Oral History Interview of Herb Steiner
Interviewed by: Andy Wilkinson June 17, 2015 Spicewood, Texas
Part of the: Crossroads of Music Archive
Texas Tech University’s Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Oral History Program
Copyright and Usage Information:
An oral history release form was signed by Herb Steiner on June 17, 2015. This transfers all rights of this interview to the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Texas Tech University.
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Preferred Citation for this Document:
Steiner, Herb Oral History Interview, June 17, 2015. Interview by Andy Wilkinson, Online Transcription, Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library. URL of PDF, date accessed.
The Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library houses almost 6000 oral history interviews dating back to the late 1940s. The historians who conduct these interviews seek to uncover the personal narratives of individuals living on the South Plains and beyond. These interviews should be considered a primary source document that does not implicate the final verified narrative of any event. These are recollections dependent upon an individual’s memory and experiences. The views expressed in these interviews are those only of the people speaking and do not reflect the views of the Southwest Collection or Texas Tech University.
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Transcription Notes: Interviewer: Andy Wilkinson Audio Editor: Elissa Stroman Transcription: Kalem White Editor(s): Katelin Dixon Final Editor: Andy Wilkinson
Interview Series Background:
The Crossroads Artists Project encompasses interviews conducted by the Crossroads of Music Archive Staff members. They hope to document the creative process of artists and songwriters from all across the Southwestern United States.
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Transcript Overview:
This interview features steel guitarist Herb Steiner. Steiner discusses his music career in Texas and California and his work with musicians, such as Michael Martin Murphey, Alvin Crow, and Jerry Jeff Walker. Steiner’s interview also sheds light on the Austin music scene in the seventies.
Length of Interview: 01:39:07
Subject Transcript Page Time Stamp Meeting Michael Martin Murphey 5 00:00:49 Beginning music and playing baseball 6 00:04:54 Tex and playing the Whiskey a Go Go 9 00:11:45 Moving to Texas and Jerry Jeff 11 00:16:09 The Austin music scene 16 00:29:01 Recording at Rapp Cleaners 18 00:32:12 Michael Martin Murphey and Jerry Jeff 20 00:36:41 Working with Bob Johnston 22 00:39:49 The steel guitar 24 00:44:05 Band breakup 29 00:56:21 Playing with Murphey and Alvin Crow 34 01:07:05 Involvement in theatre and retirement 42 01:22:38 Current albums and gigs 45 01:31:10 Working at the Chronicle 47 01:36:02
Keywords Austin music scene, bluegrass music, country music, music clubs, musicians, night clubs, Western swing music
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Andy Wilkinson (AW): Let me start by saying the date: June 17, 2015. Andy Wilkinson at Herb Steiner’s very nice—I saw the needle point “Adobe Hacienda”—in Briarcliff, Texas. This’ll pick you up. You know all about recording stuff, so you’ll get it. Let me ask just to start with to get your date of birth.
Herb Steiner (HS): November 1, 1947.
AW: All right, and where?
HS: West Hollywood, California.
AW: Wow. Well, the natural next question is how’d you get to Texas?
HS: I came to Texas at the behest of my old friend, Michael Martin Murphey.
AW: So, you met him out there when he and Bob were doing music, or before that?
HS: I met him when he was playing—he was going to UCLA ,and he had a partnership with a friend of his from Dallas who was going to Pepperdine University in LA named Owens “Boomer” Castleman.
AW: Oh yeah, I know Boomer.
HS: They had a band called the Texas Twosome, and they sang songs that they had both written plus country songs. Two beautiful, blonde, young guys playing Martin guitars, and they had a fellow named John London playing bass for them, and John McEuen played the banjo. And I saw them at a folk music club in Los Angeles, the Troubadour, one night, and this was in about 1968—I want to say—1968. No, excuse me, it was 1966—1966 for sure. And I went to a—they knocked me out. They wore white shirts with brocade vests and string ties and totally country to the max, and I was there, Mr. Hollywood. So, I was a bluegrass musician those days, played the mandolin and the Dobro. I mentioned to another folk music friend of mine, picking buddy of mine, that I
5 Texas Tech University’s Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Oral History Program saw these guys the other night, and they were terrific, and he said, “Well, one of them—I go to school with one of them; Michael Murphey is his name, Mike Murphey.” So I said, “Well, introduce me.” So, he set up an introduction at UCLA, and I told Murphey that, “Look, we have picking parties this weekend. Why don’t you come and play music with us?” So he and Boomer came to the party. There were a lot of bluegrass musicians there; Boomer and Mike fit right in, and that’s how we became friends. He kept going to the parties. Then I left school, and I started working with Linda Ronstadt in 1968, and that was the start of my steel guitar playing career.
AW: She needed one or you just wanted to do it?
HS: She wanted to have one. She saw Poco who had Rusty Young on the steel, that had come out of Buffalo Springfield—that band Poco. So, she wanted a steel too, and since she had hired me as a Dobro player, but she said, “Look. You learn steel,” so I said, “Oh, okay.”
AW: Yeah, they both lay down.
HS: You keep paying me a $150 a week. Holy moly, who do I have to kill?
AW: That’s good money in ’68.
HS: Yeah, yeah man. You could buy a nice car.
AW: Can we back up just a little bit before we go forward?
HS: Yeah.
AW: What got you interested in Dobro and mandolin in the beginning, especially in West Hollywood?
HS: Oh. The Kingston Trio.
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AW: Got it. Yeah.
HS: Before that, I was into baseball.
AW: Really? What was your position?
HS: I was a second baseman, although I wasn’t much of a player. I was more into—I mean sandlot playing. I wasn’t into, like, little league or anything like that.
AW: But you were a fan?
HS: I was a big fan, followed it tremendously, you know, and played in the school yard, but not really, but mostly I think second base—second base centerfield.
AW: Were you a Dodgers fan being—?
HS: Actually, I didn’t really like the Dodgers. When the Dodgers came in ’59, I didn’t really—I was a fan of the Los Angeles Angels which at that time was a minor league team, was a Pacific Coast League team.
AW: Did Autry own them then, too?
HS: No. It was a guy named Gilmore, and I don’t know how familiar you are with Los Angeles, but—
AW: I’ve been there—
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HS: You’ve been there? Well, the corner of Beverly Boulevard in Fairfax, the southeast corner, which was a huge area that was owned by this guy named Gilmore, and on it was CBS Television City, the Pan-Pacific Auditorium, farmers market, shops, food shops, and things like that, and Gilmore Field, which was a big field—not big like the LA Colosseum, but it was a big minor league—and since that was seven blocks from my house, you know, Gilmore Field, hey, the LA Angels fan, Steve Bilko who later went to the Dodgers, but he was a big star with the LA Angels, was a minor league team, Pacific Coast team.
AW: I love minor league ball. It’s much easier to get a seat.
HS: Exactly.
AW: They do fun things. It’s just a good time.
HS: A ticket doesn’t cost fifty bucks.
AW: Right. You know, in Lubbock, when I was a kid, we had the Hubbers which was managed by Terry Allen’s dad.
HS: Oh, really?
AW: Yeah, Terry Allen’s dad used to be a ball player himself for the Browns.
HS: Oh.
AW: Yeah, and we had the Hubbers. That was in the Texas-Louisiana League, and that went away and so did our minor league team, and we’ve never gotten one back. Midland’s got one, and it just— well, we did for a little short time; we had the Crickets which was truly a—I still have a Cricket’s hat. But yeah, well that was cool so—
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HS: Anyway, so then I—my buddy came up with a banjo somewhere, and I said, “God, where’d you get that.” He says, “Oh, listen to this,” and he hands me a Kingston Trio album, the first one, and I listen. Oh my God, and said, “I’ve got to get a banjo.” He said, “No, I have a banjo. You get a guitar.” So I pulled my parents’ legs; I got a guitar. And then I heard bluegrass, and I said, “Screw this folk music shit. I want the soulful stuff”: Bill Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs, the Stanley Brothers, and that’s got me into bluegrass. It was an easy jump from bluegrass into country, because country was—country music was so prevalent in Los Angeles. It was all over the place.
