(This article was written in
l981 twenty years before I moved to Texas. The
events described occurred during an extensive hitch-hiking trip, one of many
that I have made in my life.
It was
written for publication in the WOODSTOCK TIMES, of Woodstock, New York, where I
spent most of my life when I wasn't exploring the world.)
I think I'll go back to old Texas;
A Pilgrimage, yes, I suppose.
I like to turn on the old car radio
And hear Maddox Brothers and Rose.
(words and music by Jerry Faires)
I have driven through Texas many times in my life and I always enjoyed
it, never having had an experience one could describe as bad. But Texans have a
terrible reputation around the country. They
are stereotyped as braggarts. Always boasting about how big Texas is and how big
everything in Texas is. Texas, I
have heard, is no place to get stuck in, is full of red-necks, and is generally
the arm-pit of the USA. My
experiences do not bear out this reputation.
I have always found Texans to be cheerful, polite, and, like most people
around the country, willing to go out of their way to help a stranger.
I have no doubt that Texas has its assholes, but I have never come up
against any. But reputations do not grow out of nothing.
With smoke there is usually some sort of fire.
I may have discovered part of the reason for this contradiction between
what I heard before I came to Texas and my experiences there.
The one thing that most Texans have that I have never noticed anywhere
else in the country is an intense love of their home state far above and beyond
the feelings that most Americans have for their own state.
Texas is the only place I have ever seen people around the campfire all
night singing songs about their home state.
I have never heard a song about New York, though I am sure one may exist.
New Jersey? Pennsylvania? Forget
it! Texans seem to have a deep love for the culture of their home.
Not the Government, but the people, the ranches, the cattle, the history,
which is a hell of a lot more interesting than most other states. This is what
Texans try to share with us when they are abroad.
************************************************************************
Oklahoma City to Kerrville, Texas. An
all day drive with my friend, Terren, official photographer of the Kerrville
Folk Festival. Through the Texas
hill country, past the LBJ Ranch, now a Texas State Park, until you see a
hillside dotted with little squares of color, the tents of the campers.
We set up our tents and went to find the action.
Music everywhere! Wandering
from campsite to campsite I heard the usual run of folk music with fiddles,
guitars, and mandolins. My first
surprise. No banjos! I saw only three or four banjos in the entire crowd for the
nine days I was there.
I had never heard of Townes Van Zandt.
Terren never stopped talking about him during the drive from Oklahoma
City. She introduced me to him and
he immediately invited me into the RV he was staying in.
We had a beer and he then suggested a couple of hands of poker.
It seemed a bit strange, but who was I, a stranger in these parts to
question the local behavior. He made
it sound like the most ordinary everyday thing in the world.
After I had lost about thirty dollars to him, I finally bowed out and
went on my way. It was about three
months later, after we had become friends and were performing together that he
admitted that he had been flat broke and needed the money to buy gas to get the
borrowed RV back to its owner.
I wandered around the first day, talking to folks and trying to get a
feel for the place and the people. This
was the Kerrville Folk Festival's tenth successive year and the festival's
promoter and MCs never tired of telling the crowd how marvelous it was that this
had been going on for ten years. A
general self back-patting never completely stopped and while it did not actually
become tiresome---there was a real group spirit going---I could have done with
more music and less talk from the
stage about festivals past and present.
The first night I went to the campfires where all pickers got their
chance to perform for the folk. These
sessions were informal and lasted into the dawn.
Two or three festival heavies would get things going and would then leave
for their own campfires, assignations, or what-have-theys, leaving field to the
general audience of pickers and singers.
I started one session early the first evening and quickly gathered a
large group of listeners. I wanted to made as good an impression on the folk as
I quickly could so that the promoters would hear of me and I would get to
perform on the main concert stage, if possible.
As far as I knew I was completely unknown in Kerrville.
As it turned out none of this plotting was necessary, but I didn't know
it yet.
