Baron Wolman Texas is a annoyance – about every artist who comes from there agrees it's a annoyance – but the actuality is that some of the heaviest, funkiest bedrock accessible today is Texas music: Janis Joplin, Steve Miller, Mother Earth, the Sir Douglas Quintet – the account of accomplished Texas bedrock and cycle musicians goes on and on.
Johnny Winter and the 100 Greatest Guitarists
It's harder for a non-Texan to access how so abundant that's acceptable could appear out of such a amiss place. Janis Joplin has said of the Lone Star State: "Texas is access if you wish to achieve down and do your own affair quietly, but it's not for abandoned people, and I was consistently outrageous. In Texas, I was a beatnik, a weirdo. I got advised actual abominably in Texas. They don't amusement beatniks too acceptable there."
You apprehend the aforementioned affair from artist afterwards musician. But there's so abundant accomplished music there, a admirable heritage.
Doug Sahm, Sir Douglas of the Sir Douglas Quintet, abstruse to play guitar, he says, sitting in a big accessible acreage during the hot summer evenings of his boyhood and boyhood in Austin, from the age of 11. He was too adolescent to be accustomed central the Eastwood Country Club – not so abundant a country club as a dejection collective – so he'd sit alfresco in the still of the night and blot all the music he could. "Man, they'd accessible afterwards one at night and everybody would play there. Junior Parker, dig, Junior would play there and, I mean, he's so good. That's area I abstruse guitar, man. Just sittin' in that acreage alongside the Eastwood Country Club. Little Willie John would be there. I acclimated to apprehend Willie John accomplishing 'Fever,' man, you could apprehend that articulation driftin' beyond the field. Umhmm. T-Bone Walker! That's area I abstruse guitar, all that music driftin' out into the night."
[Screwed Appropriate And Left]
"See, in Texas, everybody, atramentous and white, address the blues. Everybody accepts it," Steve Miller explains. His accomplishments was unusual, but it illustrates the point. Dr. George Miller, Steve's father, was doctor to T-Bone Walker while the guitarist was growing up, and sometimes if T-Bone was abbreviate on aliment he'd accord Dr. Miller by arena for him at parties. Steve would sit at the anxiety of the allegorical atramentous bluesman, demography in every note. There was never annihilation like a academic lesson, but the acquaintance was awfully valuable.
"I don't wish to say it was such a bland arena for the atramentous cats," Miller says. "They were accepting bankrupt appropriate and larboard and every added way. There was – there is – all kinds of segregation. But the music was all over the place. For eighty bucks you could appoint all these outa afterimage atramentous bands, and everybody did."
Another big access on all Dallas's abecedarian adolescent white dejection players was the midnight-to-five Cats Caravan affairs on WRR. "Oh, man, they acclimated to play Lightin' Hopkins and Freddie King and like Leadbelly and all these Texas people. And Jimmy Reed! He was in boondocks all the time. That was my aboriginal thing, accomplishing Jimmy Reed."
Miller had a alive dejection bandage in Dallas at the age of 12. At 16, nine years ago, he did some tapes of his band, and audition the tapes now, Miller maintains they're as acceptable as a lot of the accepting that's accepting awash at your bounded almanac store.
["Rhythm & Dejection Was Our Folk Music"]
"You apprehend these San Francisco bodies play and it's accepting they got out of folk music. That's how it happened in San Francisco. You can apprehend all those folk guitar lessons," says Boz Scaggs.
"We had a altered folk music in Texas. Accent and dejection was our folk music and arena the dejection was the accustomed thing. Everybody played the blues. So, you know, you appear to San Francisco and there's actual few bodies on the West Coast actuality that anytime play the blues. So it's not harder to acquaint who's from Texas if you're alert to some guys jamming."
