what I call triumph songs and what are generally called

redemption songs—songs that tell of adversity overcome and hopefulness about the future. Billy

Joe, whose life is a case study in overcoming adversity, has written so many of them (and so

many of them have been covered by other artists) that narrowing it down to one triumph song did

not come easy for me. With some reluctance, I by-passed “Old Chunk of Coal” in favor of “Live

Forever,” a song that he co-wrote with his son and band-mate, Eddy Shaver. The song, as

recorded on Tramp on Your Street, is a vocal duet with Eddy, who died of a heroin overdose on

December 31, 2000. With a steady foot-tapping and sparkling guitar background, “Live Forever”

is short, and it is sweet, and it is a heart-lifting reminder that we do live on in the art we leave

behind and the hearts of those who love us.

Live Forever

– from the album Tramp on Your Street (1993)

I’m gonna live forever

I’m gonna cross that river

I’m gonna catch tomorrow now

You’re gonna wanna hold me

Just like I’ve always told you

You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone

Nobody here will ever find me

But I will always be around

Just like the songs I leave behind me

I’m gonna live forever now

You Fathers and you Mothers

Be good to one another

Please try to raise your children right

Don’t let the darkness take ‘em

Don’t make ‘em feel forsaken

Just lead ‘em safely to the light

When this old world is blown asunder

And all the stars fall from the sky

Remember someone really loves you

We’ll live forever you and I

I’m gonna live forever

I’m gonna cross that river

I’m gonna catch tomorrow now

Describing the songwriting process, Billy Joe Shaver writes, “Most songwriters, it seems to me,

write as a means to an end. The song is an attempt to create a single. Or it’s an attempt to get a

cut on Tim McGraw’s latest record. To me, the song is poetry. That’s all it is. It’s the way I

describe the world around me, make sense of it” (71).

All of Shaver’s songs are personal like that. Perhaps the most personal of all is the song he wrote

for his wife Brenda about a wildflower that rarely blooms (and is supposedly sacred to Native

Americans) in Central Texas and has the poetic name of hearts a-bustin’. Brenda, from whom

Billy Joe was twice-divorced but to whom he was thrice-married, had a special connection to the

flower which the couple had observed growing on a hillside near their Central Texas home. I

first heard the song in a cover version recorded by Lubbock singer/songwriter Jimmie Dale

Gilmore and found it quite touching in Gilmore’s wistful tenor. I now prefer the original

recording by Billy Joe—a version that couldn’t be more personal and that he was unable to

record until after Brenda’s death from cancer. It’s a country waltz (befitting the ongoing,

complicated dance between man and woman) with shimmering, wavering steel guitar lines in the

background. There was no chance that this song would ever have been recorded by Tim

McGraw. It’s just too country for Nashville.

Hearts A-Bustin’

– from the album The Earth Rolls On (2001)

Hearts a-bustin’ grew down by the river

That flows by the old paper mill

In the springtime we stood there together

At the top of the old stone fort hill

Many’s a time I’ve been lonesome

Since you left I don’t know what to do

Like the flower that grows on the hillside

My heart’s a-bustin’ for you

Hearts a-bustin’ is a beautiful flower

That looks like its heart burst inside

I miss you so much, your sweet gentle touch

I’ll love you ‘til the day that I die

One day in the year when the time’s right

The Indians float ‘round the bend

I don’t know when I’ll go but somehow I know

Someday I’ll be with you again

Hearts a-bustin’ grew down by the river

That flows by the old paper mill

In the springtime we stood there together

At the top of the old stone fort hill

If, as Aaron A. Fox contends, the lyrics of country music can be poetry that you don’t need a

Ph.D. to access (23), and that such poetry has its roots in the “artful talk” (22) of beer joints and

honky-tonks, then Billy Joe Shaver has written his dissertation in song. Obviously, he writes in

fluent Texan-speak, and his brash honky-tonk song, “Georgia on a Fast Train,” is no exception.

The song is auto-biographical. Every turn of events he describes in the lines actually happened.

His mama left him to live with his grandmother at an early age, his Grandma raised him on her

pension, and he really did pick cotton, raise hell, and bail hay. But the song is so much more than

a sentimental tribute to his upbringing, and it is anything but a lament. It is, instead, a proud

accounting of what he survived and a triumphant swipe at the Nashville establishment that

rejected him early in his career.

As he, Townes Van Zandt, Rodney Crowell, Steve Earle and other Texas songwriters hung

around the fringes of Nashville in the late sixties and early seventies trying to break in, the

demoralizing wait-and-see, you’re-not-commercial-enough, rewrite-it-this-way responses they

received forced them to trek repeatedly back and forth to Texas, where at least they could find

paying gigs. They were poor and disrespected, but they obviously believed in what they were

doing.

Shaver received the ego boost of his career when Nashville superstar, Johnny Cash, himself,

recorded “Georgia on a Fast Train” on his 1982 album, The Adventures of Johnny Cash. The

song comes on like a honky-tonk freight train and drives relentlessly forward musically while the

lyrics pelt the listener rapid-fire, and you know he means it when he says he’s “gonna get my

share of mine.” “Georgia on a Fast Train” is Billy Joe exultantly declaring to the establishment

that he is the real deal. Recognize.

I Been to Georgia on a Fast Train

– from the album Old Five and Dimers Like Me (1973)

On a rainy Wednesday morning, that’s the day that I was born

In that old sharecropper’s one room country shack

They say my mammy left me the same day that she had me

Said she hit the road and never once looked back

Now I just thought I’d mention that my grandma’s old age pension

Is the reason that I’m standin’ here today

I got all my country learnin’ milkin’ and a churnin’

Picking cotton, raisin’ hell, and bailing hay

I been to Georgia on a fast train honey

I wuddn’t born no yesterday

I got a good Christian raisin’ and a eighth grade education

Ain’t no need in y’all a treatin’ me this way

Now sweet Carolina, I don’t guess I’ll ever find another

Woman put together like you are

I love your wiggle in your walkin’ and your big city talkin’

And your brand new shiny Plymouth ragtop car

Well it’s hurry up and wait in this game of give and take

Seems like haste it makes for waste every time

I declare to my soul when you hear those ages roll

You better know I’m gonna get my share of mine

I been to Georgia on a fast train honey

I wuddn’t born no yesterday

I got a good Christian raisin’ and a eighth grade education

Ain’t no need in y’all a treatin’ me this way

The first two albums of songs that Shaver created, the once little-known Old Five and Dimers

Like Me and the much bally-hooed Honky Tonk Heroes, are now considered classics and the very

origins of the Outlaw Country subgenre. They are quintessential Shaver, and they display that

trademark simplicity that “don’t need to be greased.” Shaver is humble about his skills as a

songwriter, always referring to his lack of education as the reason his songs are written simply.

Somewhere within himself, though, he knows how fine his songs are and how groundbreaking,

too. Of the songs on Honky Tonk Heroes he says, “Chet Atkins was afraid it would hurt the

business the way we were coming out, you know, saying "God" and "damn" and things like that

in the songs. But it just couldn't be stopped. It was too good” (Doyle).

The Houston Kid: Rodney Crowell

Figure 13: Rodney Crowell, then and now.

In the previously mentioned 1976 documentary, Heartworn Highways, a twenty-six-year-old

Rodney Crowell hangs out with songwriting buddies at Guy and Susanna Clarks’ house

performing “Bluebird Wine”—the song that was later covered by Emmy Lou Harris on her first

solo album Pieces of the Sky. Director James Szalapski and a small film crew had heard about

this ragtag bunch of Texans on the periphery of Nashville trying to make music and poetry in a

new way. He found some financing and drove down to Nashville from New York to capture this

band of buddies on film. He thought he might be onto something. Clearly, he was. As good as

the song Bluebird Wine is, the buddies, who included a floppy-haired youth named Steve Earle,

could not possibly have known that this good-looking kid named Rodney from southeast Texas

would soon be the break-out star among them. Rodney Crowell got the first hot gig among them

when he became Emmy Lou Harris’ guitarist and resident songwriter.

Later, he moved back to Tennessee, married into Nashville royalty (Rosanne Cash, daughter of

Johnny Cash), and became a solo recording star, his 1988 album Diamonds and Dirt spawning

an unprecedented five number one hits on the country charts. I confess that I ignored grammy-

winning Rodney Crowell for many years. To me, he was that Nashville sellout who cashed in,

but as I plunged into the research for this project, his name kept cropping up as a favorite

songwriter of many of my favorite songwriters. Clearly, the Houston Kid deserved another look.

Then, on a trip to Austin, I came across his memoir, Chinaberry Sidewalks, in the music section

of Half-Price Books and bought it on a whim. In spite of all the research I had yet to do, I found

myself reading his engaging book straight through, which, of course, lead to ordering his CDs

and listening to song after song trying to grasp why he was so admired by so many songwriters

whom I think are at the top of their field. It took me a while to warm up to him. Rodney Crowell

has spent many years in Nashville studios, and the gleaming polish on the material is still

difficult for me to hear past, but many of the songs, including the two I’ve chosen here, are

interesting, different, and very original. In spite of the slick production values, they fit much

more neatly into the Texas pantheon than on the Nashville charts.

Judging from the contents of Rodney Crowell’s absorbing memoir, Chinaberry Sidelwalks, he

seems amazed that a kid like himself from the mean streets of an East Houston blue-collar slum

could have had the outsized life he has had. “Fate’s Right Hand” appears to me to be another

reflection, this time in sputtering imagery, on his improbable life and the improbable world

around him. The scattershot images contained in the lyrics are far less haphazard than they seem

at first listen. The initial verse is clearly about the streets Rodney Crowell grew up on, while the

second verse addresses a subject that was quite topical at the time that he wrote the song: the

investigation into President Bill Clinton’s sex life. Verse three is a collage of the valueless

vagaries of contemporary American life, and the fourth verse returns us to his Houston

childhood. I’m from that part of the world, and I’ve read Crowell’s book, too. Those images

resonate. For another listener, it might be pleasant to sit back and just enjoy the sparkling

wordplay.

Fate’s Right Hand

– from the album Fate’s Right Hand (2003)

Cool as a rule you don't learn in no school

You can't brown nose the teacher from a dunce hat stool

It's the hum and the rhythm of the birds and the bees

The momma's and the poppa's and the monkeys in the trees

It's the brothers and the sisters living life on the street

Play a hunch pull the punch and you'll likely get beat

By the junk food tattooed white dude true blued

Honky with an attitude coming unglued

Fate's right hand.....I don't understand at all

Billy loves women like a junky loves dope

Give him just enough rope and the monkey gonna choke

She's a Bill Blass combo maxed out mambo

D.K.N.Y. caught him in a lie

Ken Starr word man we’re talking absurd

Spending forty million dollars just to give a man the bird

He's a king she's a queen so the rap won't stick

Get it on with a rubber and you won't get sick

Fate's right hand.....I don't understand at all

Redrum dot com dim sum smart bombs

Double cappuccino and a heart like a tom tom

Ozone long gone that's it I quit

Natural inclination says enough of this shit

Brat pack black jack heart attack crack

We need another news channel like a hole in the back

There's a 187 on the 405

And we all go to heaven on a hard disk drive

Fate's right hand.....I don't understand at all

Hard rain fish seine hurricane Jane

Don't forget about Carla when you're talkin' about poon tang

Slow song on the bone rec hall dance

Double date Debbie with a pole in my pants

First comes love like it always did

Or we wouldn't be talkin' bout The Houston kid

Po-dunk piss-chunk old dead skunk drunk

Trot/line Freddy's got his dogs in the trunk

Fate's right hand...I don't understand at all

Fate's right hand...man I don't understand at all

According to Rodney Crowell, his song, “Beautiful Despair” sprang from a conversation

he had in Belfast with a drunken friend who lamented that he drank because he couldn’t write

like Dylan. In that moment, two words sprang to his mind: beautiful despair. Influential

journalist and author Ron Rosenbaum (a Rodney Crowell fan) writes of both the concept as well

as the song, itself, “You know beautiful despair, don’t you? Is there anyone who doesn’t?

You’ve felt it even if you haven’t named it. It’s not depression. It’s not mere melancholy . . . It’s

something sentimental and spiritual.” I would call it a feeling of despair over something actually

worthy of the feeling. I have no idea how to categorize Rodney Crowell’s song “Beautiful

Despair.” It isn’t country or rock or blues. It isn’t folk or jazz. With its lovely, pulsing,

descending progression and lilt upward in pitch at the end of each line, it is a redemption song

from another galaxy. Unearthly is one word to describe it, or, perhaps we should simply stop at

this word: beautiful.

Beautiful Despair

– from the album The Outsider (2005)

Beautiful despair is hearin’ Dylan when you’re drunk at three a. m.

Knowing that the chances are no matter what you’ll never write like him

Oh, brother

Beautiful despair is why you lean into the world without restraint

Cause somewhere out before you lies the masterpiece you’d sell your soul to paint

Oh, brother

What do we laugh or cry?

Beautiful despair

Beautiful despair is slouching forward toward a past you might regret

All to suck the marrow out of every magic moment that you get

Beautiful despair is playing safe when you were once a rebel child

Knowing that tomorrow comes and all you’ve done is last another mile

Oh brother

Oh dear brother

Oh my brother

What shall we drink or dry?

With the publication of his memoir Chinaberry Sidewalks in 2011, the Houston Kid has

branched into a more literary vein that suits him well. The book, an accounting of his Texas

childhood and his parents’ tumultuous and often drunken and violent relationship, does not cover

his rise to superstardom in the country music business but focuses instead on the real roots of the

music he has written over the years, his experiences in the working class neighborhoods in east

Houston and his exposure to the music of Texas. His memoir was inspired, in part, by Texas

author and poet, Mary Karr, whose own memoirs, The Liar’s Club and Cherry, are about her

childhood and adolescent years growing up in the same part of Southeast Texas as Crowell. He

so admired Mary Karr’s memoirs that he name-checked her in his song “Earthbound” from his

2003 album Fate’s Right Hand. Later, he contacted her to talk to her about it. The two met in

New York, became fast friends, and then Rodney encouraged her to co-write songs with him.

The result is the 2012’s Kin: Songs by Mary Karr and Rodney Crowell.

Of the area where the two grew up, Mary Karr says, “We both left that place like our hair was on

fire and then neither of us wrote about anything else for the next thirty years.” Of what Rodney

Crowell plans to do for the rest of his career, he says that it will be devoted to leaving a musical

legacy rather than making money (Morris). In my fantasy, I call him up and say, “Rodney, come

back home to Texas for the next album and record it the downhome way. You remember.” I

doubt I’m the only one who would love to hear Rodney Crowell songs recorded in the stripped-

down Texas way.