AW: Yeah, you had the Palomino, you had the—
HS: Well, the Palomino was just the king. There was all of the courtesans all over Southern California. I mean, as far—every block had a country bar, and it was all catered by people who moved out to LA during the war and their kids. I’m talking now mid-sixties—and their kids. And when I was playing in the clubs, the old guys in the—were like the Western swing guys that were still around LA who were then and still are the giants of Western swing, and I was too stupid—a dumbass kid—to realize that I had a chance to play with and sit in with some of the greats of Western swing, and I just thought they were old guys that didn’t work as much as I did because I was more commercial of a player. Stupid. Anyway, so that’s how I got into—so I played bluegrass, and I was in the folk music scene through bluegrass, and so was Linda. So Linda hired me at the recommendation of Kenny Edwards who was a buddy of mine from high school band, I think. And so Linda hired me as a Dobro and mandolin player. In the meantime, Murphey and Boomer were in a band called Louis and Clarke Expedition. They’re famous.
AW: Yeah, and I’ve seen their stint on I Dream of Genie and—
HS: Yeah, and so we were friends and we—I had my career starting, and they had theirs, you know. And as luck would have it, in 1970, Louis and Clarke had ended, and Murphey and Boomer and a drummer were just doing a trio and playing in country bars. Murphey was writing in the daytime for Screen Gems, and I got turned on to a gig that I needed a band for. And so, I called up my buddies that had the trio, and I said, “Look, I have a gig. It’s a four-piece. I’m the fourth piece. Let’s do it.” And so that band became a group called Tex, T-e-x. I have a photo of us somewhere around here.
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AW: Oh, I’d love to see it. I’ve heard Murph talk about it. In fact, I think Boomer talked about it.
HS: Boomer talked about it too.
AW: Yeah, I interviewed him. It’s been, gosh, several years ago, but yeah, he talked about that.
HS: Boomer’s not doing well, I understand.
AW: Oh, really? I hate to hear that.
HS: I just talked to his—a mutual friend of ours yesterday. Apparently, Boomer’s cancer has come back. You know, he had bladder cancer. Well, it’s come back and now it’s in one lobe of his lung and a spot on his liver. It’s treatable, but he’s so depressed over it. If you surrender, you know—
AW: That’s right. It’s all over with. He’s still in Tennessee, right?
HS: Yeah. Anyway, so we had a band for a while, maybe ten months, something like that, the four of us.
AW: While you’re still working for Ronstadt?
HS: No, no, no. This was after Ronstadt, 1979 [1969].
AW: Oh, that’s right. You said that—I was just—
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HS: I left Ronstadt in January of ’69. So 1970—I played gigs around LA. And then 1970, I put the band together with Murphey and Boomer, and we did that until December 1970. Then I moved—then Murph moved to Texas with Bob Livingston in ’71. Bob was living out in LA, so I met Bob there; I met Hubbard there, Rick Fowler, met all those boys when they were in California, Three Faces West. So, Murph moved to Texas, and Boomer and I kept playing in the clubs, not together, just we were in LA together doing different things. Sometimes we’d play together. Anyway, come early 1972, I get a call from Murphey, “Hey, I’ve got a record deal with A&M records, and we’re playing at the Whisky a Go Go this week, and I want you to play with my Texas band, with Bob Livingston’s in it.” I said, “Oh, that’s nice; but man, I’ve got a sit down job. I have a six-night-a-week gig, and I can’t—” He says, “Well, can you sub it out?” (laughter) I called Sneaky Pete, and I said, “Pete, can you fill in? “ And he said, “No problem. I’ll do it.” So he filled in for me at my gig, and I played with Murphey at the Whisky a Go Go. We rehearsed. He has this album coming out which was Geronimo’s Cadillac. And the band was me, Bob, Michael McGeary, Gary P., Craig Hillis, and Murphey. Bob, Craig Hillis, McGeary, me, and Gary P. That was the band. And we played the Whisky a Go Go which was—we opened up for the Strawbs which was a—anyway, played there. And so then they went back to Texas, and I got a call a couple of weeks later from Murphey’s manager who said, “Hey look. We want you to move to Texas.”
AW: Who was managing Murphey then? It wasn’t Brovsky yet, was it?
HS: A guy named Jeff—Jeff something or other. Bob Livingston would know, guy from New York. And I said, “Well, look. My family is here in Los Angeles. My career is here in Los Angeles. I’m not moving to Austin, Texas. By the way, Austin, Texas, isn’t that the Charles Whitman two years ago? That Austin, Texas?”
AW: Yeah. “You want me to come there?”
HS: Yeah. Oh, that’s—oh is there a new sheriff in town? So, Murphey calls me and says, “Well look, we’re going on this tour of Europe, so come on out and rehearse for the tour, and then—” “Yes, I’ve got a passport; okay, we’ll go to Europe.” So I came out here, and well, I had talked to a friend of mine who had run away to Canada to get out of Vietnam, and then as a fugitive, he came back, and he crashed somewhere on a ranch out here somewhere. He said, “Oh, man, Austin, Texas is the coolest place. Oh my God the chicks. Oh God, you know, six dollar dope.” All of this. I came out here to rehearse, and I looked and I said, “Oh. This is pretty nice,” you
11 Texas Tech University’s Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Oral History Program know, and I said, “I could rent a house for sixty-five bucks here. My God. My house in LA costs me $200 a month.” (laughter)
AW: Yeah. Don’t you wish you could do that today in LA?
HS: $200. Well, my house in LA doesn’t even exist anymore. They tore it down to put condos there. We lived right on Hollywood Boulevard and right at the mouth of Laurel Canyon. It was a great house.
AW: Golly.
HS: Anyway, so I moved out here. First week—first day I got here was great. I—Bob Livingston—I fly in at night, and Bob Livingston picks me up at the airport and says, “Okay, I got a place for you to crash. You’re going to crash on my friend Susan’s couch.” So first night in town I spend on Susan Anton’s couch. Then Bob picked me up in the morning, and we drove down to a club on Lavaca and Fifteenth Street called Castle Creek, and I met Tim O’Conner and Doug Moyes who owned—Tim O’Conner by the way lives in Spicewood.
AW: Oh, he does?
HS: He does.
AW: Really?
HS: I can contact him for you if you want to talk to him.
AW: Oh, yeah. I just love him.
HS: He’s got stories, you know. So anyway, met Tim O’Conner and, you know, I’m going in the club scene. I don’t know. Can you turn that thing off?
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AW: Sure, I can—let me pause it.
HS: I want to tell you something that is off the record, and I’ve been quoted— pause in recording
AW: Yeah, all right. We’re back.
HS: So, Bob Livingston said, “Hey, man. We’re putting you to work right away because we’re doing an album—Murphey’s band, we’re recording an album for Jerry Jeff. Downtown at the Rapp’s Cleaners building, we got a studio in there—and was the album of Jerry Jeff on MCA that was the brown covered album—“High Hill Country Rain,” “LA Freeway,”—that album.
AW: I’d love for you to talk about this session because Livingston has told me about this session, and it just sounds like the session from another planet.
HS: It was.
AW: Okay. Good. I hope you can go into some detail.
