Floyd Tillman

I heard on the radio last week that it was Floyd Tillman's birthday.  I remember going out to Henry's Bar when it was northwest of town to see Floyd play with  Bert Rivera's group.  My friend Dodd Meredith who drummed on my first record was in the band.    Floyd Tillman was really short and played a huge guitar.  It was 1999 and he rarely gigged,  especially in honky tonks.  The crowd was small.  This version of Henry's had a concrete dance floor that sloped down towards the make shift stage.  The bar area was populated with the usual drinkers looking to pick up or just get drunk.  Down around the front of the stage I was among the faithful believers in the power of country music.  Floyd certainly delivered.  His voice even as a young man was tailor made to age.   He sang "Slippin' Around",  "Makes No Difference",  "This Cold War With You".  Songs that defined not only a genre of music but a lifestyle.  Songs conceived from a bird's eye view of the carousing that went on in places just like this at the tables and booths in front of the nightclub bandstand.   In his late 80's he was a living artifact of another time.  Bert Rivera and his gang were impeccable interpreters of timeless country music.  Henry's was a true Texas roadhouse.  A simple building tucked behind a gas station at a highway crossroads.   Highway 29 spanned from Taylor to Burnet,  Highway 183 from Lampasas to Austin.  The traffic on these roads was made up of country music people,  farmers, ranchers,  construction workers.  It was 1999 though and country music and it's people were changing. 

Henry's had been a legendary beer joint in Austin.  A place where day drinkers hid from the sun while at night the room filled with slicked back music scene cowboys who crowded around with their paper sack covered pints to watch Junior Brown and Don Walser translate music from a bygone generation into something cool, edgy and vital,  hoping for the chance to sit in and show what they'd learned.  Listen and learn they did.  Those crowds at the end of the 80's and beginning of the 90's were made up of roots rock heavyweights  like Gurf Morlix, Charlie and Bruce Robison,  Slaid Cleaves,  Kelly Willis and the Bad Livers.  Like all good things that attract people to Austin it was leveled in the name of progress.  While the site of the old building became an Auto Zone parking lot the Henry's moved their operation twenty some odd miles northwest of town to a place just east of Liberty Hill called Seward Junction.   The scene moved on,  some down the street to Ginny's Little Longhorn,  more than a few to fairly successful full time touring and recording.  The scene never really followed Henry's north.  They were able to pull crowds on weekends for a while but the dancing crowd didn't care much for the sloped floor and the drinkers didn't care for the long drive. 

My friend Donnie Ayers, who knows more than most about country music, was living in Georgetown at the time and somehow got word that the great steel guitarist Bert Rivera was bringing the legendary Floyd Tillman to Henry's that Friday night.  I hadn't heard a word about it.  No advertisement,  no promotion down in Austin anyway.  I was hesitant to go out there thinking it probably wouldn't happen.  Donnie wore down my resistance,  reminding me what a rare oppurtunity this would be,  so my girlfriend Chrissy and I drove up to Georgetown picked him up and headed west down 29 for the adventure. 

We stepped  into the dark beer joint to the sounds of Bert's crying steel guitar,  locals crowding the bar,  band set up across the room in the corner.   Donnie got us some beers,  cans of Lonestar or Pearl,  and we took a table close to the stage.  Dodd gave me a friendly wave of recognition from behind the kit,  obviously glad to see us there on this special occasion.  The diminutive Mr. Tillman would take the stage for a few numbers at a time then return to his seat.  I knew all his songs from truckstop cassette tapes that cluttered the floorboards of my battered Oldsmobile,  purchased along the highways Chrissy and I constantly explored in our unburdened youth.  The few of us there for the music were in awe,  being in the presence of a living, breathing,  singing and strumming historical figure.  A writer who's work was covered by Ernest Tubb and Bing Crosby.  A stylist who's jazzy leanings and lyrical honesty opened the creative doors for Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard.  He played his songs with all his heart, right there in the type of room they were born in.   Without ceremony he packed his guitar and walked out the front door heading back to the Marble Falls home where he cared for his ailing wife.  Another night of delivering the truth as he saw it from a beerjoint bandstand. 

Within a few months a much more organized effort was made to present Mr. Tillman in a concert setting at the Paramount Theater in Austin.  The moneyed and culturally conscious were offered the opportunity to see him perform on a stage designed to showcase the masters of their crafts.  I'd like to have been there.  I really enjoy the theater setting,  where a person can sit back in a comfortable seat and let their imagination mingle with the music undistracted.  I'm also really glad we saw the gig we did.  One of the founders of our American music playing his shuffles and waltzes in a highway crossroads cinderblock beerjoint,  inhabited by the same characters as his songs.  Growing up out west I was no stranger to those rooms, those people or the lifestyle, but that night I felt like I got the deepest glance I'd ever see inside the tail end of something truly unique.

Just got my copy of this cool German 'alt country'  compilation featuring a bunch of cool bands.   They put my song  "Jake" on the comp (which is very loosely based on a story I read on the Jesse Taylor memorial site, check it out http://www.virtualubbock.com/stoJesseMemorium.html).   The CD has it's own myspace page,  
  http://www.myspace.com/ridethepalehorse

Here's a link to an interview in Country Standard Time with the ever-cool  Rick Cornell.  

http://www.countrystandardtime.com/d/column.asp?xid=303

new review for Nature of the Blues just came today 

http://www.whisperinandhollerin.com/reviews/review.asp?id=5882

check it out!

Here's an interview that just hit the web today,   check it out

http://www.texasmusictimes.com/AMTV-0810b-Eric-Hisaw.php

lot's of NM dates coming up in the next couple weeks,  hope to see you there