The Highway Minstrel: Joe Ely

John T. Davis calls Lubbock, Texas “an insular, isolated, deeply conservative, deeply

religious town that produced (and continues to produce) an improbable number of artistic and

intellectual mavericks” (xii). Greater minds than mine have attempted to explain why so much

talent comes out of Lubbock, Texas, but I haven’t heard anything that satisfactorily elucidates

the mystique. I lived there for a while in the early seventies, and I was astonished at the time by

the amount of superb music, some of it in my own literal backyard, that I was exposed to in those

days, especially in a town so darned conservative that my long-haired boyfriend was

continuously harassed by the locals. According to Lubbock boy Waylon Jennings, “Politics and

religion ain’t never gonna bring people together, but music could help” (Guralnick 204). For a

young hippie girl living in Lubbock, it certainly did. Until I could get back to Austin, the music

in Lubbock was a way for me to hold onto my sanity. The place is, as Ely says “a strange

planet.” Ely’s friend and fellow Lubbockite, singer-songwriter Butch Hancock, has famously

said that life in Lubbock “taught me two things: One is that God loves you, and you’re gonna

burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth, and you should save it

for someone you love.” Clearly it isn’t just the flatness of the landscape or the unremitting dust

in the air or the wail of the wind that shapes the Lubbock singer-songwriter.

Let’s just leave it right here: for some cotton-pickin’ reason that nobody knows, Lubbock

has spawned rock and roll pioneer Buddy Holly, country superstar Waylon Jennings, pop star

and songwriter Mac Davis and a nest of the some of the best singer-songwriters on the planet.

They are known as the Panhandle poets or the Lubbock mafia, and the group includes not only

Joe Ely, but also his friends Terry Allen, Butch Hancock, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Eddie

Beethoven, and David Halley, among others.

Born in Amarillo, raised in Lubbock, and schooled on the road, Joe Ely is ideal to

represent this spectacularly rich lode of Texas singer/songwriter talent because, at his best, he is

every bit as good a songwriter as any of them, but Ely is also a better performer than the rest of

them combined. And, if I’m to stick to my guns that the song, the music, and the performance are

all essential and inextricable components of the art, well, it just had to be Ely. Since he left

Lubbock long ago and began to tour with the likes of Tom Petty, The Clash, Merle Haggard,

Bruce Springsteen, Dwight Yoakum, and the Kinks, he has become a major performer and an

influence on a generation or two of young singer-songwriters and performers.

Figure 14: (l to r) Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, and

Jimmie Dale Gilmore—the Flatlanders

With his sometime band-mates in the Flatlanders (a whole ‘nother story, that), Jimmie

Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock, he has recorded four albums consisting mostly of their

combined catalogue. He also earned a Grammy for his work with the super group, Los Super

Seven, featuring himself, Freddy Fender, Rick Trevino, and the members of Los Lobos (Oglesby

112). On his own, Ely has recorded twenty-five solo albums since 1977. Rick Koster calls him

the “consummate road dog” (110). Ely never stops touring, writing, performing, and traveling,

and he has written a book about his life on the road, Bonfire of Roadmaps, an engaging mélange

of imagery and poetry from his travels. His is a big, big life, but his roots in Texas still form the

basis for most of his songwriting.

In the early seventies, Fat Dawg’s was a club across the street from the Texas Tech

University campus where some of the best of the Lubbock singer/songwriters cut their teeth. I

first saw Joe Ely there on the stage in the dark, smoky back room. At that time, Ely performed

solo, digging deep into his catalogue of old Bob Wills and Hank Williams songs and rarely doing

his own material. He wore a tall, black Hoss Cartwright-type cowboy hat in those days, pulled

low over his face and shadowing it from the spotlight. He was quiet and shy, stood still while

performing, and rarely spoke between songs. A few years later, some friends and I drove out to

Soap Creek Saloon in Austin to see him. We had heard he had an ass-kicking band now. What a

band! What a night! Jesse Taylor was screaming on lead guitar, Lloyd Maines (father of Natalie

of Dixie Chick fame) was sliding away on steel, John Markham was smacking the drums, Joe

Sublett was wailing on sax, and a peripatetic Joe Ely was all over the stage as he broke into his

spirited rocker, “Fingernails.” The question on everyone’s mind was, “What the hell’s going on

with Joe? Did he snort the whole band’s stash?” I think, in retrospect, Joe Ely was Springsteen a

year or two before Springsteen was.

“Honky Tonk Masquerade” is one of Joe’s songs from that era. The song is slower than

“Fingernails” and, on its surface, full of bar-room swagger, but, on closer inspection, it’s a

subtle, yet complex story of honky tonk socio-politics: a guy in a joint noticing a girl trying to

pretend that she’s happy with her man and sensing a wordless connection between himself and

the girl that he may or may not eventually act on. I was surprised on re-reading the lyrics that

there were no images of glowing neon signs, no frost on the side of a beer, no twinkling belt

buckles or a scuffed wooden floor. I swear I thought they were in there. Oh well, something

about this song makes your mind fill in all those blanks. Poetic, no?

Honky Tonk Masquerade

– from the album Honky Tonk Masquerade (1978)

You sure look fine tonight, in the beer sign light.

Why did you seem surprised when I saw through your disguise?

All your friends were there, and no one had a care

They all just looked away in this Honky Tonk Masquerade.

You should have known I knew all along.

That I could see through you right or wrong

I didn't need a clue.

I didn't even have to ask,

You saw your own reflection in the glass.

I'd like to see you home, but I know you're not alone

You seem to fit right in, as you tell me where you've been

You say there's not that much to tell but I know you oh too well

Your eyes give you away in this Honky Tonk Masquerade.

You should have known I knew all along.

That I could see through you right or wrong.

I didn't need a clue.

I didn't even have to ask,

You saw your own reflection in the glass.

You sure look fine tonight, they're turning out the lights

Why did you hold my sleeve when I said I had to leave?

I hoped it never showed, but that's the way it goes

As the lights begin to fade on this Honky Tonk Masquerade.

Figure 15: Joe Ely

For some reason, I heard Ramblin’ Jack Elliott’s version of Ely’s “Me and Billy the

Kid” before I heard Joe’s version. They’re both good, but Jack’s rendering is a folk song, while

Joe’s is a boot-thumpin’ rocker. The song works well either way. It’s a fantasy mini-western,

complete with gunplay, a bad hombre, a love-torn senorita, a robbery, and sweet, sweet revenge.

As in “Honky Tonk Masquerade,” Ely displays his talent for rendering complex thoughts,

motives, and imagery using simple language to create a story that plays out in the listener’s

mind, a sort of free-wheeling cowboy flash fiction piece. His deft touch with a detail is masterful

in that regard. Pay attention to the pocket watch.

Me and Billy the Kid

– from the album Lord of the Highway (1987)

Me and Billy the Kid never got along

I didn't like the way he cocked his hat

And he wore his gun all wrong.

We had the same girlfriend

And he never forgot it

She had a cute little Chihuahua

Until one day he up and shot it

He rode the hard country down the New Mexico line

He had a silver pocket watch that he never did wind.

He crippled the piano player

For playin' his favorite song

No, me and Billy the Kid never got along

Me and Billy the Kid never got along

I didn't like the way he parted his hair

And he wore his gun all wrong

He was bad to the bone

All hopped up on speed.

I would've left him alone

If it wasn't for that Senorita

He gave her silver and he paid her hotel bill

But it was me she loved and she said she always will.

I'd always go and see her

When Billy was gone

Yeah, me and Billy the Kid never got along

Me and Billy the Kid never got along

I didn't like the way he tied his shoes

And he wore his gun all wrong

One day I said to Billy

"I've got this foolproof scheme"

We'll rob Wells Fargo

"It's bustin’ at the seams."

I admit that I framed him but I don't feel bad

Cause the way I was livin' was drivin' me mad

Billy reached for his gun

But his gun was on wrong

Yeah, me and Billy the Kid never got along

Me and Billy the Kid never got along

But I did like the way he swayed in the wind

While I played him his favorite song

Now my baby sings harmony with me

To "La Cucaracha"

She winds her silver pocket watch

And pets her new Chihuahua

I moved in to the Hotel and got a room with a shower

We lay and listen to that watch tick hour after hour

Outside I hear the wind

Blowin' oh so strong

Me and Billy the Kid never got along

The Panhandle is a tabletop-flat expanse of cotton fields with little relief from the

horizon. You don’t forget it. Joe sure didn’t. His song, “All That You Need” is a story of that

land and of the people who stubbornly work it. As a tale of the land and the whims of nature (and

dry land farming is wholly dependent on those whims), the song is poignant. As a commentary

on the socio-political aspects of living from the land, it is intense. As each verse unfolds, we see

a family trying to hold on to the two things they value: their land and each other. As they lose

their grip on both and end up scattered in town, each working odd jobs and trying to stay off

welfare, the narrator-son ends up in jail. In the final verse, he returns to the land, in his dream of

a better life, if not in reality. On the subject matter chart, I might just as easily have slotted this

one into the social commentary column.

All That You Need

– from the album Streets of Sin (2003)

I been workin’ on the farm

Just me and my brother Jack

Choppin’ a sea of cotton

Till I thought I’d break my back

Everything changed when my daddy got hurt

Our lives were so connected

To that brown ole flatland dirt

When the government man from Austin

Come sniffin’ around our land

Askin’ a bunch of questions

That we did not understand

There’s more to farming cotton

Than just tending to your seed

The ones who set the policy

Don’t give a damn about our needs

Sow the seed in the ground below

Fall to your knees and pray real slow

That rain will come and kiss the seed

And bless you with all that you need

Mama says to Jackie

Would she bring the car around?

She’s wearing her finest dress

That’s how I know she’s goin’ to town

I wish I’d never seen that letter

That I found there in her room

They’re selling the farm on the Courthouse step

This Saturday afternoon

Me and Jack moved into town

To a shack by the train depot

Jack got a job as a bouncer

At a bar on Paradise Row

Mama got a job in the cotton gin

Grading cotton by the bale

She cried when a trailer full of cotton come in

From the farm we had to sell

Sow the seed in the ground below

Fall to your knees and pray real slow

That rain will come and kiss the seed

And bless you with all that you need

Me, I ended up in jail

Sick of livin’ on welfare

And the hardest thing ever happened to me

Is when Mama come to visit me there

Don’t you worry your pretty little head

I said as I buttoned my shirt

When I get out of this Iron Hotel

I’m goin’ back to that dry-land dirt

For some it’s just a livin’

But for us it’s our whole life

If it kills me I’m gonna rake that dirt

And make a livin’ out of toil and strife

The ways of the cities makes no sense

Strapped to dependency

I’d rather be sweatin’ ‘neath a clear blue sky

Plantin’ cotton with my family

Sow the seed in the ground below

Fall to your knees and pray real slow

That rain will come and kiss the seed

And bless you with all that you need

Of his gift for telling stories through verse, Joe says humbly, “Maybe I just read too

many Cormac McCarthy books” (Hudson Telling 110). Like his long-time friend and sometime

band-mate, Butch Hancock, Joe is a reader, and his favorite poet is Federico Garcia Lorca. As for

how he hears the music and gets it to the stage and studio, he says, “I have all the instruments in

the band, everything from accordion to steel to saxophone. I like to use the textures of different

instruments to do the song like I feel it should be” (111). Usually using, in what is now Texas

tradition, mostly his touring band members for recording as well as performing, Joe’s albums

have become more refined, but never less authentic, over the years. The road has taught him

well.

That long ago first road trip happened when he and friend and eventual co-writer, Eddie

Beethoven, decided over a cup of coffee to tear outta Lubbock by means of thumb and rail just to

see what they could see. He says he had to know “where these things came from that I was

interested in; Things like how songs got written, and why Henry Miller wrote about New York

City and about Paris.” Since then he has toured the world, always watching, thinking, learning,

writing. But he still remembers the Panhandle, and he still feels the need for “that process of

tearing away from the mother ship and at the same time being attracted back there for some

insane kind of reason.” Joe Ely may be a long way from the tiny stage in the Lubbock beer joint

where I first heard him play, but it seems he still carries a little piece of it around inside him.

The Last of the Hardcore Troubadours: Steve Earle

I don’t believe that songwriting has to be profound, but I do believe that

it’s truly a crime for you to go out of your way for it not to be.

--Steve Earle

ZZ Top played proms and shit where I grew up…so did the Thirteenth

Floor Elevators.

--Steve Earle

As far as we know, there is no cure for being a Texan.

--Steve Earle

Due to his outspoken activism, controversial (in the music business) political stances, and his

almost incomparable songwriting and outstanding musical and production skills, there is a great

deal of scholarship on Steve Earle. Not bad for a Texas boy who ran away from home at sixteen,

did time for drugs and weapons possession, married and divorced seven times, and struggled for

years in the music business before becoming a genuine break-out country music star via his first

album, Guitar Town, at the age of thirty-one. Steve Earle has had it all and lost it all at various

times, but most importantly, he has always been willing to risk it all in a given moment.

Figure 16: Steve Earle in the Nashville Days

In 2002, on the heels of the Al Quaeda attacks on the World Trade Center and the

Pentagon, he wrote and recorded a song told from the perspective of John Walker Lindh, the

young American who fought alongside the Taliban. Earle’s friend Elvis Costello told him he was

“fucking crazy” for even thinking about writing that song (Just), but the crazier part may have

been Earle’s willingness to go on television and radio networks to talk about the song, “John

Walker’s Blues.” Steve Earle is a rarity who scares the establishment music industry and

fascinates some academics: a smart, irreverent guy with rock solid principles and the artistic

chops to back them up.

Earle explained his song and the principles behind it in a CNN interview by saying,

“Fundamentalism, as practiced by the Taliban, is the enemy of real thought, and religion, too."

His foremost concern was that American culture “didn't impress [Walker Lindh], so he went

looking for something to believe in,” and that is something Americans should be thinking about.

As the father of a son of similar age to John Walker Lindh, Earle couldn’t help but see him as a

dissatisfied, impressionable boy—someone else’s son. The reaction from the corporate music

industry, an industry with close ties to television and radio, was almost universal ridicule and

official banning of his music from many Top 40 radio networks and major music retailers like

Walmart. For most performers, such banishment alone would have been a career-ender, but Earle

has managed to endure. Scholar Anthony Murphy says of Earle that his “politically and

culturally dissonant songs are reconstituted in the public sphere into vehicles of transformative

intercultural communication within American culture, between the cultural strata imposed

through distribution of power in contemporary America” (138). No shit. Steve Earle writes

provocative songs, and his songs get people of all kinds thinking and talking or, in the case of

Fox News celebrity anchors and Top 40 country radio announcers, sputtering and fuming.

