Bottling Bourbon in Texas

In late May of 1975, my friend Danny returned from college in Dallas. On the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, we drove to Hardy, Arkansas to participate in the Spring River Canoe Race. The race was held every Memorial Day. Danny had a very cool red jeep complete with a kick ass Craig stereo, over sized gumbo mudders on white rims, a whip antenna for the CB and jerry cans for extra gas. We put the top down and tied the canoe on the roll bar and wind shield. We didn’t need no stinking doors.

As we drove to Hardy, Danny introduced me to a style of music he had discovered in Dallas. In the early 70’s, just like every other rebellious and misunderstood kid at Heifer High, I had listened to Black Oak, to Bob Dylan, to Alice Cooper, to David Bowie, and to the Stones. I sometimes wondered how non-conformist it was to listen to the same music everyone else was listening to and to dress the same way everyone else was dressing. Somehow, that didn’t seem very rebellious to me to be just like everyone else. It really seemed important to conform to the socially approved definition of rebelliousness and non-conformity. Anyway,I thought I had to be a rocker even if I couldn’t sing the songs or really understand what they were about. All that changed on the drive to Hardy that day.

In 1973, a guy named Jerry Jeff Walker recorded an album in a rusty, old dance hall in a forgotten Texas ghost town owned by a crazy poet-cowboy named Hondo. The town was called Luckenbach and it honestly is in the middle of nowhere. You may have heard of Jerry Jeff, but I guaran-damn-tee you that before Jerry Jeff you had never heard of Lukenbach. Jerry Jeff wrote ‘Mr. Bojangles’. Danny had an 8-Track of the album Jerry Jeff recorded in the old dance hall in Luckenbach. Danny smiled that smile that only Danny could smile, and pulled a tape out of his water proof tape box. I caught a glimpse of the tape as Danny shoved it in the stereo. I wondered who in the hell this Jerry Jeff guy was and what in the hell a Terlingua was.

As we bounced northward on Highway 63 toward Hoxie at 55 mph, I listened intently over the roar of the wind. This music was different. I could tell that this music was as far from David Bowie as it is possible to get. As we got deeper into the music, I realized that this album, Viva Terlingua had songs I could not only sing, but that I understood and could relate to. Hell, I knew the words to the songs before I heard the songs. While David Bowie sang about spacemen in tin cans or spiders from Mars, and Alice Cooper seemed to be a cross dresser with a snake fetish, Jerry Jeff Walker wore dirty boots and Levis. He sang about a life I understood. He sang about escaping from cities like LA. He had a song about rednecks. He sang about drinking sangria wine and being homesick for Texas. It wasn’t crying in your beer country music. It was get up and sing along country music. The way he sang, you could tell he was smiling and having a good time. He may not have been completely sober. This wasn’t an album so much as it was a party. It wasn’t a deep and relevant commentary on the state of our social contract, nor was it fantasy rides into outer space with Ziggy Stardust. This was music about living the way I liked to live.

In April of this year (2021), by virtue of the kindness of a friend, Landi and I found ourselves in Hye, Texas bottling Garrison Brothers Bourbon (https://www.garrisonbros.com/). We worked like dogs, but had a great time. In a stroke of cosmic karma, we stayed in a Bed and Breakfast (The Full Moon Bed and Breakfast, https://www.fullmooninn.com/) that was a half mile from Luckenbach. For two full days we worked at the distillery bottling bourbon and had a great time. The Bourbon Fairy, Lahonda, would visit every hour or so with a small ‘shot’ of bourbon for quality control purposes. We had a great time, and made some great friends, then we were finished. Everyone scrambled for their flights back to the ‘real’ world, back to the East Coast or to South Florida. Everyone except Landi and me.

As we packed up to leave the wonderful little bed and breakfast (It’s 200 year old cabin has a ghost, but that’s another blog), we planned our drive home. It wasn’t a major plan. It was a simple plan. The plan was to visit Luckenbach, and then drive home the same way we had come. On our journey from Florida to the distillery, we were on a particularly winding highway when we passed a tavern named ‘The Devils Backbone Tavern’. That tavern was to be our second stop. So we left Hye, Texas with two objectives, both of which were to go to bars along the highway. There seems to be a pattern in my life.

I knew Luckenbach from Jerry Jeff’s ‘Viva Terlingua’ album but everyone else knows Luckenback from the old Waylon Jennings song. Today it is still little more than a house, a dance hall and the old post office. They have added a couple of stages for music. It’s now a destination. It’s a tourist trap. Honestly, just like the ‘Worlds Largest Ball of Twine’, you just gotta see it. Get a T-shirt. Buy a Luckenbach sign. Drink a beer and listen for the ghosts of Waylon and Jerry Jeff.

The Devils Backbone Tavern (https://www.devilsbackbonetavern.com/) is also the subject of a song. Todd Snyder has a song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hpq_XHOcxKU) called “The Devil’s Backbone Tavern’ that is accompanied by a fun story as to how he found it. Landi and I heard Todd tell the story and sing the song when he was the opening act for Jerry Jeff at BB King’s place on Times Square in NYC. Yeah, from Luckenbach to Times Square! How about it!

We found the Devil’s Backbone Tavern to be exactly as Todd described it in the song. In both Luckenbach and the Tavern, we had a couple of drinks and took in the culture, the atmosphere, the history and humor. On the day of our visit, a local biker group was holding a celebration of the life of one of it’s members. We shared a drink with the bikers and paid our respects to a fallen at The Devil’s Backbone tavern. We hung out for a bit, then resumed our trek home to Florida.

This whole sequence of events began because Danny needed a partner for the annual Spring River Canoe Race. I don’t remember how we did that year. I think a couple of Canadians won. We weren’t too far behind. The thing that I do remember is that this was the weekend I discovered Outlaw Country. I didn’t know that is what it was. I just thought it was music I could relate to. I didn’t realize I had found the soundtrack to my life.

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