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."
"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
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Buy the
book
Fire
in the Water, Earth in the Air: Legends of West Texas Music
by Christopher Oglesby
Coincidence,
Flying Saucers,
and Paleolithic Man
by Christopher
Oglesby
If you know anyone from there, you probably know that people
from Lubbock have a inexplicable tendency to speak about that
place and its environment with an intensity usually reserved
for the discussion of ex-spouses: Obsessive criticism, but Woe
to the outsider who speaks ill of her out of ignorance of her
many charms! For some reason, Lubbock expatriates just won’t
let others forget that they hail from a place more bizarre than
Twin Peaks, Gilligan’s Island or any place Chris Carter
of the X-Files could dream up.
Joe Ely once said to me,
"Lubbock has this way of, while you’re there, making
you feel like its the most normal place in the world; not until
you go away and start comparing your experience there to the
outside world do you realize that Lubbock is really one of the
strangest places anywhere." Austin fiddler Richard
Bowden lived for over ten years in Lubbock as a member
of The Maines Brothers Band
(which featured legendary pedal-steel guitar-man/music producer
Lloyd Maines, father of  Natalie
Maines of The Dixie Chicks.) Bowden attributes
Lubbock’s strangeness to the UFO’s which were sighted,
and even photographed by Texas Tech professors, over Lubbock
in the `Fifties, the so-called Lubbock Lights.
"I tell ya’, it’s the flying saucers," Richard
often exclaims.
I grew up in Lubbock, and no one can accuse me of ignoring
my duty to make the world aware that Lubbock is still producing
more than its share of entertaining weirdness. I am writing a
book that I am calling Fire in the Water, Earth in the Air about all the amazing, creative
people who hail from my hometown (i.e. Buddy
Holly, Joe Ely, Terry Allen, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Lloyd Maines,
Butch Hancock & the Rolling Stone’s
saxman Bobby Keys, to name
a few).
My work is an effort to answer that question: "Why this
horde of musicians, poets, writers, and artists that are being
emitted from an obviously fertile womb of creativity, and all
these from arch-conservative, xenophobic Lubbock?"
Part of my theory has to do with the relationship of subjective
intent to objective reality; Put more simply: The Power
of Dreams. For Lubbock is a place constructed of almost
nothing but dreams, a place devoid of almost everything but dirt,
sky, and wind, a place where a human consciousness is forced
to dig beauty and meaning out of its deepest hiding places within
the mind and soul because there damn sure is nothing outside
in the environment to stimulate the senses into believing the
ego is alive. However, living there for any length of time, one
feels as if there is something buried in that prairie soil, something
real and subjective (call it a Spirit if you dare) just waiting
there to be discovered by those sensitive enough.
This is the Spirit I seek to define, the same Spirit that moved
Buddy Holly to create Rock-n-Roll.
Dealing with such a mystical force, I have had many strange,
intriguing experiences while pursuing the creation of this book
about this strange place.
February ‘98 in Lubbock, I was waiting in town a few days
for an opportunity to interview Don
Caldwell, the man who operated the only recording
studio in Lubbock for years and was responsible for many of these
artists’ first recordings. Being Lubbock, there seemed to
be not much to do in the meantime; however, my friend Angela Paschal, an artist who also
worked at the Lubbock Municipal Library, took interest in my
project and introduced me to her friend and co-worker named Rob Weiner. Coincidentally, Rob is
a music historian who has published some biographical articles
about Tom X. Hancock, "Lubbock’s
Original Hippie," owner of the
Cotton Club, spiritual father of the Flatlanders,
patriarch of the
Supernatural Family Band and the Texana
Dames.
Following fortune, I plied Rob for priceless information at my
favorite chile relleno place on Lubbock’s east-side, Taco
Pueblo. Afterwards, he invited me to attend a remarkable poetry
reading which Rob was sponsoring the next evening. The poetry
was "inspired by the Grateful Dead", a truly astonishing
moment in Lubbock cultural history in any case, as there is little
Dead-head culture on the South Plains.
It was at this poetry event where I chanced to meet a
man named Warren Kinney.
Warren happens to be an archeologist who digs at the Lubbock Lake Landmark Site. The "Lubbock
Lake" is the one site in North America where there is evidence
of continuous human presence since the Ice Age; this is because
the site is located on the Yellow House Draw, headwaters of the
Brazos River and the only natural source of substantial surface
water for miles in every direction.
