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2 Lloyd: We were tentatively booked to play that Texas
Tech thing [A large fraternity party the night before the
Tech-UT football game - chris.]
with Willie, and then they decided to get David Allen Coe to
open for Willie. Chris: Right. But you still sold at that Saturday night. Lloyd: Still sold out ALL THREE nights. All three nights were jammed pack, so it worked out great. Chris: It was wonderful. Everybody looked older, though. [Laughs.] Lloyd: Yea, yea, [Laughs] We really kinda played on
that deal. I know, everybody Chris: Nobody in the room forgot. You could tell, every time a song would start everyone there would gasp. I was astonished remembering how many of those songs were
played on the radio locally at that time. That's one of the things
I would like to talk to you about: When I was growing up and
listening to The Maines Brothers, hearing that locally
on the radio and also knowing what was the popular Country music
at the time, I just always thought, "The Maines Brothers
are the best Country band." I know that y'all at one point did try to go out and "make it big" but there was some weirdness in the industry or something… Lloyd: As we were finishing Panhandle Dancer
- our fourth album - somebody in Nashville, at Mercury, had gotten
ahold of Hub City Moan. None of us remember sending it
up there. Somebody's bus driver or something got ahold of it
and gave it to some executive up there. So Mercury called us
and said, "Hey, we got ahold of this album; Do you guys
exist? Is this really y'all or just studio players?" Chris: Oh, yea! Lloyd: They sent him down to Lubbock so he heard us one Friday or Saturday night, saw us play "live". So he could tell it was the real deal… Chris: He saw everybody dancin' and lovin' it… Lloyd: Yea. So they signed us to what was supposed to be a seven album contract. But we did two records… Chris: Which ones were they? Lloyd: Let's see…The first one was called High
Rollin' and the second one was called The Boys are Back
in Town. Chris: Oh, Yea. I agree. I don't really even know anything about those two other albums. Lloyd: So after two records we just kinda agreed to disagree, so Mercury agreed to let us out of our contract. And then after that, we did our own thing again. In 1987 we put our one called Red, Hot, and Blue. Chris: I love that album! You need to put that on CD. Lloyd: You know what? It's already at the plant! After Hub City Moan, it's the next one in line. Chris: Good, good. Those are the two I've been looking to see re-released. Lloyd: Man, it really turned out good! And then after that, we did one more which was called Wind Storm. It was kind of our least favorite. It was one that we did even knowing that we were kind of winding down.
'Cause even after we did the album in 1990 called Wind
Storm, we still continued to play a little bit - private
parties, whatever - but we didn't really pursue the bookings
at all. So then by about '92 we had pretty much faded ourselves
out. Never really did like a "Farewell" thing; for
all practical purposes, we still existed. We never "stopped";
it's just they we stopped pursuing bookings. If somebody came
up to us with a big high dollar booking, we'd take it. So I hope I've kind of chronologically covered everything. Chris: Well, I wanted to get back the "Austin thing" in one way by saying, "How did you first hook up with Jerry Jeff Walker?" And then maybe we can get back into Lubbock's influence on Austin. Lloyd: I met Jerry Jeff in '76 back in the Austin "Outlaw" thing. I was coming down here and playing with Ely. Jerry Jeff was always a fan of Joe Ely. In fact, Jerry Jeff and his band - Bob Livingston and Gary P. Nunn - were very instrumental in getting Joe his MCA deal. They pretty much turned MCA onto Joe. So I had known Jerry Jeff all of those years but had kinda
lost touch with him. He Chris: Yea. That's a great album! Lloyd: He just kinda put together a rhythm section,
and he put together me and Champ Hood on guitar, and he got a
piano player from Dallas named Brian Piper that he had met along
the way. Chris: Okay. So what's the story with that "Cotton Club" song? On the Gypsy Songman album?
