Ray Wylie Hubbard

Ray Wylie Hubbard (born November 13, 1946) is an Oklahoma-born, Texas-based Americana singer-songwriter whose five-decade career has spanned folk, country, blues, and rock 'n' roll. Though long best known as the writer of the progressive country anthem "Up Against the Wall (Redneck Mother)", first recorded by Jerry Jeff Walker on his 1973 album, Viva Terlingua, Hubbard effectively rebooted his career in the '90s with more meditative, folk-leaning fare such as "The Messenger" and "Dust of the Chase," and again in the early 2000s as a "grit and groove" focused roots rocker and esteemed elder statesman of the modern Americana, Texas, and Red Dirt music scenes on albums including 2001's Eternal and Lowdown, 2006's Snake Farm, and 2017's Tell the Devil I'm Gettin' There as Fast as I Can. In 2018, Hubbard was inducted into the Texas Heritage Songwriters Hall of Fame.[1]

Biography and career

Hubbard was born in Hugo, Oklahoma, and raised in the nearby tiny town of Sopher, where his father was a school principal.[2] His family moved to Dallas, Texas, when he was in his teens, and it was during his years at Oak Cliff's Adamson High School (Class of 1965) that he joined his first band, a folk trio with fellow classmates Rick Fowler and Wayne Kidd called the Coachmen. Their first gig, as Hubbard recounted in his 2015 memoir A Life ... Well, Lived, was at a local restaurant for Kidd's younger sister's eighth grade Spanish class banquet. They only made it through two songs, but kept at it through graduation and the following summer, which they spent playing and working at resort in Red River, New Mexico. Hubbard, Fowler and Kidd dispersed to different colleges in the fall, but reconvened in Red River the following summer, by which time they'd changed their name to Three Faces West. They eventually leased a building in town to rehearse in and turned it into a coffeeshop, the Outpost—which was where Hubbard would one day write "Up Against the Wall (Redneck Mother)" after a harrowing beer run.[2]

Meanwhile, in addition to his summers playing with Three Faces West in New Mexico, Hubbard also began booking shows back in Texas while attending college in the fall, winter, and spring. Together with Larry Groce (later the host of NPR's "Mountain Stage"), Jerry Graves, and Jo Wright, he formed a short-lived Dallas jug band called the Raggedy Sometime Band,[3] while a solo gig opening for Tony Joe White in Austin was his first performance accompanied by guitarist Terry "Buffalo" Ware.[2] A few years later, after Three Faces West had broken up and Hubbard was back in Dallas looking to put together a new group, Ware was his first recruit. Drummer Jim Herbst and bassist Dennis Meehan completed the lineup, and the Cowboy Twinkies were born.

Mixing originals like "Portales", "Border Town Girl", and "West Texas Dance Band" with Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix covers, the Twinkies quickly earned a following as one of the wildest bands playing Texas' burgeoning progressive country scene. Hubbard's reputation was further bolstered by the popularity of his "Redneck Mother" song, which had recently been recorded by Jerry Jeff Walker on Viva Terlingua and would later be sung by Willie Nelson at the taping of the pilot episode of TV’s Austin City Limits.[3] With help from Hubbard's friend and de-facto manager (and Dallas Cowboys defensive end) Pat Toomay, the Cowboy Twinkies were signed to Atlantic Records by Jerry Wexler and sent to Muscle Shoals to record their debut album, but the sessions with producer Bob Johnston proved a non-starter. A second attempt, this time for Warner/Reprise and with producer Michael Brodsky, yielded a finished album (1976's Ray Wylie Hubbard and the Cowboy Twinkies), albeit with overdubs and female backing vocals that had been added to the mix without their knowledge. The result was "a botched sound" that Hubbard disapproved of vehemently, but the album was released despite his attempts to block it.[4]