HS: So he said, “We’re going to record with Jerry Jeff.” I said, “Jerry Jeff doesn’t want me to record with him,” and Bob said, “Why?” I said, “Well, you know, Jerry Jeff and I really got off on the wrong foot.” “How did that happen?” Well, Murphey and Boomer and I were playing at a club in Huntington Beach, California and it was a good club. It was a restaurant, bar, very nice club. Paid good. And Murphey said, “Hey, surprise. I’ve got two friends of mine from Texas coming out to see us tonight: John Vandiver and Jerry Jeff Walker.” I said to Murphey, said, “Well, I met John Vandiver at your wedding a couple or three years ago, so I love John.” He said, “Okay. You’ll like Jerry Jeff.” So Jerry Jeff and Vandiver show up. We’re playing, and it’s a cover band. I mean, you know, we did some of Murphey’s tunes, but we did Merle Haggard and Charley Pride and everything contemporary, you know. We were trying to make money. We’re just trying to earn a fucking living, you know. So Jerry Jeff gets drunk and wants to force himself on stage, and he like starts using my steel guitar as a ladder prop to climb up on stage, kind of like,
13 Texas Tech University’s Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Oral History Program you know, this, you know, pulling himself up on stage, which I don’t suffer that too well, you know.
AW: No, that’s not cool. (laughter)
HS: Okay, and then he’s drunk, and he gets on the microphone, and he starts talking to the audience about how they don’t know who they’re listening to, and this guy’s one of the greatest fucking song writers you’ve ever fucking heard, you know. If you’re not fucking into this fucking—you know, and—and we get him off stage, and at the end of the night, he’s drunk, crashed on the floor under a table.
AW: Oh, this is good.
HS: The boss says, “We won’t need you next week. Firstly, get him out of here, and we won’t need you next week or any other week.” So, that was in 1970, and I have—you know, I have my books that—
AW: Livingston has told me about these. This is like the Dead Sea Scrolls. These things are golden, you know.
HS: Kind of. So anyway, I can tell you what date that was. So, cut to two years later, and he said, “No, no, Jerry Jeff is cool with you,” he says. “Oh, he’s cool with me? Oh! Whew! That’s a relief!” (laughter) So anyway, we did the album, but I was sitting—Austin, Texas, July 1972, six o’clock at night on Friday—I’m sitting out in front. Next door to the studio was a hippie sandwich shop called The Sandwich Shop. That was the place that Murphey wrote, by the way, the “Alleys of Austin.” He wrote that song in that shop while his band was recording with Jerry Jeff next door. But I was sitting in front of the studio six o’clock at night on Friday afternoon, and there wasn’t a car on the street; there wasn’t a car parked anywhere. The downtown six o’clock on Friday night: cerrado, closed, you know, see us Monday morning, basically.
AW: Just hard to imagine.
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HS: Impossible to imagine. I think there was about two hundred and forty, two hundred and fifty thousand people maybe in that—
AW: Yeah, well, and the music scene then was Armadillo and—right?
HS: Armadillo, then a lot of clubs.
AW: Soap Creek?
HS: Soap Creek. Well, at that time, ’72, I believe Soap Creek was—there’s a Facebook thread on the history of Soap Creek just recently.
AW: I need to check that out.
HS: Soap Creek I think was called the Rolling Hills Party Barn. Alex Napier owned it.
(recorder makes a noise)
AW: Was that my machine doing that? How odd. I just wondered if that was my machine that did that noise. Never mind.
HS: I don’t have my hearing aids in, so I—so, yeah, but Soap Creek, okay, you know, the One Night, the New Orleans Club, Mother Earth, Castle Creek, a gazillion clubs—hippie music clubs. Then there was the country music clubs that the hippies didn’t go to. That was the Skyline Club, the Big G’s in Roundrock, Gill’s Club on South Congress, the Broken Spoke; long hairs didn’t go there. That didn’t come around until a couple years later.
AW: Yeah. Was it vice versa? The grits didn’t come to the—
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HS: Well, pretty much, you know. The rednecks went to the Armadillo for Willie. That was really the—Willie playing at the Armadillo. I’d say that I could recall two things really stand out: Willie playing at the Armadillo, and the Broken Spoke was the main country club. Well, there was—Broken Spoke was actually just one of half-a-dozen really, but it was my favorite, and the Skyline too. We had a music writer around here named Townsend Miller. Are you familiar with Townsend?
AW: Not very, but I know the name. I know who he is.
HS: He wrote for the American-Statesman, and he wrote about country music, our scene. He wrote about our scene. He legitimized our scene in print: Freda and the Firedogs, Alvin Crow, Freda and the Firedogs, Greezy Wheels, the bands that were playing in the spectrum of country to hippie rock, you know. So Alvin and Marcia Ball were definitely on the traditional side, whereas Greezy Wheels was more on the hippie side. Follow what I’m saying?
AW: Right. Yeah. Exactly. Now, Herb Steiner, being a steel guitar player, did you cross those boundaries pretty easily?
HS: No. I was never into the Greezy Wheels hippie country thing. I mean, I did it. I played it with guys, but my heart of hearts was more into the country and Western swing thing.
AW: Now I’ll say for the recording you’re now wearing an Alvin Crow t-shirt.
HS: Yeah. How coincidental.
AW: I doubt it.
HS: Totally serendipity.
AW: Remind me before we get out of here to let me tell you a great Alvin Crow story from—
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HS: Okay. So anyway, you know, when I came here from LA, I had been playing for three years in country western night clubs with guys that legitimately played country music, rednecks, California rednecks.
AW: Oh, California rednecks.
HS: Yeah, but still, they’re, you know—Buck Owens, Hank Thompson, you know, I mean guys that knew how to play country correctly, were not hippies that in their stoned reverie one night picked up a Burrito Brothers album and said, “Oh, this is cool,” you know, okay.
AW: Yeah. Alan Munde tells a great story about going back to Nashville, and I think it was—whose office was it? They had a Burrito Brothers album cover with a big red “x.”
HS: Oh, it was The Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo album. “This is not country. We do not play this record at WSM,” Ralph Emery said. So anyway, I came out here and they, “Oh, man. You gotta hear Greezy Wheels. It’s a great country band.” I listened to them. I said, “Are you kidding?” I mean, I played with great country bands. That ain’t a great country band. (laughter) They had telecasters, and they were hitting them like acoustic guitars, and they didn’t know—you know, nobody played parts. I came from a tighter thing.
AW: How did Jerry Jeff fit into that spectrum from your point of view?
HS: Well, he was the Michael Murphey that said, “Fuck.” (laughter)
AW: What a quote that is. That’s one of the best descriptions I’ve ever heard. That is terrific, but I remember in those early years that the guys with boots and hats coming to hear him, too. Well, while we’re talking about—
HS: Well, he was a partier too, and guys who liked to party—
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AW: Tell me about that recording session at the Rapp Cleaners.
HS: Well, I only did half of it because that album was recorded in pieces. So like the first week I was on that session, but through scheduling and gigs and everything, I had to go back to Los Angeles and get some stuff to move to Austin. So, David Cook, who was the steel player in Freda and the Firedogs, he played on half the record or part of the record. Then some of it was done in New York City when Jerry went on a tour up there, and some guys from New York played on part of it who subsequently moved down here, Patterson Barrett being one of them, and so that was kind of like a put together—it wasn’t like ¡Viva Terlingua! where we were all on every song.
AW: Now speaking of tight, one of the ways Bob describes that session was that there was nothing tight about that session at the Rapp Cleaners. There was a whole lot of impromptu, improv on the part of Jerry Jeff, including finishing songs in the studio on the spot.
HS: Oh, totally. Jerry was a very much of a throw it against the wall and see what stuck, and in real time. There was—the studio itself was a closed up dry cleaner building, and there was a rock singer around here who’s still around town named Jay Podolnick. His dad, Earl Podolnick, was in the movie theatre business. Jay is still doing it here in town.
AW: Tomas I think was in a band with Jay.
HS: Yeah. Blind Melon.
