Fire in the Water, Earth in the Air: Legends of West Texas Music

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Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Fire in the Water, Earth in the Air
The Legends
Terry Allen: Going Back to the Dirt
Richard Bowden: Underground Lubbock
Lloyd Maines: It's Amazing How Much Gets Done
Jay Boy Adams: Chicken-Fried Memories
Don Caldwell: Selling the Family Farm for a Song
Bobby Keys: Like a Rolling Stone
Tom X Hancock: The Supernatural Family Band
Butch Hancock: The Universe in a Grain of Sand
Angela Strehli: Blues in a Texas Town
Jesse "Guitar" Taylor: A Bad Loud Place
Ponty Bone: Illumination on the Streets of Lubbock
Bruce Jaggers: The Greatest Show on Earth
Joe Ely: Lord of the Highway
Sharon Ely: Living on Dreams
Kimmie Rhodes: West Texas Angel
Jo Harvey Allen: Take Me Back to Paradox City
Jo Carol Pierce: Bad Girl Upset by the Truth
Guy Juke: Life Imitates Art
David Halley: Hitchhiking to Nirvana
Cary Swinney: Desperate Searcher
Doug Smith: Music Ordained by God
Downe Burns: Back to the Basics of Love
Bob Livingston: Gonzo Compadre
Wade Parks: Nothing Else to Do
Colin Gilmore: Living in Dichotomy
Jimmie Dale Gilmore: Hub City Mover
Mac Davis: Happiness Is Lubbock, Texas
Appendix I: Selected Discographies
Appendix II: Original Interviews
Index

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From Buddy Holly and the Crickets to the Flatlanders, Terry Allen, and Natalie Maines, Lubbock, Texas, has produced songwriters, musicians, and artists as prolifically as cotton, conservatives, and windstorms. While nobody questions where the conservatives come from in a city that a recent nonpartisan study ranked as America's second most conservative, many people wonder why Lubbock is such fertile ground for creative spirits who want to expand the boundaries of thought in music and art. Is it just that "there's nothing else to do," as some have suggested, or is there something in the character of Lubbock that encourages creativity as much as conservatism?

In this book, Christopher Oglesby interviews twenty-five musicians and artists with ties to Lubbock to discover what it is about this community and West Texas in general that feeds the creative spirit. Their answers are revealing. Some speak of the need to rebel against conventional attitudes that threaten to limit their horizons. Others, such as Joe Ely, praise the freedom of mind they find on the wide open plains. "There is this empty desolation that I could fill if I picked up a pen and wrote, or picked up a guitar and played," he says. Still others express skepticism about how much Lubbock as a place contributes to the success of its musicians. Jimmie Dale Gilmore says, "I think there is a large measure of this Lubbock phenomenon that is just luck, and that is the part that you cannot explain."

As a whole, the interviews create a portrait not only of Lubbock's musicians and artists, but also of the musical community that has sustained them, including venues such as the legendary Cotton Club and the original Stubb's Barbecue. This kaleidoscopic portrait of the West Texas music scene gets to the heart of what it takes to create art in an isolated, often inhospitable environment. As Oglesby says, "Necessity is the mother of creation. Lubbock needed beauty, poetry, humor, and it needed to get up and shake its communal ass a bit or go mad from loneliness and boredom; so Lubbock created the amazing likes of Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Butch Hancock, Terry Allen, and Joe Ely."

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