Part IV: A final conversation with the cowboys...

Part IV

Soon the time was over, and many of the gathering got moving, as there were obligations and commitments. As most of us “cowboy types” slipped out of the restaurant, which had served as our meeting place, a few men stayed behind, not yet finished with this special time. There was a desire to say a few last things, pose for pictures and ask a few follow up questions… The focus soon became the most famous man in the room, as well-wishers and some actual fans circled around him.

He was accompanied on this day by his tour manager, Charles Lynn, musician, theologian, free spirited man Friday. Michael Martin Murphy is still someone whose songs you hear regularly on country radio stations. Songs like “Geronimo’s Cadillac,” “Wildfire,” “Wild Swans Against the Sun,” “Cherokee Fiddle” and “Carolina in the Pines” made him a Southwestern favorite. He sang “I Just Wanna Be a Cosmic Cowboy,” back in the 1970’s when the Texas-based progressive country revolution was just beginning. “Murph,” as his friends call him, has always been at the vanguard of things.

He has in recent years been the leader in reviving the old cowboy music of the Sons of the Pioneers variety. As if driven by a seeking heart, Murph has spent his career studying, experiencing, reading and processing Southwestern lore and landscape and history. Besides his family, and music of course, his love for two things have emerged. Cowboys, and God. He has immersed himself in the cowboy way, and almost lost himself in it. And more importantly, he has chosen to make himself a devoted disciple of Jesus Christ. And it is the love of these two things that brought him to this cowboy gathering today. Not to lead it. Not to even speak, but to be there in support of it and to learn and listen. A small group pulled up chairs and began to share.

Greg Hunt expounded on his theme about the powerful impact cowboy churches are having. “Cowboy Churches are going to be the center of spiritual revival in this country.” The emphasis was that this was an untapped demographic that took special treatment. Cowboy people are nothing if not independent. “America has always been the cauldron of self-reliance...” agreed Murph. That American style of independence, with all its random, untamed nature, could still drive a Christian revival where even the organized church has failed.

It was that same self-reliance that brought many of our ancestors across the oceans, and established a country based on mutual respect and freedom of religion. It was self-reliance that propelled the great evangelical movement of this Continent. Self-reliance and pioneer spirit had established a basically Protestant, democratic empire, the first of its kind in the world. Some remnant of it is still visible in these emerging cowboy churches.

Murphy spoke to singer-songwriter Brian Kalinec, who had not had an opportunity to speak as the larger gathering had run out of time. Kalinec was all smiles. He like the rest of us, found the meeting very inspiring. They discussed the gift of music, and what a special purpose it plays in worship. Brian froze pensively for a moment, trying to express what music was for him… “It’s God’s little magic,” he offered. We had only scratched the surface concerning the possibilities of this group of gifted men.

“Sometimes we don’t think big enough…” offered Murph. He went on to express his concern about the effect of the secular Media on our youth. “Today a child can watch something on television for a day that will ruin him for life…” he lamented. He was incredulous that we have not, as a people, offered a Christian counterpart. He offered with all those TV channels, surely we could create something kids would watch that might balance the scales.

And that is where my notes ended. That is what I think I heard. Certainly I have editorialized, it is after all my blog! Murph spoke to me, after everybody had said something. I told him that I had come to listen, that I had some concerns about cowboy churches and did not understand them very much. This meeting had been as much for me as anyone, a borderline skeptic who came to be convinced. As I explained to him, I had been attending an afternoon fellowship in Whitehall, Texas that was full of real cowboy types… horse trainers, horse owners, country singers, trail riders, people who came to church in hats and boots. It had been a Christian gathering of people just like we had discussed, but we never once called ourselves a “cowboy church.”

Why not? Because if anything, Christianity must be all inclusive, and we would never do anything to appear otherwise… like put a label on our fellowship that would sound exclusionary. I don’t think we should call them “cowboy” churches or “Indian” churches or “biker” or “lawyer” churches… that would tend to undermine the magic of the amazing sufficiency and diversity of the Body of Christ.