Only slightly less controversial, especially with country music audiences, is Earle’s

stance against the death penalty, about which he writes poignant songs with interesting twists of

perspective. As a poet and performer, Earle is close to his finest work here, and his fine-tuned

artistry takes the songs far beyond the realm of the merely provocative. “Ellis Unit 1,” written

from the perspective of a former soldier, recently returned from the Middle East, who becomes a

prison guard assigned to the infamous Texas unit where executions take place, is a case in point.

There may never have been a clearer argument, in song or otherwise, that no one is untouched by

capital punishment. Critic Michael Corcoran says of the song that was used in the soundtrack to

the film Dead Man Walking that “Springsteen got the title track…but Earle buried him with this

dark exploration of life in a prison town” (158). Scholar Roxanne Harde traces the narrator’s

transition “from soldier to executioner” that “shows him to be just another pawn in a judicial

system that is both political tactic and social function” (198).

“Ellis Unit 1”

--from the album Dead Man Walking (soundtrack) (1996)

I was fresh out of the service

It was back in '82

I raised some Cain when I come back to town

I left to be all I could be

Come home without a clue

Now, I married Dawn and had to settle down

So I hired on at the prison

Guess I always knew I would

Just like my dad and both my uncles done

And I worked on every cell block

Now, things're goin' good

But then they transferred me to Ellis Unit One

Swing low

Swing low and carry me home

Well, my daddy used to talk about them long nights at the walls

And how they used to strap 'em in the chair

The kids down from the college and they'd bring their beer 'n all

'N when the lights went out, a cheer rose in the air

Well, folks just got too civilized

Sparky's gatherin' dust

'Cause no one wants to touch a smokin' gun

And since they got the injection

They don't mind as much, I guess

They just put 'em down at Ellis Unit One

Swing low

Swing low and carry me home

Well, I've seen 'em fight like lions, boys

I've seen 'em go like lambs

And I've helped to drag 'em when they could not stand

And I've heard their mamas cryin' when they heard that big door slam

And I've seen the victim's family holdin' hands

Last night I dreamed that I woke up with straps across my chest

And something cold and black pullin' through my lungs

'N even Jesus couldn't save me though I know he did his best

But he don't live on Ellis Unit One

Swing low

Swing low and carry me home

Ellis Unit 1 is located in the prison town of Huntsville, Texas, which also happens to be a college

town. My uncle attended Sam Houston State College there in the 1960s, and I remember him

talking about how some of the students would attend the execution-inspired beer busts outside

the walls and wait for the lights to dim. “Sparky,” of course, is the nickname for the electric chair

at Ellis Unit 1, retired in 1982 when Texas became the first state to execute via lethal injection.

Earle became friends with a man on death row in Huntsville, a fellow named Jonathan Noble

with whom he corresponded by letter for a number of years. Earle takes his death penalty

activism seriously, and getting to know people on death row is a significant component of that

activism. At Noble’s request, Earle attended Noble’s execution. In response to the experience,

Earle wrote the following song.

Over Yonder

--from the album Transcendental Blues (2000)

The warden said he'd mail my letter

The chaplain's waitin' by the door

Tonight we'll cross the yard together

Then they can't hurt me anymore

I am going over yonder

Where no ghost can follow me

There's another place beyond here

Where I'll be free I believe

Give my radio to Johnson

Thibodeaux can have my fan

Send my Bible home to Mama

Call her every now and then

I suppose I got it comin'

I can't ever pay enough

All my rippin' and a runnin'

I hurt everyone I loved

The world'll turn around without me

The sun'll come up in the east

Shinin' down on all of them that hate me

I hope my goin' brings 'em peace

Cuz I am going over yonder

Where no ghost can follow me

There's another place beyond here

Where I'll be free I believe

Steve Earle often denies being a political songwriter by proclaiming, “I’ve written far more

songs about girls than I ever did about politics.” That’s true. His mass of work is deep and

eclectic but still true to his Texas roots. Steve Earle and I are only a few months apart in age,

and, yeah, my high school prom committee damned near hired ZZ Top. His Texas music is my

Texas music. When Earle ran away from home at sixteen, he ended up in Houston, bumming and

buskering and hanging out with Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark and Lightnin’ Hopkins and

Mance Lipscomb at The Old Quarter on Old Market Square—a few doors from La Bastille

where I was soaking up jazz and blues and even the Thirteenth Floor Elevators. It was hard to

avoid the various musical genres and influences in this fertile atmosphere, but Earle went much

further. He fanatically sought them out and soaked them up.

In spite of the fact that Guitar Town, his first album, rocketed to number one on the Country

Music Chart—in spite of the subsequent success of his second and third albums, Exit 0 and

Copperhead Road on country charts—Earle never was solely a country artist. “I convinced

myself that I could make country albums that were art and get on the charts,” he says of this

early work (Blickenstaff). He did, and he earned critical acclaim, mostly by bringing his eclectic

Texas musical influences into the mix and giving the country music of the early eighties a timely

injection of honky tonk and blues. He continues to stretch artistically, as the rich roots of his

Texas influences keep inspiring him to try new things, explore new veins.

Figure 17: Steve Earle today

In recent years, Earle has been writing prose, penning a short story collection, Doghouse

Roses (2002), a novel, I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive (2012), various essays on social

ééconcerns and musicology, and an introduction to the 2009 Penguin Classic edition of James

Agee’s A Death in the Family. He has also acted in two David Simon television series, The Wire,

set in Boston, and Tremé, set in post-Katrina New Orleans. During the production of Tremé,

Simon tapped Earle to write some songs that his character, Harley, a street musician, would have

written. Among the contributions was “This City,” an anthem to the resilience of New Orleans.

Earle knew that he needed to record this one for his new album and called producer T Bone

Burnett back in Texas to help him get it recorded as soon as possible. Burnett immediately

brought in New Orleans composer and arranger Allen Toussaint to write the charts. The result is

a song soaked in New Orleans brass and laden with grace.

This City

--from the album I’ll Never Get Out of The World Alive (2011)

This city won't wash away

This city won't ever drown

Blood in the water and hell to pay

Sky tear open and pain rain down

Doesn't matter 'cause come what may

I ain't ever gonna leave this town

This city won't wash away

This city won't ever drown

Ain't the river or the wind to blame

Everybody around here knows

Nothin' holdin' back Ponchartrain

Except for a prayer and a promise's ghost

We just carry on diggin' our graves

In solid marble above the ground

Maybe our bones'll wash away

But this city won't ever drown

This city won't ever die

Just as long as her heart beats strong

Like a second line steppin' high

Raisin' hell as we roll along

Gentilly to the Vieux Carre

Lower Nine, Central City, Uptown

Singin' Jacamo fee-nah-nay

This city won't ever drown

Doesn't matter cause there ain't no way

I'm ever gonna leave this town

This city won't wash away

This city won't ever drown

Earle told a recent audience that, as part of his latest divorce, he was required to catalogue his

entire body of work, and as a result, he had come to realize he’d written “a helluva lot of good

songs.” The revelation seemed to spark his own thoughts about the roots of his music. The

divorce also inspired his first blues album, and as he also said from the stage, “If you’re from

Texas, and you set out to make a blues record, the bar is already set about as high as it can be.”

He points out there are only two kinds of shuffle ever invented, the one from Chicago and the

one from Texas. That Texas shuffle he’s speaking about is one of the cornerstones of honky

tonk. In his newest album, Terraplane, you can hear that shuffle and many other blues influences

from Earle’s cognitive archive. Mance is in there, and Lightnin’, too, along with a touch of the

east Texas country drink joints and the Houston eastside clubs where his guitarist, the ultra-

talented Chris Matthews, cut his teeth. In the liner notes, Earle writes, “Hell, everyone’s sick of

all my fucking happy songs, anyway.” But there was a strain of the Texas country blues that was

happy, actually, and Earle’s playful song “Ain’t Nobody’s Daddy Now” is one of those. This is a

jaunty acoustic celebration and a channeling of another time in the fine tradition of the Texas

country blues—chockful of delicious simile and metaphor—a folk poem.

“Ain’t Nobody’s Daddy Now”

--from the album Terraplane (2015)

Standing on the corner

Bleaker 8th or 9th

Money in my pocket

And women on my mind

I'm free

Can't nobody tie me down

Nothing ever worries me

Ain't nobody's daddy now

Here I say the women

Are the very finest kind

Clacking on their high heels

Like an engine down the line

(Chorus)

I'm free

Can't nobody tie me down

Nothing ever worries me

I ain't nobody's daddy now

I usually have a woman

Who worry me to death

Hammers in my pocket

And a fool was on my neck

(Chorus)

Got a baby on the east side

Honey on the west

Got a woman uptown

But my downtown gal's the best

She's gone

And I'm free

Can't nobody tie me down

Nothing ever worries me

Ain't nobody's daddy now

Steve Earle was born in the faraway state of Virginia because his father, an air traffic controller,

was stationed there at the time. His grandparents were so discomforted by the non-Texas arrival

of the newest Earle that they sent a flask of back-home dirt from the family farm to his parents.

Earle’s mom and dad rubbed the bottoms of the newborn’s feet with the soil, an improvised

baptism into Texan-hood. He is right; there is no cure for us Texans. We are an obsessed lot, but

Earle and many other thinking Texans like journalist Molly Ivins, former Governor Ann

Richards, relentless activist Jim Hightower, and I, if I may be allowed to include myself in such

rare company, have figured how to love our home state while still questioning its common

assumptions and values. As has already been shown, Earle does the same regarding America. He

often reminds his audiences that “it is never unpatriotic to question anything in a fucking

democracy.”

Earle’s biographer, David McGee, calls “Johnny Come Lately” from the Copperhead Road

album “an amazing song. It wraps up 30-plus years of American history in three and a half

minutes.” Another dramatic monologue, the song covers the American presence in Second

World War England from the point of view of an airman running raids over Europe. In the last

verse, the perspective shifts, and the voice is that of the airman’s grandson returning from

another war, another time. Although Earle was initially pegged as a country singer, and he calls

himself a folksinger, I’ve mostly thought of him as an ass-kicking roots rocker. “Johnny Come

Lately” is stellar evidence, and it comes with a bonus, a raucous Irish punk influence by way of

the Pogues, who sat in as the backing band on the London recording session.

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By all accounts, the session was over-the-top rowdy, both the Pogues and Steve Earle renowned

for their drinking, drugging, and generally out of control behavior during those days. But all

were serious musicians and dedicated to their art. They were determined to lay down a sound, a

feel, that Earle had about the Irish thread in Texas folk music. So according to Phillip Chevron,

guitarist and singer-songwriter for the Pogues, “the band was playing live” with notorious Pogue

front-man Shane MacGowan “experimenting on electric banjo” and Spider Stacy on tin whistle

(McGee 139). Once Earle felt they had it, the whole thing happened fast. One take. The result is

brilliant in terms of both lyrics and sound. Brilliant.

Johnny Come Lately

--from the album Copperhead Road (1988)

I'm an American, boys, and I've come a long way

I was born and bred in the USA

So listen up close, I've get something to say

Boys, I'm buying this round

Well it took a little while but we're in this fight

And we ain't going home 'til we've done what's right

We're gonna drink Camden Town dry tonight

If I have to spend my last pound

When I first got to London it was pourin' down rain

Met a Iittle girl in the field canteen

Painted her name on the nose of my plane

Six more missions I'm gone

Well I asked if I could stay and she said that I might

Then the warden came around yelling "shut out the lights"

Death rainin' out of the London night

We made love 'til dawn

But when Johnny Come Lately comes marching home

With a chest full of medals and a G.I. loan

They'll be waitin' at the station down in San Antone

When Johnny comes marching home

MY P-47 is a pretty good ship

And she took a round coming ‘cross the Channel last trip

I was thinking 'bout my baby and letting her rip

Always got me through so far

101

Well they can ship me all over this great big world

But I'll never find nothing like my North End girl

taking her home with me one day, sir

Soon as we win this war

But when Johnny Come Lately comes marching home

With a chest full of medals and a G.I. loan

They'll be waitin' at the station down in San Antone

When Johnny comes marching home

Now my granddaddy sang me this song

Told me about London when the Blitz was on

How he married Grandma and brought her back home

A hero throughout his land

Now I'm standing on a runway in San Diego

A couple Purple Hearts and I move a little slow

There's nobody here, maybe nobody knows

About a place called Vietnam

Since Steve Earle is so insistent that he wrote a lot of songs about girls, I would be remiss in

leaving out an example. “The Galway Girl,” another of Earle’s Irish-influenced songs, fits the

bill. Upon first hearing this song, most people, including Irish folks, assume this is a traditional

Irish folk song—unaware that it was written by a bloke from Texas not so long ago. An “Irish”

band plays the song at a club in the movie P.S. I Love You. Earle wrote it during a period when

he was living in Galway and sitting in on trad sessions. Although Earle won’t identify the lady in

question, his Irish recording partner Sharon Shannon insists that the Galway girl is a real person

whom she knows, that there was no affair, and it was, for Earle, a case of “unrequited love”

(Irish).

The Galway Girl

--from the album Transcendental Blues (2000)

Well, I took a stroll on the old long walk

Of a day -I-ay-I-ay

I met a little girl and we stopped to talk

Of a fine soft day -I-ay-I-ay

And I ask you, friend, what's a fella to do

'Cause her hair was black and her eyes were blue

102

And I knew right then I'd be takin' a whirl

'Round the Salthill Prom with a Galway girl

We were halfway there when the rain came down

Of a day -I-ay-I-ay

And she asked me up to her flat downtown

Of a fine soft day -I-ay-I-ay

And I ask you, friend, what's a fella to do

'Cause her hair was black and her eyes were blue

So I took her hand and I gave her a twirl

And I lost my heart to a Galway girl

When I woke up I was all alone

With a broken heart and a ticket home

And I ask you now, tell me what would you do

If her hair was black and her eyes were blue

I've traveled around I've been all over this world

Boys, I ain't never seen nothin' like a Galway girl

The locations within the lyrics are all actual places in Galway, and this mini-memoir appears to

be accurate in terms of the actual events as they occurred. “The Galway Girl” remains popular in

Ireland where it has been covered by a number of traditional musicians—an outsized case of the

boomerang effect of a good song in which Irish rhythms and melodic influences crossed the

Atlantic and made their way to Texas and back home again.