AW: Yeah, Blind Melon. Exactly.
HS: That was where I met Tomas, right in front of that studio.
AW: Really?
HS: Yeah, with Jay, Tomas, and Ralph, the organ player.
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AW: You know, it was very funny. Yesterday Tomas said, “Ralph’s the organ player. I can’t think of his last name.” That’s what he said.
HS: Exactly?
AW: Yeah. (laugther)
HS: Mi amigo!
AW: So, from hence forth, he’ll just be known as Ralph, the organ player.
HS: Ralph, the organ player.
AW: Oh, that’s great.
HS: So that’s where I met Tomas. So, Jay Podolnick and Steve Shields bought this tape recorder, Ampex tape recorder, but they didn’t have a board. They didn’t have a control board. They had a input bus so that we all plugged into this input bus that went right to the tape recorder, but there was no board to control—
AW: Whatever level you’re playing at is what goes to tape, right? Man.
HS: I don’t know how they did it.
AW: I don’t either, and Bob mentioned also there was absolutely no way to hear back whatever you played.
HS: Oh, no. No. You couldn’t hear back.
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AW: Yeah. That is—
HS: Very funky.
AW: It’s very funky, yeah. Sounds like something in a science lab. So, what was it like to record in that circumstance for you?
HS: Well, it was hot as fuck. I can tell you that much. You know, Andy, it was forty-three years ago. I remember it all being brown. Everything was just dark grey and brown in there. It’s not my favorite album by any means.
AW: No. I don’t know that anybody else would put it in that pile either. I’m sorry I interrupted you. I just wanted to get some more—
HS: Actually, let me tell you about when I said he is the Murphey that said “fuck.” There’s really absolutely no connection artistically at all between Michael Murphey and Jerry Jeff Walker. Murphey is an educated—almost too intellectual—he’s so intellectual he plays games with himself. Jerry Jeff is a total—well at least in the days that I knew him because I’d like to say, for the record, I probably haven’t seen or been around Jerry for at least twenty years, maybe longer—but he was strictly a body person. Everything he felt with his body; he moved. Murphey was in his head with the classical guitar playing, and Jerry Jeff is a hitter; Murphey is a caresser of the instrument. Murphey caresses you with words. Jerry Jeff is like the Ernest Hemingway of—you know, like what H. L. Mencken said about Hemingway. He said, “He never wrote anything that drove a reader to the dictionary.” Okay, well, Murphey is like the wordsmith, and Jerry Jeff is the, “Oh, I got to get it out! Get it out! I got to—” It sounds like he’s actually trying to get something out. So, that’s the difference.
AW: Great comparisons. So, you’re—I can’t remember where we left off except after—
HS: Oh, so I moved to LA, and I moved from LA. I moved here, and—
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AW: And you were working—where were you working here in Austin. You were working with Livingston and Murphey, maybe?
HS: Yeah, right.
AW: You did this album for Jerry Jeff and then what were you guys doing with—?
HS: Well, Murphey and I and the band went on the road.
AW: And you went straight to Europe. Was that the—?
HS: No, we never went to Europe.
AW: Really?
HS: No. That was a canard to get me to move to—(laughter)
AW: Lured you out, right?
HS: Exactly. The bait and switch. I like that word “canard.”
AW: Yes. It’s a great word. Not one Hemingway would use.
HS: No, he would not, no. So, no, we went to—on the East Coast, and then we started working on what became the Cosmic Cowboy Souvenir album.
AW: That was produced with Bob Johnston, too, right?
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HS: Mhmm.
AW: And recorded in Nashville?
HS: Nashville.
AW: Yeah. What was it like working with the mysterious and enigmatic Bob Johnston?
HS: Low key. He was almost like, you know, what are we paying this guy for? Basically, he said, “Well, my job’s just to turn on the tape recorders and let you guys go,” and I thought, for that, he gets eight points or something? I don’t know what it was, but it’s—No, Bob Johnston was a genius in recognizing music, like Jerry Wexler.
AW: He’s probably a genius in turning on the tape and letting you go also.
HS Well, yeah.
AW: That was a bit of—
HS: He knew what—you know, give the artist his head and let him go. And I guess he could communicate with record labels, and he could communicate with musicians.
AW: You know, I got to spend an evening with Bob not far from here when he was living at Marble Falls several years ago. He would not let me turn on a—
HS: He’s not alive anymore, is he?
AW: Yeah. He’s out on the West Coast.
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HS: Oh, he is? He’s still alive?
AW: Yep. I’ve even got a phone number for him. I can’t promise you he’ll answer it.
HS: No, that’s okay. I don’t want to talk to him.
AW: But he never let me turn the tape recorder on, which is a real sad thing for me, but it was very interesting listening to him talk about the difficulty he had being—the barrier between letting the artist have their head and the suits back in the office. And so I think, to me, when I think about him as a producer, I think about as much of a buffer as he was a producer, letting people like you, and Murph, and Bob, and all of you actually do what you do.
HS: Right, right.
AW: For that matter, letting Bob Dylan or Johnny Cash do what they do.
HS: Right, exactly.
AW: So, I would imagine before we get on to Terlingua or any of those other… that working with Murphey was a lot like Murphey’s writing. I would imagine things were more controlled and organized and you rehearsed and—
HS: Oh, yeah. Rehearsed a lot. It was a good band. I really enjoyed the band.
AW: That’s a great lineup of people.
HS: Yeah. Gary played piano, and Craig Hillis, guitar. Good band. Bob, and Michael McGeary who was from California. He and I were kind of the marshmallows in the raisin box in that we were the California transplants, and the rest of the guys were all Okies and Texans.
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AW: Yeah, yeah. How did McGeary get out there—out here, rather?
HS: Three Faces West. Hubbard. And Bob Livingston was playing with Three Faces West at the time. I think they were called Texas Fever or something in those days, and they were in California—I think they picked up McGeary in California and moved him out here, maybe a year before me—something like that.
AW: Were you by now strictly steel?
HS: Steel is a very jealous mistress, and if you’re going to learn how to play it, you got to devote yourself.
AW: I’m looking around and I see two set up in—
HS: Well, yeah, but I also have a mandolin right here.
AW: Yeah. Well, good. I’m glad.
HS: And is it in there? Yeah.
AW: Yeah.
HS: So, I played mandolin on a few of Murphey’s records, but I really didn’t see myself as a mandolin player anymore. I wanted to see myself as a steel player. I really didn’t want to see myself as a multi-instrumentalist. I should have, but I didn’t.
AW: Well, I don’t know. I think you’re right; steel is a—to me it’s like sitting down at the controls of a 747.
24 Texas Tech University’s Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Oral History Program
HS: Very—you know, it’s—I have a friend who plays non-pedal steel guitar for Wayne Hancock; Rose Sinclair is her name. She can also play zydeco accordion. She’s good at that, and she plays old-time style claw-hammer banjo. She can play upright bass. She played guitar and everything, but she came here, and she wanted to work as a steel player. I said, “Well, you should sell yourself as a multi-instrumentalist. Cajun accordion, that’s a incredibly hip instrument, and people would love to hire you.” “No, I don’t want to be known as an accordion player! I want to be known as a steel player.” So, she eschews that stuff. (phone rings)
AW: Do you need me to pause this?
HS: Hold on a second. Oh, okay. I’ll reply yes. It’s to confirm an appointment with my eye doctor. Okay. You know, that’s what you have to do to be a steel player.
AW: I think about steel, and I came to know it—other than just listening to records—I came to know it because my pal Lloyd Maines has been producing my stuff since I started recording, and I listen to him play a lot, and I’ve listened to him play, as I know you have, on a wide variety of kinds of music, adapting the steel to fit into places that you don’t normally think of it. And so I’ve come to think about the steel guitar as this—I don’t want to use the word computer—but it’s almost like it’s so much more versatile than what people think about and the ways you can use it and places you can put it—
HS: Right.
