My story "Dragons at the County Line" is set in Aldo's Domino Parlor, a place where the old men rattle bones and chew the fat. The jukebox at Aldo's is filled with country gold, though the domino players occasionally debate the merits of various country artists. In "Dragons at the County Line," the ol' boys get in a brief, though heated, debate about Ray Price, the Cherokee Cowboy.
I had the opportunity to see Ray Price at a couple of Willie Nelson's Fourth of July Picnics. At the picnic in Selma (near San Antonio) in 2008, Ray told the story of how at one point he had hired Willie to be his bass player. After Willie had been playing with Ray for a while, he said something like, "I bet you didn't know that I don't play bass," to which Ray replied with something like, "Willie, I know that very well."
Here is Ray Price performing "Heartaches by the Number."
Johnny Cash, the Man in Black, would have been 86 years old today. Although he is often associated with classic songs like "Ring of Fire," "Folsom Prison Blues," and "I Walk the Line," his catalog is vast and versatile. He sang a duet of "Girl From the North Country" with Bob Dylan on Nashville Skyline. He covered Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails, and Bob Marley. Cash was a musical outlaw, and he rode whatever range happened to suit him.
In celebration of Johnny Cash's birthday, here is his cover of Texas songwriting legend Guy Clark's "Texas 1947."
My next book signing for Waylon County: Texas Stories will be held at Deep Vellum Books in Dallas on March 10 from 6 pm to 8 pm. Deep Vellum Books is at 3000 Commerce Street in a building where Leadbelly once lived. Folks who hung around Deep Ellum in the 90s will remember the building as Club Clearview.
If you are within driving distance, stop by and visit even if you already have a copy of Waylon County. The bookstore is incredibly well-curated and features titles by Deep Vellum Publishing, including one that was long-listed for the prestigious Man Booker International Prize.
In the early 20th century, a number of Slavic people settled in North Fort Worth and left an indelible imprint on Cowtown. Poland-native Joe Riscky, for example, founded Riscky's Barbeque on Azle Avenue in 1927. Longtime Fort Worth residents, myself included, will likely remember eating a Riscky's chopped sandwich at the grocery store counter on the North Side. Considering that Joe Riscky started out working at the packing house in the Fort Worth Stockyards, it seems appropriate that Riscky's barbeque can now be enjoyed on Exchange Avenue.
Many Czech people also arrived in Fort Worth in the early twentieth century. According to J'Nell Pate, in North of the River: A brief history of North Fort Worth, Saint Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church on Azle Avenue celebrated mass in Czech until the 1950s. Another Czech institution, the Sokol (which means "Falcon" in English) gymnastics hall on Boat Club Road, was built on the principle of "a sound mind in a sound body." Not far away from these two institutions, on Roberts Cut-Off, the local Czech community built the National Hall. The hall, which was originally known as the Svaz Cechoslovanu (Alliance of Czechoslovaks), is now open for the occasional polka.
I first heard Ruthie Foster on the Oxford American's Texas compilation album, and she absolutely blew me away. As soon as I heard her, I couldn't believe I hadn't heard her sooner. Ruthie Foster can take you to the Delta or straight to the here and now. She has that power. I was also glad to see the lyrics to her song, "Mama Said," included in Her Texas: Story, Image, Poem & Song, a collection of works by Texan women released by Wings Press. Although I have never heard Ruthie Foster live, I did see where she (perhaps) had autographed the men's room wall at the Old Quarter Acoustic Cafe in Galveston.
Here is Ruthie Foster playing a groovy, bluesed-out cover of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs."
A German act called No Lonesome Tune and I recently made one another's acquaintance through the magic of Twitter. These guys are all Townes all day. While checking out their posts, I even saw a picture of a girl with a Townes Van Zandt tattoo on her arm. This, of course, made me happy because in Waylon County there is also a girl with a Townes tattoo, though she is purely fiction. The girl featured in No Lonesome Tune's post is apparently very real, and she plays guitar, too.
Here is No Lonesome Tune playing a very interesting interpretation of one of Townes' more well-known songs.
It came a gully washer in North Texas today. It rained so hard that the windshield wipers seemed ornamental. They did not seem to serve any real purpose. Speaking of hard rain and flooding down in Texas, I got to thinking about one time when Martina and I were in Austin early in the week and went to dinner with our ol' buddy Brent. After we ate, we happened by the Continental Club, and it turned out that Jimmie Vaughan was playing upstairs in the gallery.
So we hung out and heard this Texas legend playing with the late Frosty Smith on drums, who I remember from his Soulhat days at the long-lost Black Cat. About an hour or so into the set, it began to rain, and you could see it falling beyond the big window with its stellar view of the Austin skyline. About that time, the band started playing "The Sky is Crying." The room, which holds about fifty people, was mesmerized. I could hardly believe our luck that day.
