August 18, 2024 • 24 mins
So much to cover with this segment including never heard before stories of the album "Viva Terlingua" plus Bob tells a great story about Ray Wylie. Listen!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, it's Bob Picket. We are on our way to
the legendary Broken Spoken. Come on, let's get out of
the truck and head inside.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
You're proud of it.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Come on, it's going side. Get ready for another tale
from the Broken Spoke. Hey it's Bob Pikett. Hope you're
enjoying our conversation with Bob Livingston tells Broken Spoke. Now
let's uh, let's get to the final part of the
conversation talking about the historic album Viva Terry Lingua more
from the Broken Spoke with Monty Warden, myself, Bob Pickett
(00:40):
and the legendary Bob Levingston. Do you ever go back
and listen to Viva Terry Lingua. You probably listened to
it a lot differently than we do.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
I know, right, yeah, because I listened and I hear
myself and I go, God, what a funky tone that is?
Oh my god. But I mean I do listen to it,
not if I can. I mean, I'm not going to
put it on, but it has come across, you know,
and and I like, you know, London Homestick Blues is
(01:09):
such an exciting, you know song and at the end,
you know what happened with that song. We didn't know
it really. We rehearsed it a couple of times, but
when we played it, the place went crazy, and you know,
and it there was apparently a clam or whatever. But
(01:31):
our engineer Sundance Marty Leonard came running in with with
Michael Brobskin said, the tape broke. We got to do
it again. And so what you hear on the record
is the second time through, and that's when Gary says,
I got to put myself back in that place because
it was so crazy, you know. Uh and uh by
(01:55):
that time, everybody kind of knew the song and the
crowd was singing along from the first chorus.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
So is that so was that two takes spliced together?
Speaker 3 (02:04):
The only thing that was spliced together was the end
when the crowd goes absolutely berserk the first time through,
the second time through, they didn't go that crazy for
some reason. But we we spliced it right three the
women you ever same badam bomb. That's a that's a splice.
(02:26):
And then the crowd ray screams for ten minutes and
then we go back into I Want to go Home.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
And you know, and that's real, that's actual razor cutting
take people to.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Go out to Lucenbach though, to even find Lukenbach back.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Hondo Crouch he was like his surrogate father. He met
Hondo and he was just like he just imagined he
wanted to be like Hondo. He would he wanted to
have crows feet like Hondo. He lay in his in
his swimming pool, you know, and okill squinting at the sun,
and I said, what do you doing. I'm trying to
get crows feet like Hondo.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Have you seen that the Hondo and Jerry Jeff statue.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
I think, yeah, yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
I mean it's just like you know you're doing it
and you know it's a good record or it's you know,
a record's good enough to tour for a whole year
or something, and then you and then like I mean,
I think of Beaver to Lingua. That is like the
one of those major trunks of a tree, because you
(03:30):
look at all the branches that went out from Beaver
to Lingua. It is it's you know, danger created an
entire genre.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Well you know I didn't, I did not say this,
but I'll quote it. Hector Saldonia that has this great
exhibit at the Whittliff Collection in San Marcos. I urge
everybody to go see it, he said. Forget Willie, forget Whalen.
Viva tre Lingual was the first Texas outlaw country album.
(03:59):
That's why I believe that. Yeah, and it was before
those guys got town.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Anyway, you sang right, and it's hard to refute that. Yeah,
you know, and then you just look back and you go,
that's just a piece of damn history. And then you
know when you talk to somebody like you, that it
was such an integral part of that record. And then
you look back fifty years later and you know, of
course y'all had no idea who you're happy to be
(04:24):
making a record, you having to have a.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Gig, you know, I can't believe it's fifty And again,
that's exactly I've said this many times. That's the record
that made me want to.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
And you think how many guitars that album sold to
kids wanting to learn GC and D and see if
they can write a song.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Well, you're like a real estatee. How many people did?
You're the reason for Austin's growth, right, Really music, you know.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
And a lot of people have said that you know
when we did the fiftieth We did the fiftieth anniversary
at Luke and bach I was in the band. Craig
hillis Herbsteiner. But then they had Chris Gage and Steve
Samuel on the drums and that guy from the Texas
(05:07):
Music Brendan Anthony. Yeah, he's he's great pick he's a
great picker. He and a few people. So it's a
lot of fun. But why was I telling you? What
were you? What were you saying right.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Talking about the fiftieth album? How much you've influenced everybody?