Hubbard released one more album with the Twinkies in the '70s (1978's Off the Wall, for Willie Nelson's Polygram imprint Lone Star Records) and two in the early '80s with different band members (1980's half live, half studio Something About the Night for Renegade Records and 1984's live Caught in the Act, on his own Misery Loves Company Records). None of them were very successful, though, and by the mid-80s his career was all but bust. So was his marriage to his first wife, with whom he had child, his oldest son, Cory. By Hubbard's own admission, his drinking and drug use weren't helping matters. As he recounted in his 2016 memoir, A Life Well ... Lived: "I was in this make believe world I had created for myself. It was a dark kingdom where I thought of myself as a Keith Richards cool drug rocker, a Townes Van Zandt tortured songwriter, a Dylan Thomas heartbroken poet. The reality was that I was just a sloppy blackout drunk playing 'Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother' twice a night in these shitty honk tonks and seedy bars in Fort Worth and Dallas and Oklahoma, where the patrons drank like I did. Offstage, I thought I was doing this Don Rickles' funny, witty insult humor, when in reality I was just saying mean and hurtful things to people."[2]

Inspired in part by the example and encouraging words of recently sober fellow Texas musician Stevie Ray Vaughan, Hubbard quit alcohol and drugs on the morning of his 41st birthday (Nov. 13, 1987).[3] Soon after, in the midst of completing his 12-step program, he met the woman who would become his second wife (and eventual manager), Judy Stone, at a gig at Poor David's Pub in Dallas.[4] They married in 1989 and have one son, Lucas Hubbard (born 1993), who in his late teens began playing lead guitar in his father's band.[5]

Concurrent with his new marriage, Hubbard made a concerted effort to revive his career and commitment to songwriting. He began taking his first real guitar lessons, with an emphasis on finger picking, and in 1991 self-released his first "sober" album, Lost Train of Thought. That was followed by 1994's Loco Gringo's Lament (DejaDisc Records), his first album produced by Lloyd Maines and, in Hubbard's own words, "the first record I ever made that I could hand to someone, look them in the eye and say, 'here it is,' without wincing or having excuses duct taped to it."[2] Hubbard went on to make three more albums with Maines at the production helm: 1997's Dangerous Spirits (Rounder/Philo Records), 1998's Live at Cibolo Creek (Misery Loves Company),and1999's Crusades of the Restless Knights (Rounder/Phil Records). All were critically well received and helped elevate Hubbard's standing not just as a legacy act from the 1970s progressive country era, but as a widely respected and relevant "songwriter's songwriter" on the contemporary Americana, folk, and Texas music scenes. Younger artists ranging from Slaid Cleaves and Hayes Carll to Pat Green and Randy Rogers began to seek audiences with him for both career guidance and co-writing sessions, leading to his nickname on the Texas music scene as "the Wylie Lama."[6]

While Hubbard's predominantly acoustic songs like "The Messenger", "Without Love", and "Conversations with the Devil" from Loco Gringo's Lament through Crusades of the Restless Knights helped him transition from "honky-tonks and seedy bars" into listening rooms and theaters, the most successful stage of his career (in terms of audience, acclaim, and TV appearances on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,[7] The Late Show with David Letterman,[8] and Conan)[9] began with his move to a more bluesy, roots-rock sound introduced on 2001's Gurf Morlix-produced Eternal and Lowdown (Rounder/Philo). Oft described by Hubbard himself as "grit ’n' groove," the style found him favoring Resonator slide guitar and open tuning more often than the intricate finger picking that characterized his folkier records of the 1990s, and spawned many of his most popular songs, including the title track to 2006's Snake Farm (Sustain Records) and "Mother Blues," from 2012's The Grifter's Hymnal (on Hubbard's own Bordello Records).[3] Snake Farm in particular earned him wide acclaim, including a YouTube plug by Ringo Starr of the Beatles.[10] Starr would later guest on Hubbard's cover of Starr's "Coochy Coochy" (on The Grifter's Hymnal), while Lucinda Williams and mainstream country artist Eric Church (who mentioned Hubbard by name in his song "Mr. Misunderstood") would both sing on the title track to Hubbard's 2017 album, Tell the Devil That I'm Getting There as Fast as I Can (Bordello). And on June 16, 2019, Hubbard made his debut on the Grand Ole Opry,[11] performing three songs (including "Snake Farm") accompanied by his son Lucas as well as the Americana duo Larkin Poe and Opry member Pam Tillis.[12]