I would call Steve Earle an anomaly in the music business, and he is that, but such is a common

tale in the world of the Texas singer-songwriter. While Earle has never re-achieved the

phenomenal sales of Guitar Town and Copperhead Road from the eighties, he always knew that

he wasn’t cut out for the committee-driven music of Nashville anyway. He showed ‘em a thing

or two back in the day, as had Willie and Waylon before him, but he is foremost, as he says, a

folk singer. With that job come certain responsibilities to his fans, his roots, and his conscience.

He says his next record will be a country one, “what the record after Guitar Town might have

been” if he hadn’t sailed in a different direction. “The next record,” he says, “will sound closer to

Waylon’s Honky Tonk Heroes than it will anything else.”

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A Little Bitta Latin and a Whole Lotta Rock ‘n’ Roll: Alejandro Escovedo

Alejandro Escovedo’s parents were born in Mexico, but he was born in San Antonio. His is a

very musical family who have made many contributions to American music. His uncle, Pete

Escovedo, has lead the Latin band Azteca and played percussion in Carlos Santana’s band off

and on over the years. His niece Sheila E has played percussion for Prince, George Duke, Gloria

Estefan, Beyonce, and Kanye West and was a solo artist with a bonafide major hit album, The

Glamorous Life, in 1984. But Alejandro Escovedo avows that he was a rock and roller from

adolescence. Before he launched his solo career, he did stints with the Nuns, Rank and File, and

The True Believers. Since then, Alejandro has based himself in Austin and released a dozen

albums that range in spirit from hard-edged rock and punk to soulful ballads and explorations of

his Latin roots and family themes.

Figure 18: Alejandro Escovedo

As for the song “Chelsea Hotel ’78,” it is straight from his own life experiences. He was

living in the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan in 1978 in the room next door to British punker Sid

Vicious, of the Sex Pistols, and his American girlfriend, Nancy Spungen. Escovedo was there on

the night that Nancy died of a stab wound under mysterious circumstances. “Chelsea Hotel ‘78”

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is an ode to the exhilaration as well as the tragedy of a particular moment in rock history, and it

took him thirty years after the fact to write the song. It is, at once, a celebration and a mourning

of punk sensibilities—post-modern ambiguity about a life and a lifestyle. In performance, the

crowd often joins Escovedo in singing the lines: It makes no sense/and it makes perfect sense. In

true punk fashion, this world makes no sense in the first place, and, therefore, doing nonsensical

things is an apt response. The crowd also joins in on the fadeout lines: So we all moved out/and

we all moved on.

Chelsea Hotel ‘78

– from the album Real Animal (2008)

I lived in the Chelsea once on 7th and 23rd

We came to live inside the myth of everything we heard;

The poets on their barstools, they just loved it when it rained,

They comb their hair in the mirror and grow addicted to the pain.

And it makes no sense

And it makes perfect sense;

And it makes no sense

And it makes perfect sense.

I saw Neon Leon, Spider and the boys

Just before the cops arrived and took off with the noise;

It was nothing special, just another bar,

The Max's Kansas City life makes everyone a star.

And it makes no sense

And it makes perfect sense;

And it makes no sense

And it makes perfect sense.

Nancy called us to her room, said "Come and help with Sid."

We went down and looked around, the dealer let us in;

We thought he was hysterical, but not that he was a joke;

Don't know if he did what he said he did, nobody really knows.

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I stood out on the sidewalk when they busted through the door

And watched that Tito's jacket caught and had him by his arm,

You know the show of that thing nobody knows for sure

Because they found Nancy in her black underwear dead on the bathroom floor.

And it makes no sense

And it makes perfect sense;

And it makes no sense

And it makes perfect sense.

I lived in the Chelsea once on 7th and 23rd

We came to live inside the myth of everything we heard

The poets on their barstools, they just loved it when it rained

They comb their hair in the mirror and grow addicted to the pain.

And it makes no sense

And it makes perfect sense;

And it makes no sense

And it makes perfect sense.

So we all moved out

And we all moved on;

So we all moved out

And we all moved on

And on and on

When Alejandro Escovedo releases a new album or launches a new tour, you never know what

you’ll hear. He constantly evolves, explores new formats and traditions, and consistently

surprises. It’s difficult to believe that the same man who wrote “Chelsea Hotel ‘78” also wrote

“The Ballad of the Sun and the Moon.” A return to Escovedo’s Latin roots and a tribute to his

Mexican heritage, “The Ballad of the Sun and the Moon” is a tone poem in the classical sense of

the term. There is mystery in the lyrics that speaks to the myriad battles fought on Mexican soil

(now Texas soil) rather than to any specific battle. The fighting goes on as the sun and the moon

rise and the mountains, the land, echo those battles across time and space. Alejandro sometimes

utilizes strings in his compositions as he does here to beautiful effect. The song is a mini-

symphony of imagery and music and displays his remarkable range of styles and talent. We

mourn for the lost sister and the senselessness of battle. As the verses intone that the battles come

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and go, but the earth remains, this remarkable little song explores some of the same territory as

does Carl Sandburg in his poem “Grass.” “The Ballad of the Sun and the Moon” is equally

stirring and condemning, but it is, perhaps, even more accessible and universal.

Ballad of the Sun and the Moon

– from the album Thirteen Years (1994)

Day started out like any other day

The sun rising, there was always the sun

The mountains and the echoes of the voices

Where’d they go, they fall

Sons of the sun

That’s the ballad of the sun and the moon

Can you hear the cannon and the fighting

Can you feel the soldiers when they’re marching

They came they took my sister away

They came and they took her away

Sons of the sun

That’s the ballad of the sun and the moon

Night started out like any other night

The moon rising, there was always the moon

The mountains and the echoes of the voices

Where’d they go, they fall

Sons of the sun

That’s the ballad of the sun and the moon

“The Ladder” was inspired by a street performer in Santa Monica, California where Escovedo

lived for a while. In this song we see images of California, Mexico, and Texas intertwined with

images of the street performer climbing a ladder that seems to stand on its own. According to

Escovedo, he and his wife used to watch this performer on their walks along the oceanfront as

the ladder-climber would reach the top and unfold two cobras gracefully coiling around each

other in the air above. The instrumentation for this slow, dreamlike song is puro Mexico:

accordion, guitar, viola, and a barely audible bajo sexto thump on first and third beats—simple.

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Mexican songs don’t often translate well for the American ear from Spanish to English, and the

reasons are mostly cultural. In a Mexican song, one can get away with a drama, emotionalism,

and sentimentality that Americans usually shrink from. Somehow, in “The Ladder,” with its

slow, drawn-out pacing that allows the listener to dwell on each word and image, Escovedo

manages to infuse this lovely song with a Mexican sensibility that works for the American ear.

For an English-only speaker, listening to this song is probably the closest thing I know to fully

experiencing the Mexican canción.

“The Ladder”

--from the album Boxing Mirror (2006)

I'd climb a ladder just to see you

I have no eyes but I can feel

Two snakes entwine so I can be you

This ladder climbs from me to you

La Bufadora will explode soon

In liquid splendor sculptured trees

Amongst the oaks the shapes are shifting

A shift to meld you into me

Let's sleep away the pain we suffer

The medicine is in our dreams

Fly away like Caracaras

This ladder climbs from me to you

La Bufadora is a marine geyser in Baja California, Mexico, and caracaras are a type of falcon

that English-speaking Texans call Mexican Eagles. The only places where they venture in the

U.S. are the southern parts of California, Arizona, Florida, and Texas, where Escovedo probably

first saw it as a child as did I. They are large, graceful and striking black and white birds who

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look as if they are dressed for a formal, impossible not to notice, especially as they fly flashing

dark and light. Caracaras are monogamous. They fly in pairs.

I own every album Alejandro Escovedo has recorded, each one a perfect mingling of musical

styles, each song rendered in the idiom and music that best expresses its message. I vowed to a

friend once that I intended to play Escovedo’s music for everyone I knew until they all began to

appreciate his talent. Apparently, playing his music numerous times at home had an effect on my

oldest son, Miguel. He became a fan, and we bonded over this music. Some of my happiest

memories of Miguel are the two of us on long road trips or in the kitchen cooking while a

hundred Alejandro Escovedo songs play one after the other, the mood zinging from punk to

Latin to swing to blues to jazz to rock to folk. Depending on the tune, we may dance or rock out

or just nod in time. Sometimes, we stop what we’re doing just to listen—to take in the beauty.

Keepin’ It Real Country: Dale Watson

Dale Watson keeps it closer to the roots than any country artist I can name. He engages in very

little genre-hopping and is so incensed by what he thinks is the demise of country music at the

hands of those who see it only as a commodity that he wrote a song about it called “The

Nashville Rash.” Before he settled in Austin a number of years ago where he, like so many

before him, found the venues, appreciative audiences, and like-minded musicians he was

seeking, he did some time in California picking up strains of the Bakersfield sound. He also, like

so many before him, tried his hand in Nashville as a tunesmith-for-hire but soon grew tired of the

scene. As Rick Koster says, Dale has a “no-horseshit reverence for C & W history and a

penchant for writing genuine tunes” (78).

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Figure 19: Dale Watson

Although based in Austin, he lives on the road most of the time because he loves to play

music, and the interaction between musician and audience is everything to him. In a reverse of

the norm for the business and like many of the Texas singer/songwriters, Watson seems to record

in order to support his road habit as opposed to touring to support music sales. He can read a

crowd and work it like a medicine show salesman, but he’s not a huckster. He’s a believer. His

devotion to pure country music and the joy of live performance is a matter of unshakable faith.

Perhaps that’s why his recordings sometimes lack the fire and the flavor of his personal

appearances, but not by much.

In 2006, I was booking a charity gig for the Sierra Club in Austin. My advisor, Clifford

Antone, the famed owner of Antone’s blues club, urged me to book Watson. I went out to

Ginny’s Little Longhorn Saloon on the north side of town that weekend to see just why Clifford,

a devotee of the blues, would be so taken with a pure country singer/songwriter. It didn’t take

long to figure out. The band was tight, the music was original and refreshingly authentic, and the

crowd was fired up—dancing to some great country songs delivered in Watson’s gorgeous,

smooth baritone. A few days later, I chatted with Watson’s manager on the phone to set up the

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gig and negotiate a greatly-reduced fee for the charity. In passing, I mentioned that I really liked

Dale Watson’s band, the Lone Stars, and I particularly liked his drummer. “Which one?” the

manager asked. “He goes through several of them a year—just wears ‘em out. His drummers

can’t keep up with his schedule.”

Watson’s passion for the endangered species known as authentic country music is

inspiring. He declares a “mandatory Merle Haggard moment” at least once per set, and the band

breaks into “Big City” or “Workin’ Man Blues” or “That’s the Way Love Goes.” One night

during the middle set of a performance at The Railroad Blues club in Alpine, Texas, he noticed

that a lot of older folks had shown up. He trashed the set list and asked for requests “as old as

y’all can think of.” Watson and his Lone Stars knew ‘em all: Lefty Frizell’s “Always Late,”

Johnny Bush’s “Green Snakes on the Ceiling,” and, of course, Merle Haggard’s “Silver Wings.”

But Watson isn’t a cover guy, and, given his massive catalogue, he doesn’t need to be. He was

giving the older members of the crowd a treat and the younger members an education—just as he

does his listeners in “Nashville Rash.”

“Nashville Rash”

--from the album Live in London, England (2002)

Help me Merle, I’m breakin’ out in a Nashville rash

Its a-looking like I’m fallin’ in the cracks

I’m too country now for country, just like Johnny Cash

Help me Merle, Im breakin out in a Nashville rash

Shoulda known it when they closed the Opry down

Things are bound to change in that town

You can’t grow when you rip the roots out of the ground

Looks like that Nashville rash is getting round

Ain’t it funny how things can really change

Rock and roll back in the 70s are country hits today

Breaks my heart to see my heroes fadin’ away

The victims of Nashville rash, its Nashville’s way

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Help me Merle, I’m breakin’ out in a Nashville rash

Its a-looking like I’m fallin’ in the cracks

I’m too country now for country, just like Johnny Cash

And Buck Owens and Faron Young and Johnny Bush

And Johnny Paycheck and Charley Pride and Loretta Lynn, Mmmmmmm

Help me Merle, I’m breakin’ out in a Nashville rash

Aw good god it’s gonna be the death of us

Watson deserves credit for sticking to his vision and for writing one of the most perfect

little gems of a country song I’ve ever heard: “She Don’t Care.” I played this song once for a

friend who is a gifted singer/songwriter from Lubbock, and he, too, was blown away. The song,

with its architecture of verse/verse/chorus/verse/verse/chorus with the break at the end, rather

than in the middle, is beautifully and uniquely structured from a technical perspective, and it has

lines that resonate poetically as well. A silent telephone really can “make a deafening noise.”

And while you could listen to this song by yourself when you’re feeling lonely and lovelorn, it

was made for dancing as well—slow, close, and definitely romantic two-step dancing.

She Don’t Care

– from the album Dreamland (2004)

You don’t call

What I’d give if I could hear your voice

But a phone that doesn’t ring makes a deafening noise

You don’t call

You don’t write

If you did I’d read between the lines

Maybe find out what’s inside your mind

But you don’t write

How long can this go on

How long ‘til hope is gone

And can a love this strong

Feel so right and be so wrong

And so I think

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Why am I sittin’ here on the brink

Of just crying tears enough to sink

And so I think

How long can this go on

How long ‘til hope is gone

And can a love this strong

Feel so right and be so wrong

You don’t care

If you did, Honey, you’d be right here

It’s time I learned sometimes that love ain’t fair

And you don’t care

You don’t call

You don’t write

And so I think

You don’t care

By the way, I booked Dale Watson as the final act of the seven-act charity event in Austin

because I knew that, no matter what else happened that evening, he could get the crowd going

for a big finish. He and the Lone Stars were scheduled to careen in off the road about thirty

minutes before they were to play. About an hour before their scheduled arrival, my assistant

handed me the phone. It was Dale Watson. Oh, hell, I thought. This could only be trouble.

“Ma’am,” he said, “My fiddle player is sick.”

I didn’t say a word as I waited a couple of seconds, stomach twisting into knots, for him

to tell me that he was cancelling the gig.

“So, ma’am, I just don’t see how I can charge you anything at all. It just don’t sound the

same without the fiddle player.”

