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Fire in the Water, Earth in the Air: Legends of West Texas Music
by Christopher Oglesby
Published by the University of Texas Press:
"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."

buy the book

"Indeed, Oglesby's introduction of more than two dozen musicians who called Lubbock home should be required reading not only for music fans, but for Lubbock residents and anyone thinking about moving here. On these pages, music becomes a part of Lubbock's living history."
- William Kerns, Lubbock Avalanche Journal


Chris Oglesby Interviews
Mike Burk
"Friend of Lubbock Music"
Lubbock; 5/14/00

Mike Burk does not claim to be a musician or an artist; unless you consider meat butchery an artform. However, Mike and his beloved brother Jack Burk long have been the best friends to the community of musicians in Lubbock. Whether promoting outstanding musical events, working the door at the Cotton Club or Fat Dawg's, revelling backstage at the Tornado Jam, or providing a private venue for after hours jam sessions, the Burk Brothers have encouraged and provided solace to many Lubbock musicians including Joe Ely, Bobby Keys, Cary Swinney, and dozens more untold grateful artists.
Mike Burk was the Producer of "Live at Tommy's Place," a remarkable single-season television series based in Lubbock which featured live performances by a pantheon of Lubbock musicians.


Mike: This is the story of the TV show "Live at Tommy’s Place." What happened was; We were trying to figure out a way to promote a club out in the middle of nowhere - out by the Strip; Just nobody could find us. We was goin’ broke. And I come up with the idea; "Why don’t we try and promote something like Austin City Limits?
Now myself, with all the experience in TV that I had - which was exactly zero - and in promotion - a little bit - I went down and talked to an old friend of mine, Don Caldwell and presented him with the idea. And I had a friend at KLBK named Rick Lipps that we had gotten to know each other through drinking several beers together…We all came together and wrassled around the idea about puttin’ on a TV show. We enlisted South Plains College...

Chris: How was South Plains College helping?

Mike: They were loaning us equipment. Pat McCutcheon from South Plains College played a big part in it; Pat heads up their Music Department. He was there at every show; a great help.

So we just issued a press release saying that we were gonna produce a live music show based on Austin City Limits called "Live at Tommy's Place." Before we had any kind of budget, before we had any kind of real ideas about it; We went ahead and issued the press release. William Kerns at the Avalanche Journal wrote it up. It hit the Lubbock paper; then it was picked up by the AP, and it went around the world!

So here we are; We’re basically five people who has sat around a table and come up with an idea of a whole bunch of "Want-To" and not a whole lot of "How-To."

Chris: So what was the plan?

Mike: We were gonna do this TV show with Live music at Tommy’s Place which had a beautiful stage in there. Had plenty of space; Three stories…I mean, just a beautiful place. The place had magic in it...Not that it ever made any money. But that place had a lot of magic.

Chris: Is that building still there?

Mike: Yea. It’s known as 4-Bar-K, now. They just rent it out for parties and stuff.

Tommy Thompson built 90% of it. For this show, we went in and we did a lot of remodeling. We basically built a whole new stage and a whole new backdrop; Ol’ Norman Neavey of Jungle Studios donated a 32 channel soundboard for the show. And Jimmy Mason came in and did probably 90% of the show. Don Caldwell did maybe 4 or 5 shows, and then he bowed out. He was too busy and the show took up a lot of time.

Chris: How many shows did you end up doing?

Mike: I would say at least 24 shows or so; I’m not sure on that, because we had a complete season of shows, and I don’t know how many weeks in a season was.

There was a lot of film that was edited out and on the cuttin’ room floor, just for the time factor. And nobody was getting’ paid; Everybody was just devotin’ their time and effort; Some things were sacrificed because people who were working on it had to say, "I haven’t gotten any more time to do this." So we were always limited by that factor.
But we put a TV show up for a year’s time that was the #1 rated local television show in the area. It came on at 10:30 on Sunday night, and it had the largest viewing of any station in Lubbock at the time.