Blues is all over Texas and the roots go deep. Dark Lemon Jefferson came out of Wortham, about-face of the century, with a moaning, arrant dejection actualization that set the accent for ancestors of Texas bluesmen. He generally beyond the paths with Leadbelly, who, while Louisiana-born, formed the beyond of Texas and advance his message. Lightnin' Hopkins dug them both; abstruse at the anxiety of Dark Lemon, he has said. T-Bone Walker, built-in in Linden, aloft in Waxahachie, was the aboriginal of the dejection guitarists to accomplish it nation-wide with heavy-selling recordings, years afore B. B. King. Everybody dug Mance Lipscomb. New ancestors heard these men, captivated what they had to say and developed the Texas genre. Buddy Holly, out of Lubbock, took it one direction. A adolescent saxophone amateur from Fort Worth alleged Ornette Coleman gigged with Pee Wee Crayton's (and others') accent and dejection bandage for a bulk of years, afore he spun off into his own canal and created a advocate way of arena jazz.
No one attitude has produced all the bedrock players that are now advancing out of Texas' all-inclusive expanses (267,339 aboveboard miles). Actuality – atramentous and white – and hill-billy music coexist and admix with the dejection to anatomy the accepted aural ancestry of Lyndon Johnson's birth-state. Steve Miller's bigger amusement as a kid was to go to the Big D Jamboree. "I admired it, man, all those hill-billy bands. It was like 6000 humans a night, like the Fillmore of Dallas!"
Mother Earth hornman Martin Fierro, who's half-Indian and looks rather like Tonto, has played every affectionate of Texas music, including churches ("they let you accompany your horn and jam, man, and it's so beautiful") and mariachi bands. "There were these two old ladies in this mariachi thing, man. Arena tambourine and accordion, that was all. But they austere – they burned. I sat in with them, man, and it was so good."
Cajun music out of Louisiana has aswell been an access – men like the dejection accordionist Clifton Chenier (who's recorded for Arhoolie) command account a allotment of the Texas players.
["It's Boxy For A Longhair, Man"]
"One way you apprentice all these kinds of music is by arena it," says Tougue & Canal bassist Terry Owens. "We'd consistently yield any gig and play whatever it was declared to be: country and western or dejection or folk or soul. There was never any distinction. Afterwards a while it all comes naturally."
This explains why all those things fit calm so able-bodied if Sir Douglas or Mother Earth articulation their horns like a mariachi band, let the accent area abatement into a accent and dejection groove, sing country and western style, followed by a dejection guitar solo. It sounds appropriate because it's natural.
But dejection – atramentous dejection – is basal to the Texas sound.
He'd been a able artist for seven or eight years afore Doug Sahm absolutely acquainted he'd fabricated it. He went down to the Ebony Club in San Antonio one night to sit in with some atramentous cats. "They dug us, man, they dug us. That's if we knew we were gettin' into somethin', if those atramentous bodies said they dug us, and you could acquaint they absolutely did."
There's so abounding acceptable musicians in San Antonio, area Doug Sahm comes from, that you can, he says, get a atramentous five-piece bandage "as acceptable as annihilation you anytime heard" for 5 or six dollars a man.
It's no simple activity for a atramentous artist in Texas, no bulk how acceptable he is.
Says Ed Guinn, bass amateur with the Conqueroo and a atramentous man: "People are absolutely awe-inspiring aback there. It's boxy for a longhair. They amusement longhairs just like they amusement colored. And it can be boxy for Negroes – decidedly if you're some hot-head militant. In Texas you apperceive you're a Nigger and if you act like one, everything's cool."
"Prejudice is the aforementioned everywhere," says Lonnie Castille, bagman for Mother Earth, a atramentous artist who just "came down" to San Francisco a brace of months ago. "But I'll acquaint you this, man, it's stronger in Texas. Humans are added calm here. They wish to apperceive about you, yourself, and it don't bulk so abundant annihilation except what you are." Texas isn't like that.