I finally got him to agree to, at least, let me pay the band, and just as expected, the crowd

hit the dance floor the moment Dale Watson and his Lone Stars took the stage. Later, I talked to

him backstage about how much I love his song, “She Don’t Care.” Since then I’ve requested it

from him about a dozen times. He always says yes, and he always calls me, “Darlin’”

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Down Deep in the Soul: Ruthie Foster

Figure 20: Ruthie Foster

Ruthie Foster was born in the tiny East Texas town of Gause (population about 500), a

segregated community where there was a church on every corner and where Ruthie received a

thorough grounding in gospel. Since then, she has branched into blues, jazz, and folk. Ruthie

Foster is primarily a performer of song, as befits the extraordinary instrument of her voice—a

voice that, through its power and majesty, makes you unintentionally stand up straighter and lift

your chin. But Ruthie doesn’t just belt out a song. Her performance can be as subtle and nuanced

as it is commanding—a measure of her exquisite vocal taste. Two of my favorites of her

recordings of other people’s songs happen to be from the 1930s: Son House’s “People Grinning

in Your Face,” which Ruthie performs with all the original blues flavor but with some gospel

added for spice, and Woodie Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land,” which she recasts in shades of

the blues. Ruthie Foster could have made a career out of simply recording other people’s songs,

but she has continued to write her own material and is continuing to grow as a songwriter. Her

emphasis is, understandably, more on music than lyrics, but she has written some evocative

pieces nonetheless. “Prayin’ for Rain” is one of those.

Prayin’ for Rain

– from the album Stages (2004)

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It’s just another day where I’m sittin’ around waitin’ for rain

And there ain’t no cure inside for the end of the pain

Well I’m standin’ in a line holdin’ my time

And it looks the end of the road’s coming up again

Try to treat folks right all along my way

Well, some days it just don’t matter what you do, what you say

These are times when you’ve got to shove the line

If you refuse to choose you could lose a lot more than your mind

It’s just another day where I’m sittin’ around waitin’ for rain

And there ain’t no cure inside for the end of the pain

Well I’m standin’ in a line holdin’ my time

And it looks the end of the road’s coming up again

I laid my cards on the table of life

It’s something I don’t do a lot but I did it in spite

Of the dreams of freedom, man they’ll talk you into crazy things

If you sell your soul, they’ll give you gold records and a brand new name

It’s another day I’m sittin’ around waitin’ for rain

How I wish that it would rain

Well I’m standin’ in a line holdin’ my time

And it looks the end of the road’s coming up again

Said it looks the end of the road’s coming up again

If I never ask for anything again, God give me love

This old tired world ain’t getting enough

People say we’ve got a plan on how we’ve gotta see this land

But when trouble comes knockin’ they come out sockin’

With guns in their hand

It’s another day I’m sittin’ around waitin’ for rain

How I wish that it would rain

Well I’m standin’ in a line holdin’ my time

And it looks the end of the road’s coming up again

Said it looks the end of the road’s coming up again

And I can tell I’m at the end of the road by the way you’ve been

The first few times I listened to Ruthie’s “Praying for Rain,” I was probably driving and not

paying much attention. As background music, it seemed a rather generic lament about tough

times or some such, but eventually I listened more closely and came to realize that it was actually

a very personal song, specific to Ruthie’s ups and downs in the music business. The rain imagery

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refers to the success (and, yes, possibly even money) that has eluded Ruthie over the years. Still,

she has remained steadfast in her insistence on quality material and her refusal to alter her image

in order to sell records through sex appeal, and that tenacity has, no doubt, cost her in terms of

money and fame. Laying one’s “cards on the table of life” and not letting them “talk you into

crazy things” must sometimes feel like the less-than-smart route, but that’s what people’s poets

and people’s performers like Ruthie Foster do.

The Well-Rounded Wonder: Carolyn Wonderland

Figure 21: Carolyn Wonderland

Carolyn Wonderland rocks. She also wails and moans and scats and screams, shreds a

mean guitar (acoustic, electric, lap steel, and slide), plays trumpet and keyboards, and writes

songs that’ll tear your heart out or make you pound the table to the beat. She is a musician’s

musician, a writer’s writer, and a singer’s singer. And you have to see her live, because, while I

enjoy her albums tremendously, they don’t quite capture what she does on stage. It’s that old

interactive thing again. Plus, other musicians love her so much you never know who will show

up at her gigs for the pleasure of performing with her. When the blues clubs close down late at

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night on the east side of Austin, some of the old horn players migrate to wherever she’s gigging.

Singer-songwriters might wander by to play a couple of their songs while Carolyn backs them up

on guitar or trumpet. In the oughts, she had a regular Monday night gig at Ruta Maya on South

Congress Street in Austin that was famous for these free-wheeling improvisations.

Carolyn’s mother was a guitarist and singer, and, living in Houston as a kid, Carolyn was

exposed to an amazing variety of music and musicians. In her songs, one can hear blues, jazz,

soul, gospel, country, rock, and surf influences. Her voice is often compared to Janis Joplin’s,

but she decided, as a young musician, not to play that up, focusing instead on doing her own

material (Hudson 239). As she says, if you’re a girl growing up in Texas, you “pretty much learn

that you sings Janis songs in private” because you can’t possibly top her. Wonderland finally

relented by recording one of Joplin’s lesser known songs, “What Good Can Drinkin’ Do?,” on

her 2011 album Peace Meal—an ironic, but somehow fitting, choice given Joplin’s proclivities

and Wonderland’s established sobriety. Her 2003 album, Alcohol and Salvation, is an homage to

and an acknowledgement of her struggles and triumphs.

Wonderland, whose real last name is Bradford (she adopted Wonderland minutes before

a performance when she was in high school, and it stuck), leads an eventful life, and even if not

many have heard of her, she’s okay with that. In 2011, she married former Saturday Night Live

comedian and commentator A. Whitney Brown. Officiating at the ceremony was former Monkee

and Texas singer-songwriter-producer, Michael Nesmith. Ray Benson, leader of Asleep at the

Wheel and Wonderland’s sometimes producer, says that Bob Dylan called him up after hearing

Wonderland and said, “Hey, have you heard Carolyn Wonderland? She’s something else! She

should be nationwide!” (Wonderland SXSW) When he finally met Wonderland in person, Dylan

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told her he couldn’t believe she wasn’t famous. Her reply? “I can’t believe you’ve heard of me”

(Hudson 240).

Dylan had looked her up partly because he’s a fan and partly due to his interest in her

song “Annie’s Scarlet Letter.” The song is social commentary told in the tradition of persona—a

Robert Browning-type dramatic monologue about a young woman imprisoned for selling

marijuana. The narrator’s scarlet letter, a metaphor for her marijuana leaf tattoo, has become, in

Carolyn’s imagery, Annie’s “badge” of tenacity and strength, a symbol of the injustice and

wrong-headedness of locking up a young mother for years for what many people believe is a

rather minor crime.

Annie’s Scarlet Letter

– from the album Alcohol and Salvation (2003)

My name is Annie

I’m about your daughter’s age

I was happy with my living

Earning minimum wage

Last year I had a baby

Love him with all I got

But the bills they became too much

So I moved a little pot

Now I’m an expatriate

In my home town

And I can’t even vote to change the laws

That put me down

I only pray you fare better

I wear my marijuana leaf like a badge

It’s my scarlet letter

Time goes slow here

From behind these bars

But I’m not so far away

That I can’t hear the cars

Driving down the freeway

Wishing one of them would give

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Me that short ride downtown

Where my little boy lives

I don’t want you

To feel sorry for me

And I ain’t on bended knee

For your sympathy

I knew it wasn’t legal

But was it really so wrong

To justify lockin’ me up here

For so damned long

Now I’m an expatriate

In my home town

And I can’t even vote to change the laws

That put me down

I only pray you fare better

I wear my marijuana leaf like a badge

It’s my scarlet letter

Carolyn’s blues/jazz song “Feed Me to the Lions” displays her singing, her jazzy piano-playing,

and her remarkable gift for songwriting, all in one quick, poignant dose. This portrait of

loneliness and despair is apparently difficult even for her, though she hints that it may be her

favorite of the songs she has written. She says that it “is a song that I couldn’t play live for years.

It was just too close to home” (Hudson 238). Is this a young girl escaping an abusive home? A

battered wife running from her tormentor? The lines are suggestive rather than definitive, and we

are left to imagine all but her agony. We see the narrator’s pluckiness and dark humor in spite of

her anguish in lines like “there’s no one to talk to in the checkout line/Nobody to share in the

fun.” Carolyn recorded the song simply – just her voice and her piano – and it is stunning in its

poetry and pain.

Feed Me to the Lions

– from the album Alcohol and Salvation

Ain’t no use in me cryin’ no more she says

My own tears just make me sicker

So she took twenty dollars and she left for the store

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To find faith in the form of cheap liquor

I have only been drunk before you she would joke

Since I was twenty one

But there’s no one to talk to in the checkout line

Nobody to share in the fun

She says Lord I don’t wanna give up

I just need a reason for tryin’

So hide me away in the jungle now Lord

Before they feed me to the lions

And on the drive home she was thinkin’

How he’d finally crossed the line

She walked in and packed up one suitcase quickly

Before she changed her mind

She left him no note, no no nothin’

Placed the bottle between her knees

And at a red light she unscrewed the Thunderbird

To have it ready in case of need

She says Lord I don’t wanna give up

I just need a reason for tryin’

So hide me away in the jungle now Lord

Before they feed me to the lions

One night on the town, Lord, is just tease enough

The open road is callin’

She buys one more drink with the change in her purse

Gets the rest from the man who calls her darlin’

And thinkin’ about him it ain’t hard to do

The hard part is keepin’ from cryin’

With friends all around she retreats to the car

To sleep off intensions of flyin’

She says Lord I don’t wanna give up

I just need a reason for tryin’

So hide me away in the jungle now Lord

Before they feed me to the lions

Among the musicians and songwriters Carolyn lists as influences are her mother, the Grateful

Dead, Texas groover Doug Sahm, Townes Van Zandt, ZZ Top, Screamin’ Kenny, and Billy Joe

Shaver (Hudson 239). Based in Austin for a number of years now, she (who once lived in her

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van for two years to support her touring habit) sits on several boards of directors for issues that

range from supporting young musicians to supporting returning veterans to sheltering the

homeless. During a break from her gig at Ruta Maya one night, I asked her if she would consider

performing at a charity function for an environmental organization I was working with at the

time. She interrupted me in mid-sentence to say, “Yup. I’m in.” I went on to explain how

important the work we were doing was, in the hope that she would reduce her fee, and she

interrupted me again, “I said I’m in.” Her fee? Nothing.

Serious, Soulful, and Sardonic: James McMurtry

That’s right. James McMurtry is the son of that other McMurtry, Larry, the one who

wrote Lonesome Dove, Terms of Endearment, The Last Picture Show, and many other novels.

James was raised by his famous dad in Houston, and, before becoming a performer and

songwriter, he worked in restaurants and as a house painter. He also stayed in touch with his

working-class relatives in North Texas where Larry was born and raised. I mention all this

because James McMurtry has a social conscience that comes through in his song-writing, and his

ability to relate to working-class people, despite being raised by a famous and well-to-do father,

is apparent in his work. He definitely has his eye on the little guy, and he explores political

themes, but that’s not all he writes. He sometimes chaffs at being called a political songwriter,

saying, “I don’t mind people listening to my political stuff, but it’s a fraction of what I do”

(McMurtry). James is not a fan of Nashville country music which he dismisses by saying, “I

can’t tell one country song from another anymore. Since the eighties, it seems like every hit was

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pretty much written by the same five guys, or different teams of five guys, and then all the

records are recorded by another team of five guys. And then they find the pretty artist that can

sell it” (McMurtry).

Figure 22: James McMurtry

Rick Koster calls McMurtry’s songwriting a linking of “short story narrative with folk

balladry,” and says that, “his brushfire-dry tunes are three-minute bursts of Flannery O’Connor

by way of Bob Dylan” (217). Literary, he is. And, in his song “Choctaw Bingo” we get a slice of

Americana that reads like flash fiction. The landmarks mentioned in the song are all real places

along an east Oklahoma stretch of interstate, and these roadside images blaze by as a story about

a redneck family reunion and the less than conventional family, itself, emerges in blasts of

imagism. Hang on for the ride.

Choctaw Bingo

– from the album Saint Mary of the Woods (2002)

Strap them kids in

Give 'em a little bit of vodka

In a Cherry Coke

We're goin’ to Oklahoma

To the family reunion

For the first time in years

It's up at Uncle Slaton's

Cuz he's gettin’ on in years

You know he no longer travels

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But he's still pretty spry

Not much on talking

He's just too mean to die

And they'll be

Comin' down from Kansas

And from West Arkansas

It'll be one great big old party

Like you never saw

Uncle Slaton's got his Texan pride

Back in the thickets with his Asian bride

He's got a Airstream trailer and a Holstein cow

Still makes whiskey cuz he still knows how

He plays that Choctaw bingo every Friday night

You know he had to leave Texas

But he won't say why

He owns a quarter section up by Lake Eufaulla

Caught a great big ole bluecat on a driftin jugline

Sells his hardwood timber to the chippin' mill

Cooks that chrystal meth becuz his shine don't sell

He cooks that crystal meth becuz his shine don't sell

You know he likes that money

He don't mind the smell

My cousin Roscoe, Slaton's oldest boy

From his second marriage up in Illinois

He wuz raised in East St Louis

By his mamma's people

Where they do things different

Thought he'd just come on down

He was goin' to Dallas, Texas in a semi-truck

Called from that big McDonalds

You know that one that's built up on that

Great big old bridge across the

Will Rogers turnpike

Took the Big Cabin exit

Stopped and bought a carton of cigarettes

At that Indian smoke shop with the

Big neon smoke rings

In the Cherokee nation

Hit Muskogee late that night

Somebody ran the stoplight

At the Shawnee Bypass

Roscoe tried to miss him but he didn't quite

[ Lyricttp://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/j/james_mcmurtry/choctaw_bingo.html ]

Bob and Mae come up from

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Some little town way down by Lake Texoma

Where he coaches football

They were two-A champions now for

Two years running

But he says they won’t be this year

No, they won’t be this year

And he stopped off in Tuska

At the Pop’s knife and gun place

Bought a SKS rifle and a couple full cases

Of that steel core ammo with the Berdan primers

From some east bloc nation

That no longer needs ‘em

And a desert eagle

That's one great big old pistol

I mean fifty caliber

Made by bad-ass Hebrews

And some surplus tracers for that old B.A.R.

