True to the Roots (9 page)

"Now the big boys are going to force it down your throat, whether you like it or not. When they pulled Ralph Emery off the air (on the old Nashville Network), it was a crying shame when they did that because there were so many pure country people who loved 'Nashville Now.' They yanked him off because he wasn't young enough looking. He wasn't playing enough of the young artists. Now the whole darn thing is sold out."

White helped raise money to relieve Willie Nelson's income tax woes. He's seen all manner of behavior and lifestyles that don't necessarily jibe with his own. He never expected the heroes to be perfect, though. Heroes are the performers who rise above their flaws.

"Jerry Jeff Walker is one of my biggest draws," White says. "He plays the Friday night here when his birthday party kicks off [it's called the BDB, for 'Birthday Bash'].

"I've had 'Jerry duty' a few times back in the old days. Jerry duty is when you get to take Jerry Jeff Walker home when he's had too much to drink. We get along just wonderful, him and his wife, Susan, and his kid, Django Walker, his son, who's doing real good writing songs now. We had a good time."

The Spoke has been ranked the best honkytonk in Texas by at least one publication, and another rated its chicken fried steak the best in town. The front room is a restaurant that's open for lunch, even though the steel guitars don't crank up generally until after the sun goes down.

"I love the music, and I hate to see it changing like it is, getting too slick, too imitation, too plastic," White says. "It's just not there, but every now and then, some of the stations will throw us a bone and play some good country music. I wrote a song called 'Putting the C Back in Country.' I haven't got it on CD yet, but I mention the doghouse bass and the steel guitar. You know where you are when you hear that steel guitar, you know. There's nothing any better than a steel guitar and a fiddle sound when it's played correctly."

But no one could say the world has passed the Spoke by, at least no one present to see Asleep at the Wheel play on a Saturday night. Country radio gears itself to a young demographic—not only young but with limited sensibilities, it seems—but the Spoke reflects the larger population. Every age group is represented on the dance floor, from the gentle shuffles of an elderly couple staring warmly into each other's eyes to the advanced, showy version of the same dance as practiced by college kids. A lot has changed, White concedes.

"Sometimes you kind of reflect back to when you were in high school, and that's what I do sometimes, only I reflect way back to the opening day of the Broken Spoke," he says. "I was still working sixteen hours a day out front, beer was two bits a bottle as fast as we could pop it, and there were some good, hardcore drinkers back in those days.

"I mean, well, there would be a fight. There'd be a knockdown, drag out. I remember, they'd get to fighting and knocking one another down, and people stood up and went to the side of the wall, and they'd just let 'em fight it out. After a while, the bouncers would drag 'em on out, the best they could. We've weeded out a lot of troublemakers over the years. I think they respect the Broken Spoke so much anymore when they come here that they behave theirselves.

"It's more of a dance hall. When you get the rough places, I call them roadhouses. A roadhouse, maybe that might be a little rougher. We used to have a band years ago, and when they'd play here, they'd get the kids in here, and I think the young, they'd get to fighting with or over their girlfriends. If you let them over the pool table . . . we don't let 'em gamble, but I figure it's mainly over women. You know how that goes. That's true of the honkytonk. They might get in a fight with their friend, and the next minute they're over there buying each other a beer. If it's a fair fight, ok. But if it gets too rough, the way it is nowadays, you don't want to let anything get started because it's harder to stop. All in all, we're real fortunate not to have any problems out here.

"Back when beer was two bits a bottle, it was a lot hard er. I didn't have any air conditioning, and they worked hard all day, they got hot, and they wanted to drink that beer as fast as they could. You figure four beers for a dollar, hell, you couldn't afford not to get drunk."

White's greatest memories are reserved for the heroes of another time—Bob Wills, Tubb, Tex Ritter, Roy Acuff—all now deceased but all featured prominently on his walls.

