Down by the Brazos
In spite of a tour with Stephen Stills, four albums, a number one country single recorded by Willie Nelson — “I’d Have To Be Crazy” — and a part in the movie Outlaw Blues, the 34-year-old Fromholz has managed to elude national recognition.
He was recognized as a major force in Texas music in Jan Reid’s The Improbable Rise Of Redneck Rock, a book published in 1974 about Austin’s “progressive country” movement — a movement which in fact never progressed. But that recognition did Fromholz little good in terms of amassing a record-buying public.
Reid’s observations are as accurate today — three albums, a hit single and a movie part later — as they were then:
Many performers of lesser talent than Steve Fromholz were making a living off their records in 1973, and many people knew that. … People attached themselves to Fromholz because he was the best entertainer in town.
…Unfortunately, stage presence did not always translate into recording effectiveness. The banter between songs of a good stage act got lost in the scratching silence between cuts on an album, and the music had to stand alone. … When he got into a professional studio, it never seemed to work out.
His music was hard to define, and his producers had a difficult time fitting it into popular forms. … Fromholz seemed the most luckless musician alive.
Reid devoted a whole chapter to Fromholz and [also chapters to] other Austin-based musicians like Jerry Jeff Walker, B.W. Stevenson, Willis Alan Ramsey, Bobby Bridger, Rusty Weir, Kinky Friedman, Michael Murphey and Willie Nelson.
The hope of catapulting Texas country-rock into national prominence was to rest with these artists. But they were either absorbed by already existing forms of pop music, receiving national recognition through conventional means, or left playing to esoteric folk audiences, slipping back into relative obscurity.
Fromholz hits somewhere in the middle. Though his last album was blatantly directed at the Nashville music market, most of his support comes from his already cultivated fans.
“He’s tryin’ to hit anew market,” his agent said Tuesday. “And ‘Heroes’ (the single from his latest release) was on the country charts for three or four weeks.”
But the Nashville pedal steel and almost-God-forbid-Mickey-Gilley-style honky-tonk piano don’t do justice to Fromholz’s style.
As Reid implies, Fromholz is at best in a live performance, where the anecdotes and haunting lyrical realities don’t get lost in the shuffle of a Nashville studio.
“Steve doesn’t really have a niche,” the agent said. But Fromholz calls his music “free-form, country-folk, rock-science-fiction, gospel-gum, existential-bluegrass, guacamole-opera music.”
He also likes to joke about his obscurity.
“I’m back to workin’ towards my eventual disappearance,” he says.
He named his first two solo albums A Rumor In My Own Time and Frolicking In The Myth. Fromholz says he loves the “mystique and confusion” surrounding his career.
So, Sunday Steve Fromholz disappears to Bryan, where at least 200 people have heard of him. He’s to perform solo and will assuredly display the talents that have made him one of Texas’ premier nobodies.
MICHAEL MURPHEY
April 6, 1979
“Geronimo’s Cadillac” poured through the stereo speakers. A crowd waited anxiously Wednesday afternoon at a local record store for Michael Murphey to arrive.
The radio station made ready for a remote-broadcast interview and the TV station was on standby with its minicam. People milled about, up and down the aisles. Most of them carried at least one of Murphey’s albums. At the cash register, ticket after ticket was selling for that night’s concert.
He was to arrive at 3:30. Right on time, he walked up the sidewalk. The crowd didn’t notice.
Murphey was just going to walk in the front door — alone, no fanfare, no introduction. But about 10 steps from the door he was met by a man who handed him a T-shirt bearing the station logo. The man directed Murphey into the back seat of a small car, and the car pulled away.
About 10 minutes later, as “Cosmic Cowboy” began to play, the crowd cheered and Murphey walked out from the back of the store with a radio station entourage. He was wearing the T-shirt. The interview was inaudible from the back of the crowd. But everyone watched Murphey talk and flash his charismatic smile.
The crowd had been gathered around the interview set in a semicircle, leaving some distance between it and Murphey. That distance wouldn’t last long.
“OK, I think we’re ready to do this,” he said as the interview ended. The stereo played the chorus of Murphey’s “Healing Springs” as the semicircle tightened and autograph-seekers engulfed him. “Bring the lame, the halt, the blind…”
Murphey posed for pictures and signed albums and posters for a solid hour and a half. His smile never quit and never seemed put-on or forced. He greeted each fan as if he or she were first in line. Murphey seemed genuinely interested. He displayed the same sincerity always present in his music.
If he’s an act, he’s a consistent one.
That night, Murphey played to an enthusiastic crowd that three-quarters filled the 1,500-seat Bryan Civic Auditorium.