Tony King, administrator of Bar None Cowboy Church was glad to handle my questions. His answer was more or less that the cowboy churches are like a mission, aimed at people that will never enter a regular church. It’s just a focus on a particular group of people, largely unchurched, with a strategy to get into their world, any way possible.

Like Young Life, it is targeting the farthest person from Christ, and sometimes that takes extraordinary measures. I worked a great deal with Young Life as a young man. My ministry there was blessed, but I have to admit, I was always concerned with the low numbers that stuck with the program. When you make something too easy, too accessible, it can become easy come, easy go. But his answer was reasonable, so I shot him another question.

Of more concern to me was his and Jason’s story about an entertainer who had been invited to perform at one of their events. It had been learned after the fact that he sang a lot of “beerology” songs and church members expressed their concerns about him appearing there. But they went ahead, convinced that the somewhat worldly performer might be the project that day, as much as anyone.

“What do you say to someone like me who might ask, what about the impressionable young person who hears this person and their beerology at his church and their music, whether played or not, is legitimized because they heard it first in church?”

This was no problem at Bar None, the entertainer with questionable songs was not welcome to sing his “questionable” songs. I guess Jason and Tony were true to their all inclusive name… “Bar None.” That's an example of "cowboy logic." But this does not realistically address the question. Young kids will see the star, go buy the CD’s, and listen to that music the rest of their lives. Parents will go buy it for them, because he was at their church. I know firsthand how impressionable I was at around 17 to 21 years old, when I listened to Jerry Jeff Walker and Co., who were the high priests of beerology in my youth. I can’t imagine how much more I would have worshipped at that twisted altar, had I seen them first in church! In effect, this kind of twist is exactly the kind of wrong message that Murph started the conversation about. We as Christians should be offering something to counter the world and the Devil, not something to accommodate it.

But something tells me that Bar None will be more discerning in the future. The teachings of Christ leave no question that for those who lead these little children astray, it would be better for them to have a millstone tied to their neck and to be thrown into the sea. A special judgment awaits those who misuse this trust.

The cowboy church is new and rough around the edges. We all need to pitch in and make sure it does what Greg Hunt thinks it will. But this movement is vulnerable to swift, unmanagable growth and an abundance of "git‘er done" types like Simon Peter and a shortage of doctrinally sound individuals like Paul. Even though Chuck Montgomery was right about Pharisees, Paul had the training and wisdom of one, and without him, we would not have most of the great writings of the New Testament. The idea of “Bishops” in the early church was developed for just this reason. Without wisdom, this whole thing could end up as just another embarrassing whim.

But it will be meetings such as this one, with open minds and hearts like these, where wisdom will be found. The only spiritual measure of success in this world is changed lives. That is happening if these men in the room were any example of the leadership in ths movement. Men are being brought into every day ministy that mainstream churches might have never considered twice. It says in the Bible that God often uses the foolish to confound the wise. You gotta love a God like that!

Part I: "Christian Cowboys Outreach Fellowship"

My friend Jeff Moreland put together a gathering in Klein, Texas Friday that became a golden moment for me and others who participated. Thank You Jeff!

It was a hand-picked pow-wow of cowboy songwriters, entertainers and cowboy church pastors, all seeking to network and better use their abilities to serve the Lord's Kingdom. You will be reading much more about it in the days to come.

Kyle Hutton, Brian Kalinec, George Ensle, Pat Gavin, Kevin Robinson and Michael Martin Murphy were some of the entertainers that attended. It seemed strange to see them all together without a single guitar in the bunch. But, as was soon evident, they had a lot on their minds and singing was not on the agenda.

Jeff explained that we were there to "collide" our various ideas and perspectives... and hopefully forge something in the process. And we did, as instant friendships began all around the room. I'm not sure I've ever experienced such a group, where there was so much wisdom and talent in one place.

And not to my surprise, there were around a half-dozen Lefties there, almost three times the population's average. Right-brained folk are as thick as fleas in creative circles. It's going to be fun to see what emerges...