It's a assured and actual Southern ancestral affair a lot of places in Texas. Everybody, white and black, knows his place. White association and blacks accrue appealing neatly divided. Except for the musicians. Boz Scaggs, aforetime additional guitarist with Steve Miller, tells of arena at every affectionate of club and coffer in Dallas and in his home town, Plano, 20 afar to the north. "It's absolutely something they way the Negro humans there just access you. 'Specially if you can play. I mean, in Harlem, you go into a club to jam and there's this bend of abandon to the accomplished thing. You can feel something agitated about to happen. A allotment of the musicians and the humans who dig what they're doing, there's a affable activity in Texas. Family feeling."
[Red-Neck & Head-Neck Hippies]
Drummer Castille, who's played abaft Wilson Pickett and others (including Archie Bell & the Drells, if he was in top academy in Houston) professes to apprehend little aberration in the way the best atramentous bands and the best white bands play. "Sometimes, you can't acquaint whether it's white or Negro until you look." Lonnie admits to "copping a lot of accepting off white bands like the Jokers and Buddy White – some of those guys were hotter'n hell." Atramentous or white, Castille says he can consistently acquaint whether a musician's from Texas. "Especially the adroit patterns and the dynamics the drummers use man. A lot of drummers actuality [in San Francisco] play at a loud akin all the time. In Texas you can't get abroad with that. You got to play what fits."
Texas is the home of red-neck hippies (those who alcohol Pearl beer and maybe sip a little Southern Comfort) and head-necks (same agglomeration except they yield a lot of drugs). If you're association you alum from the University of Texas or absorb a brace of semesters at the University of Houston (no aberration except that you alcohol added wine) and afresh you breach and don't acquaint anyone area you appear from until you do something important.
Most notable of these is red/head-neck Janis Joplin, "the babe from Port Arthur who swore she wasn't never advancing back," admitting some of her endure engagements with the Holding Co. are appointed in Texas. Janis is the assurance of San Francisco but the accession of Texans Chet Helms and Steve Miller to the aboriginal San Francisco arena accord could cause and acumen to accrue Texas on your scorecard: there's consistently at atomic one bullpen abating up.
[A Bigger Lay Than Sam Andrew]
Self-appointed scorekeeper seems to be San Francisco's Henry Carr, a bounded ambassador and co-manager for Mother Earth, who is aggravating to accrue all the West Coast Texas aptitude together. He has been somewhat amenable for the contempo accession of the Sir Douglas Quintet + 2. In addition, the Conqueroo featuring Fat Charlie on guitar and Super Spade on bass/flute and Shiva's Head Bandage featuring advance violin are the latest Texas arrivals.
Mother Earth is headed by harpist/songwriter Powell St. John and actualization Tracy Nelson, a abundant actuality accompanist on vocals. Powell, forth with Janis, were frontrunners of the Ghetto folk arena at the University of Texas in the aboriginal Sixties. Both apperceive that music's primary action is to move the physique (e.g, girls bathroom graffito Fillmore West: "Powell St. John is a bigger lay than Sam Andrew"). Intellectual physique bedrock seems to be a superior inherent in all of the West Coast Texas groups.
Presently Sir Doug is apparently added important than Mother Earth. Admitting both groups are congenital forth the aforementioned curve (simple R&B absolute with bound horn sections), Sir Doug's accumulation has been arena calm for eight years. The two groups intend to authorize a Stax/Volt complete with chargeless barter of musicians amid the two groups at arena dates.
Sir Doug himself is a gas, ambling on date with cowboy hat, boots, and jeans, and signals for his San Antonio horn area to breach into the blazon of music that Bloomfield never accomplished with the Electric Flag. Admitting his anthology Honkey Blues lacks the conciseness of reside achievement it is at atomic bigger than Mother Earth's embarassing admission on the Revolution album. (Mother Earth's new Living With The Animals is a apparent improvement.)
The hottest account alfresco of Janis Joplin, though, still charcoal in Texas. If you can brainstorm a hundred and thirty batter absurd albino with continued downy hair arena some of the gutsiest aqueous dejection guitar you accept anytime heard, afresh access Johnny Winter. At 16, Bloomfield alleged him the best white dejection guitarist he had anytime heard. Now 23, Winter has been out and about for some time. At one time he and his identical accompanying brother, Edgar, had a accumulation alleged the Atramentous Plague, Edgar on tenor and at the keyboard.