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Well, it's just that we did the the Oh yeah,
so they decided who could who could sing what? And
of all, you know the songs and can play these songs,
and so so Dennis Quaid is coming and and we
said okay, because I had met him a couple of times.
Maybe but he so he Dennis Quaid shows up and
(05:44):
he's going to sing London Homesick Blues because Gary Nuns
not there. Gary Nuns was not invited to this thing.
That's a whole other, you know, story episode, and so
he's so Gary's not there, So who else is gonna
sing London Homesick Blues? But Gary Nunn, I could never
figure that out. But Dennis Quaid is society. He's gonna
sing it. And what Dennis says is when I was
(06:07):
eighteen nineteen years old, I was going to high school
in Houston, and viaver Tlingua came out and we all
bought it. All my friends bought it. We learned every song,
we all bought guitars. We'd sit around campfires and we'd
sing song after song. It was our sergeant Pepper.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Oh that's so great, that is cool, that.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Is so cool.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
And and I I remember one of the one of
the first gigs I picked. It was out at the pier,
you know, and I was fourteen, and so this is,
you know, I'm just can't believe I have a gig.
You know, I feel like I'm so excited to have
a gig. And this guy comes up and like, and
when you picked at the pier, the uh, the fry
(06:51):
cook Mike overrode the PA. So you're singing a song
and then it's say number twenty seven, your fries already
you know.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Yeah, I didn't care showsiness, you know.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
So so I remember this guy came out and he goes, hey, man,
play something off of Beaver to Lingua, and I went, well,
I don't. I was fourteen, and goes well, I don't.
I don't know anything. Oh, come on. And then he
went to his car and got the cassette and he
would read off song title, go what about this one?
Speaker 3 (07:22):
What about?
Speaker 2 (07:22):
I said? I said no, I said I know that album.
I don't know well enough to play in front of people.
I don't don't I want to, you know, I didn't
want to insult the thing that's insult the music. And
then and then it's like and I didn't see the opening,
goes well I do, like, oh my god. And so
the bass player was a little bit older than me,
and I'm fourteen. He's like nineteen, so he's a seasoned vet,
(07:45):
you know. And he goes, you can you can have it.
You can sing anything you want off Viaver to Lingua.
It'll cost you fifty bucks a song, And that son
of a bitch sang the whole record, didn't drop a lyric.
He was drunkard and hell it was great, and he
paid us fifty bucks.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
It it was.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
It was the highest pai gig I've ever had. That
time I was paid not to play. He loved that
that recommend so much him. And this was when it
was eight years old that he could not believe a
musician in Austin didn't know it backwards and forward.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Yeah, but there's only nine songs on that record, so
he didn't have to you know. Yeah, if there were fourteen,
it been a double album. I retired.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Yeah, you talk about this book that we've been waiting for.
The book. I know you. You've been working on it
for years. It's got to be a big book, especially
with the stories.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Well, they made me cut it and cut it and
cut it. It's a Texas tech Press and it's been sent. Uh,
they they've got it. Now. They do a thing with
peer readers. They send it to five or six people
that might be in your genre that have written books
or writers that kind of thing. And they asked for
(09:00):
or comments and notes and you know, should we should we?
And none of them made any one who said this
is great put it out?
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Not long enough?
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Said you see. The thing is is it can can
be too long with photographs, like right now I'm looking
at photographs and uh that adds to it, and they
just want a shorter book. Right now. It's about well,
I don't know why.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
But you know what also lends itself to volume two.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Well, like val, there's a lot of stuff taken out,
but it's mine is is a you know, it's being
on the road, it's it's uh. I did a lot
of tours in foreign tours for the US State Department.
I went to India and Pakistan and all over the
(09:55):
Middle East and Africa and played and so a lot
of that is in there too.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Good now in this book because just in just this conversation,
did you talk about the actual technical or lack of
technology aspect of recording. I think that's so important for
younger pickers and musicians to know the best music is
everybody sitting in the room picking at the same.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Time, exactly. I tell As a matter of fact, my
editor encouraged you know, Andy Wilkinson, I don't anyways, great guy,
a great songwriter. He is my editor, and he encouraged
me to write about Lubbock bands in Lubbock if they
had been recording or whatever, especially when I got in
(10:45):
a studio. What was the scene like? So, I mean
I explained Murphy's mood in my opinion, Jerry Jeff's what
he's like. The songs we did. Herbsteiner was a great
resource because he kept a journal all these years of
everything he ever did or got paid for on the show. Yeah,
(11:05):
great cat now unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
I wanted to ask you because there's uh as a songwriter,
a platinum record is a miracle. They're so hard to
get and you're just blessed if you're ever part of
anything that gets any type of heavy metal. But the
most fabulous story I've ever heard of a record selling
(11:30):
a million copies of something you've written is of course
hold On.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Yeah by Lloyd Bank.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
That's that's so great. Do you know the story?