Charles Lynn, Michael Murphy's production and tour manager, always has astute insights. Lynn admitted that the juxtaposition of the entertainment world with the ministry world was almost perplexing. And that perceptions about what is "mainstream" are usually wrong. "Mainstream is never really mainstream." Cowboy churches are probably more mainstream than we think. But he offered that cowboys are notoriously rough and rebellious and difficult to handle, and thus a real challenge. He also asserted that hunger pains are what guide people, so as we offer what they are hungry for, they will find us.

It occured to me as he said that, how similar cowboys are to those rough and tough fishermen that Jesus chose. When the Savior of the world came to change Man's relationship to God, he did not go to the synagogue to pick his disciples. He went to the beach, and began to banter with a bunch of rednecks. In his estimation, it was these uneducated, hard working men of the open sea that had the right stuff. These were the likes of who would change the world for Christ.

Greg Hunt of Magnolia Cowboy Church later proclaimed that it would be Cowboy Churches that would lead the way to a spiritual revival in our Country, if it were ever to happen. Hunt sees the hope of our Country in these churches. As he stood there resolute, with his cowboy confidence, I saw the likes of Peter preaching to the thousands at Pentecost. With that purposeful, expectant comment, he may have impacted my estimation of the Cowboy Church forever.

I certainly would have no problem with something called "Fisherman Church," as the significance would be obvious. Perhaps I put too much importance on names and titles. If Jesus came around today, as Michael Martin Murphy has said, he would probably gravitate to "cowboys," working men of the outdoors, the way he did fishermen then.

Fishermen, cowboys, sodbusters, whatever, we need to be ready to feed the sheep. Their stomachs are growling!

Note: This is Part 1 of a popular series on the Cowboy Church movement, to see them all go back to the main page and use the search button at the top right... search CHRISTIAN COWBOYS.

The Taming of a Texan... Part III

With every adventure in live music, there is always the crazy stuff that happens that you talk about first. “Yeah, the show was great but…” These past months in Navasota with all the deluge of live music has been a barrel of monkeys. That’s right, brass monkeys. I’m about to do a photographic end-of-the-year retrospective of all the fun, so you won’t forget, and perhaps in your next lifetime you will choose to get out and enjoy art like you should.

My trek to see Michael Martin Murphy was no exception. I was given the privilege to accompany his escort to pick him up at the hotel where he stayed in Houston. True to authentic cowboy fashion, we hauled him in a dirty, messy pick-up truck. When he came out, he was wearing a camo jacket, but he was still Michael Murphy. I was thrilled to meet him again. Perhaps this time it would not be so rushed.

I was wearing a leather frill coat with beadwork. I felt like Hans and Franz in their phony muscles when Schwartznegger came out on SNL and grabbed them by their necks… Like a teen ager, I jumped in the junky back seat, as there was no place else for a person, unless I wanted to ride in the bed. Michael Martin Murphy soon turned up the radio, when he heard the music of one of his protégés. “That’s Lester Flatt,” he smiled. He and the driver talked bluegrass as we pulled up alongside a car at the red light. The lady in the car next to us stared real hard, knowing that the guy over in the next lane could be somebody… I could almost read her mind as she told herself, probably not… and then she looked straight ahead.

When we got to HBU, I sat in a stupor, wondering how in the hell can a person tell somebody else how much their art had meant to them for thirty five years. There was no time, and besides, I was looking at the back of his head. I just blew it off. Where do you start, he’s got a lot on his mind, besides, he has heard all that stuff before. I thought of my daughter, an accomplished musician, who never was much for conversation right before a performance. He probably was somewhere else anyway. Once she forgot her guitar as we drove her to a little gig in Hempstead. Had to go back and get it… And I know all performers are running a thousand things through their minds right before they go on.

Anyway, just as I thought I had my shortened speech ready, we were there. Perhaps I could at least shake his hand and wish him well….The truck stopped, Michael Martin Murphy jumped out, pretty spry for an old guy. And closed the door. I’m behind him in one of those cabs that the back folds out, only if the front passenger door is open. I can’t even get out. Murph hops away, and I sit there considering my options. I called for help, and the driver soon reopened my side, and we chuckled about it.

