' Still, the pivotal year was 1972, and the place was Austin. '

July 29, 2016 11:53 AM

"As the seventies began, there were two major schisms bearing down on Austin’s budding country music scene. As the seventies began, there were two major schisms bearing down on Austin’s budding country music scene. The first was political. The cultural upheaval of the sixties was still going full force, particularly in Texas, even in a city that considered itself as forward thinking as Austin did. The second related more narrowly to the music. The only route to success for young Texas country songwriters went through Nashville, a stubbornly conservative industry town considered every bit as reactionary as the Nixon administration. "
posted by the man of twists and turns (4 comments total)

In 1972 the Austin music scene exploded with a new, rootsy form of country that turned its back on Nashville and embraced the counterculture. Forty years later, Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker, Michael Martin Murphey, and a host of other cosmic cowboys and redneck rockers remember the first Dripping Springs Reunion, the time Waylon Jennings almost got busted, and the birth of outlaw country.

don't forget townes van zandt!

If I Needed You :P

also btw, re: the forces shaping austin...
"One of my heroes is Pike Powers, a politician-turned-consultant who helped build Austin, Texas, from a sleepy state capital into one of the world's premier technology clusters. In an essay for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Powers explains how they did it. The key to Austin's success, he says, was the collaboration between local government, big business and the University of Texas."
posted by kliuless at 12:24 PM on July 29, 2016

My good friend Danny Garrett has written a book called Weird Yet Strange about being an artist around that scene at the time. Since an overview of his career mainly, he moves on to Antone's in the 70's & 80's but he covers Willie & the cosmic cowboy scene pretty well, at least from the vantage point of a poster artist.

I arrived in Austin in the spring of '78 so I missed a lot of that stuff, but I love the generation that followed -- the Joe Ely & Lubbock or Leave It crowd, Robert Earl Keen, etc. All great storytellers.

Also, I just finished reading The Gay Place, and while it's about politics in the preceding years, Brammer indelibly describes central Texas & sets the stage for what was coming.
posted by Devils Rancher at 1:44 PM on July 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

In 1972 I began over two decades in the bar business in Austin. I'll leave it to your imagination as to what that weirdness was like...
posted by jim in austin at 2:24 PM on July 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

Says a lot about high weirdness in that era of Austin country when someone as certifiable as Kinky Friedman ranks only a brief mention.
posted by delfin at 9:11 PM on July 29, 2016