Winter anon appears with a trio, and, like Janis, is backed by bereft talent. Henry Carr ability accede the possibilities of Winter and Joplin on the aforementioned stage. In accession to guitar, Winter aswell plays superb harp and has a accomplished harder dejection voice. His beheld and aural attendance is a attenuate alongside to Joplin's.
No catechism of it, the aboriginal name that comes to apperception if you ask alien Texans about the acceptable musicians that accept backward aback home is Winter's. "Incredible," says Chet Helms of Family Dog. Almost inevitably, the additional name you apprehend is Bobby Doyle, a dark pianist-singer-composer who comes beyond like Ray Charles and Hank Williams and several added people, but mainly Bobby Doyle. Afresh there's one actual soulful tenor amateur and accompanist alleged Jerry LaCroix with a big physique bandage out of Beaumont and Houston alleged the Boogie Kings. And a songwriter-banjoist alleged John Clay, who's said to absorb hours simultaneouly watching TV, arena banjo, account a book and autograph songs like his amazing (but unrecorded) "On the Road to Mingus." There's John Roberts and the Hurricanes, a bandage that gets into a array of things, all funky. Ray Sharpe. Cookie and the Cupcakes. The Valentine Brothers.
["They're Afire – They're All Burning"]
Though the present bedrock arena in Texas is rather thin, important aptitude still lies with the absolute abandoned singer/songwriter. Admitting actually these humans ability be referred to as "folksingers" because of their nonelectric acoustical accompaniment, they escape that allocation as calmly as Tim Hardin or Arlo Guthrie.
Only Jerry Jeff Walker, with his "Mr. Bojangles" has accomplished any array of civic recognition.
For several years the abilities of Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Frank Davis, and several others accept not even accustomed boundless bounded recognition. They accept had to be agreeable with the abbreviating bulk of coffeehouses and "folk music" concerts. Since the Houston/Austin/Dallas triangle has been for the a lot of allotment apathetic to access a astute ear for abreast music, it has abandoned been afresh that cogent absorption has been generated about their abeyant for prominence.
Discovered by Jack Clement, Townes Van Zandt is the a lot of advantageous songwriter. Contempo affair plan in Nashville produced an anthology on MGM's Poppy characterization advantaged For the Account of a Song. The characterization abominably included some of his weaker actual and chaotic the selections with some easy-listening Nashville production. Despite this, Peter, Paul, and Mary accept included some of his performances into their repertoire.
Guitarmaker Guy Clark is a non-aggressive bendable announced person, and this is abundantly amenable for his anonymity. Guy's autograph is musically actual adapted and lyrically as agitating and aboveboard as any songwriting accepting produced. Guy will anon go to Nashville with Jay Boyett (Townes' manager) to cut an anthology of aboriginal actual that will hopefully be bought and broadcast by a civic label. The basic accent though, will be to accomplish added artists acquainted of his actual for their consideration.
Presently a bounded engineer, Frank Davis has been alive sporadically for over a year on an anthology with Carolyn Terry for a bounded label. Frank is a alarming performer. His captivation in a song produces all-overs added astute than Tim Hardin. Frank's botheration admitting seems to be in befitting his activities focused on one affair continued abundant to sustain momentum. Accepting strungout admitting abandoned adds to his charisma. Frank Davis is already there, it's just a bulk of affair him.
One gets the consequence of astronomic alpha assets of agreeable activity all over the state. "You yield EI Paso," says Mother Earth saxophonist Martin Fierro, "that's just a baby city-limits of about 300,000, but there's at atomic 25 bedrock and cycle bands there, I've heard a lot of them, and they're afire – they're all burning. And nothing's anytime traveling to appear to those bodies unless they leave. They'll wind up in factories and in the fields. But those bodies can play!"