Hey, there was no offense intended, and none taken. Cowboys have done much worse to each other. Like the time my boss on a ranch let me drink tap water from his hose for two weeks before he told me there was a dead possum in the well. Now THAT would make you mad.

Anyway I got to see Murph again as it turned out, and go through the Bible museum at HBU, and share some of my heritage. I showed him and others my mural of the Battle of Galveston inside the Museum of Southern History, in the same building. He seemed to enjoy the museums, and his associates were so well informed about the Bible and the exhibits that they could have been docents. Everyone was amazed at the spiritual and intellectual level of these men. Murphy, like all successful people, has surrounded himself with very able men. That may have been the highlight of the evening, which sure ran long, as these entertainers stopped and considered the various ancient translations of the WORD. I think the museums made as much of an impression on them as their performance had on us.

When we finally got to my mural, everyone was dragging, but Murph hung in there, so graciously, and I was almost embarrassed to take up his time. I stood in shock, because I had ever seen the mural without a huge cannon that used to set in front of it. In fact the missing cannon was carefully placed so that it appeared as if it had just sent a projectile that was exploding in the painting. It was gone… My 30 foot mural, much to my dismay, was a smoking gun with no gun. So I told them about the Texans like my great, great grandfather, who took back Galveston Island with cunning and subterfuge, inflicting minimum of casualties, yet handing the Union Navy the single most humiliating defeat in American Naval history. And then I gave him a line that ought to be in a song; When the Rebs got back their strategic port, they claimed they would never lose it again in battle, because they “would fight until hell froze over… and then fight on the ice!”

That’s the kind of people that built this Country. They believed in something. Our challenge is to be careful what we embrace, but realize that some things are worth sacrificing and even dying for. Michael Martin Murphy seems to have discovered those things, and is touring the state to get his message out. And doing it in a beautiful way. Hopefully he has found that a lot of people, including me, agree with him, his style and his substance, and see him as a Godsend to this Country.

I’ll gladly take a back seat to a man like that any day.

The Taming of a Texan, Part I... and another member of my "Top Ten"

“You never realize how much you need wild men ‘til they’re gone.”
Michael Murphy

OK, so Michael Murphy was not that wild, and I wasn’t either, but the thing about being wild at heart is telling yourself anything can happen… and hoping it will. Most of us are just wild in our minds. Like when I’m taking the garbage out, after my wife has asked me, twice. I stare up into the trees and threaten the squirrels, who scamper around in the canopy without a care in the world, heckling me, the little devils. I tell them they better run before I get my high powered pellet gun with a scope. The dog understands the exchange and wags her tail in anticipation. She has seen the little peckerwoods fall to the earth before. For that moment I am a grizzled mountain man, in touch with the forces of nature, capable of survival with my trusty Labrador in any situation. That’s when I head back into the house and get on the computer or something else less exciting.

We live dual lives, just like Walter Mitty, a complicated weave of habits and fantasies where we are constantly the more exotic and poetic journeyman, doing something relatively mundane, for the moment. I’ve usually been the cowboy who paints or sculpts as a sideline between running a sign or remodeling business, and dabbling with theology and history and antiquities. That’s on Monday. But basically I’m an artist, who wants to be a writer. I know a writer that wants to be a musician, a musician that wants to be a horsetrader, and a horsetrader that wants to be a dozer driver. A psychologist that wants to be a restaurateur, a lawyer that wants to be a farmer, even an insurance adjuster who wants to be a marriage counselor with a gameboard. People dream. And for some people, their dreams are what make their lives bearable.

And somewhere, sometime, perhaps at a very early age, Michael Murphy wanted to be a cowboy. A free spirited kid from Oak Cliff in Dallas, he forged a raw and unique sound with his squeaky voice and guitar, and went to California like everyone from Texas does when they want to make it in the music business. He wrote songs like crazy, and some were like crazy, and he sold them to cover stallions like Kenny Rogers and the Monkees. That’s right, the Monkees. He even teamed up with fellow Texan Michael Nesmith, the tall boyish looking Monkee, and recorded an album. It was a long way from home on the range. And Murphy knew that whatever it was, it was not IT.