AW: How do you view the instrument and your work with it as you’ve developed it. I mean, you talk about Hollywood and California, and these are the traditionalists, you know, the people who had to find the genre and a kind of way of working with the instrument, and you come to Austin, and here’s this whole other big palette of different things going on.
HS: Well, this type of discussion goes on amongst steel players, generally on the steel guitar forum on the Internet, but also when we get together, and it could go on for hours. We could spend an entire day just talking about this, but I think that there’s certain parameters that define what the instrument is, and one of them is cultural, and another is player-based, in other words, limited by the creativity of the player. So, culturally, the people that have made the decisions in the media
25 Texas Tech University’s Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Oral History Program going back to when there wasn’t—when mass media first—sonic media first started happening which was in the early part of the twentieth century I’d say, when records started being produced. Well, the steel guitar was a Hawaiian instrument, and it was very popular, and it wasn’t used in anything except Hawaiian. And in the 1920s, the hillbillies started buying the Hawaiian records and then learning Hawaiian guitar, and they brought the steel guitar starting with the Dobro and the acoustic steels into country music. So, the country people accepted it, and it was used in big band music sporadically, but not too much there, but it really took off in country music and Hawaiian music, and then Hawaiian music faded in the 1950s, but it kept going strong in country. And so that was—our culture defined “if it’s country, it’s got steel guitar. If it’s got steel guitar, it’s country.” And none of the players were good enough to break out of that because there weren’t—there was a million guitar players playing all styles of music, and guitar was traditionally taught—classically taught—and it was used in a wider variety of idioms, right? So, there was so many more guitar players than there were steel guitar players that there was a lot more cream from that particular barrel than there is in the smaller barrel, right? You know what I’m saying?
AW: Right. Yeah.
HS: Yeah, so there was more opportunity for genius to express itself in the standard guitar, which is a much older instrument. You know, steel guitar is only about a hundred years old.
AW: Yeah, and I remember even in the fifties when I was a little kid people coming through our neighborhoods—
HS: Selling lessons, right?
AW: To “Hoowaiian,” not “Hawaiian.” “Hoowaiian” steel guitar.
HS: “Hoowaiian.”
AW: That’s what they would say, but it was called the “Hoowaiian” steel.
26 Texas Tech University’s Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Oral History Program
HS: Right, exactly.
AW: It wasn’t—so, yeah.
HS: So steel guitarists made inroads into pop music for sure. And in the sixties and the seventies, it started becoming—making its way into pop music. You know Linda Ronstadt—
AW: Grateful Dead.
HS: Grateful Dead, Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Ringo Starr; they all started using steel guitar. Ray Charles used Buddy Emmons, and so it’s—but still, it’s still culturally defined. And people have asked me and said, “When do you think steel guitar would ever be a legitimate jazz instrument?” And I said, “Well, it will be when you walk into a club and there’s a steel guitar on stage in a jazz club, and you say ‘Oh, I wonder who’s playing steel’ as opposed to ‘Wow, they’ve got a steel guitar.’” You know? “Oh, I see a tenor sax. I wonder who’s the sax player. I wonder who the steel player is.” That’s when you’ve made it into a genre, right? That’s my level of acceptance.
AW: Do you think of yourself, though, as strictly traditionalist, or—?
HS: I am on the traditionalist side of the spectrum. I know guys who play steel guitar who are—I never recognized a note they’ve ever played. They’re good, though, because people who I respect say they’re good. Just ain’t my glass of tea. But I’m more on the traditionalist side—the music that I play is big band jazz. I’m planning an album of doing Duke Ellington—a Duke Ellington album—Ellington and Frank Sinatra songs played on the steel guitar. And I play traditional Western swing and traditional Ray Price, Johnny Bush—I was in Johnny Bush’s band fourteen years.
AW: Really?
HS: Yeah.
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AW: Johnny Bush. What years were you in Johnny Bush’s—?
HS: 1992-2006. I don’t believe Johnny will ever have a steel guitar player that’s played with him longer than me because I don’t think he’s got fourteen years left in him. He’ll be ninety-four if he does.
AW: Yeah, in fact, every time I think about Johnny, the first question I have is, “Is he still alive?”
HS: God, is he ever. Fuck, he’s in better shape than me.
AW: Oh.
HS: John is—yeah. And he—I haven’t played with him in nine years, but he’s constantly sending me jokes, texts.
AW: Oh, really?
HS: Oh, terrible jokes, terrible jokes. And he always says, “Oh, this is from Willie.” Right, okay. Oh, sure, you know.
AW: Right, right.
HS: “It ain’t my joke; Willie told me this one.”
AW: “So if it’s bad, it’s not my fault.”
HS: If it’s completely racist, you know, misogynistic, everything, it doesn’t matter. Johnny Bush, he’s a great man. I love him.
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AW: Yeah, I do too.
HS: He’s a Masonic brother of mine. We’ve had some good times.
AW: Yeah. No, he’s terrific, and when I think about country music—
HS: So that’s where I am. I’m on the traditional side of things.
AW: Well then, let’s back up to the biography side. You’re touring with Murphey.
HS: Touring with Murphey, and we’re planning the album Cosmic Cowboy, and Murphey’s throat gets sick.
AW: Right.
HS: December of ’72. And Livingston I’m sure has told you about this whole thing—writing, Murphey writing on a magic marker pad and all of that. So Murphey lets his voice heal. We record the album, and then Murphey wants to go to England with his wife and visit England and his in-laws, but he wants some companionship, so he takes Gary P. to London. And that’s when the companionship ends because Murphey goes off to Scotland to visit his in-laws, and Gary says, “que estoy es siendo. What do you know? What am I doing?” So he writes “London Homesick Blues,” and Murphey for all intents and purposes breaks up the band. He wants to do something else. So, I start working with Rusty—I did gigs with everybody: B.W. Stevenson, Bill and Bonnie Hearne—I played with everybody for the first part of 1973. Rusty Wier. Did I mention Rusty? Whatever, everybody. So, then Jerry Jeff wants to do the album that became ¡Viva Terlingua!, so we start rehearsing, and we go out to Luckenbach, and we do the album.
AW: And he brings the sound truck, right?
HS: He brings the sound truck from New York.
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AW: Which is pretty cool, I mean at the time.
HS: Very cool.
AW: Very cool.
HS: Very futuristic thinking. He wanted an on-site album, right?
AW: But with real—something different than the Rapp Cleaners.
HS: Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, it’s a—still very funky. I mean, hay bales for baffles in the Luckenbach Dancehall. Still very funky, but a level of funkiness up—professionalism. He says, “God, this is great. Let’s take this act on the road.” Then appears Michael Murphey like deus ex machina coming down and saying, “Wait a minute!” (laughter)
AW: “Where is my band?”
HS: “This is my band,” and we say in one voice, “No, Murphey. You broke the band up. We’re not your band.” What happened was Craig Hillis—the core of the band with Jerry Jeff was Craig, me, Gary, Bob, McGeary, Kelly Dunn on organ, and I don’t think Tomas was on that record. He wasn’t on that record. We didn’t have sax on that record. We decided that the band would split up and that Craig Hillis and I would hire a bass player and drummer, and we will go with Murphey; and Gary P., Livingston, McGeary, and Kelly Dun on organ will go with Jerry Jeff, and that became the Lost Gonzo Band, the official Lost Gonzo Band. We were all called the Lost Gonzo Band because that’s what Jerry Jeff named the band on the album, and so that’s how the split occurred in August of 1973.
AW: Before we go further than that, describe what the session was like at Luckenbach.