Chris: Who were the performers?

Mike: We did...

Oh, hell. There was a bunch more bands that we did - dadgum - I’m still not touchin’ on 'em all. We’d shoot two bands a week.

Chris: Is there any record of them?

Mike: I think Jimmy Mason’s still got ‘em…We got all the tapes on one inch video. There’s huge amount of tapes. Actually, they belong to the musicians. The way we wrote the contract was after a certain period of time, the tapes would default back to ownership of the musicians that had performed the show. Basically, nobody ever picked ‘em up. [Laughs.] There’s mountains of good Lubbock stuff in there.

But anyway, after that first press release was written - and this is kinda what spurred us on - We hadn’t even put up a show yet; And suddenly we’re lookin’ at our names in the Australian press, the London Times, New York...I’ve had papers with my name in it from all over the world, just because this show was from Lubbock, Texas.
Nobody in Lubbock, probably - besides us - even realized that; because we had people sending clippings to us from all over.
So this is how much the rest of the world looks at what is goin’ on in Lubbock, Texas! It’s just like the world was hungry for it because they know something’s here.

Chris: It’s amazing, how "Big-in-Europe" all the Lubbock artists are. Cary Swinney told me he has sold more records in Europe than he has around Lubbock.

Mike: Well, nobody here recognizes it. When it’s here, it’s so avante garde that only a few people are able to see it. But that’s what catches the eye of the rest of the world: Something that’s new. Not necessarily does the place where it originates catch on.

And it’s originated from Lubbock, Texas, the home of the Bible-Belt, basically. We’re talking about Rock-n-Roll and real good Country music. It’s all got its basis in the church because that’s where most people learned how to play music. But then it graduated out into something much more.

It’s a struggle between whatever forces it is; Where their roots come from, And then it’s also your "questioning your life."

Y’know; "What is talent and what’s not talent? What is art and what’s not art?" Some people choose to go one way and some people choose to go the other.
If the door doesn’t hit you goin’ into the church, then you’re pretty much heading the other way. That’s right.

Chris: That’s one thing about Lubbock; It does cause you to make a choice.

Mike: Where it all happened - I mean, where I got my dose of Lubbock music was from The Cotton Club, Stubb’s, and Fat Dawg’s.

My brother Jack’s wife used to run the door at the Cotton Club. That’s how I got turned on to Joe Ely. "Come on out! We’ll get you in free!"

The Cotton Club was a great place.
It was pure freedom.

Chris: How do you mean, "It was pure freedom"?

Mike: If you were not able to quite afford the bar - which most of the bars at that time were private clubs - the Cotton Club was "bring your own bottle." And we mighta been a little young to get in sometimes but we’d have a case of beer with us...

That was mainly to go see the Maines Brothers. They were the dance band out there. I had a girlfriend who liked to dance to them; and that’s why we went. And towards the ‘70s, I was goin’ out there to see Joe Ely. You'd carry your own beer in, and dance like the dickens. And if you got a little drunk and fell on the dance floor, then people just danced around ya’.
I’m not sayin’ there wasn’t a fight or two out there but it didn’t ever scare me off.
I thought it was a very cool place to go.

Chris: I missed all that.
I started goin’ to Fat Dawg’s in about ’83.

Mike: I saw Los Lobos at Fat Dawg's for two dollars! On a Tuesday night! The Nelsons - Donnie Allison, John Sprott and Kevin Mackey - They won MTV’s amateur band "Basement Tapes" contest. MTV put the Nelsons on national tour, and Los Lobos traveled with ‘em. Both of ‘em toured the nation together, driving Dodge vans or something…[Laughs] The night that Los Lobos played Fat Dawg’s; I hadn’t never heard of ‘em but it was one of the all-time best concerts I’ve ever seen in my life. And it was two dollars! And the house was not full.