After I played a while one of the heavies took over and started the ball
rolling around the group, each person that cared to singing one or two songs.
By the time I left a few hours later, I was impressed by two things. One:
most of the material I was hearing was brand new to me.
And two, most of it was about Texas.
Texas, the state, the land, the people, cows ranches, history, was the
subject of all these songs. Some
were fun-poking hilarious. Others
tear-provoking serious. And the crowd there knew the songs well.
All the choruses were roundly joined.
This was no up tight folk singing gathering needing a Pete Seeger to get
it going. These people were singing THEIR music about THEIR home.
For the first time in my life I was experiencing a group of English
speaking people lustily and unselfconsciously singing their living music.
These were not the old folksongs I was used to hearing.
These songs were being written now or in the last few years. I really
didn't know because it was all so new to me.
Whenever the circle came back to me I felt some embarrassment because
none of my music, my banjo instrumentals, the old-timey songs I did seemed to
contribute to what I perceived as the flow of the evening. But I quickly
overcame this self-consciousness and was having a ball by the next day.
It would make this piece far too long to go into detail about the various
singers I heard that night and got to know during the festival. But I will
mention three men. Mike Williams, a
big blustery, red haired smiling freak singing delicate flowery songs about his
eight year old daughter. Tim
Henderson, ordinary looking spellbinder with his intense love of Texas through
his songs. And Frank Hill, the only
one of the three that looked like a Texas to my stereotypically accustomed eyes,
with his raw SOMEBODY'S GOT TO PICK FOR THE PLAIN FOLK.
These three were typical, if not the best, of the singers I heard there.
Next day, wandering around through the craft booths I met Crow Johnson ,a
black haired woman, selling her records and little four holed ocarinas she made.
The size of a quarter, they played a chromatic octave in the piccolo
range. You could wear one on a
string around your neck and never know they were there until time to make music.
After a while we got to the "Where are you from?" stage and, Lo
and Behold, she is Forest Goodenough's daughter, Amy.
I used to see her around Woodstock when she was tiny.
Having been in and out of the music world for thirty years I know how
difficult it can be when just before, or right after, a performance, some old
friend whom you haven't seen for a long while, shows up and wants your
attention. Therefore I made only one
unsuccessful attempt apiece to communicate with three big stars of the festival.
(Why was I being so coy when I wrote this in 1981?
We are talking here of Odetta, Peter Yarrow, and Bob Gibson.) On the
other hand, David Amram, with whom I once performed at Café Lena in Saratoga,
was tickled to see me, and we made some music together, on and off the stage.
But the best old friend meeting was with Carolyn Hester whom I hardly
know at all except by dim recollection and reputation.
She and I came together quickly because we have had similar experiences
in the music business world. We both dropped out years ago because of intense
dissatisfaction with our lives as professional singers, and now, having both
found ourselves to some degree, are playing our way back into the field, each in
out own way.
On Sunday morning Carolyn played at a folk mass and I went to her
afterward and reintroduced myself. She
was happy to see me and we arranged for me to sing with her at a song swapping
session she was running. She also
asked me to play with her at her evening concert the next night.
All of this came to pass.
Before I go any further I must say that this is not meant, in any sense,
to be a review of the Kerrville Folk Festival.
It is, I fear, a rather halting attempt to make some sense of my own
impressions and experiences.
I introduced myself to Allen Damron on the third day.
He seemed to be a person of some influence there and also, like me,
played a long neck banjo. His
reaction to my name was unexpected.
"Ah liked t' shit!" he told me later.
He had grown up, musically speaking, on my old records and couldn't
believe I was actually there in the flesh. I
have since discovered a few more people in the Southwest that know of or have my
old records. In fact, I am sure I
made more friends through them than dollars, unquestionably the better deal.
Allen said he would get me engagements in Austin, and he did.
After the festival I went to Austin where I performed for three days at
Snavely's, a new folk club.