When I first knew about him, he was already a veteran songsmith. Dubbed the "Cosmic Cowboy," the voice I discovered on the radio was the result of years of hammering out a style and a stage personality, with so many varied influences that Michael Murphy had almost become a chameleon. He could sing like a cranky, sunburned prospector, or a choir boy, or Hank Williams, or a ditzy flower child. One song like Rainbow Man could be a Beatles hit, another like Geronimo’s Cadillac became a Native American anthem. Rolling Stone proclaimed him the best new songwriter in the Country. Yet in all his lyrics, real, lasso and lariat cowboys scarcely ever emerged from the images he created. It was as if Michael was avoiding the obvious, denying this quintessential American hero as much as the God that he had learned about in Sunday School. They were good, and he was a bad boy, a wild child, at least for now. The cowboy in him had to wait. At that point, he was a Dallas kid that wanted to be an intellectual. And he was. The 70’s Michael Murphy gave you poignant lyrics and tasty music, full of all the influences he could draw upon, blues, country, rock, folk, even Spanish and German ethnic music. In his mind it was all these forces that came together to make Texas music. He was a student of these influences and the talented mixer between them. It was a rich sound that has rarely ever been matched.

I sure did love it, but it was not ever going to take Michael Murphy on a fast trip to the top. It was a melancholy kind of success. One of his band members, Gary P. Nunn wrote a song while they were recording in London, and it said it all. Lonesome Homesick Blues defined more than a wild afternoon at Luchenbach, Texas. Although it was a big rowdy hit with Jerry Jeff and the Lost Gonzo Band, it was written and delivered as a pitifully sad song. “I wanna go home with the armadillo” was almost the self-fulfilling prophesy of the Progressive Country movement. Tectonic music shifts were already reshaping the music landscape, and most of the Austin sound entertainers would melt into regional obscurity. For one thing, Nashville got the message, and began to incorporate more contemporary and experimental sounds.

Ironically, coincidentally, incredibly, I have recently met Gary P. and Bob Livingston, both former members of Murphy’s band back then. Both super entertainers, songwriters and story tellers, today they are playing for pennies compared to their real value. Art trends are heartless, relentless tides that overwhelm all but the most cunning swimmers. There are so many excellent musicians out there, who were good enough to spellbind countless thousands for a season, who have been left behind as somebody younger or more trendy usurped them, in a constant cycle of the new and sensational trumping yesterday’s genius.

In my career, the powers-that-be got frustrated with my early works, because like Murphy, I had so many influences, that I could not be pigeon-holed. “Come back when you grow up” was their usual response. Like most music producers, the average art gallery needs a consistent, predictable product to invest their time and energy and resources in. And a familiar product people can easily identify and relate to. These kinds of expectations restricted my gifts of invention and originality. Soon I was painting bluebonnets, to make a living, and to give the masses what they already wanted. I loved doing them, and especially making money, but they were not what I was born to create. They were my answer to finding an audience. I told myself that I would have to find my own style, my own look, to add another chapter to the Texas bluebonnet painting legacy. Maybe someday I would get back to my own peculiar niche.

I am still working on that. And the same kinds of narrow, visionless forces that molded me, molded Michael Murphy. When sales dipped, he searched the airwaves for a magic bullet, something to hang his hat on. Something bigger than one artist, and big enough for one more talent, where there was a built-in audience, readymade, just waiting for his innovations. Someplace that felt like home. There was something about garden variety country music that was unappealing to him. Perhaps he had spent too many years scoffing at it. When he shocked Warner Brothers with his project, of recording old cowboy songs, he met with a few raised eyebrows. Michael Murphy, the bluesy, rocky, folky, wild child, Rainbow man, crackin’ up in Las Cruces, progressive country outlaw, Austin sound founder, Michael Murphy, suddenly …wanted to be… a cowboy. Gene Autry. Roy Rogers. Many might have suggested that the Dallas boy cracked up in Las Cruces was just plain cracked. That was in 1990.

