Craig D. Hillis and Bruce F. Jordan,
Texas Trilogy: Life in a Small Texas Town

Publisher: UT Press
Year: 2002

(2 out of 5)

Musician and historian Craig D. Hillis seeks to tell the stories behind Steven Fromholz's "Texas Trilogy" in Texas Trilogy: Life in a Small Texas Town.

Fromholz recorded recorded "Texas Trilogy"with his folk group Frummox in 1969. Long considered a classic story song cycle, the trilogy has benefited from renewed interest in recent years thanks to its inclusion on Lyle Lovett's 1998 tribute to Texas songwriters, Step Inside This House.

The book begins with a series of photographic essays and interview snippets that illustrate each song in the trilogy: "Daybreak," "Trainride," and "Bosque Country Romance." Interview subjects include the songwriter himself as well as Billy Archer, his father Humpy, and other local townsfolk.

Bruce F. Jordan's black-and-white photography makes for interesting and occasionally stunning accompaniment to Fromholz's vivid lyrics. Hillis's oral history fragments, however, fail to add much to the spreads. They do provide some local color, but rarely do they build upon the story behind the songs.

I looked forward to greater explication of Fromholz's lyrics in subsequent chapters. But that's not at all what Hillis provides. Instead, the remaining chapters cover brief snippets of Bosque county history.

Hillis attempts to connect the Bosque county story to the greater national history by covering such topics as democracy, capitalism, and religion, but he provides so little substantive analysis that the text instead reads like an introductory and often hole-filled primer.

The author seems to have missed a wonderful opportunity to connect a storytelling songwriter with the landscape and the people who shaped his stories. Fromholz referred to real people and places in "Texas Trilogy," but Hillis provides little explanation as to why Fromholz chose his specific subjects.

For example, Billy Archer is presented in interview segments, but there's nothing to tell us whether he really married Mary Martin, a schoolgirl, just seventeen or so, as related in "Bosque County Romance." Archer does tell of the 1957 drought referenced later in the song, but he does not tell us if the weather got the water and a snakebite took a child / And a fire in the old barn took the hay that Bill had piled / The mortgage got the money / And the screw worm got the cows.

Fromholz drew a compelling portrait of rural heartbreak and loss, but Hillis doesn't capitalize on the songwriter's extensive groundwork.

Where Hillis's text falls short, Jordan's portraits succeed at capturing the dichotomy of bleak-yet-beautiful life in small Texas towns. Through his work we see the weathered faces of rural landowners, the sere land under the hot summer sun, and the churches and other public buildings that have sagged since the region's railroad era glory days.

The beautifully bound and packaged book includes a CD with digitally remastered tracks from Frummox's original recording of "Texas Trilogy."

If you're looking for coffee table photography books on central Texas, then you might consider Texas Trilogy: Life in a Small Texas Town. But if you're looking to understand what inspired Fromholz to create the song cycle, you might as well go ahead and guess.

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January 4, 2005