Things went so well there that I am going back on September 22 for a two week
gig on my way back to Woodstock.
There were many other Texas songwriters in Austin that I had never heard
of. I mention only two more;
Rusty Wier, who impressed me with his beautiful command of his medium as a
writer, singer, and performer, and
Gary P. Nunn, who wrote the LONDON
HOMESICK BLUES. Since I had never
heard this song of Gary's before, I figured no one else had either.
Loving it, I learned it and sang it at the gig in Austin, only to learn
that it was well known. This may be
taken as a comment on how much I knew of Texas music before I get to Texas.
While I was singing the chorus a weird looking guy jumped up on the stage
and sang it with me. This pissed me off and I wished someone would get rid of
him for me. The only other time I had ever seen anyone do this was in Woodstock,
years before, when Bobby Shehorn, a Texan living in Woodstock, jumped up
uninvited to sing with Brian Hollander which pissed Brian off. I figured it was
a Texan thing. After my set I found out that my stage jumper was Gary P. Nunn
who had written the song, paying me the ultimate compliment. It was a good
lesson for me.
But the best part of all of this for me was the dozen or so musicians
there who really got off on my music, and played it with me as I did theirs.
I fit in in Texas musically as I never seemed to anywhere else.
Stuff I had been playing for years and seemed to leave most Woodstock
musicians cold was received with enthusiasm in Texas, both Kerrville and Austin.
I had the intense satisfaction of hearing my compositions understood and played
along with by these Texas musicians, players of the highest quality.
I didn't have to explain or 'teach' them. They heard and played.
Perhaps a real Woodstock music festival would bring out the same spirit
in Woodstock musicians, a spirit of musical togetherness unencumbered by the
knowledge of who is making how many bucks. Woodstock
would certainly benefit more through a local musician's festival then it ever
did through the dope ridden abstractions of the so-called Woodstock Nation on
sale in most shops from the playhouse to the Bear Café.
I played more music with strangers in the three weeks in Texas than I did
with friends in Woodstock for the last ten years.
Sometimes we change and grow inwardly, showing no outside manifestation
of that change until something happens to trigger the change into an observed
reality. Perhaps on my return home I
will find music all around me as I never did before.
That would be a blessing.
AND TEXAS GUNS
I know less about guns than I knew about Texas music.
I know that guns can be used to hit a target.
I know that there are different sizes, types and styles, but I know very
little about them. A rifle is a long
gun and shoots with greater accuracy than a short gun, a pistol.
That is the extent of my knowledge about guns.
I have never seen a gun used threateningly in real life and I hope I
never do. But I will tell you about
one hitch-hiking experience when I thought it was happening and perhaps could
have had I behaved differently. Two
years ago I was headed west on Interstate 40 in Tennessee and got a ride at
night with two local men. They were
only going a short distance and they assured me they would let me out at a busy,
well lighted exit ramp because, as I told them, I didn't want to be stuck at a
dark lonely place at night. As usually happens, they asked me to play my banjo
and I, being very tired, declined, saying they would never hear it above the
noise of the moving car, my usual excuse.
In a little while the driver said to his companion,
"Let's see that pistol in the glove compartment."
The passenger took a gun out and handed it to the driver who waved it
sort of aimlessly over his shoulder--he was not pointing it at me--and said,
"We carry this in case folks get strange ideas, and we know how to
use it, don't we?" His friend agreed and took the gun and put it back in
the glove compartment. I tell you,
friends and neighbors, I felt very weird at that moment.
Here I was, riding at night, helpless, in a car with two strangers who had
just waved a gun at me. This had
never happened in all my years and thousands of miles of hitch-hiking.
The image of me lying dead on the roadside and all my stuff stolen--my
fantasy gave equal weight to both--presented itself to my imagination.
Had I gotten "that" ride, the one some folks always talk about
when I mention hitch-hiking?