Jerry Jeff walks in…And I had never laid eyes on him
before…But he just came runnin' up to the stage…because
Joe already knew him from somewhere. I'll never forget, Jerry
Jeff had a tambourine around his neck and this real glazed look
in his eye, and he jumped up on stage and grabbed Joe's guitar
and started singing. But I tell ya', my association with Jerry Jeff really got me a lot of work in Austin, because of doing his records; and then I did those Lost Gonzo Band records. Both those records turned out so good that people would hear those records and then seek me out to do their projects, because of the fidelity and just the way that they were put together. It spawned my doin' Chris Wall's record; doin' Robert Earl Keene's second live one… Chris: So basically, when all this "Austin Sound" music was really hittin' it big, you were right in the thick of all that. Those are all the big ones right there. Lloyd: Yea. All the time that this was happening, there were a lot of young guys comin' up out of high school and college that were like idolizing Jerry Jeff. Pat Green
is one of them. It's kind of this new generation of Texas
singer-songwriter that are comin' up behind the ranks of Robert
Earl Keen - Pat Green and Cory Morrow - are making huge strides; I
mean, they're selling tons of records and drawing humongous crowds.
And so these guys hired me to do their records based on the fact
that they liked Jerry Jeff's records. My wife had been wanting to move somewhere for awhile, and we liked Austin. We already had a daughter living here. So we just said, "Hey, Let's put the house up for sale and let's go!" Chris: And you weren't here how many months when you got "Producer of the Year" in Austin? It wasn't a whole year.
Chris: Maybe we can discuss a little bit or point out some aspects of how this whole Lubbock scene has really kind of fueled a lot of this music scene here in Austin; back to Joe Ely, The Hub City Movers, and Butch Hancock, and all those guys here? Lloyd: You mean as far as how its affected Austin? Well, I think that there a few bands that have called tremendous attention to Austin: Stevie Ray, The Thunderbirds… Chris: Well, and of course Stevie Ray spent a lot of time in Lubbock. Lloyd: Ah, Man! I heard Stevie Ray in Lubbock when he was first getting started. Anytime that he was in the vicinity of a Joe Ely show or vice-versa, we would always get together. He would either come out and sit in and finish up the night with us, or he would at least show up for part. Chris: He was crashing on somebody's couch there in Lubbock, I know, for a certain period of time. Lloyd: He used to come to Stubb's; He used to stay at Stubb's a lot. I mean Stubb would always let people sleep at his place. He would definitely feed 'em barbecue. If you were a traveling musician, you always got a free meal at Stubb's. So there's Stevie Ray, The Thunderbirds, Jerry Jeff, Asleep at the Wheel, and kind of the "Outlaw" scene sort of made a name for Austin back in the early '70s. But in the '80s, I think that Joe Ely was one of the guys that brought a lot of attention to Austin, both nationally and internationally. I think the fact that Joe Ely honed his craft when he was living in Lubbock - when we all lived in Lubbock - working on his sound and his music…I think the trickle-down effect…People would hone their craft in Lubbock, and then when they would need to move on they would move to Austin. Chris: So there was that big crowd there, and this was just the next logical place to come. So a lot of that got dumped here in Austin. Lloyd: Exactly. This was just the logical stopping
off place for getting your music heard. Because you could get
it heard to a certain degree in Lubbock, but there just seemed
to be a lot more happening down here. Lubbock...I tell ya' what, until I started playing with Ely in '73, you never really even thought about doing original material. I mean, you would always kinda play what was on the radio, and Joe kinda opened my eyes to the fact that, "Hey! This guy is doing his own music, and people love it!" Chris: Buddy Holly was the same way; He was doing his own stuff and it had some small amount of appreciation but mostly...Like you said, you didn't even know much about him there. A big thing in Lubbock that people are usually surprised to hear is that most people who grew up in Lubbock didn't really pay that much attention to Buddy Holly. Lloyd: No. Exactly! In fact, I just don't think that Buddy Holly got the respect that he deserved in Lubbock until long after his death. Chris: He didn't live for very long. Lloyd: Yea. But he was still shunned. A lot of these dances he would do at these roller rinks were Rock-n-Roll dances, and the sponsors of the dances would discourage him from doing Rock-n-Roll. They were afraid he was gonna get the kids riled up, I guess. Chris: So I guess that explains how all these great Lubbock people ended up in Austin; Do you have any deeper thoughts or inspirations about "Why there's all these people from Lubbock?"