[Never Asked To Play Aforementioned Abode Twice]
Not that this is reflected by the accepted Texas pop scene. On one duke you accept what Rick Barthelme agreement Tanglewood Bedrock (college suburbanites too flush to bead out (i.e. Fever Tree and the 5 Americans and their contributions to analytic rock). The best of these though, the Moving Sidewalks, are the a lot of bartering artefact in the South.
A assertive bulk of abuse is alpha to accomplish itself acquainted in the Texas agreeable scene, Doug Sahm says. A lot of the dejection players are audition "all that cool cyberbanking pop stuff" that's fabricated so abundant money for almost failing pop groups alfresco Texas and are alpha to absorb it into their music. "Some of the new bands are accomplishing that," Sahm says, "but I don't anticipate it's traveling to appear to anything."
Whereas it is all in foreground for Winter and the Ancillary walks, it is all abaft for the 13th Floor Elevators, one of the ancient of the "psychedelic" groups. At one time at bound able date group, they are a lot of arresting for their access on the bounded arena rather than for their music (though "Slip Central This House" is an accomplished section of lyricism). The accumulation has been cogent in council adolescent groups from the acceptable Gulf Coast complete taken by such humans as B.J. Thomas, Roy Head, and Gene Thomas.
Probably one of the a lot of abnormal groups beneath arrangement anywhere is the Red Krayola (the "C" was abandoned afterwards the Crayola Co. filed suit) who accept recorded two albums for the International Artists label. The aboriginal freak-out group, they are acclaimed for accepting never been asked to play the aforementioned abode twice. Sparked by Rick Barthelme's blaze for accuracy on their aboriginal album, the additional anthology focuses on the astute ability of Mayo and Steve. Admitting the anthology is egoistic at times, the 22 songs accurate a wit advised on its own agreement to be as absolute as a B.C. banana strip.
Both the Elevators and the Red Krayola forth with a lot of bounded groups are beneath arrangement to the International Artists label, the South's a lot of appalling absolute bedrock label. Through the efforts of admiral Bill Dillard, Lelan Rogers, and Ray Rush they accept been amenable in three years for authoritative I-A what it is today.
Huey P. Meaux charcoal a amount on the Houston scene. He's produced a acceptable allotment of the hits that appear out of Houston. An independent, his adjustment of accepting a affair calm at Gold Star Studios (Houston's funkiest) is awful individualistic. "Somebody will accord him a buzz alarm at two in the morning and advance an abstraction to him," says Doug Sahm, "and Huey will get on the buzz appropriate away, accepting musicians for the date. He doesn't delay a minute. Now, man – be does it appropriate now. Ability be three o'clock, you're still abrading the beddy-bye out of your eyes, this guy Huey is recording this thing, it works, don't ask me how."
[Blustering Self-Righteous Assholes]
The rather apathetic development of the bounded groups has been the absence of a cogent amphitheater scene. In Texas, the a lot of arresting are the Vulcan Gas Co. in Austin, the Catacombs and Love Artery in Houston. The Houston Clubs ache mainly from abridgement of atmosphere; the Catacombs because an under-21 club license, no air conditioning, and low beam makes it anachronistic in abstraction and appeal, and Love Artery because it is in the affection of Houston's hippie alliance (populated by Marlon Brando types and absent identities with "groovy, stoned, and freaky" fixations).
An accomplishment is anon accepting fabricated to accessible a "Fill-more South" blazon ballroom. But in actualization of accomplished attempts its success is doubtful.
So the blue affair that has happened is that there's a big growing bazaar for Texas bedrock alfresco Texas, but not at home.
"It had been a bankrupt little apple aback in Texas," says Martin Fierro of Mother Earth. "We all dug the music. but cipher alfresco Texas anytime heard it. You can play Texas if you're abroad from there and everybody address it. It's something special. But if you're there you don't complete that unusual, 'cause you're just accomplishing what everybody does – Texas music."
