Ray Wylie Hubbard

Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #134 (February/March 2008).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Ray Wylie Hubbard

Snakes & Dragons & Redneck Mothers (Oh, My!)

by Michael Parrish

Few singer/songwriters have the range of Ray Wylie Hubbard. He has written some of the funniest, scariest, most poetic, and grittiest tunes you'll ever hear, often on the same album, and sometimes in the same song. In the 1970s, Hubbard was -- along with Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Jerry Jeff Walker, and many others -- part of the vanguard of the Progressive Country movement out of Austin. Since the early 90s, he has crafted a series of finely honed studio albums that have moved him more into the folk-Americana world. However, as Hubbard explained, this is more a return to his roots than a move into new territory.

"I started out in folk music in high school. In Oak Cliff, outside of Dallas, I was in school with Michael Murphey (now Michael Martin Murphey), a fellow named B.W. Stevenson, and Larry Groce, who now hosts 'Mountain Stage.' I got started in folk music in '64 or '65. The Kingston Trio was happening, and Peter, Paul and Mary. Someone gave me a Dylan record and doors started tumbling open. I appreciated that this guy was singing with so much passion and writing his own material. Then, through Dylan, further doors started to open to Woody Guthrie, Cisco Houston, and Leadbelly. There was a little folk scene in Dallas at a club called the Rubiyat -- this would have been '65 or '66. That's where I started playing acoustic guitar. I was in a little folk group called Three Faces West. There was a folk circuit and people like Allen Damron, Bill Moss, Townes Van Zandt, and Steve Fromholz played all these little clubs. So my first calling was folk music."

A few years later, Hubbard was swept up in the wave that became known as Texas progressive country. "Willie Nelson moved to Austin, as did Jerry Jeff Walker and Michael Murphey. You had guys like Jerry Jeff -- a folk singer who had a band with John Inman, who played rock guitar. Willie, being a Nashville songwriter, got Micky Raphael playing blues harp. And Michael Murphey had, I think, Leo LeBlanc playing steel guitar. So there were all these folksinger types who all got bands. I was in a band called Ray Wylie Hubbard and the Cowboy Twinkies. We were more folk-rock than we were anything."

Hubbard and the Twinkies were a relatively hot commercial commodity, courted by labels that included Atlantic and even Frank Zappa's Discreet imprint, and ultimately signing with Warner Brothers. Things didn't turn out exactly as they had planned. "We had made a really good tape at this little eight-track studio, and everyone was offering us deals. It was a real folk-rock record, and everybody loved it. We got signed, and they told us 'Go to Nashville, and you can record this on really good equipment.' So we went there and recorded it in Nashville. They took it to the people in Nashville, and they said, 'Country radio's not gonna play this,' so they put girl singers and steel guitar on every track. I love girl singers and steel guitar, but on every track? The first time we heard it was in my driveway on a cassette, and we were actually in tears listening to it. It really broke our hearts. I called up this attorney friend of mine and asked him what I should do. He said 'I suggest you start drinking heavily because there's not a lot you can do.' "

[cover #134]