"When I grew up, Bob Wills was a living legend," he says. "I booked Bob Wills in 1966 and '67 and '68. I was bartender at the time. I used to work . . . seven days a week just so I could get this place paid for. I did the cleanup—whatever it took, I did it. I told the old drunks at the bar, 'I'm going to have Bob Wills here,' and they all said: 'Aw, hell, he won't show up. He'll be drunk. He's well known for not showing up.'

"He opened up the front door; he was by himself, had his fiddle on his arm and his cigar. He had his cowboy hat on. Boy, they were whispering, 'There's Bob Wills, there he is,' and that's one of my most memorable moments. Get out and meet Bob Wills, and he was the first big star who walked on the stage of the Broken Spoke. I'll always remember it. Later on, back in '68, I'd book just him and 'Tag' Lambert. About that time Tommy Duncan was on his own. I'd book him also and get a band to back him up. Bob Wills couldn't have been nicer to me and more polite. I was in awe. I was twenty-six years old at the time, and it was a big thrill just to have him here.

"Ernest [Tubb], he'd come up and tell me, 'Keep it country, James,' or 'Keep it country, boy.' I'd book him about three times a year out here, and then another one I got to book one time was my childhood hero, Tex Ritter, and I remember when I was a kid I went down to the Capitol Theater on Sixth Street, which is no longer there, and we got to see Tex Ritter ride out on his horse and rear up and shoot the gun, you know. I got a picture of Tex up there singing on our bandstand. He'd sing that 'Rye Whiskey,' you know, and he'd fall out of the chair, he'd get so drunk. 'If the ocean was whiskey and I was a duck,' he'd hiccup, and then he'd fall out of the chair. 'Rye Whiskey,' he said, at first it was called 'Jack of Diamonds.' They changed it to 'Rye Whiskey.' They kicked it around a lot before they called it 'Hillbilly Heaven,' 'cause they didn't want to use the word
hillbilly
.

"I got to book Roy Acuff, and his last tour had a stop right here at the Broken Spoke. He went from Nashville to Disneyland to the Broken Spoke then back to Nashville. Then he kind of stayed up there in Nashville for the rest of his life. He was a nice guy. He came up and said, 'Well, when's the opening band going to start?' and I said, 'Well, you're the only one I've got booked.' He said, 'Well, we ain't much of a dance band,' and I said, 'Well, you just play, and everybody'll love you,' and they did. Those people kind of had tears in their eyes. At first he wasn't going to sing 'The Great Speckled Bird' [a gospel song] because of this being a honkytonk, but he said, 'Well, I'll go ahead. My daddy was a hard shell Baptist, but I'll go ahead and sing it as long as the people don't applaud when I get through with it.' That's what he did, and the people abided his wishes and just had tears in their eyes when he got through with it. When I was a kid, my parents would take me to see Roy Acuff when he toured through Austin. For some of them it was just like a tent revival meeting. One time it was raining, and water was just coming through the tent."

When the cowboys roll into the Broken Spoke these days, they don't tie their quarter horses to the hitching post out front. They're more likely, in twenty-first-century Austin, to have stopped by the split level home at the end of the cul-de-sac to ditch the tie and don the boots. But the spirit still lives, and it transcends, at least within the Spoke's walls, the artificialities that have undermined it.

"I'm just a true South Austin boy. I've been on both sides of the tracks right here in Austin, Texas," White says. "I've heard that train all my life, and that's the way I want to keep it.

"We get them from all over the world when they come here, and when we got voted the best honkytonk in Texas, there wasn't anything that could have meant more to me. To me that means the world. It never ceases to amaze me. It's just a rustic old building with a dirt parking lot."

A Man of the People

Gruene, Texas I December 2004

Pat Green's comments are peppered with offbeat observations and allusions.

"I've been on the river way too many times to see if there are any rules and regulations.

"My votes count double, and I'm the only one counting.

"When we visit my inlaws, they always have enchilada breakfasts on Christmas Day. Enchiladas and cinnamon buns. That makes for a great, gassy afternoon. We all sit around the fire.

"Instead of writing a book, I wound up buying a guitar.

"Recording at Willie Nelson's studio is great because I can act like I'm mad at the band and storm out to the golf course.