Most non-Texans tend to anticipate of Texas humans as barefaced affected assholes, to accompaniment it bluntly. That's added or beneath Janis Joplin's actualization of the humans about the oil refinery boondocks of Port Arthur, area she grew up alienated and rejected. "Man, those humans aching me," she recalls bitterly. She corrective and apprehend poetry, and that fabricated her different, weird. a aberration in the eyes of affable Texans. "I had a lot of hurts and confusions. You know, it's harder if you're a kid to be different. You're all abounding of things and you don't apperceive what it's about."
"It's not absolute simple to reside there if you say what you think," says Steve Miller. "Everytime you go out in the artery with continued hair some fraternity boy or football amateur or something is traveling to alpha some affectionate of hassle."
[An Insult To Southern Womanhood]
Robert Sherill already wrote a book about modern-day Texans; he alleged them "The Super-Americans" and drew a account of the American dream gone biologically wild, huge libraries congenital with oil able-bodied millions, arresting edifices of knowledge, bare of books and acquirements within; museums congenital in affront of arctic art circles, by Dallas association afraid to blast the best-dressed cities list, but abandoned of annihilation of aesthetic importance.
Thus Texas: already the acreage of Mexico, already the acreage of Sam Houston and Texas, now the acreage of the United States and Lyndon Johnson, John Conally, Jack Ruby, Lee Oswald, Billie Sol Estes and H.L. Hunt.
In abounding ways, Texas is still a frontier. The old virtues – toughness, abnegation – are cherished. Adventurousness is punished.
"The affair is, there's still all those humans in Texas who aren't traveling to let you do annihilation unless you do it their way," explain Boz Scaggs. "You absolutely gotta go through a lotta bits to acquisition your own way. But, I don't know, maybe it's so bad that you see the alternatives to Texas a lot added clearly."
Just how Southern a abode Texas is, is neatly illustrated by the action Boz Scaggs and Steve Miller about affronted if they were in Dallas beforehand this year. The two were abrogation a drive-in burger collective if a top academy audacious came roaring into the lot in his candy-apple red Corvette's babe acquaintance at his side, in one hell of a hurry. Corvette's brakes locked, tires squealed, skidded appropriate up assimilate a curb. "Slow the fuck down," Scaggs shouted as he and Miller collection off. "What did you say?" the audacious bellowed. "Slow The Fuck Down!" Scaggs accursed back, as he and Miller pulled away. The Corvette tore out afterwards them, bent them at a red light. Miller and Scaggs carefully formed up the windows and bound the doors while the adolescent balderdash formed on the car and raged. "What pissed him off was that his babe acquaintance was with him and I'd affronted Southern Womanhood. Which absolutely tells you area a lot of of Texas is at. He'd like to accept kicked hell out of us for the account of Southern Womanhood."
[Drunken Hoots At Threadgill's Gas Station]
One beginning arena was Austin during the aboriginal 1960s, area a loose-knit accumulation of folk singers dabbled at the University of Texas, created abandoned banter (like Wonder Warthog) for the university amusement magazine, the Texas Ranger, and were alive in civilian rights movement leadership. A lot of them lived in a briefing accommodation architecture abreast the University alleged the Ghetto (or, as Texans say it, the Ghet-to).
The accommodation was the accessible centermost of beatnikism to association of the Texas capital, and if the trend against continued hair began, the Austinites reacted in all their ample Texas wrath.
Meanwhile, Ghetto citizenry would all go out to bashed all-night hoots at a 1930's adapted gas base in East Austin, run by a man alleged Kenneth Threadgill, a folk and country singer.
It was at Threadgill's that Janis, Joplin, Powell St. John and Larry Wiggins acclimated to accomplish as the Waller Creek Boys. Threadgill himself sang this year at the Newport Folk Festival and got nice reviews. It was his aboriginal above actualization alfresco the Lone Star State. He sang generally during the 1930's with Jimmy Rodgers – and bigger than Rodgers, According to some of his staunchest admirers.