Hubbard's writing endeavors in the last decade have not been limited to his songs. With director Tiller Russell, he co-wrote the 2010 Western action film The Last Rites of Ransom Pride. He also wrote several songs for the project which ended up not being used in the movie but were included on his 2010 album A. Enlightenment B. Endarkenment (Hint: There is no C) (Bordello). The film itself was not a hit (commercially or critically), but it did feature a cast full of notable names, including fellow songwriters Kris Kristofferson and Dwight Yoakam as well as Lizzy Caplan and Peter Dinklage, just before their respective big breaks on cable TV's Masters of Sex and Game of Thrones, respectively.[13]

In 2015, Hubbard published a memoir, A Life ... Well, Lived (Bordello), which he co-credited to editor Thom Jurek. In addition to the main narrative, presenting a candid first-person account of his life and music from childhood up to his sobriety and career comeback, Hubbard interspersed the book with shorter chapters, written in the looser style of his stream-of-consciousness social media updates from the road, recounting colorful gig anecdotes, musings on his bandmates and family, and his favorite guitar tunings. Critic Doug Freeman of the Austin Chronicle noted that the book read "like a 'drunken poet's dream,' a morning-after piecing together of what happened," and called it "captivating, hilarious, honest, and enlightening."[14]

In 2019, Texas A&M University Press published The Messenger: The Songwriting Legacy of Ray Wylie Hubbard, in which writer Brian T. Atkinson collected testimonials on Hubbard's influence by a number of his peers and followers on the Americana scene, including Jerry Jeff Walker, Bobby Bare, Michal Martin Murphey, Steve Earle, Hayes Carll, and Slaid Cleaves. A companion album, The Messenger: A Tribute to Ray Wylie Hubbard, was released at the same time on Eight 30 Records, featuring covers of Hubbard's songs by Bare, Rodney Crowell, Charlie Musselwhite, Tom Russell, Terri Hendrix, James McMurtry, and more.

Discography

  • 1976 Ray Wylie Hubbard and the Cowboy TwinkiesWarner Bros. Records[15]
  • 1978 Off the Wall – Lone Star Records, Polygram[16]
  • 1980 Something About the Night – Renegade Records
  • 1984 Caught in the Act – Misery Loves Company Records
  • 1991 Lost Train of Thought – Misery Loves Company Records
  • 1994 Loco Gringo's Lament – DejaDisc Records
  • 1997 Dangerous SpiritsRounder/Philo Records[17]
  • 1998 Live at Cibolo Creek – Misery Loves Company Records
  • 1999 Crusades of the Restless Knights – Rounder/Philo Records
  • 2001 Eternal & Lowdown – Rounder/Philo Records[18]
  • 2003 GROWL – Rounder/Philo Records[18]
  • 2005 Delirium Tremolos – Rounder/Philo Records
  • 2006 Snake Farm- Sustain Records[19]
  • 2010 A. Enlightenment B. Endarkenment (Hint: There is no C) – Bordello Records (Thirty Tigers/RED)
  • 2012 The Grifter's Hymnal – Bordello Records (Thirty Tigers/RED)[20]
  • 2015 The Ruffian's Misfortune – Bordello Records
  • 2017 Tell The Devil That I'm Getting There As Fast As I Can – Bordello Records[21][22]

Books

  • A Life... Well, Lived – A biography and memoir published in 2015.[23][21][24][25]

