Gotta Lubbock
Long Before Austin Was The Live Music Capital Of The World, A Cotton-Pickin' High Plains City Put Texas On The Map. From Buddy Holly To Jimmie Dale Gilmore, An Oral History Of The State's Most Storied Scene.
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Hughes Lubbock was dry. These Mexican guys would come out there with big washtubs in their trunk full of beer and sell till they sold out. You brought your own bottle to all those dance clubs, or there were bootleggers. And they sold speed: They had a gallon jar of pills sitting on the damn bar.
Tommy X Hancock Lubbock was overflowing with musicians and bootleggers. And with the bootleggers there’s a subtle psychological feeling that you should drink all of your booze before you get caught with it. So it resulted in everybody drinking too much. And the drug of choice was Benzedrine, so everybody stayed awake and got drunker and drunker. It was just as rough and rowdy a scene as ever was. Lubbock’s a little like an Indian reservation — it’s a real easy place to get real bored. And so there was a lot of drug abuse.
Keys There was a place called Club 87 out on U.S. 87 — I used to listen to a lot of music out there. Then, of course, the Glassarama. Then there were a few other after-hours joints that you would only go to if you wanted to get, you know, shot or stabbed or both.
Hughes When Elvis played the Cotton Club, he stood outside and bragged about sexual conquests. We’d never heard people talk that way. Girls would come up and let him sign their bra or their panties. We were hoping to see some panties for the first time; women were standing in a line. None of that had ever happened. Earlier on that tour Elvis got punched out in Wichita Falls and in Lubbock because guys were jealous. Their girlfriends were out having him sign their panties.
Juke A real important scene was Stubb’s Bar-B-Q. That came around in the seventies. Stevie Ray [Vaughan] played there; everybody played there.
Hughes Stubbs would open up and only serve maybe two customers in the day but stay open and let musicians come and play that night.
Terry Allen I remember in the seventies and early eighties, musicians who lived there could actually make a living playing music. Which is pretty odd for a place that size, but there were a lot of clubs. And then it all up and shut down and became discos or whatever.
Dying to Get Out
Ely I’m sure all of us were always trying to get out of there. When you grew up there, you realized that isn’t where you wanted to be, especially if you had actually gotten out of there and seen some of the world.
Jennings Buddy was up and gone very quick — he had to get out of there.
Keys Music was my only ticket out of town. I was a failure at crime, and that was about my only other option if I’d stayed in Lubbock. There were several of the policemen on duty there at that time who just did not like musicians at all, especially young ones hanging out late. And it was suggested by several cops that it’d be a good idea if I went someplace else. They suggested that to several other people too. So, thank you, Lubbock Police Department!
Odam I left there in sixty-eight. There wasn’t anything there left to do. It was just a town of retired farmers and ranchers and college students, and that’s it.
McLarty It was a great place to grow up and be from, but once you realized what was what, you were, like, “I’ve got to get the f— out of here.”
Traci Lamar Hancock It’s probably a great place to grow up, but I am glad that I got out of it when I did. Just in time. Because teenagers there are bored to death. There’s nothing to do but drink a lot.
Tommy X Hancock I hated it. I was a poor white trash kid in the Depression in a town that was having a drought. And not only was there nothing to do, but what there was to do was negative.
Jo Harvey Allen I was the first person in my family to ever leave. My grandfather was hanging on to a banister just bent over double and sobbing. And my whole family was wailing when Terry and I got into the car to drive off. It was just a dirge. We got in this black Ford and headed for L.A. and didn’t know one single person. I didn’t know anybody else who had done that.
Weiner People talk about the Austin music scene, but really, it’s Lubbock transferred to Austin in a lot of ways.
Tommy X Hancock When we moved to Austin, in 1980, there were already eleven working bands here from Lubbock that we knew about. They had a terrific support system.
Hughes I make jokes about the first guy who left Lubbock for Austin in 1911. He was a tuba player. He wrote his own tunes and couldn’t get along here because it’s too repressive.
Jennings I love Texas as much as anybody. I have the Texas flag in my living room here up on the wall. Only it’s upside down; that means I don’t want to live in West Texas anymore.
