Reviews
"I love your new record. You're writing great songs, especially Turn Row Blues and Little Hearts and Flowers. Well, really, all of them. It's a pleasure to listen to."
"Listening to Bobby Earl is like putting on my favorite pair of boots, the ones whose soles feel like they were form-fitted to each foot, and whose leather's so aged and worn, the boot stack flops over like a piece of suede. Or sitting around the table for family supper on Sundays. Or patting the head of your favorite dog who knows you better than any human does. Or country, back when country was cool. His timbre is puro West Texas, all twang and wide open spaces between each and every syllable. He wears his heart on his sleeve and in lyrics that take you to another place somewhere in the west. The playing is precise, but languid, loping and easy. No one's in a rush, even when sending up Ricky Nelson. This is what happens when the money's off the table and no one's betting piles of cash on the outcome: music for music's sake-for the song, for the dance, for the emotion. What a novel concept."
"I've known Bobby Earl for a long time. Since 1972, when he was playing hippie country in the bars and I was a hippie DJ in Austin. Eventually he and I realized we shared the same vision for the future of Texas music and we became partners, 'The Jackalope Brothers.' We wanted to help save the cultural heritage of Texas in all of its forms, before it disappeared, and at the same time create a new Texas music out of our own experience. He was a singer and songwriter in Freda and the Firedogs, I had a radio station, KOKE-FM, both entities being a new thing in those days. Freda disbanded, I left radio, we went to work producing records and playing with Alvin Crow and driving all over the country in Bobby Earl's old blue Ford living on beanie weenies and crackers and playing the radio really loud while we worked Crow's Polygram releases. We never stopped believing that music should be from the heart and that there was a place in the world for small labels to put out music that could reach out to people everywhere. In '77 we started a label again and a studio and recorded Stevie Vaughn, The Skunks and Kimmie Rhodes and put out records that were only heard in Texas. Radio changed in the 80's and stopped playing small labels and we had to figure out other things to do for awhile, but a couple of years ago we said it was time to make another record and create another label, that the time had come back around again, and it has. This record has some of our old compadres on it and two of our kids, Eric and Gabe, who grew up to be pickers, and we made it the same way we always made records---we got in front of the mikes and we played it. We all had a lot of fun making this music and we hope you enjoy being a part of it when you listen to it. I can't think of a better way to come full circle from '72 when we knew something was happening here, to now, when it still is, because real Texas music will never die as long as people like Bobby Earl Smith have anything to do with it. Drink lots of water, stay off your feet, and come when you can."