Michael found new musicians and had begun to sing under his full name, Michael Martin Murphy. He was finally becoming complete. He had found the music he wanted to be married to. When he began to hang out with other artists of that genre, he found instant, lifelong compadres. In fact, he found it to be like a religious experience, and indeed it was. He and his music were never the same. And the words and the hope and patriotism and Faith behind them began to resonate within, until the new Michael Martin Murphy evolved, and through numerous successful albums featuring old- fashioned cowboy music, he has become the single most influential cowboy singer of our generation. He is credited by all interested in this genre has having single handedly revived American cowboy poetry and music.

Murphy now has ranches and cattle and a wife and family. Unlike the youthful skeptic of the 70’s, he speaks of Jesus as if he has met him. And now he sings with one voice. And he has found a small but steady crowd, that represents the backbone of this country, that appreciates his message and his gift for song. His show makes a strong statement about patriotism, faith, family & support for troops and local police. Everyone grins, remembering that this child of the sixties would probably have been booed by his audiences for the same comments 25 years ago… And Murphy meets his doubters head on. He has become a bastion of cowboy logic. He even has a song by that name. He explains that people ask him what’s the difference between Country music and Cowboy music. “The difference between Country music and Cowboy music… is Cowboy music is good.”

Murphy explains in more diplomatic terms that Country music has become the music of drunks and bars and adulterers. Country music finds the lowest common denominator, and he is reaching for a higher level of existence. Cowboy music is GOOD. As in good versus evil. Both are true, and a form of reality. But just as Michael Murphy was once a singer-songwriter that wanted to be a cowboy, he has over time become a cowboy that wants to be a leader of men. He has aimed his intellect at the Christian Right, who could stand an injection of fresh thought. He wants to impart values and ideals. He wants to be a positive force in a negative world.

Michael Martin Murphy has found the place where he will hang his hat, until Jesus comes. He believes that Jesus is the answer. And even if his crowds are smaller now than those he has entertained at Carnegie Hall, or many places all over the world, he seems to know they are his real friends, his forever audience, the ones he knows understand the cowboy way, and his journey, and the end of the trail for all of us.

Michael Murphy deserves his place on my list of the "Top Ten in Texas" for a lifetime of creativity, growing, giving, caring, and keeping our cowboy culture alive in song, so Texans and their fans will always know what we are about.

The most amazing live music month of my life!

I think I lost most of my followers when I blogged so much about my favorite songwriter, Rusty Weir, after his passing. His death seemed to mean a lot to me that I could not explain. And now on the heals of that, AND RAY WYLIE HUBBARD APPEARING IN MY OWN TOWN LAST WEEK, another music titan in my mind crossed my path out of nowhere…

When I first heard Michael Murphy, and took note of his name, he was raging like a crusty, poetic lunatic on KFM Radio, 92 ½ in Dallas, singing Crack Up in Las Cruces, and I was still mourning a similar loss after totaling my own car. The first time I heard it, it kind of irritated me. It was nothing to sing about. After riding around Denton on a four-speed for a few weeks, balancing my groceries on the handlebars, dodging clueless drivers, and nearly crashing in the bushes a couple of times after taking those steep Denton hills too fast, I found his high pitched lamentations fit amazingly close to mine, and I bought Geronimo’s Cadillac (1972), and his new album, Blue Sky-Night Thunder (1975). They may have been the very first albums I ever bought as a youth away from home, and making choices for myself. I fell heart and soul into Boy From the Country, Waking up, Geronimo’s Cadillac, all songs from his first album. At the time I was having that once-in-a-lifetime, passionate love affair with the woman of my dreams… my future wife of now 35 years, and his title song from the other album, Night Thunder, pretty much summed up my student- in- his- first- apartment- by- himself outlook. And what a great album, sporting two hits, Wildfire, his biggest chartbuster ever, and Carolina in the Pines. And get down in your mind ditties like Wild Bird and Blue Sky Riding Song.