Warren is a wild-man of the prairie, and we naturally became
fast-friends. He invited me on a private tour of the Lake Site.
What an unexpected opportunity! I figured I better learn why
paleolithic people were also insane enough to dwell in this desolate
place; Maybe I would be a step closer to discerning "What
is up with Lubbock?"
Once at the site, I discovered (in accordance with my theory
about subjective intent and objective reality) that another guest
on the private tour happened to be Kent
Mings, oldest of three brothers who form the core
of The Texas BelAirs,
a smokin’ Lubbock country-blues-rock band in the tradition
of Joe Ely. Coincidentally, here's another significant artist
to interview for the book, and I had been on my search in Lubbock
for only three days!
One fact about Lubbock which Warren shared with us on t6he tour
is that, not only are there obviously no natural trees in Lubbock,
there are no natural sources for rock within a hundred miles
in every direction; only dirt. This fact is archeologically significant
because, by uncovering their rock tools, we can discern from
what areas migrant hunters were coming to hunt in the Lubbock
environs. More incredible, there is no evidence of permanent
dwellings or burial sites; These people simply were walking from
hundreds of miles away to hunt meat and then returning home to
whence they came.
So there Mings and I are, standing out there in the "Lubbock
Lake" (today not more than a small, dry arroyo.) We had
seen the dioramas and paintings in the Welcome Center of the
Ice Age animals which congregated here; HUGE beasts: Bison Antiquus,
Giant Ground Sloth, Woolly Armadillo, as well as the ultimate
hunter himself Saber Tooth Tiger.
We began imagining together, aloud, "What if we were paleolithic
men? It is so flat and barren out here, nowhere to run and nowhere
to hide. If ole’ Saber Tooth is downwind, he’ll be
on us before we could even think of escape."
We have none of the security that goes with being "Head
of the Food Chain." I begin to really feel like a stone-age
man of the plains.
So here we sit, visible to all nature, even at night under a
vast canopy of stars, hunted as much as hunter, with our big
rocks we have toted across hundreds of miles of waterless emptiness.
We wait patiently trying to figure out how and when we are going
to leap down into this small canyon onto the back of some behemoth-beast
and smash it on the head with our rocks, without becoming dinner
for one of many creatures much larger than ourselves.
We discovered one is required
to be a mad genius to survive in Lubbock, even in the Stone Age.
What a bizarre experience: slipping back to the "Natural
State of Man," so nearly animal but obviously conscious
of himself and his world. Nothing is certain but the fact that
one is alive and compelled to live. I experienced something there
in that dry creek bed which is so foreign to "ordinary,
everyday experience" it was startling; closer to that reality
associated with dreams or psychedelics. And I wasn’t three
miles from the ordinary two-story house with white picket fence
where I was reared.
Upon leaving the Lubbock Lake Site that afternoon, one of the
women with us pointed to the remarkable life-sized bronze statue
of an anatomical recreation of Bison Antiquus.
"The church people had a fit over that thing," Tanya So, who works for Texas Tech’s
Southwest Collection, told me. I knew the people she spoke of:
the arch-fundamentalist Southern Baptist Church and their equally
as conservative counterparts, The Church of Christ, maintain
as strong a hold on Lubbock politics as the Jews do in Jerusalem.
But I could not imagine what criticism they could have with this
beautiful artist’s recreation of one of God & America’s
most amazing (albeit extinct) animals.
When I questioned Tanya she pointed to the huge feature between
the animal’s mighty legs. "They didn’t like looking
at his dork."
Yes, my hometown Lubbock, Texas, is an exceptionally paradoxical
place. Writer and actress Jo Harvey
Allen (wife of musician/visual artist Terry Allen
who recorded the critically acclaimed, classic Lubbock album
"Lubbock: on everything") describes Lubbock
most frequently with that one word: PARADOX.
Describing her feelings about Lubbock, Jo Harvey relates this
anecdote: her son Bukka Allen
(now a musician, considered one of Austin's best keyboard players)
was 6 years old and sitting on the toilet. He had just heard
the word "paradox" for the first time and asked his
mother from the restroom what it means.
Jo Harvey answered, "Paradox is like how if your soccer
coach uses that word 'nigger' one more time we’re gonna’
get his ass fired but your granddaddy uses the word everyday
of his life and we love him with all our hearts."
Lubbock is truly astonishing. While difficult for many of
us to be there some times, once away, we realize it is truly
an amazing place to be from.
Do you like what you just read?
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
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