"I wouldn't say I was drunk because I don't remember.

"Pootie's Bar is the kind of place where people tinkle on the floor. . . . It's family is what it is.

"I didn't have any money because I spent it on beer. Well, not all of it. I spent the rest on paper towels to clean up the back seat of the car.

"Waco is really where I'm from, and Waco is such a lame place. You remember that David Koresh thing? What was it? Branch Davidians? That's, like, forty miles from Waco. Waco is so starved for attention that they claimed it. That's like something happening in Hillsboro and people from Dallas saying, 'Yeah, that was here.'"

The "venue," as they say, is a live radio show hosted by legendary songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard at the Lone Star Music store. Lone Star Music is revered not just for the store, situated in the quaint and cozy little dance hall village of Gruene, but for the mailorder business (lonestarmusic. com) that ships Texas music far and wide. That's one of the reasons why Green is here. That and because Hubbard asked him. The live audience consists of only about thirty people, all present by special invitation. Green has been known to sell out the Houston Astrodome. Most any form of advance publicity would produce a mob, not that these aren't true believers in the folding chairs placed around the little music store.

Pat Green's affability isn't an act. Some artists, like Reckless Kelly's Willy Braun, seem to be energized by a surge of electrical power when they mount a stage and hear the roar of a crowd. Green probably dances around alone in his hotel room, and there is probably no difference between the reminiscences shared by Hubbard and Green in this radio show and the ones that might occur if the two were sitting in a living room or over supper. With the exception of a few commercial breaks and the odd sponsor reference—and perhaps the omission of an occasional word that might not be suitable for "radio land"—this is unrehearsed, spontaneous, and candid. And the sparse audience eats it up.

At one point Hubbard refers to the show as a "hootenanny," to which Green replies, "I gotta get some salve and ointment to put on my hootenanny."

"You know, Pat, this is live radio," says Hubbard.

"What? All I said was hootenanny."

Green, equipped only with the gorgeous Gibson guitar that he wound up purchasing instead of writing a book—it's a long story—spends considerable time ridiculing his own playing. Acknowledging some assistance from another musician, a holdover from the show's previous segment, Green tells the audience, "I love a qualified musician."

Then he signs autographs, poses for photographs, chats with the guests, packs up his guitar, and invites me out back, where we drive around the area for most of an hour and talk. The only stop is a convenience store where Green buys a couple of Diet Cokes.

"Got one lemon and one lime," he says. "You get to pick."

"Lime," I say, and off we go.

"We all go through these points in our lives," he says, "where we wake up one morning and say, 'Tomorrow I'm not going to be young anymore. Right now, though, I'm still young for one more day.'"

This isn't a response to a question. This is kind of a random observation. Green bears some similarity to the Funny Car drag racer John Force, whom I've also interviewed, in that extensive questions aren't required. The interviewer can just place his recorder in the proper location and let Green rip, and it isn't because he is trying, in some way, to manipulate the interview. At any time Green might volunteer insights derived from the way his mind just flits about. The recorder operates properly; it's Green who skips.

He compares what I do to what he does. Writing columns, he says, "is a little bit more of a flip the bird means of communicating, you know," and that leads to a segment in which Green interviews me instead of vice versa.

He's a strapping lad, husky and larger than he appears onstage, probably a handful when he was younger and had a few beers in him. But any intimidating aspect of his persona is more than offset by his irreverent good humor.

Yet the selfproclaimed "Dancehall Dreamer"—it's the title of an early song and album—has managed to avoid falling through the Nashville cracks. Green somehow succeeds because he is an original, not in spite of it.

The radio show just completed marks the fifth time Green and I have crossed paths, but this is our first conversation. I've seen him in a variety of settings: a street festival in Charlotte, North Carolina; a club in downtown Columbia, South Carolina; an outdoor concert in Glen Rose, Texas; a lavish concert hall in Las Vegas; and now an informal radio show. A Green concert is typically an unruly celebration. College kids flock to his shows.