The calefaction got had in Texas about four years ago, with the actualization of the Austin Ghetto underground scene. It wasn't so bad afore that, if you kept in line. But if Texas beeline association (everything in Texas is beyond than life, and Texas beeline society, no exception, is straighter than life) bent wind of what was traveling down in Austin, they addled out. So abounding Texas bedrock musicians accept been bankrupt on so abounding accuse – justified and contrarily – that the account would be too continued to print.
"All that calefaction out of Austin," says Doug Sahm. "That did it. Everybody who could do it had to split. To San Francisco, man, because this is admirable here, you know? It's a abundant abode to actualize music. It's the centermost of that force, that scene. Let me acquaint you now, this is accurate – there's a accomplished lotta animated humans in this city. Yeh."
[Yard Sale – Traveling West]
Chet Helms, hitch-hiking against Mexico in 1963 the day JFK was assassinated, was tossed in bastille in Laredo and put through some absurd changes afore he was rescued – by the FBI, of all people. "I was accused of accepting an abettor to the assassin," he says, and "when they couldn't accomplish that stick, they accused me of burglary nine dollars from a barter driver. Afresh it was afflicted to a adventure charge. That's the acknowledgment why I don't wish to go aback to Texas."
Travis Rivers (who's co-manager, these days, for Mother Earth and a brace of added S.F. groups) went through an abundantly bad year of animality and aggravation afore he assuredly absitively to acquaint Texas good-bye. Some of his accompany had abutting the Adolescent Peoples. Socialist League and he had been active, with them, in amalgam an Austin cine theatre and added appropriately avant-garde (for Texas) endeavors. He absent his job and it was eight months afore he could acquisition another. Chat went out that Travis was a bad-ass, and, just possibly, a commie.
"You know, amalgam a cine abode to you and me isn't annihilation too weird," says Travis. "But you accept to access Texas. To them, man, that was weirder than anything. If they banish you, you're blacklisted up and down the state. I got so hungry, so thin, no money and cipher would do a affair for, me. Texas is like a huge baby town. Everybody knows about you."
Finally he got a job as a attendant in the library of the University of Texas. (It was in the library, it seems, because of Travis' accomplished acquaintance as an ascendancy on attenuate books.) "One night I went to a flick alleged Help, watched it all the way through, afresh all the way through, afresh all the way through again, and afresh I collection out to the dupe to anticipate about it. Just me, abandoned out there with the dupe and the night sky. I collection aback to this little abode area I was active and played mumbleypeg for awhile. And afresh I confused aggregate out to the foreground yard, emptied the accomplished abode out, put up a big assurance that said Yard Sale – Traveling West."
["You pay ante for that soulfulness, man"]
There's all these things accident in Texas music, but Texas was too backbreaking an atmosphere for Powell St. John to get it all together. He thinks the aforementioned is accurate for added Texans. "It's abandoned arising actuality in San Francisco. This is a freer environment. You can breathe here. Everybody knows something's accident here, it's like a acquisition of artists to do what they couldn't do achieve else."
Henry Carr explains: "These Texas humans got to accomplish it actuality because they can't go aback to Texas. That's why Texas musicians you apprehend alfresco Texas are absolutely alive at it."
There is a array of Texas association aural every ample city-limits alfresco Texas. "It's safer central the association than it is outside, man; you apperceive what to apprehend with Texans," says St. John. "Like, we authority calm – it's still Texas, wherever we go," Fierro adds.
Texas is allotment of the Old South, but the added west you go beyond the state, the beneath ageism and abnegation and accepted tight-assed-ness do you encounter. Which is array of accurate nationally and may explain why so abounding Texas musicians accept drifted as far west as they can go, to San Francisco. "All this advertising that this was a chargeless city, that you could dress or do annihilation anyhow you capital to, smoke blockhead after a lot of agitation – that's what brought them here," says Tracy Nelson, Mother Earth diva whose bandage is 75% Texan in origin. "They were absolutely driven out of Texas, man. It's a absolutely brainless agglomeration of clods aback there and all the Texas bodies I apperceive abhorrence that Texas mentality and all the bullshit."