See also

External links

  1. ^ "Inductees". TXSHA. Retrieved 2019-10-30.
  2. ^ a b c d e Hubbard, Ray Wylie (2015). A Life Well ... Lived. Print Edition: WylieWorld LLC. ISBN 978-0-9861125-0-8.
  3. ^ a b c d Skanse, Richard (12-10-2015). "All Loose Things: Conversations with Ray Wylie Hubbard from a year ... well, lived". LoneStarMusicMagazine.com. Retrieved 30 October 2019. Check date values in: |date= (help)
  4. ^ a b Tucker, Chris (March 1993). "The Second Life of Ray Wylie Hubbard". D Magazine. Retrieved 30 October 2019.
  5. ^ Hubbard, Judy (September 2011). "Heartworn Highways: Enlightenment, Endarkenment, Resurrection and Redneck Mother Love". LoneStarMusicMagazine.com. Retrieved 30 October 2019.
  6. ^ Buckley, Tom (Summer 2003). "The Wylie Lama Sings the Blues". Texas Music Magazine. Issue 15.
  7. ^ Ray Wylie Hubbard on the Jimmny Fallon Show, retrieved 2019-10-30
  8. ^ RAY WYLIE HUBBARD Does Letterman, retrieved 2019-10-30
  9. ^ Leahey, Andrew (24 June 2015). "See Ray Wylie Hubbard Ride 'Stone Blind Horses' on 'Conan.'". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 30 October 2019.
  10. ^ Ringo Starr loves Snake Farm, retrieved 2019-10-30
  11. ^ Blackstock, Peter (18 July 2019). "Ray Wylie Hubbard plays 'Snake Farm' on Grand Ole Opry. Yes, you read that right". Austin 360. Retrieved 30 October 2019.
  12. ^ Ray Wylie Hubbard | My Opry Debut | Opry, retrieved 2019-10-30
  13. ^ The Last Rites of Ransom Pride, retrieved 2019-10-30
  14. ^ Freeman, Doug (11 December 2015). "A redneck mother's recollections — those that remain". The Austin Chronicle. Retrieved 30 October 2019.
  15. ^ Christgau, Robert. "Ray Wylie Hubbard & the Cowboy Twinkies [extended]". RobertChristgau.com. Retrieved 22 March 2019.
  16. ^ Kurt Wolff, Orla Duane - Country Music: The Rough Guide 2000- Page 359 1858285348 "During the mid-'70s he and his band recorded tor Atlantic and Warner Brothers, then Hubbard cut a solo album, OFF THE WALL, for Willie Nelson's Lone Star label"
  17. ^ Steinberg, Brian (1997). "Ray Wylie Hubbard - Dangerous Spirits – 1997 (Rounder)". CountryStandardTime.com. Country Standard Time.
  18. ^ a b Wooldridge, Robert (2003). "Ray Wylie Hubbard - Growl – 2003 (Rounder)". CountryStandardTime.com. Country Standard Time.
  19. ^ Gottlieb, Bob (2006). "Snake Farm : Ray Wylie Hubbard". AcousticMusic.com. Peterborough Folk Music Society.
  20. ^ Dansby, Andrew. "Q & A : RAY WYLIE HUBBARD - The Wylie Lama on life, death, damnation, Beatles, blues, and the fine art of grifting". LoneStarMusicMagazine.com. Lone Star Music. Retrieved 1 March 2012.
  21. ^ a b Gage, Jeff. "Ray Wylie Hubbard on New Album: 'I Still Enjoy Being a Smartass'". RollingStone.com. Rolling Stone. Retrieved 22 August 2017.
  22. ^ Clarke, Tom. "Review: Ray Wylie Hubbard gives the devil run for money". TahoeOnstage.com. Retrieved 14 September 2017.
  23. ^ Ray Wylie Hubbard with Thom Jurek. "A Life....Well, Lived [Print Replica] Kindle Edition (2018)". Amazon Digital Services LLC. Retrieved 7 November 2018.
  24. ^ from an interview on Americana Music Show #254, published July 7, 2015.
  25. ^ Bloom, D.C. "BOOK REVIEW: "A LIFE … WELL, LIVED" by Ray Wylie Hubbard with Thom Jurek". LoneStarMusicMagazine.com. Lone Star Music. Retrieved 17 November 2015.

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