HS:
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Well, it was very funky. It was a lot of rehearsing in the daytime and wandering around Luckenbach. A lot of beer all the time. A lot of marijuana all the time. There was some LSD floating around. And we recorded—we rehearsed in the daytime when it was hot and recorded in the evening when it was cool.
AW: And some of those recordings were—you had audience, but not all of them, correct?
HS: On a Saturday night, we had a live dance.
AW: But you’d been recording at night before that?
HS: We had been recording for a few days beforehand, and then we recorded a few days after, also after the show. So the show wasn’t the culmination; it was kind of the zenith.
AW: Yeah, and then there was the denouement that followed.
HS: Right.
AW: We all talk about that album as being like Cosmic Cowboy Souvenir and like Geronimo’s Cadillac, you know, Honky Tonk Heroes. There’s just a few albums at that time that you could say, “Man, these made a difference.”
HS: Right.
AW: Did you have a sense of that at the time with Cosmic Cowboy and with Terlingua?
HS: No. I wasn’t even really happy with my playing on it.
AW:
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Really?
HS: No. Not that I’ve ever been happy with my playing any of it.
AW: The rest of us were very happy.
HS: Well, there are lots of guys that said, “Oh man, I heard that album and made me want to become a steel player,” Yeah, so, you mean because that, “Well, if he can get on a record—”
AW: Oh, I don’t think so.
HS: You know, I tell the joke that—because I do comedy on stage too when I do a show. I mean I’m not a comedian, but I tell jokes and stuff like that. Merle Travis tells this joke on one of his Austin City Limits shows about how Chet Atkins got discovered. So, I kind of turn it around and put myself into it. I said—where I say about—people ask me about playing and everything. I said, “Well, you know, when Michael Murphey left Austin, I stayed, and so he went to Denver, and he started auditioning people, and he came up this one guitar player, multi-instrumentalist, guitar, mandolin, fiddle, played them all like a master, sang like a bird, everything, you know.” And Murphey said, “You know, you really—you’ve got some good licks on all those instruments. I really like your playing.” And he said, “What about steel guitar? Do you play any steel guitar?” The guy says, “Well, Mr. Murphey, that’s one instrument I have tried. I’ve sat down at that thing. I don’t know hide nor hair of—I don’t even know what the pickup is. I have never—it’s beyond me. I have never got anywhere on the steel guitar. I’m sorry.” He says, “Well, you know, that’s too bad because I was looking for somebody who could play the licks that Herb Steiner played on my records.” He said, “Oh, I can play that good.” (laughter)
AW: Too mean.
HS: I did a gig with him in Steamboat just recently. I said, “God, Murphey. It’s been a long time. When was the last time we played together?” He said, “Tonight.” (laughter)
AW: Yeah.
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HS: Just had to get in that humor here in the, you know, for posterity’s sake.
AW: This is the most fun I’ve had in months. Yesterday, all day with Tomas, you can imagine what that was like. I ask him, you know, Tomas, but you know, he’s down there in Premont with his mother.
HS: Where is he living now?
AW: Premont, Texas, down in the valley.
HS: Freemont?
AW: Premont, P-r-e-m-o-n-t.
HS: Oh, Premont.
AW: Yeah. It’s just a tiny little, tiny—
HS: In the valley down there?
AW: Yeah. He said the big town is Falfurrias.
HS: Oh.
AW: That tells you, you know.
HS:
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What’s he doing down there?
AW: Well, he’s pretty much taking care of his mom.
HS: Oh, taking care of his mom.
AW: Yeah. Now, he’s travelling out and doing Tomas gigs where he shows up with his sax and they have a backup and he plays, but not doing much of that. He’s starting to write some prose and things, and after listening to him I said, “Gosh, why aren’t you doing stand-up?” Said, “I’m not that funny.” I thought he was very funny. No, this is great. It’s really good.
HS: Okay, so where were we now? Jerry Jeff? The band breaks up?
AW: And you go with Murph?
HS: Murph.
AW: Now, so, I’ve heard Gary P. talk a little bit about this, and Craig’s talked to me a little bit about this, and Bob Livingston has talked about it. And I really hadn’t spent any time with—other than saying “hi and bye” to Michael, or Kelly or the rest of the crew. But so what was the vibe like after that happens and you’re now off with Murph?
HS: Nothing has changed in terms of our friendships.
AW: Right, and Murph is happy with what’s going on and—?
HS: Murph was happy with what’s going on as far as I was concerned. I was doing things with the Gonzos. When Lloyd was still living in Lubbock, I would be the steel player the Gonzos would call, so I think I was on a couple of like Lone Star beer commercials with the Gonzos. I think “Nights Never Get Lonely.” I was on that, I think; I’m not sure. But I did work with the Gonzos
34 Texas Tech University’s Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Oral History Program before Lloyd came. So we were good, you know, and I was on several other subsequent Jerry Jeff albums, Man Must Carry On. Livin’ something—I don’t know, whatever. It was a pink cover with him wearing a cowboy hat. Well, he wears a cowboy hat on everything. Anyway, so I was doing that, and Bob’s playing with Murphey, and then also when I left Murphey and went with Alvin Crow, still doing that, you know.
AW: How long were you with Alvin?
HS: 1974, I want to say mid-late ’74 to 1979, mid 1979. I’d say about five years. I’d say probably late ’74. I had known Alvin. I’d played with him a little bit in the first part of ’73 when Murphey was in Scotland and Gary was in London. I was working with Alvin Crow then, too. He was one of the many people I played with.
AW: Quite a player. I really like the way he thinks about his—
HS: Alvin?
AW: Yeah, about his music.
HS: Oh, yeah, yeah. He’s a remarkable—you know, for a long time, he really had an inferiority complex.
AW: Really?
HS: I thought because he came on so, you know, Oklahoma redneck. He’s really—he’s much smarter than your average redneck. He’s brilliant.
AW: Oh yeah, yeah, and his musicianship—I mean it’s not just how good his chops are. The story I’ll tell you in a little bit had to do with a recording session we did together, and I got to watch him work in the studio. I’d only ever heard him before on stage, and watching him work in the studio was a real revelation.
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HS: No, he’s good.
AW: Yeah, his—
HS: You know, I don’t think Alvin thinks—I don’t believe Alvin thinks I think as highly of him as I do, but he’s a confident man now. I mean, he was—I thought maybe he was a little insecure back in the seventies or something, but maybe it’s just my psychology. I don’t know.
AW: I don’t know the—that whole coming from that tradition of— in the fiddle world where you’ve got sort of this dichotomy between stage and contest, and when you’re good at one, you’re always worried about “can you be good at the other,” and if you’re good at one or the other, people say, “well, he’s only a stage or he’s only a contest player.” There’s this sort of all questioning among fiddle players that I know and hear them talk about this, seems to be part and parcel of the way they come to the music.
HS: Well, yeah, but there was a lot of posing that I felt was going on. I hope this doesn’t come out well—well, anyway.
AW: Do you want me to pause it?
HS: There was a lot of posing that I felt was going on in the Alvin Crow band—redneck posing, machismo, rural white machismo. I remember one gig we did in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, played for a convention of police departments or something like that. So the contingent of cops picks us up at the airport, you know, “Hey, boys!” They were great. They drive us to the show, play, they treat us like royalty, you know. We’re going back to the airport. We get on the plane, and Rick Crow, Alvin’s brother, and Roger Crabtree say to me, “I can’t believe those guys got to be policemen. I fucking can’t believe—those guys should not be allowed to even own guns much less carry them in public.” I said, “What are you talking about?” He said, “Did you hear the way they were talking about shooting niggers? Black guys?” I said, “Well, they don’t talk about anything anymore than everybody else in this band talks about.” And Roger and Rick said, “Yeah, but they mean it.” (laughter)
AW:
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That’s a great story.