Of Slaton's

As soon as it gets dark

Were gonna have us a time

Have us a time

Ruthanne and Lynn come down from Baxter Springs

That's one hell-raisin’ town way up in

Southeastern Kansas

Got a biker bar next to the

Lingerie store

That's got the Rolling Stones lips up there in

Bright pink neon

And they're right downtown where

Everyone can see ‘em

And they burn all night

You know they burn all night

Ruthanne and Lynn they wear them

Cut-off britches and them

Skinny little halters

And they're second cousins to me

Man I don't care I wanna get between ‘em

With a great big old hard on

Like a old bois d’arc fence post

You could hang a pipe rail gate from

Do some sister twisters

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Til the cows come home

And we’ll be having us a time

Uh huh

Uncle Slaton's got his Texan pride

Back in the thickets with his Asian bride

He's cut that corner pasture into acre lots

He sells them owner-financed

Strictly to them that's got no

Kind of credit

Cause he knows they're slackers

And they'll miss that payment

And he takes it back

He plays that Choctaw bingo

Every Friday night

He drinks his Johnny Walker

At that Club 69

We're gonna strap them kids in

Give ‘em a little bit of Benadryl

In a Cherry Coke

We’re going to Oklahoma

We're gonna have us a time

James’ 2005 breakout political song, “We Can’t Make It Here Anymore” won him

accolades and airplay and changed his career by bringing him to the attention of a wider

audience. It’s the kind of song that cuts through the hype and gets people’s attention on both

sides of the political divide because the images are so recognizable and relatable. Dividing his

performances, as he does, between sets with his backing band and solo sets, he has performed

this song in both formats. It is a picture of America that questions, with wit, compassion, and no

small amount of sarcasm, the frustrations of the working class. The images of rotting, empty

pallets by the docks, vets who are homeless because “the V. A. budget’s just stretched so thin,”

and the double entendre lament of the title and repeated lines, “We Can’t Make it Here

Anymore,” (simultaneously meaning that we’re having trouble surviving and that manufacturing

jobs have been out-sourced) contribute to the resounding character of this protest poem.

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We Can’t Make It Here Anymore (2005)

– from the album Childish Things

There's a Vietnam Vet with a cardboard sign

Sitting there by the left turn line

The flag on his wheelchair flapping in the breeze

One leg missing and both hands free

No one's paying much mind to him

The V.A. budget's just stretched so thin

And now there's more coming back from the Mideast war

We can't make it here anymore

And that big ol' building was the textile mill

That fed our kids and it paid our bills

But they turned us out and they closed the doors

'Cause we can't make it here anymore

You see those pallets piled up on the loading dock

They're just gonna sit there 'til they rot

'Cause there's nothing to ship, nothing to pack

Just busted concrete and rusted tracks

Empty storefronts around the square

There's a needle in the gutter and glass everywhere

You don't come down here unless you're looking to score

We can't make it here anymore

The bar's still open but man it's slow

The tip jar's light and the register's low

The bartender don't have much to say

The regular crowd gets thinner each day

Some have maxed out all their credit cards

Some are working two jobs and living in cars

Minimum wage won't pay for a roof, won't pay for a drink

If you gotta have proof just try it yourself Mr. C.E.O.

See how far 5.15 an hour will go

Take a part time job at one your stores

I bet you can't make it here anymore

And there's a high school girl with a bourgeois dream

Just like the pictures in the magazine

She found on the floor of the laundromat

A woman with kids can forget all that

If she comes up pregnant what'll she do

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Forget the career and forget about school

Can she live on faith, live on hope

High on Jesus or hooked on dope

When it's way too late to just say no

You can't make it here anymore

Now I'm stocking shirts in the Wal-Mart store

Just like the ones we made before

'Cept this one came from Singapore

I guess we can't make it here anymore

Should I hate a people for the shade of their skin

Or the shape of their eyes or the shape I'm in

Should I hate 'em for having our jobs today

No, I hate the men sent the jobs away

I can see them all now, they haunt my dreams

All lily white and squeaky clean

They've never known want, they'll never know need

Their shit don't stink and their kids won't bleed

Their kids won't bleed in their damn little war

And we can't make it here anymore

Will I work for food, will I die for oil

Will kill for power and to us the spoils

The billionaires get to pay less tax

The working poor get to fall through the cracks

So let 'em eat jellybeans let 'em eat cake

Let 'em eat shit, whatever it takes

They can join the Air Force or join the Corps

If they can't make it here anymore

So that's how it is, that's what we got

If the president wants to admit it or not

You can read it in the paper, read it on the wall

Hear it on the wind if you're listening at all

Get out of that limo, look us in the eye

Call us on the cell phone tell us all why

In Dayton Ohio or Portland Maine

Or a cotton gin out on the great high plains

That's done closed down along with the school

And the hospital and the swimming pool

Dust devils dance in the noonday heat

There's rats in the alley and trash in the street

Gang graffiti on a boxcar door

We can't make it here anymore

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Unlike, say, Guy Clark or Billy Joe Shaver, McMurtry shies away from the personal, the

memoir. His song-craft is fiction. “Ruby and Carlos” is a short story, told in poetic form,

complete with characters, plot, symbols, and conflict – a romance between an older woman and a

younger man that begins with their parting, as Ruby refuses to accompany Carlos to Tennessee

in pursuit of his dream of working in the music business. In the tradition of good fiction, we are

given enough detail to know what is happening, but the questions that arise in our minds are

critical components of the poetic experience. What does Ruby really mean in her put-down of the

destination (“Down below the Mason-Dumbass Line the food gets worse”) but not the dream? Is

she letting Carlos go because of a sense that their age difference will end the relationship

anyway? Is she concerned that Carlos’ dream will fail? Is she letting her young man go out of

some misguided sense of altruism? In the tradition of good short fiction, but utilizing poetic

aesthetics, McMurtry draws us into an interesting, sad tale and leaves us to judge, as Ruby

herself must do, whether or not she made the right decision. The setting feels cold and autumnal,

the colors are grays and browns, and the symbol of the colt who eventually throws her serves as

metaphor for what might have happened if Ruby had gone with Carlos or, perhaps worse, asked

him to stay. The photo of Carlos on the icebox door lets us know that something happened to

Carlos after the Gulf War, emphasized in the line that tells us that he is looking “from way on

back inside his head.” Underscoring the mood is the spare accompaniment of McMurtry on

acoustic guitar, a simple standup bass line and the strains of a single violin.

Ruby and Carlos

– from the album Just Us Kids

Ruby said "You're gettin' us in a world of hurt.

Down below the Mason-Dumbass line the food gets worse.

I can't go back to Tennessee

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That NASCAR country's not for me.

Go on, if you think you must."

Carlos packed his drums up in the dark of night

Ruby's standing just outside the front porch light

Chain-smoking Camel straights

The sky off to the east got gray

And he rolled off in a cloud of dust.

And the gray colt knickered at the gate

She said "You're right it's getting late.

You and me got work to do

We can't be burning daylight too."

She took down the long lead rope

And stayed off that slippery slope

The aspen trees were turning gold up top

The talk was buzzin 'round the beauty shop

"Wasn't he barely half her age?

Well that's just how they do now days.

We should all have been so lucky."

By spring she'd had the run of the free born men

Ruby turned 50 in a sheep camp tent

Her body still could rock all night

But her heart was closed and locked up tight

Potato fields all muddy and brown

The gossip long since quieted down

And after one more Coggins test

Pouring coffee for the county vet

Pictures on the ice box door

Of Carlos in the first Gulf War

Black-eyed brown and youthful face

Smiling back from a Saudi base

And then Carlos on the big bay mare

Heavier now and longer hair

Looking past the saddle shed

From way on back inside his head

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And the old vet said, "One day, Rube,

That colt will break an egg in you.

Now and then one comes along

You just can't ride." And he went on home

http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/j/james_mcmurtry/ruby_and_carlos.html ]

And the storm door didn't catch

It blew back hard as she struck a match

But she cupped it just in time

And she sent that ash tray flyin'

And holding back the flood

Just don't do no good

You can't unclench your teeth

To howl the way you should

So you curl your lips around

The taste, the tears, and the hollow sound

That no one owns but you

No one owns but you.

Carlos took the road gig and he saw it through

He rode the tour bus while the singer flew

Managed out of music row

Carlos never saw the studio

Session guys had that all sewn up.

He looks out the window and it starts to sleet

Laying on a friend's couch on Nevada Street

Lately he's been staying high

Sick all winter and they don't know why

They don't know why or they just won't say

They don't talk much down at the V.A.

And Ruby's in his thoughts sometimes

What thoughts can get out past the wine

He feels her fingers on his brow

And right then he misses how

She looked in that gray morning light

She never shaved like they all do now

He sees it all behind his eyes

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And his hands go searching but they come up dry

And half way in that wakin' dream

Carlos lets the land line ring

He never guessed it was Ruby calling

The pin in her hip from the gray colt falling

Figure eight in a lazy lope

Stumbled on that slippery slope

And holding back the flood

Just don't do no good

You can't unclench your teeth

To howl the way you should

So you curl your lips around

The taste, the tears, and the hollow sound

That no one owns but you

No one owns but you.

In James’ song “Levelland” we see three generations of a north Texas family and their different

responses to farm life in different eras. This is an ironic and unsentimental song about the land

and the times, and how they shape the people. It weaves from the grandfather’s difficult dry-land

farming life that leaves the old man addle-brained in a nursing home to the father’s modern

irrigation methods that suck “the water table dry/His rolling sprinklers circle back/Bleeding it to

the bone.” In the closing verses we see the metaphors for a changing way of life, including the

jets flying from coast to coast overhead and the central air conditioning and satellite television

that keep the family indoors at night so they no longer look at the stars. For himself, the narrator

expresses only his desire to leave Levelland. In several dozen brief lines, James tells an

American story of the generational arc: from dirt poor and hopeful to more prosperous but

valueless to total disenchantment.

Levelland

– from the album Where’d You Hide the Body (1995)

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Flatter than a table top

Makes you wonder why they stopped here

Wagon must have lost a wheel

Or they lacked ambition one

In the great migration west

Separated from the rest

Though they might have tried their best

They never caught the sun

So they sunk some roots down in this dirt

To keep from blowin' off the earth

Built a town right here

When the dust had all but cleared

They called it Levelland

The pride of man

Levelland

Grandad grew the dry land wheat

Stood on his own two feet

His mind got incomplete

And they put him in a home

Daddy's cotton grows so high

Sucks the water table dry

His rolling sprinklers circle back

Bleeding it to the bone

And I won't be here when it comes the day

It all dries up and blows away

I'd hang around just to see

But they never had much use for me

[http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/j/james_mcmurtry/levelland.html ]

In Levelland

They don't understand me

In Levelland

Well I watch those ships trails comin' out that big blue sky

Coast to coasters, watch 'em go

And I don't blame 'em one damn bit

If they never look down on this

Ain't much down here they'd want to know

Just Levelland

You could wash your hands

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In nothin' but Levelland

Mama used to roll her hair

Back before the central air

We'd sit outside and watch the stars at night

She’d tell me to make a wish

I'd wish we both could fly

I don't think she's seen the sky

Since we got the satellite dish

I can hear the marching band

Doing the best they can to play

Smoke on the Water

And Joy to the World

I paid up all my debts

Got some change left over yet

I'm getting on a whisper jet

Going to fly as far as I can get

From Levelland

Done the best I can

In Levelland

James varies the second line of the three-line, intermittently-repeated chorus to great effect. By

following that line alone, we can feel the song move from hopefulness to resignation, and that is

not an uncommon arc for a family working the High Plains landscape. Levelland, by the way, is

the name of an actual town just west of Lubbock, much the same setting as Joe Ely’s dry-land

anthem, “All that You Need.” The High Plains west of the Caprock, an escarpment that cuts

more or less diagonally across the northern part of the state, is the edge of the vast prairie that

extends north to Central Canada. This stark, horizontal region of Texas has produced an

astonishing number of singer/songwriters, and, obviously, inspired many others.

Road Scholar: Ryan Bingham

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Born in Hobbs, New Mexico, and raised in various small towns in West Texas, Ryan Bingham

left home as a teenager to work the rodeo circuit, sleeping in the backs of pickup trucks and,

eventually, becoming a bull rider. It was a rough life for a tough kid, but he had a guitar with him

and would amuse himself by learning to play it and learning to write songs (Bingham Rolling

Stone).

Figure 23: Ryan Bingham

His voice, no doubt affected by his years outdoors, sounds like a whiskey-soaked rasp,

but it is always in tune, and it only adds to the atmosphere of his stark and lonely songs. He is

capable of rocking (as in the blue-grass-influenced “Bread and Water,” a road song), but his forte

is the striking and beautiful ballad, of which “Yesterday’s Blues” is one of his most lovely. A

twist on the expected trope of the merely praiseful, “Yesterday’s Blues” is a tribute to a lover

who allows the narrator his freedom while seeing into him and past his pain. In the touching lines

where the narrator “searched through his dreams to find you” or is “lost in the maze of the veins

in my heart” or praises his lover for having “a heart that can see right through/The bitterness of

my yesterday’s blues,” we sense the redemptive power of unreserved love.

Yesterday’s Blues

– from the album Junky Star (2010)

Well, I shook the hand of a weeping sparrow

And heard the most beautiful tune

Laid myself down upon a field of flowers

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And searched through my dreams to find you

And lost all of yesterday's blues

And I walked in circles confused and scattered

And stumbled around as a fool

Lost in the maze of veins in my heart

'Til I woke up unconscious with you

And let go of yesterday's blues

'Cause you have a way that lets me breathe

And you have a way that sets me free

And you have a heart that can see right through

The bitterness of my yesterday's blues

Down in a city of shelters and shambles

I thought I had nothing to lose

I took for granted the wise words of strangers

And gambled until I was through

And lost all of yesterday's blues

'Cause you have a way that sets me free

And you have a way that lets me breathe

And you have a heart that can see right through

The bitterness of my yesterday's blues

Well, I shook the hand of the deepest sorrow

And waved a goodbye just to lose

Laid myself down below the endless towers

And searched through my dreams to find you

And lost all of yesterday's blues

Ryan Bingham speaks often in interviews about his concern for “the condition the country is in

and the condition the people are in” and his particular empathy for the homeless (Bingham NPR).

His song “Depression” speaks to those concerns through a narrator hanging on to the edge of his

dignity and finding hope through love. The theme is nothing new. Poets have expressed as much

numerous times across the years. But Bingham’s song has a working class empathy and an

American wrinkle. The song is tinged with a bitterness of what the songwriter sees on the road

and what he lived in West Texas as a youth: a man who would rather die than ask for a handout,

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all the while maintaining his faith that he doesn’t have to resort to those extremes because “all I

need is you.”