Michael Murphy perfectly, artistically personified many a church-raised, red-blooded American male at large, especially southern boys with a love for the out of doors and the land. Young cowboys with no cattle to round up, no towns to shoot up, and no Indians to fight. The first Dr. Spock generation, with a thousand questions and all of them avoiding the One answer. We were wild, or at least wild at heart, or wanted to be, and only challenged authority as the new liberated society expected us to. Our father’s called it sowing our wild oats. Our mother’s called it a phase. Wildness was a right to passage, and in many cases, Michael, or at least the one on the album covers, was wild enough to satisfy the wild man in most of us.

Later he came out with a fabulous, inspiring album called Swans Against the Sun, my personal favorite, that really affirmed my focus as an artist on the legend and lore of my native Texas, which almost immediately got me kicked out of the North Texas State University Art Department. Suddenly I wanted to have an art show that was the equivalent to Wild Kingdom and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. I just wanted to paint what Michael Murphy was singing about. Appalled, my professors wanted me to go away and never return. They told me to major in something else. Crack Up in Las Cruces seemed to be the theme for me while up in Denton. Rejected and dejected, and feeling weirdly counter-countercultural, I kicked the dust off of my feet and found greener pastures and melted into the sunset. But I held on to my albums… Somewhere in between their covers was the map of my identity, and I had better hold on until that became more clear.

I had a little pathetic barrel cactus for awhile, and an old Grapette bottle we found one day, but the cactus finally died down here, from too much rain, so today my Blue Sky- Night Thunder Lp is my one prominent souvenir from those innocent, difficult times. I’m not complaining, I got the girl… and I listened to my Texas Music for years until my turntable broke and they were out of style, and marriage and the music of the 80’s obliterated the soul strings I had woven with a number of musicians from that era. Many of them bit the dust right along with my art degree, when everything recorded and played turned to cassette technology. Struggling recording artists must groan real loud every time the music technology changes, since they will be the last to be re-issued in the new medium, right in time for it to change again... Waylon and Willie were immune to such obstacles, but other Hill Country artists like Rusty Weir, Steve Fromholtz , Kinky Friedman and Ray Wylie Hubbard often got lost in the shuffle, or just as often were victims of their own wildness…

Yet others, Texas music survivors like Jerry Jeff Walker, Gary P. Nunn and Michael Murphy persevered with some success and faithfully represented that rebellious generation of Texas sons of WWII heroes that were carving out their own cultural niche… and Michael Martin Murphy was at the head of the class. He had actual hits, songs that were loved from coast to coast. He broke out, took Texas music to an international level. He made us all proud.

Then radio trends changed and I lost my lifeline for Texas music, and spent a decade at least brushing up on the rock music I had ignored during that time. I figured all those wild men either went down hard like wild men do, or got respectable jobs.

About a year ago a friend gave me a decent turntable that still worked, and I began to collect old Lp’s, and listen to them again. I could finally play Blue Sky- Night Thunder again. I had long since lost my copies of Geronimo’s Cadillac and Swans Against the Sun to fleeting friends who “borrowed” them. For some reason, I have carried that old discolored, warped album around from phase to phase of my life like a security blanket. And little could I have ever imagined, that someone who had been a silent icon, staring out into my studio for thirty years, could become flesh and bone.

That, as you might have expected, is what happened, and I can’t wait to share every interesting detail with you!

A few months ago, a new friend of mine and as it just so happens, a friend and production manager for Michael Martin Murphy, crafted a “chance” meeting between Michael Martin Murphy and myself out at River Haven, and got me an autographed CD. How cool is that? Recently the same friend invited me to hear Michael Martin Murphy in concert at Houston Baptist University… You can imagine my pleasure at this turn of events. So it was at one university where I discovered Michael Murphy, and another thirty years later where I rediscovered him. Even the names and places are very telling. From hippie college town to straight as an arrow Baptist institution. And miraculously, Michael Murphy fit in both, yet looked bigger in real life than he ever did in my imagination, or on my dusty album cover. The following are several independent segments about my impressions about his musical transformation. And as usual, they have strong interpretations as well as implications. But I think you will find each segment worth your time.

I hope through it all, to get you into the music, and also illustrate the idea that there is a reason for everything that happens, and it is up to us to figure out the significance of them. And that is what makes the unfolding of this mystery so much fun!