Speaker 1 (11:38):
No?
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Would you tell it? Because the album went Warrior went
to number one? Yeah right, please tell a story.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Well, it's a little dicey, but Ray Hubbard and I,
Ray Wiley and I wrote a song called hold On
for your Life and it was back in like maybe
nineteen seventy six, and we wanted to He was trying
to get one for the Gonzo record that we were
making a new record, And so meanwhile we're on tour
(12:10):
with Jerry Jeff. We go to LA and down I'm
up in my room and Michael Brovski, the manager, calls
down the bar and says, hey, man, you need to
come down here and listen to meet these people. And
they were in a band called McKendree Spring and they
were from Scotland and I can't remember the lead of
the group. That they were looking for songs and I said, well,
(12:35):
I you know this song that we just wrote, and
I at the bar played the song and the guy went, oh, yeah,
we do it, and Broski said, let's cut it. So
they cut it, they recorded, and that's the last I
hear of it.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Now soon after you picked it for him, did they
cut it like right away?
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Yeah, they were in they were in town in the student.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
So they cut it in La.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Okay, so this is seventy seven, seventy eight, something like seventy.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
It can't be later in seventy seven. Okay, it's seventy
more like seventy six, and we may we cut the
we cut our thing. It doesn't come out yet. But
I'm out on the road with the James the Lost
Consol band had our own albums. We were on MCA
in Capital and so we would have a juggle around
on what we're going to do. So meanwhile, flash forward
(13:23):
twenty years twenty five years and the phone rings in
my office here in Austin, and this woman says, are
you Bob Livingston? Yes? Do you have a publishing company
called doctor Livingston? I presume music. That's the name of
my publishing country. He said, yees still are back then? Yeah?
(13:45):
Back then? Still?
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Right? And did you write a song called hold On?
With Ray Hubbard? And I go, well, yeah, what's this
all about? And so I'll just add on my perception
of what the way I thought it happened. So there
was this rap artist named Lloyd Banks and his brother
and they're in New York and they're walking down some
(14:10):
dusty street in New York and they duck into a
discount record store and they're looking through it and they
come upon this record by McKendree Spring and it's called
Going to the Country or something like that, and they
thought cool cover, and they bought it with the two
or three others and they take it home and they
(14:31):
listen to the first track, which is hold On, and
they listened to that cool groove. Let's sample it, right,
So they sample and it becomes the bed of this
song that they're writing, and the lyrics are absolutely filthy
(14:57):
and I wish I could tell them to you, but
I think someone come get me. But needless to say,
it was somehow a big hit, and and Ray and
I each had a quarter of the song, and then
the two brothers had a quarter of the song. And
the first quarter it sold a million, two hundred thousand.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
And it's double platinum now if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
No, I really don't know that, but I think maybe.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
I think on R I A A it's CERTIFI. So
you're got some nice checks off of this big, big check, right,
you know. And that's his whole thing is like the
Angels or God goes. You know what, what the hell
I'm gonna give Bob and Ray Wyler platinum record this year.
Oh and the number one album, Warrior was the number
(15:46):
one album.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
You know. I don't know the song might have been,
but uh yeah, Warrior, and it had all this crazy stuff,
but that song was on the record. And uh, I
call Michael Corcoran up, and I I said, because hay me,
once in a while, i'd have a story for him
or whatever. And so I call him up and rest
in peace, Michael Corkoran, and I said, man, I got
(16:09):
a story and I tell him his story. He goes,
you're right, that's a great story. So he uh has
a photographer. We meet him in the hip hop record
store in East Austin and they had this big display
of Lloyd Banks, larger than life, like seven feet tall,
and he's holding all this money and they give us
all this what they call warrior money. And so we
(16:32):
have the warrior money and we're flashing around, they're taking pictures,
and that ended up on the cover of the Austin
American Statesman. The day that Lance Copeland Lance what's his name,
the writer the bike rider Armstrong, Lance Armstrong. The day
that that guy won the we were above him in
(16:53):
the front page France.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
And the byeline was keep Austin Weird.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Well, the byline was cosmic Cowboys hop on hip Hop
gravy Train. And he told the whole story.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
That when I when I heard that story, I think
it was somebody in Nashville told me the story, and
it's like, this is the greatest story of how somebody
sells a million records. And I was like, that's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Livingston's Saturday Night Buffett not about me, but he told me.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
He says, how does Lidby. Since Saturday he has two
Livingston songs, Livingston's gone to Texas and Livingston Saturday Night.