HS: And I say, “You know, I like you guys more now.” “Yeah, but they mean it.” I mean, it was like they were genuinely shocked. And this was back forty years ago.
AW: So listening to this—
HS: What’s going on now, I mean, shit.
AW: I know it, but also, I’m thinking, Is Alvin Crow the first Texas country guy, the band attitude, you know, this machismo—
HS: Alvin was the first Texas country—well, he was the first country guy—
AW: You know what I’m talking about this crop of Texas country that we’ve got, the Pat Greens and the—
HS: Oh, he was the first one that I played with.
AW: Yeah, but I mean in terms of having that persona—stage persona—that has the “aw shucks,” redneck—
HS: Well, there was always a—oh, with that persona. Well, what I would say was Alvin was the most real country—most genuine country act with a rock and roll attitude.
AW: Good way to put it.
HS: That I knew of. I was aware of. You can be a rock and roll band and have a country attitude, which means to me is a—well, “we’re a rock and roll band, yes, but we want you to wear
37 Texas Tech University’s Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Oral History Program uniforms for this gig,” “Oh, okay.” “And we want you to come in through the back door through the kitchen. Don’t mingle with the guests.” “Oh, okay.” In other words, conciliatory everything. A rock and roll attitude is, “Hey, man. Fuck you. We’re here to play. You want us to play? We’ll do it. Otherwise, we’re going to get in the fucking bus and drive off.” So, Alvin Crow and the Pleasant Valley Boys was always, “You’re goddamn right. We get out of our bus in our underwear smelling of marijuana, and that’s it.” So, we were really a rock and roll band that played real country. You know what I’m saying?
AW: Yeah, yeah.
HS: As opposed to the “Whatever you say, boss” kind of a thing.
AW: Great analogy.
HS: It was a great time. I had a great time in the seventies.
AW: If you can’t have fun in the seventies, when could you?
HS: If you couldn’t have fun in the seventies, I’m sorry. It was good.
AW: So how did you make it through the seventies? That’s a tough one.
HS: Well, I was never into cocaine, I was never into needles, and I had my share of girlfriends for sure, but I didn’t stick my dick in everything. So, I scathed—I never had a tattoo, no ink, no piercings, so pretty much all the ways you can get hepatitis, I never got, or AIDS. Not that I didn’t flirt with some questionable behavior, but never to the point where I dodged, you know, I dodged all the bullets. Never been in jail. Only times I was in jail was to bail out some good-for- nothing girlfriend.
AW: Terrific. You’re doing a lot, of lot of touring. A lot of playing on stage.
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HS: In those days?
AW: Yeah.
HS: Yeah.
AW: Were you doing a fair amount of session work as well?
HS: Not a whole lot.
AW: Probably wouldn’t have any time, you were—
HS: Well, didn’t have any time, there weren’t that many recording artists around here.
AW: Yeah, I guess that’s right.
HS: I played on three or four, three albums of Alvin’s.
AW: Where did you record those?
HS: Huh?
AW: Where did you record those? Were they Nashville?
HS: Where did we record those? One album we did in Dallas at Summit Burnett Studios, and the other one we did at the Rapp’s Cleaner’s building, but it had been turned into a studio at that time.
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AW: A real studio.
HS: It was turned into a studio by that time, a real studio. Actually, I’ve only done two albums with Alvin, but a couple albums with Murphey, and a lot of little projects, but I really wasn’t really a session guy. Mostly a touring club guy.
AW: Yeah.
HS: I’m on one of Dale Watson’s—covered two of Dale Watson’s records. I’m on a couple of Johnny Bush records, maybe about three Johnny Bush records. I don’t know. I’ve lost count. Go to my website, I guess. It’s on there.
AW: Man, Dale Watson. There’s a singer, I think.
HS: Oh, God, yeah.
AW: Yeah.
HS: Workaholic.
AW: Really? I don’t know a thing about him other than listening to his records. I really just don’t know.
HS: He is a Type triple-A personality. Musically.
AW: Not Type A, but Type triple-A.
HS:
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Triple-A. Energizer Bunny.
AW: Yeah, and you talk about doing touring—
HS: Driving his own bus.
AW: Driving his own bus?
HS: Touring, owning a night club here, owning a night club in San Antonio, recording, going to the East Coast, playing on Letterman, you know. The guy’s—and he’s real smart, real sensitive, great writer, prolific writer. Good friend.
AW: What’s going on with him now?
HS: I don’t know. I guess he’s doing the same thing. Playing his gigs, running his night clubs—or owning it, you know, he has people running it—and then doing his thing. You know, I’m kind of—I live out here. I don’t go into town every day. I don’t read the Chronicle every week, not that the Chronicle covers the shit that I’m interested in. I don’t gig very often, and so I don’t really, you know, it’s—I tell Rose that I’ve been retired. She says, “You’re not retired! If you say you’re retired people are going to stop calling you.” I said, “Well, the reason why I say I’m retired is because people have stopped calling me.” I don’t say, “I chose to be retired.” I say, “I’ve been retired.” Word just got out I guess that I wasn’t hungry anymore.
AW: Meaning you weren’t going to be cheap or easy or—?
HS: You know, I would get a call and say, “Hey, man, can you play this gig in Taylor?” And I said, “Well, where is it?” “SPJST Hall in Taylor.” I said, “Well, man, Taylor is eighty-five miles from me.”
AW: Yeah, and there’s no good road between here and Taylor.
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HS: It might not be eighty-five, but it’s close, and I said, “Man, that’s a hundred and seventy mile round trip, and where is it?” “At the SP Hall in Taylor.” I said, “Man, that’s an eighty-dollar job,” and I just can’t see leaving two hours before the gig, doing a three or four-hour gig and then two-hour drive back plus the gas in my car and everything. So I’ve got to pass, and then they think, Oh, okay. Well, Herb doesn’t want to work. And I guess that means that I don’t really. So why is it that I’m going to be playing a play in Taylor, the Hank Williams: Lost Highway in—not in Taylor—in Georgetown, which is a hundred-mile roundtrip, and it’s for seventy bucks a night. Why did I decide to do that?
AW: We’ll, it’s not the SP Hall for one thing.
HS: It’s not the SP Hall. I enjoy doing theatre. The only thing I don’t like about it is it doesn’t pay good. But I enjoyed doing the theatre. I enjoyed working with the music director of this play. I’ve done this play before. It’s keeping my hand in it, and I even logistically have got it figured out to where I can crash at my buddy’s house in Georgetown over the weekend, fish in Lake Georgetown—I haul the boat up there—spend the weekend in Georgetown, come back Sunday after the matinee. So hey, turn it into a busman’s holiday.
AW: Well, you know, Herb, one of the things that I see from my pals and the people that I just know and I’ve been interviewing for these kinds of things, as they get further along in their careers, one of the things that marks a successful person is that they diversify.
HS: Oh, yeah.
AW: They do things like theatre arts. I saw you at—couple years ago—at the steel guitar show.
HS: Right.
AW: You teach?
HS: Well, I don’t teach anymore, but I do have a line of instructional products that I sell.
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AW: But you taught at one time?
HS: Oh, yes.
AW: Yeah, right.
HS: Absolutely.
AW: You know, those are the—doing those kinds of things and—our friend Alan Munde does camps in the summer. First of all, they’re important for the good of the world, but they’re also ways that you are able to still—I heard at Kerrville one year, I heard Utah Phillips say something about music that just burned into my brain. He said, “It’s like life. It ain’t deep, but it’s wide.” And so when I hear about these kinds of things, I think, Yeah; that’s what’s doing. Well, describe what you’re doing just generally.
HS: Well, I was working the last year or so. I was working with Gary P.’s band, which was my second or third tenure working with Gary.
AW: He’s working a lot.