Stevie Ray Vaughn played in Lubbock, Texas, so much during the ‘70s...
He played Stubb’s so much that you’d get to where you’d wish there was a little different entertainment there, sometimes. Stevie Ray played Stubb’s just about every Sunday night, for about a year. He lived right across the alley from my brother Jack [Burk]. Stevie Ray was staying with David Smith at the time. And that was about 50 yards from Jack’s backdoor.

Chris: Where was that?

Mike: Over in the "Tech Ghetto."
[NOTE: This was the low-rent section of town which lies in the area just East of Texas Tech and West of downtown. - c.o.] Jesse Taylor and everybody lived right in that area, the center of the Tech Ghetto. The whole music scene seemed like it was - during those years; the late ‘70s and early ‘80s - was centered around Tech Ghetto. A lot of places around there- like Main Street Saloon - were puttin’ up "live" music at the time.
In the late ‘70s & early ‘80s the music scene was tremendous in Lubbock. There was a lot of people getting good paychecks; Like Harold Aiken - I guess you’d have to say , "If Lloyd Maines is the 'Best Steel-Guitar Player,' then Harold Aiken is "Second Best." I met Harold Aiken in 1970. He went to work for me cuttin’ meat at Piggly Wiggly. He had moved here from Dallas and went to work for a band that played out there at Bigger’n Dallas, out there on South Loop. He played there six nights a week for them, and then worked 40 hours a week for me butcherin' meat. He was burnin’ the candle at both ends.
In the mid-70s, Harold and I went into business together there right off Broadway, down in the Tech Ghetto. It was a wholesale meat company. So we were in that area where all this action was takin’ place. We began to go to different parties, and there was a lot of music goin’ on at that time.
Then, right after the last Fat Dawg’s days - That was pretty well the end of the goddamn music scene in Lubbock, for awhile. There was pretty much no place else that played "live" music after that, for awhile.

Chris: You’re right, Everything dried up there for awhile. Do you have an opinion on why that happened?

Mike: Well, what first happened is; In the early ‘80s, you had "Ladies’ Nights." And that’s where all the women could drink free. That presented the biggest club scene in Lubbock, Texas, probably. Because if you’re givin’ it away to the women, the men are comin’ in and, basically, they’re payin’ for both sides of it. Well, they change the liquor laws right about then and stopped that from happenin’. They started makin’ laws that shut down "Ladies Nights." That changed the whole goddamn deal, right there.

What happened towards the end of that scene; there was a few die-hards like us who lived around "live" music. But really, as far as anybody makin’ any money in the music business…It just wasn’t happenin’.
The Depot came along down there; I was cuttin’ meat for the Depot, and Ronnie Thompson approached me to take over the music scene out there in the Depot Beer Garden, probably around ‘86.

Paul Bullock was Doug Smith’s manager at the time. Doug played the entire summer down there at the Depot Beer Garden and had a tremendous summer. Basically, Ronnie come to me and said, "I know you know all the musicians in town. Start bookin’ bands."
And that just took off like gang-busters. Lots of money and lots of talent and everything started goin’ through the Depot there for the next few years; Mike Pritchard, Squarehead.

I was cuttin’ meat for The Depot and bookin’ bands down there for ‘em; That went on for about three years….

Well, I learned where I-27 was comin’ through Lubbock, and made mention of that to Ronnie Thompson - that he probably needed to get more serious about this. He pulled Stubb in as a partner at first and started that other Stubb's over there by the highway. That’s kinda how the whole Depot District got started, right there.

Chris: Yea. That was a good idea.

Mike: I basically pulled out of the Depot at that time; Our negotiations broke down on our music business. And that's how it happened that I got involved with Tommy Thompson on Tommy's Place out there. That was probably about ‘88 or so. The TV show really started takin’ place in about '89…

-End-
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Do you like the interviews you have been reading on virtualubbock.com?
Buy the book by author Christopher Oglesby
Fire in the Water, Earth in the Air:
Legends of West Texas Music

"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." - University of Texas Press

buy the book


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