The moment had come to play music. Out
came the banjo, noisy car notwithstanding. I
played my best songs, including THE GREAT ASSEMBLY, the one that never fails to
get 'em. They loved it and after I
had played a while, the passenger handed me two dollars.
I took the money because my paranoia was still high from seeing the gun,
and I didn't want them to think I had any money.
Then they let me out at a dark lonely exit and I was full of fear again.
Hadn't they assured me that they would let me out at a busy place?
I walked away from their car, in the glare of their headlights, expecting
the worst, a bullet in my back. I
got to the other end of the exit ramp and they still hadn't moved.
When I had settled down to wait for another ride they finally started
moving and pulled up along side of me.
"This isn't where we meant to let you
out," said the passenger. I
realized that their behavior was not that of two scheming predators and I got
back in the car. They drove me one
more exit and I got out at my desired interchange with restaurants and motels
lighting up the night. Driver handed me three dollars which I accepted for the
same reason as before. There was no
doubt that I had more money on me than they did but I didn't want to shake their
image of me; the lonely broke banjo player wandering the world.
When they left I sat and went over the entire experience in my mind.
I saw how irrationally I had behaved.
The mere sight of the gun for a few seconds had blinded me to their
behavior which was, at all times, open and friendly.
If anything, showing me the gun was evidence of their fear of me. I was
in their world, their car, and knew perfectly well that guns were an
ever-present fact of life in the South, certainly more so than in the north.
As least Southerners do not try to hide their guns as much.
I clearly saw that the sight of the gun had caused me to clam up and make
no attempt to get to know them, while they were being talkative and friendly.
I was the one who was weird. I hoped to learn from this experience.
I also decided to leave their five dollars in their community along with
a few of my own and took an inexpensive motel room for the night.
Back to the present trip.
In Austin I stayed with Allen Damron who generously offered me space
while I was in town. There were
three cat skins spread out on one wall of the living room.
Guns, rifles, shotguns, seemed to be all over the place.
Three stacked in one corner. Two
under the couch. A bunch leaning up
against the sink in the kitchen. Looking for a stamp on a cluttered desk I
accidentally dropped a hidden pistol on to the floor.
Every once in a while someone would pick up a gun, aim it, fool with the
mechanism a bit, put it down--all seemingly at random--with no real purpose
behind the move, sort of the way one might idly pick ones nose.
I asked Allen, "Are any of
these guns loaded?"
"Y'all won't find the loaded ones lyin' around." Was the
cheerful answer. Years later,
telling this story about my reaction to the guns in his house, he claims he
answered, "They all are!"
About this time I realized that this trip of mine had two themes that
were starting to cross and weave with each other. Guns and music.
I felt in no personal danger. There
was a lesson to be learned here and I determined to remain open and learn it.
Somewhere in the mystery of why Texas has such a bad press lies the fact
that Texans are aware of this and seem to be overly sensitive to the impression
they are making. As a result they
tend to explain themselves more than generally called for by ordinary
conversation. I can not know how
they behave when alone with each other, but in my presence, and both on and off
stage there was a generous sprinkling of humorous and not so humorous comments
about the North and Yankees. It has
been said that the South is still fighting the Civil War.
But for anyone desirous of getting to know the South it would be foolish
to criticize them for this. It is
deeply ingrained in their humor and culture, part of what they are.
Texas musicians anyway.
It was with full consciousness of these thoughts that I asked my
host--after I had been there a few days, "What
kind of cats are these?'--the skins on the wall.
I hoped that this question would trigger a flood of talk about hunting
and guns and I was not disappointed. I
was ready to hear it. So far I had
been spared the gun rap, but it was in the air, so to speak, and I felt that as
an aware and friendly guest I should try to clear the air.
Ed Balmer, a sage from Woodstock, New York, my home town, once told me
something I will never forget.
"Responsibility lies with those who understand the situation."