"No catechism about Texas soul," Sahm agrees. "But, listen, you pay, ante for that soulfulness. You pay ante for that soulfulness, man."
[The calefaction makes them play that way]
Roadhouses in Texas are like annoying else. All the adolescent bedrock musicians play them at the start. They're affair houses far added than they are cocktail lounges or beer halls. They're area a lot of humans get calm to get bashed and accept a acceptable time. It's a acquisition of accompany and the music is allotment of the camaraderie, allotment of the acceptable activity rather than a abstracted entertainment.
Travis Rivers acclimated to go from jam affair to jam affair all day Saturday and Sunday. "Texas music, it's so fine. I acclimated to anticipate all the music in the apple was like that until I got here. There's a assertive way Texas musicians play, but it's harder to describe. I got a acquaintance who tells me it's the calefaction that makes them play that way."
You apprehend a Texas bandage and you apperceive it's a Texas band. It's not so abundant a actualization as a feeling. An affirmation of the land, the space, the clean, bright sky.
"People in the city-limits – the big cities – feel so awkward in, and there's so abounding humans putting them through so abounding changes – you know, like in Chicago and New York – that it puts aggregate on the apparent and superficial, relationships and emotions," Steve Miller contends. "But Texas bodies reside out on the acreage – with the acreage and amplitude out there. They accept a added activity because added of that activity for activity exists out there on the land. It gets you into a affair added like physique music, like country music."
["You got the time to Get it together"]
"Thing about Texas is you just yield it slower up there," says Doug Sahm. "You got added time. Not a lot of humans hassling you there, if you apperceive area to go. You got the time to get it together, after a lot of humans pressuring you about authoritative a hit record. By the time you go record, you got it formed out."
One of the absolutely allegorical Texas bluesmen, Mance Lipscomb is all but retired now. He's got a acreage in Navasota, on the Brazos River, and mostly he spends his time sitting on the river bank, cerebration and singing to himself every now and then. Lipscomb hardly plays at all anymore. There's affluence of time for accomplishing annihilation forth the Brazos.
Travis Rivers loves Texas, abundant as he hates how he's been advised there. "It's admirable there. It's the a lot of admirable country I've anytime seen. I try to get aback there every three or four months now, whenever I can allow it. They're abundant people, Texans. I dig their silly. bigoted bullshit. They're great, as continued as you don't accept to depend on them for anything.
"It's funny Texas humans can be so harder and so soft. I beggarly you breeze at a Texas cat, you got a action on you hands. But if you anticipate with him, array of be affable and yield him into your self, he'll assemblage to you."
"You don't fool Texas people, I'll say that for them. They're so aboveboard if they accept in somethin', dig? so aboveboard it's beautiful, they're absolutely with you one hundred percent,"Sahm says. "You can't get abroad with a lot of bullshit, though, 'cause Texas humans – they apperceive it's bullshit."
Martin Fierro's eyes ablaze up if you ask him what he misses about Texas. It's not the cities or the people. "It's the desert, man. Yeah, and all that peyote out there. Humans bulb it like all over the arid – wow – there it is, man. Can't hardly get it anyplace else."
There is a assertive pride in accepting from Texas. Fierro, for instance, was built-in in Mexico and the aboriginal several years he lived in Texas he was a wetback. "Even the Mexican humans in Texas anticipation of me as Mexican. Afresh I lived there and played the music, blues, rock, country and western and everything, for several years, and afresh I went down to Mexico City-limits one time and all those cats, man, they said 'You're not Mexican, man, you're from Texas.' Man, if those bodies told me that, I knew I had it made!
"There's so abundant – assurance is the chat – so abundant assurance on the allotment of Texas musicians to get their own affair beyond that it absolutely is a aggressive scene. You absolutely got to accomplish it. If you haven't got it all together, you apperceive what I'm talkin' about? Afresh you can just overlook arena music in Texas, you dig it?"
This adventure is from the December 7th, 1968 affair of Rolling Stone.
From The Archives Affair 23: December 7, 1968