Depression

– from the album Junky Star

If I held my breath in the morning

Would I wake up for a lifetime

Lose my job in this depression

Well I don’t care cause I got your love

In this depression

All I need is you

In this depression

What is there to lose

If I held your hand in this town

They would lock me up for possession

But now there strung out on heroin

And we’ve gone out to California

In this depression

Breaks my heart in two

In this depression

All I need is you

I could make some friends down at the courthouse

Get bailed out and go on welfare

I’d rather lay down in a pine box

Than to sell my heart to a fucking wasteland

In this depression

It’s just me and you

In this depression

What are we to do

In this depression

Breaks my heart in two

In this depression

All I need is you

If I held my breath in the morning

Would I wake up in a new land

Follow you forever

Dance all night in this depression

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In this depression

“Junky Star” is another ballad about homelessness, this time set in California, where the

narrator has ended up among “the junkies and the stars.” It is an unflinching look at what Ryan

sees as the indignities of the working class losing hope in an America that seems to have lost its

heart. This protagonist reacts by shooting the man who has come to take his farm and running

west in the dead man’s car. Ryan says he sees this song, more or less, as “the opening chapter of

a Cormac McCarthy novel” (Bingham NPR). I see that, too.

Junky Star

– from the album Junky Star (2010)

The man come to shake my hand, and rob me of my farm.

I shot 'im dead and I hung my head, and drove off in his car.

So on the run with a smokin' gun, lookin' for the coast.

Of all the things I've had and lost, your love I miss the most.

And hell will have to pay, I went a little bit too far I'd say.

Half drunk I stumble on the whiskey from the bar.

Sleepin' on the Santa Monica pier with the junkies and the stars.

For when I woke a Spanish cross, was reachin' for my hand.

Then the stranger took the place, the words I couldn't understand.

And there's nothin' but the ground, it's the only place I found.

Where I can lay my head in town.

Down on the boulevard, the sidewalk shuffles change.

Cracked out from the night before, hallucinatin' in the rain.

So borrowed me a quarter for a call to the other side.

I told God that the whole damn world was waitin' in line to die.

But not me, this time.

I left the trouble far behind.

And he tied his arm off one more time.

The man come to shake my hand, and rob me of my farm.

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Ryan’s career took a major upswing several years ago when film director Scott Cooper called

him to ask if he would be interested in writing a few songs for Cooper’s upcoming movie, Crazy

Heart, the story of a down and out, alcoholic Texas singer/songwriter trying desperately to make

a final stand in both love and art. Cooper sent him the script, and Bingham wrote most of his

song “The Weary Kind” within a matter of days. Cooper then put him in touch with the film’s

musical director, T-Bone Burnett, who received co-writing status on the song, which won an

Oscar as Best Song for 2010. This is another road song, this time the story of a musician, a

narrator in dialogue with himself, and the pain and heartache of a life lived alone—a befitting, if

painful, tribute to those who are dedicated to the road and the music and unable to live peacefully

among civilians.

The Weary Kind

- from the album Junky Star (2010)

Your heart’s on the loose

You rolled them sevens with nothing to lose

And this ain’t no place for the weary kind

You called all your shots

Shooting eight ball at the corner truck stop

Somehow this don’t feel like home anymore

And this ain’t no place for the weary kind

And this ain’t no place to lose your mind

And this ain’t no place to fall behind

Pick up your crazy heart and give it one more try

Your body aches

Playing your guitar and sweatin’ out the hate

The days and the nights all feel the same

Whiskey has been a thorn in your side

And it doesn’t forget

The highway that calls for your heart inside

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And this ain’t no place for the weary kind

And this ain’t no place to lose your mind

And this ain’t no place to fall behind

Pick up your crazy heart and give it one more try

Your lovers won’t kiss

It’s too damned far from your fingertips

You are the man that ruined her world

Your heart’s on the loose

You rolled them sevens with nothing to lose

And this ain’t no place for the weary kind.

With its spare instrumentation, punctuated by bass drum and cymbal late in the song, as the

depth of the heartache set in with the listener as well as the narrator, “The Weary Kind” is one of

the most starkly beautiful songs to emerge from the new traditionalists in recent years. Ryan

Bingham included it in his 2010 album Junky Star, his third album. Since then he has recorded

two more, both critically praised, Tomorrowland (2012) and Fear and Saturday Night (2015). In

spite of the accolades and their heady adjunct, fame, he shows little sign of succumbing to the

darker sides of the business. He sings from his roots. In many ways he’s still that homeless kid

that some of my rodeo circuit friends used to know, the one who tied their bull ropes by day and

serenaded them with his poems by night.

There’s Wit in Them There Words: Hayes Carll

If the Nashville songwriting formula is taking a catchy hook and then stretching it to its wobbly

limits in order to create a song, then Hayes Carll is anathema to that formula. His work is

characterized by songs so pithy and packed with wit, that they take second, third, and fourth

listens just to get all the jokes. It’s not that he can’t be tender and poignant as well, as he is in

“Hide Me Babe,” one of his songs that appeared in the film, Country Strong, which starred

Gwyneth Paltrow. But Hayes has some stuff that’s outright funny, too, such as the clever send-up

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of ignorance and lost love, “She Left Me for Jesus,” in which the narrator laments that, “She says

I should find Him/And I’ll know peace at last/But if I ever find Jesus/I’m kickin’ his ass.”

Figure 24: Hayes Carll

Carll knew that, in writing such as song, he risked being misunderstood (much as some

liberals didn’t always get that Randy Newman songs like “Good Ole Boys” were actually

skewering racism rather than embracing it), but says that while he was briefly concerned about

the controversy, he got over it. He realized that, “This is funny, it’s not blasphemous. It’s making

fun of the guy who is a borderline, racist, intolerant redneck. If people don’t get that, then I’m

not going to lose sleep over it” (McCord). The song is delivered in a raucous honky-tonk style,

befitting the redneck narrator’s milieu, with a verse/chorus/verse/chorus/verse/chorus structure

and a final, impertinent break at the end.

She Left Me for Jesus

- from the album Trouble in Mind

We've been datin’ since high school, we never once left this town

We use to go out on the weekends, and we'd drink ‘til we drowned

But now she’s acting funny, and I don’t understand

I think that she’s found her some other man

She left me for Jesus and that just ain’t fair

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She says that He’s perfect, how could I compare

She says I should find Him and I’ll know peace at last

If I ever find Jesus, I’m kickin’ His ass

She showed me a picture, all I could do was stare

At that freak in his sandals with his long pretty hair

They must think that I’m stupid or I don’t have a clue

I’ll bet he’s a commie or even worse yet a Jew

She left me for Jesus and that just ain’t fair

She says that He’s perfect, how could I compare

She says I should find Him and I’ll know peace at last

If I ever find Jesus, I’m kickin’ His ass

She’s given up whiskey and taken up wine

While she prays for His troubles, she’s forgot about mine

I’m a gonna get even, I can’t handle the shame

Why last time we made love, she even called out His name

She left me for Jesus and that just ain’t fair

She says that He’s perfect, how could I compare

She says I should find Him and I’ll know peace at last

If I ever find Jesus, I’m kickin’ His ass

It coulda been Carlos or even Billy or Ted

But if I ever find Jesus

He’s gonna wish he was dead

Aaaaaaaa-men

The back story on Hayes Carll’s KMAG YOYO (a military acronym for Kiss My Ass Guys,

You’re On Your Own) is pretty interesting, and it’s a study on just how mystifying the creative

process can be. Hayes says that he only had these two vivid pictures in his mind and had no idea

why they might, or even if they might, fit together: a scared young soldier in the desert with a

gun and a space trip on acid. Somehow, the two merged, and as he began to write, he realized

that the space trip on acid was the hallucination of the wounded soldier. He claims he never set

out to write a protest song, but that’s exactly what he understood it was when he finished—a

protest song, in relentless imagism, a la Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” But as Hayes

Carll also says, “If you’re gonna rip someone off, why not rip off the best” (McCord)?

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KMAG YOYO

- from the album KMAG YOYO and Other American Stories (2011)

Well, daddy joined the Air Force

Said it was a good source

Danger, love, and money, but it only led to divorce

Ended up in Abilene

Working at a Dairy Queen

Put me in the Army on the day that I turned seventeen

Here I am standin' in the desert with a gun

Thought of going AWOL but I'm too afraid to run

So I got myself a new plan

Stealin' from the Taliban

Make a little money turning poppies into heroin

Sergeant didn't like it so they put me in a hole

I said, "It's easy shootin' when they don't know where to go."

Threw me on a lily pad

Sent me home to NORAD

I knew I'd be in trouble but I didn't think it’d be this bad.

Stranger wearin' all black

Met me on the tarmac

Told him I was sorry but I ain't ever going back

He said, you ain't in trouble son

Learn to fight without a gun

Got a new assignment now, you're working for the Pentagon

Gonna take a trip, wouldn't tell me what it's for

Gotta serve your country, gonna help us win the war

MIT, PhD.'s, night & day, they're testing me

Ain't what I was thinking but I'm being all that I can be

I ain't no genius but I knew it wasn't right

Eating uppers in the morning and LSD at night

Send me off to deep space

Help 'em win the arms race

Ola me, oh mighty, but this shit has got a funny taste.

I think I hear the countdown

Hundred feet above the ground

Told me when I'm leavin' but a'nothing 'bout a'coming down

Sittin' on a bad dream

Thousand pounds of gasoline

Ain't leavin' nothing but some rubble and my slipstream

Mama always said, I should be aimin' for the moon

Never would've guessed that I'd be passin' by soon

How the hell'd I get here?

Blastin' through the atmosphere

Drop the rocket boosters and I'm shiftin' into high gear.

Bowie on the system and a bottle on my knee

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Armstrong ain't got nothing on me

Hey ho, here we go

KMAG YOYO, gotta come up where the sun don't go.

I think I see a bright light

Something 'bout it ain't right

I laid down in a space ship

Woke up in a fire-fight

Someone wanna get me

Trippin' from the morphine

Came down in a bad scene

God, don't let me die here, I ain't even nineteen

I won't ever ask you, Lord, for anything again

I'll swear it on the Bible, Torah or Koran

Lyin' in a rhino track

'Bout to have a heart attack

IED got to me, someone call the Medevac

I need some fixin' after where it is I've been

Never wanna go and try and shoot a gun again

Slippin' out the back door

Gonna join the Peace Corps

Tell me, I'm a hero now, so

Someone else can fight this war

“Willing to Love Again” is a curveball take on an old trope: the “goodhearted woman in love

with a good-timin’ man” (or, from the Tammy Wynette perspective, a woman standing by her

unworthy man). In Hayes Carll’s vision, the narrator, rather than flippantly patting his woman on

the back, in third person, for her fidelity and patience, seems genuinely in awe of her and speaks

directly to her. This take is far more tender, a narrator lamenting his unworthiness rather than

celebrating his bad behavior, and with lines like “I spend my life on this broken crutch/And you

believe I can fly,” it is far more poetic than the standard variations on this theme.

Willing to Love Again

- from the album KMAG YOYO and Other American Stories (2011)

I drink too much, I smoke too much

I laugh at all my own jokes too much

I’m hard to tell and soft to touch

And easy at sayin’ goodbye

I broke your heart a thousand times

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With wasted nights and ramblin’ rhymes

I thought I’d leave you far behind

But time just wouldn’t let go.

I walk the streets, I kick the cans

Tore down walls with my two hands

And still across my floor you stand

Willing to love again.

Out of all the dreams in this whole world,

How’d you get so unlucky girl?

To find a shell that had no pearl

And a man who couldn’t find home.

I feel too much, I protect too much

And most times I probably expect too much

I spend my life on this broken crutch

And you believe I can fly.

I walk the streets, I kick the cans

Tore down walls with my two hands

And still across my floor you stand

Willing to love again.

And still across my floor you stand

Willing to love again.

Hayes Carll writes so gosh-darned many great songs about the road and the music

business that narrowing it down to a single example is difficult. “It’s Hard Out Here,” with its

lines, “Everybody's talking 'bout the shape I’m in/They say, boy you ain’t a poet, just a drunk

with a pen,” was tempting. So, too, was “I Got a Gig,” Hayes’ homage to Bob’s Sports Bar in

Crystal Beach, Texas, where he earned his stripes as resident poet for a crowd of bikers,

shrimpers, and assorted druggies and ne’er-do-wells. I eventually chose “The Letter” because,

rather than being either the usual boisterous salute or the mournful regret, this song is delivered,

both musically and poetically, in a straightforward, quiet style. It is also a very personal song.

We don’t know who Birdy is, but we know that this narrator has a personal connection and

someone who obviously cares about him back home – again, the universal message best

expressed within the specific. The song begins, unusually, with the chorus, and there is a

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lingering pause just before the final verse, which Carll delivers in a touching, breathy a capella,

lending the song an even more private and personal sense.

The Letter

- from the album KMAG YOYO and Other American Stories (2011)

I meet some wild people out here

Those who are pretendin' and others more sincere

A few that outright scare me and ones that I hold dear

I meet some wild people out here

You won't believe the things I have done

Racin' downn the highway like a bullet from a gun

This life is like to kill me but it sure has been fun

You won't believe the things I have done

Birdy says I outta go home

I swear I tried to reach you but the cop took my phone

Them Tulsa women's nicer when they leave me alone

Birdy says, I outta go home

I don't know how I got this way

Burnin' through my nights and wastin' my days

So many people talking, I forgot what to say

I don't know how I ended this way

I meet some wild people out here, wild people

Those who are pretendin' and others more sincere

A few that outright scare me and ones that I hold dear

I meet some wild people out here

I hope that you sleep well tonight

Know that I am dreamin' of you, hope you're alright

I'm gonna be there come dawn's early light

I hope that you sleep well tonight

Hayes Carll is the most refreshingly irreverent talent on the Texas singer/songwriter horizon.

Raised in the Houston suburb of The Woodlands, college-educated in Arkansas, and honky-tonk

schooled in Galveston County, he paid his dues early and hasn’t forgotten them. He produced his

first three albums before landing a package deal, complete with producer and a distribution

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network, for his fourth album, KMAG YOYO and Other American Stories. Such a deal has often

been the artistic downfall for young musicians, a succumbing to fame and commercialism and a

dilution of their original artistic vision. When asked at a press conference, just prior to the release

of KMAG YOYO and Other American Stories, if having the backing of a major label, Lost

Highways, home to Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, and Van Morrison, was intimidating, he

quipped, “No, I don’t think they’re intimidated by it” (Carll SXSW).

