Jan Reid,
The Improbabe Rise of Redneck Rock: New Edition

Publisher: UT Press
Year: 2004

(4½ out of 5)

In 1974, young journalist Jan Reid released what would become widely regarded as the bible of Texas Music, The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock. It was a publishing experiment of sorts, and its print run was relatively limited. Decades later, copies of the original text are near-impossible to find.

Of course, much has changed in Texas Music over the last 30 years. No longer a free-spirited intellectual and political town, Austin is now a real city—the tech boom made sure of that. And while Willie is still a living legend, many other singer/songwriters who populated the pages of the original edition have faded away while new generations have established themselves at the forefront of the Texas Music scene.

Reflecting these and other wholesale changes, the University of Texas Press recently released a new edition of Jan Reid's seminal work. While the core of the 1974 edition remains intact, Reid has altered some chapters to incorporate more of the Texas Music scene as it evolved outside of Austin. Furthermore, Reid has written four new chapters to sum up the past three decades.

The core chapters, comprising Parts One through Three, are a vivid portrait of the burgeoning Texas Music scene. Based in Austin, Reid chronicles the emergence of that scene as a counter to contemporary social and political upheaval as well as the increasing mediocrity of Nashville music. "The craze for nostalgia, to get away from it all, engulfed almost all popular forms of American expression, and inAustin, the musical retreat led naturally enough to country and western.… But while mainstream country contented itself with self-pitying accounts of the state of suburban captivity, Austin music suggested an active disengagement, a quest for another way of life."

One man stood squarely at the center of the Austin music revival. Willie Nelson returned from Nashville and established himself as an unlikely icon for hippies and cowboys, as well as scores of younger singer/songwriters. "Nelson did not grovel in the presence of Chet Atkins, and he was the first to say to hell with what Nashville thought; he was going to take his recording business to New York and go home to Texas and run around with Leon Russell if he wanted to. Young Austinites loved him for that, and they had drawn closer together because of Nelson and his younger running mates."

The Austin and Texas Music scenes were, of course, much larger than just Willie himself. Reid devotes full and partial chapters to a number of artists, from the reclusive Willis Alan Ramsey to the garrulous Kinky Friedman, from the enigmatic Michael Martin Murphey to good-timing Jerry Jeff Walker. Others profiled include Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, B. W. Stevenson, Bobby Bridger, Rusty Wier, and Steven Fromholtz.

Venues play almost as central a role in Reid's story as do the artists themselves. With its growing artist community, Austin needed a signature stage on which to showcase its diverse talents. While Threadgill's and the Vulcan Gas Company played important roles, it was the Armadillo World Headquarters that catapulted Austin into the major leagues. Reid delves into the sketchy business behind the Armadillo, as well as the colorful personality of house artist Jim Franklin.

When Reid ventures into the modern era, the momentum falls apart somewhat. The Dixie Chicks, Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen, and the Robison brothers are important contemporary figures, sure, but their impact isn't fully fleshed out. The new chapters in Part Four feel tacked on—which of course they are—and read more like a surface-depth series of bio sketches than a sequence of links in the continuing evolution of Texas Music.

The new additions may disappoint, but the book's core is as informative and lively as any journalistic foray into the arts. Reid's sparkling narrative and his interviewees' candid dialog bring early 70s Austin vividly to life.

This book is highly recommended especially for readers who, like me, either weren't yet born or weren't yet mature enough to engage in the days' hijinks.

But The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock is such a passionate overview of the evolving scenes in Austin and throughout Texas that just about any music fan will come away wanting to track down or rediscover albums by a host of singer/songwriters who were bubbling to the surface in the early 70s.

Thanks to the University of Texas Press, a whole new generation can benefit from Reid's journalistic eye and experience the energy and artistry that helped establish Austin as the "Live Music Capital of the World."

Buy: Lone Star Music, Amazon

November 2, 2004