I would never try to manipulate a situation, but if one well placed question
achieves a desired result, why not?
Allen told me how the mountain cats had to be thinned out because they
were killing the valuable horses on
his father's ranch. It seemed reasonable to me and I didn't interrupt as he
answered my question. Finding no
resistance to his story, Allen slowly shifted the thread of the tale from
practical necessity to divine purpose. Am I exaggerating?
"Ah'd dah if I couldn't hunt them cats at least once a yeah. Ah'd
jes' dah!" Readers, please forgive me for attempting to render Texas
dialect. But hearing Allen's speech
was very much a part of the total experience.
And I must add here that I am not being critical of him.
He was a good friend and I admire him intensely.
My host's room-mate was a peace officer. He carried two guns, a knife,
and a night stick at all times. He
gave me a detailed description of each, how they worked, the most effective way
of using them, how well they killed, maimed, or scared, whatever the desired
result. He ended by saying that they
were tools of his trade, as a banjo was mine.
I refrained from pointing out to him that my object was to use the banjo
as much as possible while his was, or should be, to not use him tools at all,
fearing that he would take it as sarcasm. This
entire conversation with both friends was not an argument, nor was it a friendly
discussion. We were all trying to
state our case without offending, instinctively avoiding the areas where this
would be impossible. I was there because of music and no one wanted to disturb
that equilibrium. But we all wanted to communicate our feelings about all the
weaponry about. We did pretty well.
Two more new friends from the same group invited me to visit them in El
Paso on my way through. They owned a
gun store and a firing range twenty miles from downtown El Paso.
It seemed like part of my education and I accepted.
Back on the hitch-hiking road now. Domingo
Cervantes drove me back to Kerrville and the Interstate. There I teamed up with
a black veteran, Duane, who was making his first hitch-hiking trip in order to
see the South first hand. He was
totally ill-equipped for what he was doing and I saved him from real discomfort
by sharing my water. We got a ride with a certain 'Joe' who, after telling us he
had just paid thirty thousand dollars for his car (a Camero) wanted us to kick
in with gas money. I gave him ten
dollars. Duane and I rode with him most of the way to El Paso but we finally
sent him on his way about 150 miles short of our goal.
Joe was simply too weird for us. Also, as Duane pointed out to me, he had
probably stolen the car. He had
no gear and didn't even have keys to the trunk or gas cap.
I got into El Paso next day about noon.
Searing hot, over 100 degrees in the shade.
For the next three days, at the gun club, I met lots of shooters and
listened to the sound of gunfire. On
the hitch-hiking trip to Oklahoma City I had gotten a ride from a man who
claimed to be an assassin, trained by the CIA to do our dirty work.
He was very convincing. When
I told my new hosts about it they laughed and said they knew of two others
living in El Paso. They only killed
out of the country. One was a member
of the gun club. My Woodstock bred
innocence was quickly ablating away from the heat of reentry into the world.
I had mentioned my friend, the assassin, to number of people since I had
come to Texas. So far I was the only
one to be surprised.
Though my hosts considered themselves humanistic and open-minded they
exhibited opinions I had come to regard as extremely right wing.
Our only common interest was music. I was trying to learn as much as I
could about guns: not the care and shooting of, but the role guns played in
their lives. My host was tired of dealing guns and was ready to sell out.
But his defense of guns was fierce. Once
again I was exposed to opinions and beliefs of which I was aware but had never
heard proclaimed. It seemed to boil
down to "People, not guns, do the shooting" Here in the south, in El
Paso, there was no one to look at and wink with when some one made some
particularly outrageous statement. I
was alone. Frequently people who are
defending the open ownership of guns will wax philosophical and emotional about
the great feeling or 'joy' of using a gun. When
this happens I am always reminded of the words of a now faded Woodstock immortal
who declared at the end of a snowmobile information meeting many years ago,
"You folks just don't know what its like to have twenty-two
horsepower between your legs."
