TEXAS SOUL: Ray Wylie Hubbard puts the song first in all that he does
By Steve Wildsmithof The Daily Times Staff
Originally published: June 25. 2009 11:30AM
Last modified: June 25. 2009 11:30AM
Texas songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard performs Saturday (June 27) at "The Shed" at Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson in Maryville.
Summary
His last album, "Snake Farm," features a title track about a tattooed woman who works at a reptile ranch. Such is the eye and imagination of Texas songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard, who saw a sign for such an establishment during a tour drive and turned it into a song. He performs Saturday (June 27) in Maryville.
At the age of 62, singer-songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard is sitting in the fabled catbird seat.
With a history of respectable tunes recorded by others -- from 1973's "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother," cut by Jerry Jeff Walker, all the way up to "Wanna Rock And Roll," covered in 2004 by Cross Canadian Ragweed -- Hubbard is among those songwriters from the Lone Star State held in high regard by his contemporaries.
Throw in his lack of mainstream success -- his appeal lies off the beaten path, his popularity limited to those who like their music with the stinging grit of an East Texas dust storm -- and you've got a man who knows no fear and obeys no rules, at least as far as music goes.
That's a powerful thing, Hubbard told The Daily Times this week.
"I'm kind of at the age now where I'm writing songs that not only don't change chords, but they don't even rhyme," he said with a chuckle. "My buddies say that on the next record, I'll probably be beating on a log with some bones and groaning. But I really love that real rootsy stuff, and I'm kind of rediscovering it.
"I feel really fortunate that I got to see guys like Freddie King and Lightnin' Hopkins and Ernest Tubb and Mance Lipscomb play. I have such respect for that kind of American music, and I have a good situation where I've got this freedom to kind of do whatever I want. I'm an old guy, and I don't have a record label looking over my shoulder going, 'You've got to have a Top 40 country hit.'
"That just ain't gonna happen," he added. "But when you have that freedom, there are no boundaries."
Not that Hubbard has ever shackled himself with what's expected by industry executives pushing mainstream music like foul-tasting cheap liquor. Born in Oklahoma but raised in Dallas, he was inspired to play and write by an old Bob Dylan album and found his calling when "(Up Against the Wall) Redneck Mother" became a hit for Walker.
His ability with a pen turned heads, but Hubbard could never quite find the hitch on the star that so many of his "progressive country" peers from Texas seemed to ride to national renown. For most of the 1980s, he toiled locally, making a name for himself as a Texas troubadour, a guy with a guitar who played every honky tonk, roadhouse and shrimp shack from the Panhandle to Galveston Bay. The lifestyle eventually took its toll, however, and when he sobered up at the end of the decade, he knew it was time to reevaluate the direction in which his music was headed.
The result was 1991's "Lost Train of Thought," the first of several albums over the next 15 years that would establish him as, in the words of one scribe, an "elder statesman" of the Texas music scene. Along with men like Billy Joe Shaver, Guy Clark and the late Townes Van Zandt, he has an eye for detail, an ability to craft a song that seems built on raw emotion, wry observation and troubled introspection. Hubbard doesn't put himself in the same category as those other men, but close attention to his most recent material (he released "Snake Farm" in 2006 and is wrapping work on a new album this month) shows that his pen is just as sharp as it's ever been, if not more so.
"It seems like there's this caliber of writer who does so because they're condemned to write," Hubbard says. "They have no choice; they're going to write what they need to express, and they're not concerned with what happens after they write the song because they're writing for that moment. Guy like Townes and Guy and Billy Joe have all written songs that have been done on country radio, and I really respect those guys -- because they don't have a choice.
"They don't really have control over what happens afterward. They're just certain people condemned to write that way by the gods. And sometimes I feel that way, too -- like I'm writing because there's something tearing off a little piece of my soul to do the damn thing."
It all goes back to the lack of pressure such men have to pen a song that'll be in constant rotation on country music radio. The fact that they, by and large, have stayed out of the mainstream spotlight yet still cultivated respect and adoration for their way with words is what sets them apart. It inspires younger artists, guys like Hayes Carll and Ryan Bingham, and it allows them the independence to pursue whatever projects strike their fancy -- like "The Last Rites of Ransom Pride," an independent film co-written by Hubbard starring Kris Kristofferson, Dwight Yoakam and Jason Priestley, among others.
"It's about a bunch of despicable people cussing and killing each other in Texas in 1912, and I wrote the screenplay with Tiller Russell," Hubbard said. "We wrote it and they raised the money to do it, and they shot it up in Canada last September. It was my first time working on a movie and writing songs for specific scenes, so there was kind of a good process for me to sit down and have some discipline.
"I've got four or five songs on this new record I'm working on that are in the movie. Everything's done on it and everything's tracked, and it's kind of a continuation of 'Snake Farm' -- just greasy and rootsy."
Saturday, Hubbard returns to "The Shed" at Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson in Maryville -- his third visit in as many years, and one that will feature his 16-year-old son, Lucas, playing guitar. With a combination of grizzled road dogs and weekend warriors who shelter their bikes during the week, "The Shed" is Hubbard's kind of place -- quirky and a little edgy, but filled with friendly folks who appreciate good music regardless of whether it's every played on the radio. (Plus, he added with a laugh, "they treat me the way I deserve to be treated.")
In other words, it's a venue of Hubbard's kind of people -- the ones who appreciate talent and heart over studio trickery and flashy showmanship tailor-made for a music television channel. It's the sort of crowd he can hand a song to and know they'll give it a fair shake instead of pondering its sales or chart potential.
"For me, the idea that I need to try and write a hit song just limits me," he said. "I really kind of embraced that idea that you just remove your fear and just do it, anything is possible, and that's really a great feeling for a writer. Sure, my wife appreciates when a royalty check comes in, but the gratification for me is when other writers come up and tell me how good my song is.
"For people that I really respect as writers and musicians to acknowledge that, or to work with people like Gurf Morlix (another Texas musician who toured for more than a decade as a guitarist for Lucinda Williams), who plays guitar on this new record, that's more important and more gratifying to me, as a writer, than when the royalty check comes in."
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