Terry Allen When I was growing up, I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to be. The only thing I knew that I liked to do was make pictures and play music. But the idea of it being something that you could do with your life — there was just no reinforcement for that. What happens is, you leave a place with a vengeance to get away from it to go find the world and find yourself and find what you want to do. And then running as far away from that stuff as you can, you realize that’s really where all your blood and history are. So you make a full circle and realize this endless resource to tap into in your work.
Jennings Lubbock is not a good place to try to get started, because there are really no outlets, but the good thing is — you’re not that influenced. As far as songwriting and styles, it’s a good place to develop your own style.
Pierce I know I would be different if I hadn’t grown up there.
Jo Harvey Allen There is just an amazing level of confidence in people from Lubbock. I remember seeing lots of people from that part of the country when I was living out in L.A. And I noticed that it seemed like everybody else I was meeting was on this quest to be something, or to achieve some great thing. And it seemed like everyone I knew in Lubbock already was whatever that was. It was good enough. It was sort of like, “Well, if I’m different and you don’t like it, well, that’s just tough. But this is who I am.”
Musical Genius
Hughes Before Buddy Holly, when I was in high school, you had to play football. You had to if you wanted to get any dates. And then Buddy Holly comes along. Here’s a skinny guy with a guitar — I mean, the whole damn world changed. Every skinny guy in New Jersey owed his first woman to Buddy Holly. And the football players didn’t get to beat you up.
Weiner When you’re talking about West Texas music, the most important musician is Tommy Hancock. Tommy is one of those people who does things on his own terms and in his own way. And he has remained true to himself and true to his family.
Fiel Of all the songwriters that came out of Lubbock, I don’t think there’s anybody who can match what [Angela Strehli’s brother] Al Strehli does. You feel something when you hear what he writes. It may not make sense to you, but you’ll feel something. That’s one of the things that makes a great song. If anybody around here ever was a musical genius — other than Buddy Holly — I’d say it’d be Al. Right now he’s up in Colorado, composing big choral pieces in some little old mountain cabin.
McLarty Bobby Keys is from Slaton, fifteen miles from Lubbock. He joined Buddy Knox in fifty-nine. And he told me that Jerry Allison went to Bobby’s grandfather and told him that it would be a good thing to let his grandson go on the road. So he went on the road, and he never went home. That guy’s history is amazing. I think he’s the only guy who can say he played with Elvis, the Beatles, the Stones, Stevie Wonder. He never played with Buddy Holly, but he used to go to their rehearsals, and they used to send him out to get Cokes and fries. They would say, “Go get us Coca Colas, boy.”
Hester Norman Petty is the one history hasn’t been kind to. I wouldn’t say he was an angel or anything, but I just feel like his contribution to the Crickets is understated. His vision was essential. That flame of music that was in Lubbock, Texas? Clovis, New Mexico, is where it got channeled.
Ely Curley Lawler, the greatest fiddler in the world. Don Baggett, one of the greatest guitar players I’ve ever heard. Eddie Beethoven, a great songwriter. And John Reed helped everybody organize music together. One of the guys that I used to love was a guy named Lucky Floyd. He had the best rock and roll band in town, the Sparkles. Gary P. Nunn played bass with him, and Jimmy Marriot played drums.
A Tough Damn Town
Hughes This is a tough damn town. Bob Dylan had to cancel, and Jerry Jeff has said several times, “I’ll never go there again” — although he does. We’re in the middle between Austin and Albuquerque and L.A., so bands want to play here, but you can never tell whether people are coming out or not. In fact, we have this new 15,000-seat United Spirit Arena, which just sold out for Elton John in two hours.
Terry Allen There are a lot of people in Lubbock who still play music. There are a lot of young musicians. It seems to me that the club thing kind of comes in cycles. Right now, I don’t even know of a place people can go to play.
Steve Maines The idea with the Depot District [the downtown entertainment area] was to create a little [Austin’s] Sixth Street. It’s going to take some time, but I think they’ll get it.
Weiner Where professional entertainment is scarce, you make your own entertainment. And I think that’s true today too — there are a lot of people playing here. New bands coming all the time.
Odam They are still a-comin’ out. Just like a chute in a rodeo. Comin’ out of chute number one.
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