Rock Moment: Texas Cosmic Cowboys

John Angelle at Threadgill's restaurant, under the big Freddie King painting that once hung in the Armadillo World HQ

It’s been a busy week for us, and we must apologize for not tending the blog recently.  We’ve done a few interviews in advance of South by Southwest, those are coming soon and we have some other cool stuff on the horizon – promise.

Today we want to give you something for the weekend … a little remembrance of the Texas “cosmic cowboy” movement of the 1970s.  The other day we mentioned Shiva’s Headband, the psychedelic country rockers partially responsible for the creation of the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin.   But even before the Armadillo, Texas’ capital city was a mecca for young longhairs who liked country music.

I suppose Michael Murphey coined the phrase “cosmic cowboy” back in 1973, on his album Cosmic Cowboy Souvenir.  He also sort of laid out the blueprint for the movement in “Cosmic Cowboy” from that album … “Lone Star sippin’ and skinny dippin’/and steel guitars and stars.”  You could say a cosmic cowboy was one quarter redneck and three quarters hippie, a guy who’d happily loan you his pickup truck and his wife.

A Smoke and a Cheap Guitar

Earlier this week we roamed over to Luckenbach to soak up a little of that Texas mystique, and I thought while we’re in the neighborhood we oughta just keep goin’ about the good old days.  Well, as I said, back in the 1970s Texas became the epicenter of something called the outlaw country music movement.  It kinda started around 1972, right about the time Willie Nelson’s Nashville home burned down and he moved back to Austin.  Later that year Nelson held his first Fourth of July festival at Dripping Springs – featuring Waylon Jennings, Tompall Glaser, Kris Kristofferson and Leon Russell – and that sort of kicked off the whole shebang.

Michael Martin Murphey

You’d hit the usual hangouts, like the Armadillo World Headquarters and Soap Creek Saloon, and you’d see musicians sipping their beer from longneck bottles and longhairs and rednecks co-inhabiting peacefully.  The music could turn a redneck into a “cosmic cowboy,” and hippies became “redneck rockers.”  Michael (not yet Martin) Murphey wrote the movement’s unofficial anthem with “Cosmic Cowboy,” off his Cosmic Cowboy Souvenir album.  Willis Alan Ramsey cut his one eponymous album on Leon Russell’s Shelter label in 1972 then he dropped off the face of the earth.  Jerry Jeff Walker walked onstage at Castle Creek in his boxer shorts, and Gove Scrivenor played the harmonica and the autoharp and did a solo with his foot (stomping percussion).  Over in Houston, Townes Van Zandt played in places like Anderson Fair and the Texas Opry House, commuting from the dilapidated trailer where he lived in Austin, while Guy Clark gave voice to his great songs.

Greetings From Texas! Part 2 (Still Hot)

There’s a place in Austin, it’s called Barton Springs.  Even on these blistering hot days (temps in the 100s) the damn water is ice cold.  You leap into this pool at your own risk because you’re going from air that’s around 105 degrees into water that’s about 68 degrees.  It may not seem so bad to you folks up in the snow belt but try it some time.  I know for sure that my heart can’t take it – not like it could when I was younger.  Instead, my heart is definitely open to this Lone Star flavored refreshment:

MP3: “Cosmic Cowboy” by Michael Martin Murphey

MP3: “Houston Chicks” by Doug Sahm

MP3: “Gettin’ By” (live) by Jerry Jeff Walker

MP3: “Love At The Five and Dime” by Nanci Griffith & Darius Rucker

MP3: “Austin City Limits ad/Rusty Weir” (KILT-FM, 1977)

MP3: “Playboy Theme” by Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys

MP3: “Before The Next Teardrop Falls” by Freddy Fender

MP3: “Rosemary” by C.J. Chenier

MP3: “Pancho and Lefty” (live) by Townes Van Zandt

MP3: “Working At Working” by Wayne Hancock

MP3: “The Legend” by Willie Nelson

MP3: “Dublin Blues” (live) by Guy Clark

MP3: “To Live Is To Fly” by Steve Earle

MP3: “The Road Goes On Forever” by Robert Earl Keen