That was then. After a nearly five year hiatus, during which he experienced a divorce, found a

new producer, and moved back to his old label, Hayes Carll has finally recorded a fifth album to

be released in April 2016, Lovers and Leavers. Already available on itunes, the album’s first

single, “The Love That We Need,” laments “we got the life that we wanted/not the love that we

need.” Carll has always acknowledged the darker aspects of choosing the troubadour life, but this

cut seems to herald a quieter, more serious, more introspective batch of songs than we are

accustomed to from him. “I’m a singer-songwriter.” he says. This album “comes closer to

reflecting that than any other record I’ve made” (Lane). He is aware that this may not be the

record his fans hanker for, declaring that there are “very few hoots and almost no hollers”

(Hight).

I tracked down some thirty-second samples from the yet-to-be-released album cuts on

allmusic.com and came across “Sake of the Song” which contained this lyrical pearl: “If you’re

nobody’s business/or front page news/if you’re folk, rock, country, or Delta blues/tell your truth

however you choose/and do it all for the sake of the song.” The spirit of Townes and Guy and

Billy Joe, it appears, is still surging through this one.

Unknown but Up and Coming: Chris McWilliams

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Knowing Chris McWilliams, a personal friend, as I do, I am certain that he would take issue with

my calling him “up and coming.” He is pretty hardcore when it comes to making his music his

way and prefers to live in the West Texas town of Alpine so that he can focus on his work

without the distractions of the industry and club scenes that he feels plague Austin these days.

Chris is a mega-talented composer, musician, and singer/songwriter, tenaciously planted within

the trend, now technically possible, of producing his own music, which he does in a converted

shed/studio behind his home. He writes all the music and lyrics for his recordings, performs all

the vocals (lead, harmony, and backup), and he plays all the instruments: guitar, keyboards,

trumpet, bass, and percussion. Schooled, as he is, in everything from classical to punk, his music

spans a tremendous range of traditions, and he dips into that deep bag of tricks to express himself

exactly and authentically. As a wordsmith, he is up there with the best of them.

Figure 25: Chris McWilliams

His tendency toward reclusiveness is tempered by his work with the Doodlin’

Hogwallops, a band he formed with local singer/songwriter Neil Trammell (who frequently

swaps guitar and bass roles with Chris) and harmonica player, Todd Ellrod. The Doodlin’

Hogwallops’ set list is loaded with Texas music classics as well as joint compositions and

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Trammell’s impressive catalogue along with a McWilliams song occasionally thrown in. But

most of Chris’s own compositions are reserved for his growing list of Internet fans, who access

his music via the Web. Among his fans (and I am obviously one), Chris is known for his prowess

on guitar. He’s a guitar monster in a state that cranks out guitar prodigies by the semi-load and is

equally masterful and comfortable on both acoustic and electric. Playing in the band keeps his

performance chops up to snuff, but it’s the music he makes in the shed that really sings. I also

like his unusual choices in subject matter. Chris’s song “Meth Makin’ Mama,” about a woman

trapped in a cycle of survival and pain, is an outstanding example of his handling of a subject

that is all around us these days, but that few have the guts to touch. The last line of the final

verse, “your spirit fire is a toothless smile,” is starkly simple and piercingly powerful as a

metaphor for despair in a woman who has lost all hope.

Meth Makin’ Mama

- from the album Dreams in West Texas Wind (2012)

You do a few lines of speed when the kids go down

To dream somehow of a better way

You dream about leavin’ this town

‘Cause if you stick around, you’ll burn it down.

There’ll be hell to pay.

Meth makin’ mama it’s a shame

You can’t look in the mirror without cryin’

So you quit tryin’ and hide your face.

Meth makin’ mama it’s a shame

On your wedding day he could not make bail

So he stayed in jail. You had two black eyes.

You never really thought you had a choice

To trust that voice deep inside.

You’re feelin’ so damned old and doggone tired

And your spirit fire is a toothless smile.

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Meth makin’ mama it’s a shame.

Unlike “Meth Makin’ Mama,” Chris’s “All Alone, One and All” puts a new slant on an old

trope, the love triangle. It is a waltz that lilts gently downward within each verse, as it spills forth

a tale of a man torn between the woman he loves and who left him and the woman who took him

in and loves him. As the narrator contrasts the two women (“One’s always screamin’ and

grievin’ while one’s always dreamin’/I’m a comin’ and goin’ on my way”), the performer

punctuates the lyrics, increasing the volume and emphasis. The song builds to a climax here

before reverting to a quieter tone to repeat the lines, “I walked between them but not out of

meanness/Weakness for my own poor heartbeat.” The narrator’s guilt about both situations and

all three lovers is revealed simply, sweetly, and powerfully.

One and All, All Alone

- from the album Songs, Guns, and Gin (2009)

One lived on one side, the other on another

Of the same small town street

And I walk between them, but not out of meanness

Weakness for my own heartbeat

But mostly, I just walk home

All alone

One was the master of her own disaster

Hardly even quiet when she slept

One I had known, the other, I’d just met

But how could I leave the one I’d

Loved so long

All alone

Because one had just left me while the other received me

And puttied up my deep puncture wounds

And as they were healin’ I knew I had this feelin’

For somethin’ I wanted to do

To keep her out of bein’

All alone

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One’s always screamin’ and grievin’ while one’s always dreamin’

I’m a comin’ and goin’ on my way

And I don’t need remindin’ which one’s on my mind

In the passing of the hours of the day

Still it looks we’re one and all

All alone

One lived on one side and the other on another

Of the same small town street

And I walked between them, but not out of meanness

Weakness for my own heartbeat

But mostly, I just walk home

All alone

Chris has produced eight self-published albums altogether and shows no signs of slowing down.

Six of those eight were recorded in backyard shed/studio and include “special guest appearances

by the wind and the train.”

Conclusion: The Tradition Rolls On

People need art and poetry in their lives, and, increasingly over the last fifty years,

traditional poetry has been locked away in textbooks, literary journals, and academia. Writers

without credentials can’t catapult themselves over the hurdles thrown up by publishers, and they

can’t be taken seriously by establishment critics. When was the last time any of us heard of a

terrific novel written by a cab driver? It does my heart good to know that there are poets and

writers in at least one area, the singer-songwriter tradition, who can immerse themselves in the

art of the lyricism and bring their real experiences as real people to our attention—that their body

of work is accessible for the price of a CD or a download and for the act of merely listening or

attending a performance. The work of the gifted and hard-working singer-songwriters is where

literature, particularly poetry, is most alive and well in America, and Texas is that work’s

epicenter. And while it’s true, as music critic Frank Goodman says, “More has been written

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about songwriters from Texas than from any other place on earth,” it’s also true that the writing

about their lyrical legacy has been, at best, a series of passing glances. It is a subject seriously

worthy of serious study. In the meantime, I’m glad to know that it’s still out there, that some of

its very best practitioners are still going strong, and that the baton is still being passed to grateful

new generations.

As a subject of study, Texas music is vast, deep, and rich, and an assessment of its

history, both long-term and recent, reveals the following:

1. The immigrant state provides a profusion of musical conventions and genres from

which the Texas singer/songwriters can draw inspiration, and the constant mixing

of cultures results in a hybrid vigor between those genres that keeps the music

fresh and ever-evolving.

2. The cultural traditions of live, participatory music in Texas, originally based

largely within the customs of the Mexican corrido and the European immigrant

dance halls, have kept the music interactive and accessible for generations of

musicians and composers as well as their audiences.

3. The venues that the live music traditions bred have allowed song-writing and

performance to evolve into a worthwhile, respected, and, often, viable career

option within the state.

4. Live performance by the songwriter is important and differs greatly from the

manufacturing of song as it is has been practiced in Nashville (and elsewhere)

where songs are usually written by faceless composers, pitched to industry hacks,

and doled out to pretty performers for the sole purpose of making money. In the

art form of the Texas singer-songwriters, lyrics, music, and performance are, on

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the other hand, simply indivisible, and while making a living is possible and

important, making a fortune is not.

5. The natural poetry of Texas-speak and the story-telling traditions of the culture

have inspired great lyrical compositions while simultaneously satisfying the

demands of audiences and consumers who desire a more intelligent and authentic

musical experience and one that is relatable and reflects their lives and values.

The resulting literature, usually written in the people’s vernacular, is accessible.

6. The changes wrought in the early 1970s in Austin sparked a revolution in how

this new music was recorded and marketed, reflecting the demand for greater

authenticity: a more poetic, artistic and less packaged experience, whether live or

recorded—a new tradition that took hold and is still flourishing in spite of music

industry establishment trends.

7. The corpus of lyrical compositions of this group of singer-songwriters inspires

and celebrates the lives of working people rather than merely pandering to them,

and it elevates the pop song to poetic status. It is a literature for the working,

thinking people, and it resonates.

Delve into this music, and you will find the people: the proud Mexican immigrants, the ranch

hands, the housewives, the blue collar workers, the artists, the unemployed, and the working

musicians themselves. It truly is poetry that, as Fox has explained, doesn’t require a Ph. D. to

understand. It is accessible both in terms of how it can be acquired, through a download, the

purchase of a recording, or a turn around the dance floor at a local honky-tonk, and it is equally

accessible in terms of comprehension. It needs no explication.

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From the doleful expressions of Townes Van Zandt that seem to have sprung from the Aeolian

harp of the Romantics, to the skillful, precise lyrics of Guy Clark, to the eloquent simplicity of a

Billy Joe Shaver ballad, to the intricate, conscientiousness of a James McMurtry song or the

soulful laments of Ruthie Foster, these lyrics sing of real people’s lives in a way that many

modern literary forms cannot, or, rather, do not. As Rosenbaum says, “… if you detach yourself

from conventional hierarchies of genre, some of the best American writing of any kind is being

done in that form [songwriting].” I wholeheartedly agree.

Currently, there’s a cynical maxim among cut-and-paste Nashville songwriters that says there are

only four subjects a profitable country song can cover:

1. I sure would like to be fucking you.

2. I sure am enjoying fucking you.

3. I sure wish I was still fucking you.

4. Fuck you.

It’s funny, but it’s also sad.

When songs first became a commodity in America over a hundred years ago, a person who could

write a song could make a buck. Then came song publishing, sound recording, movies, and

radio, and all that growth of the American corporate music industry meant that while someone

who could write a song could still make a buck, the buck had to be shared with the publishing

and recording companies, the radio networks, and the movie studios. The American music

industry eventually encompassed all manner of roots music and became the largest music

industry in the world. The industry tail, predictably, began wagging the songwriting dog early

on. In the contemporary market, however, the industry has unprecedented control over what

music Americans listen to every day. According to David Suisman, aesthetic values were

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bulldozed by commercial values “in whose interest it was to avoid challenges of the prevailing

order; and whose growing dominance made alternative models of cultural production

increasingly scarce” (275). That’s not just about Nashville. That’s about the whole damned

business from pop to hip-hop and L.A. to New York.

Corporate songwriters don’t exactly work out their stuff alone. It is, as Guy Clark, James

McMurtry, and others have complained, a committee process, one that “resembles the

unappealing aesthetics of industrial food production… where legions of songwriters peck away

in cubicle farms from 9 to 5 under florescent track lights, trying to manufacture a hit with very

formulaic approaches” (Big Names). The byword for the corporate-chosen “artists,” often fair of

face and figure, but limited in talent, is “change a word, get a third,” meaning that the recording

artist, by merely offering a suggestion or two, can get song-writing credit and a thirty-plus

percentage of the take on publishing songs they had very little to do with writing. Given

collapsing CD sales, the “artists” now make a sizeable chunk of their money through publishing.

In their economic study of the American music industry, Alan Kreuger and Marie Connolly

found that, under the current system, concerts furnish “an even larger source of income for

performers than record sales or publishing royalties” (4). They also discovered that an

increasingly smaller fraction of performers “earn a substantial portion of the [overall] revenues”

(34). Maybe road dogs like Dale Watson and Joe Ely had it right all along.

Well then, God bless the songwriters who remain steadfastly independent of all that industry

crap. It can’t be easy. They’re lucky there is still an audience for thoughtful music not piped in as

force-fed earworms and stamped out like audible McNuggets. Long may the independent singer-

songwriter wave.

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With new technologies that enable singer-songwriters to self-publish and self-market their own

material, we will, no doubt, see a surfeit of unpolished, lesser-quality work surface, but we will

also see the emergence of talented, as-yet-unsung poets like Chris McWilliams. How technology

will continue to change the business of music-making is currently a subject of much debate

among music industry insiders and aficionados, but what is certain is that change will come.

And, no doubt, there will be some Texans at the forefront of the innovations to appear, a fact that

makes me want to scavenge the Internet in search of the talented singer/songwriter/poets whom

the industry has not yet exploited.

Figure 26: Leon Bridges Black Joe LewisJake Paleschic

My latest discoveries? Ft. Worth’s Leon Bridges is breaking big at the moment with his soulful

throwback tunes, especially “Coming Home,” which reached a Top 10 position on Spotify. I’m

keeping an eye on him because I think, if the business doesn’t ruin him first, he has a good shot

at honing his craft and eventually writing songs of lyrical significance. With his first two albums,

Austin’s Black Joe Lewis proved that he’s a rocker and a screamer in the tradition of Joe Tex,

but with his newest album, Electric Slave, he has also proven that he is a lyricist who can deliver

a social commentary wallop in songs like “The Hipster,” a searing and witty sendup of

gentrification. And then there’s Ft. Worth’s Jake Paleschic who has already penned a stunner of

a take on the songwriter’s obligation to the song from inception to performance. “When It’s

Played” is from his independently-produced debut album Again, At Last. An excerpt:

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You will not choose the form it takes

Only its hours and its days

And when it rises from the sand

It is brought forth by no mistake

So let it move about, let it howl and shout

Without hindering or stepping in its way

And like as not, you will know it by the sound

Of the silence in the room when it is played

I can’t wait to see what happens next for these talented young singer-songwriters. In the

meantime, scouts from L. A., New York, and Nashville will continue to prowl the venues of

Austin, seeking talent that can be turned into cash, and Austin will continue to be a mecca for

musicians scrambling to cash in. Still, I’m grateful there remains a certain segment of young

musicians who draw inspiration from the music, lyrics, and principles of the Texas singer-

songwriter tradition and who, like their forefathers and foremothers, will continue to innovate.

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169

VITA

Phyllis Dunham was born in Houston, Texas and received her BA in English with a minor in

History from Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas in 2013. She joined the University of

New Orleans graduate program in the University of New Orleans Creative Writing Workshop to

pursue her MFA in Creative Writing.