HS: Okay, well, that’s really the reason why I recently left his band. I enjoy his songs, good songs, easy to play steel guitar to; I mean they just fit. The instrument and his songs fit, or at least the way I play the instrument and his songs fit. But he works all over Texas every week. Now, two gigs a week in Texas means three days on the road minimum, maybe four. Three gigs a week in Texas means definitely four good days on the road. Well, when you think about—when you subtract the two hours a night that you play, all the rest of the time is in the motel or it’s in the van or it’s in the restaurant or it’s anywhere except in my home, and it’s—four days a week is sixty percent of my life. Now, when I was twenty-eight, I had all the time in the world; I don’t have time anymore. So, I was balancing out my assets and how I can—can I retire? Absolutely, yes. Knock wood. I’ve made good decisions in my life, and I’m fortunate, and I’m a blessed man. So, the money that I was making with Gary, I can easily replace out of my pension, and I
43 Texas Tech University’s Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Oral History Program have control of my life because when you’re in your van—in somebody’s van—all you can do is read or listen to music or chat or something. You can’t clean the house, you can’t do interviews like this, you can’t take care of your yard—
AW: You can’t go get the oil changed on your car.
HS: You can’t do the shit that has to be done, you know. That’s why I decided, well—and you know what? There’s got to be something else out here for me. My girlfriend said, “You know what we ought to do? We ought to go down to Mexico, go down to Merida, or Cancun and take an intensive Spanish thing for a month.” And I said, “You know, that would be fun, but I don’t want to—I’m not ready for that. I want to be somewhat fluent before I go down there.” So that’s why I’m taking three-months-worth of—well, I don’t know how many of these things—but I’m learning Spanish at UT, so I’ll be able to go down there and spend a month comfortably. I’ll learn a lot, but I’ll be ready to accept it. I’ll have the knowledge base, so that’s why I’m taking Spanish classes. It’s like Maslow’s fifth hierarchical level about self-realization, whatever it is, so that’s where I’m at in my life.
AW: That’s good. You don’t want to go down there until it gets cooler anyway.
HS: Until it gets—?
AW: You don’t want to go down there until it gets cooler anyway.
HS: Oh, no! Right, no. I want November, December, something like that.
AW: I think it’d be a great thing. Let me check and see how we’re doing on time. Oh, that’s probably the time over there, isn’t it? Good. Doing well. What have I not asked you about that I should have?
HS: I don’t know. I’m not sure of the scope of your project.
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AW: I’m interested in you and your music. That’s the scope. You talked a little bit about an album you’re getting ready to—
HS: I’ve got three albums of my own right now. I dabble with not just being a side man. I’ve put bands together and fronted bands, playing music that I want to play, and I’m doing one this Sunday. I’m a band leader—well, it’s a trio. It’s going to be the Herb Steiner Trio.
AW: And who is the Herb Steiner Trio? Is it—?
HS: It’s me and two guys that I hire.
AW: Oh. (laughter)
HS: Generally, it’s the Herb Steiner Quartet. But we’re the Herb Steiner Quintet. But this gig is— since this won’t be coming out until way after—I’m playing for Zooey Deschanel’s wedding. Do you know who Zooey Deschanel is, the actress?
AW: Yeah.
HS: She’s marrying this hot shit producer. So, me and—Hay Bale was playing for the Saturday night party. My trio was playing for the service—before and after the service—and then the DJ comes on at nine o’clock. So the band is Terry Hale on bass, who is George Strait’s bass player for the last forty years—thirty-something—forty years. And then Rick McRae, who was George’s guitarist and possibly the greatest jazz guitarist I’ve ever played with, and me; and we’re going to be doing instrumental background musical wallpaper, right. “I think they’re playing ‘Blue Bayou.’” “Oh yeah, that sounds like ‘Blue Bayou.’” “Oh, listen, ‘Fly Me to the Moon.’” “Boy, aren’t they good. Don’t they play this nice stuff?” “Oh, there’s a Duke Ellington song.” And we’re going to do soft jazz and ballads and—
AW: But with that crew, it’s going to be fun.
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HS: “When I fall in love,” you know.
AW: Yeah, but still, it doesn’t matter what you’re playing when you have those musicians.
HS: Musicians of that quality—
AW: That’s good stuff. Well, when you do a gig, and you say you play things that you want to play, what are those things? What do you want to play?
HS: Great American Songbook songs: “When I fall in love,” “On my own again. I hear that trumpets blow again.” You know, “Taking a Chance on Love,” “You’re Nobody ‘til Somebody Loves You,” “I’m an Old Cow Hand,” “Fly Me to the Moon,” “It’s witchcraft, wicked witchcraft.” I do stuff like that. “You came to me from out of nowhere.” That’s what I do, and my albums are all Western swing, so again with Rick McRae, Terry Hale, or David Biller on guitar, or Bobby Flores on fiddle. Good guys.
AW: Yeah.
HS: So that’s what I like doing. I also enjoy playing straight-ahead Johnny Bush country music, Ray Price, Johnny Bush, “Dance With Who Brung Ya.” That’s where I came from, grew up in the sixties listening to 1960s country music on the radio. Even in my bluegrass band in the sixties, we did country songs.
AW: Really?
HS: Yeah. Just to have a different material—just have different material—we were all country music. We listen to country radio when we were in high school. We wanted different material than all the other bluegrass bands did, so we played country songs, country-western songs, and it was a fun time So that’s where I’m at musically. And a lot of—when you talk about your career—my career slowing down, it was probably my choice, but also, my not being willing to—for twenty-
46 Texas Tech University’s Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Oral History Program two years, I was married and my wife had a—half of that time I was working at the Chronicle. I had a good day job.
AW: Oh, really? What did you do at the Chronicle?
HS: I was a classified advertising manager at the Chronicle.
AW: Oh, I didn’t know that. That’s really cool.
HS: That’s where I made most of my money, other than the stock market, was being an advertising manager for the Chronicle. And my wife—my ex-wife now—is a veterinarian, owns her own veterinary clinic. So, I didn’t need to go play shitty gigs. I mean, playing some honkytonk and everything, “Why the fuck am I sitting here?” I could be sitting in front of my—in my house, my beautiful home with my wife upstairs and et cetera. So, I took myself out of that situation—out of those situations—and then generationally, people don’t get in bands to play with somebody as old as their grandfather, right? I’m not trying to be funny.
AW: No. (laughter)
HS: Or older than their grandfather.
AW: I was born in 1948, so yeah, we’re in the same—same thing.
HS: The first time you tell a young kid, “Well, back in the day, the way we used to do it was—” Their eyes roll back, and they go, “Oh, thank you, Grandpa.” “Why don’t we hire Jason on the next job or—” Kids like to play with kids their own age, so that’s what I do. And sadly, most kids my age aren’t playing. (laughter) AW: Yeah, there is that.
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HS: No, no. There are quite a few of the young hipsters that do appreciate having a senior player on stage, and the experience and all that.
AW: I think there always will be a—I play with a young guy whose—he educated himself in music. He’s a huge twenties and thirties—we’d call it folk—but I’d call it string band music, and here’s a guy who’s gone out and sought that out.
HS: Oh, absolutely.
AW: But they’re few and far between.
HS: I know, but God bless those guys.
AW: You bet. Well, I know you’ve got things to get going, and I want to visit a little bit more about your collection—what we would call it—so I’m going to say thanks.
HS: You’re welcome.
AW: And when I’m going over this in the weeks to come, I may give you a whistle.
HS: You want to ask me some more questions?
AW: Yeah.
HS: Ask me some more questions, that’d be—
AW: Yeah, I’d like to do that, but it’s really been good. I’ve enjoyed it a great deal.
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HS: Thank you, man.
AW: And I love your observations here. It’s spot on. All right. Thank you.
End of Recording
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