Chris: Like Lanny Fiel has with the fiddle players up there. Have you seen them? Lloyd: Yea. Same deal. And as far as I know, Lanny might have been one of those kids, too. I just remember being in this big room with all these guys my age, and for all I know it was some of the guys that I grew up with later on playing music. I think that whoever that was that organized that probably realized, "Hey, we gotta find these kids something to do, because there's nothin' else to do around here." Chris: Kinda like, "There's trouble in River City," in The Music Man maybe? Lloyd: Yea. Exactly! [Laughs]. But my answer would be that kids had to create their own entertainment. You could either become a hoodlum, or a football star, or learn to play music. Chris: I've always thought that same thing. Now, we've talked some about how Lubbock affected Austin music, and then the other part of the question was, "How Lubbock affected music nationally or internationally." We talked some about Buddy Holly, but The Dixie Chicks had their very first prime-time TV special just last night. How big do you think that show was last night? Lloyd: It was probably 30,000. They've been doing all arena shows, and most of the arenas have been from 15,000 - 30,000. Chris: My first feeling when I saw that show last night was I was so astonished to see that that's what Country bands are doing now - playing these big stadium shows now. Do you wanta talk about what you think The Dixie Chicks are doing with music right now. Lloyd: The Chicks have changed the whole complexion
of Country music since they came on the scene. For one thing…You
know the stuff that that comedian Andy Dick was doing last night
on that show? Like the first thing he said was "Girls, the
first thing we need to do is talk about changing your name."
Well, that's exactly what Sony tried to get them to do. All of
that stuff was true. Sony tried to get them to change their name. They thought
"The Dixie Chicks" was politically incorrect, because
of the "chicks." They thought some women would take
offense to being referred to as "chicks." Then they tried to get 'em not to play on their own record.
They said, "Let us hire Chris: Do you work with Natalie at all? Does she take any lessons from you? Lloyd: Just whenever she comes to visit. But any time we're together and she has any questions on the guitar, I'll show her. Like the main thing I'll show her: A lot of what she's learned over the years, she's kinda doin' the hard way. Especially when you're singing, there are certain little tricks you can use that are - not really short cuts but - just an easier way to get from point 'A' to point 'B' than what she was doing. So I would sort of tutor her on that and show her that, "Hey, you can get the same effect without working so hard down there." Chris: But she mostly likes to do it all on her own, anyway? Lloyd: Yea. Pretty much. But she is real good about taking advice. So I've showed her a little bit. But she's learned most of it just on the road with those girls. I mean, both of those girls are consummate musicians. -end-
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Chris: That
was a great event up there in Lubbock, that reunion show. People
have asked me the story behind that; How did that come together?
The reason we wound
down was, once again, we had come to a point where to keep going
as The Maines Brothers we either needed to step up our
traveling and travel more or just be content playing local rodeos
and stuff. We were just tired of doing that. Plus everybody…well,
my kids are the oldest…but everybody else still had little
kids. Even 
went
through a lot of band changes, and actually he dissolved his
band in about '86. He was just doing solo. In 1988 Jerry Jeff
called me in Lubbock, and he said, "I'm gonna re-form a
band, just temporarily, and I'm gonna do an record called Live
at Gruene Hall. I don't really have a band together so I
just wanta hand-pick some guys that I've always wanted to play
with." And he said, "So you're the steel player."
studio
guys, and y'all just sing." 