About
Singer, songwriter, musician, award-winning producer, manager, booking agent, lawyer- it takes all of this to describe Bobby Earl Smith. Born in San Angelo, Texas, a cattle ranching town on the Rio Concho in West Texas about halfway between Lubbock and Austin, he began playing in bands as the rock & roll revolution swept America and continued to play music after moving to Austin to attend law school, but spent more time in the Split Rail, a legendary watering hole, than the law library, playing in a bluegrass group and various country bands.
In 1972 he joined with Marcia Ball and John Reed to form Freda and the Firedogs, the seminal Austin hippie country band. In 1972 a reviewer in the Houston Chronicle wrote:
"Freda's Firedogs: Savvy, Stringy Meat- Freda and the Firedogs, an Austin based band of hill-Williams more intensely, and authentically, into C&W tradition than most groups currently trying to make it. ountry 'n' Western--white mans's blues, a current critic calls it. And Freda and company grasp that truth with all the searing scorch of human passion, with more musicality per square twang than many musicians ever manage to muster. For anyone seeking musical highs, a whiff of Freda's Firedogs should trip out the staunchest country pop purist. Freda and the Firedogs may look like freaks, but they pick like corralsful of kickers. With musical savvy. Stringy meat. Tough. All puns intended."
Freda and the Firedogs was the cornerstone of the Austin progressive-country music explosion, with Willie Nelson coming around to sit in and check them out and Atlantic mega-producer Jerry Wexler offering to sign them along with Willie and Doug Sahm as he tried to capture this new long-haired country-rock fusion on record. They epitomized endless nights in Austin bars as the Lone Star, Shiner and Pearl flowed from the taps and blended with music by Merle Haggard and Johnny Horton mixed with Gulf Coast Blues. The Firedogs became Sahm's backup band of choice as well as playing gigs behind Floyd Tillman or opening for Freddie King and playing on bills with the Texas Flatlanders at the Armadillo World Hearquarters, and more than any other Austin band, came to symbolize the Austin mystique.
The driving songwriting force in the Firedogs was Bobby Earl Smith, and his songs became the soulful signature of the band, the thing that gave it depth and breadth beyond the hippies-playing-county music angle. His mournful bluegrass-tinged vocals contrasted with Marcia Ball's brassy blues singing, and if Austin in 1972 could have been captured in amber for all time, it would have to have been one of those langourous nights in the Armadillo World Headquarters beer garden with the Firedogs, a full moon and Bobby Earl and Marcia singing "Cold Wind".
Freda and the Firedogs broke up soon after playing Willie Nelson's 4th of July Picnic in 1974 at the Texas International Speedway. Bobby Earl then partnered with Alvin Crow as his manager, booking agent, and rhythm guitar player. This resulted in an album deal with Polydor, a chart single, and this review by John Rockwell in the New York Times in 1977:
"The year was full of memorable concerts. Among the best were Alvin Crow at the Lone Star Cafe (New York City); the Rolling Stones at the El Mocambo Club in Toronto...." and "the whole group is full of fine musicians, and together they make for an evening that is both vastly entertaining and in a real sense, inspiring, because it makes one realize once again what a wealth of music this country has produced."
Bobby Earl and Alvin co-produced Alvin's first album release on their label, Longneck, which won the Country Music Magazine Silver Bullet Award. This album subsequently became part of the Polydor multi-album deal and a song from it, "Nyquil Blues" charted in 1977.
In 1978 Bobby Earl and Joe Gracey left Alvin Crow and began to look for other artists to produce and manage, and for the next several years they recorded various people in Gracey's "Electric Graceyland" studio, including Stevie Ray Vaughn and Lou Ann Barton's Double Trouble, The Skunks, and Kimmie Rhodes. They released several albums on their Jackalope and Rude labels, including Bobby Earl's 1974 "Dry Creek Inn" masters, a Skunks record, and a "Best of Electric Graceyland" album.
In 1981 Bobby Earl and Kimmie Rhodes and Joe Gracey formed "Kimmie Rhodes and the Jackalope Brothers" and began performing around Texas together. Willie Nelson invited them to record an album at his newly-opened Pedernales Recording Studios and Golf Links, which they did, and it was released in 1983 as "Kimmie Rhodes and the Jackalope Brothers" with songs by both Bobby Earl and Kimmie on Jackalope Records.
Bobby Earl also played in bands with Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Butch Hancock, then did record promotion for Gary P. Nunn (writer of the Austin City Limits theme song "Home With the Armadillo") as well as playing in his band.
In 1984 Bobby Earl decided to dust off his never-used law degree and enter law practice as a criminal defense attorney in Austin, defending desperados for horrible crimes like smoking marijuana. It was in 1999 that he and Joe Gracey decided to record a new CD, "Rear View Mirror" which is now in release on their new label, Muleshoe Records. The CD features nine songs written or co-written by Smith, a song originally recorded by Webb Pierce, and a stellar cast of Texas musicians, including Flaco Jimenez, Johnny Gimble, Marcia Ball, Kimmie Rhodes, John X. Reed and Floyd Domino. Pure Texas music in the Austin tradition.