I think Livingston might be a town. But Livingston's going
to texa guy named Livingston. And he told me it's
(17:49):
not about you. It's about this guy named Lannie Feel.
And I don't know if you remember Lanny Fiach from Lubbook.
He's a he's a musician, artist and he was friends
with Buffett. He said, it's about Lanny Field. But I
liked your name better.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
So well, that's a compliment just to go back, just
because it's so cool. So your publishing company is Doctor Levyson,
I presumed.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
Yeah, that's so cool. That's so cool.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Oh man, man, what.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
We're gonna have to do about four of these.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
When the book comes out. Let's do another one.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
You know, I'll be so wild. And you know, I'm
sure your publishers like four steps ahead of me, because
that's not really any heavy lifting. But man, you got
to do some readings, man, Yeah, yeah, they were going
to Oh be fantastic.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
I wish I could, you know, I have it here,
I could get to it. I could read you the
first chapter three paragraphs you want me to do that. Yes, yes, please,
you need to be great. Nah no, yes, yes, of course. Okay,
here's the first little chapter, the first, but not the last.
(18:56):
Nineteen seventy two. He charged me, snarling and spitting and
cussing and slobbering. I'd already hit him a few times,
and it smashed him into my pickup door like a
rag doll. We wrestled around to the sideyard asses and elbows,
all dusty and bleeding, our bodies scraping on the limestone rocks,
poking like dull knives out of the hard hill country ground.
(19:19):
I hit him hard with an almost virgin fist, and
he fell back for a few moments, then came after
me again. He whacked me a good one over my
left ear, the one that still rings. Some primal memory
took over and I actually got into a three point stance,
the one my high school football coach, Freddie Acres drilled
into me at Lobocai. I threw my glasses off and crouched.
(19:43):
Here he comes. I sprang up hard, my fist together
under my chin, elbows out, a perfect battering ram up
and out, smashing my forehead just under his chin. It's
a wonder I didn't take his head off. I tried.
He fell back in a heap, and I was on him.
He got the better of me for a while, but
I ended up on top in his face. Everything I
(20:05):
grabbed was sweaty, slippery and greasy, and I couldn't get
any traction. I tried to pull his hair out from
the roots, but it just slipped through my fingers. No
matter how hard I tried to do real damage and
rip his ears off or his eyes out, I couldn't
get a hold of anything, and my efforts were for nothing. Then,
with my hands around his throat and looking into his eyes,
(20:29):
I saw a fantastic sight. He was grinning like a
gargyle and laughing through the spit and blood, his breath,
reeking whiskey and beer. He was loving this. He wasn't
taking it seriously at all. I was beating the crap
out of him and he was laughing. It was surreal
and demonic in a funny sort of way. I'd only
(20:49):
had one other fight in my life, with Greg Cobb
in the fifth grade, and here I was about to
strangle Jerry Jeff Walker, and the day had started out
so promising.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
I cannot wait to read the book, man.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
That's fantastic.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Yeah, and then the second I'll just read the the second.
So that's the end of the first chapter. But then
the second chapter. It's called Indian Summer. It felt as
though there were two suns in the yellow afternoon sky.
The air was so hot. I was in a crouch
trying to find some coolness. Load to the ground. As
I scuddered along the filthy, dusty road towards the railway
(21:32):
station in South India. I was fighting to breathe see
all of a sudden boom and so I go back
and forth in time, trying to make it make sense.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
You know, beautiful man, man, thank you. Will you come
back from the book and oh.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Yeah, or anything anytime you want to hawk anything.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
It's just I don't have anything to hawk, but I
could tell let me just let me hawk this one.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Give your website, people can con okay.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
So my website is Bob Livingston music dot com. Bob
Livingston music dot com. I'm on Facebook. I got a
couple of different Facebook pages.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
You know, it's so cool. We were doing something at
the Saxon I think something being mind put together. I
don't know what it was.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Yeah, is that what it was? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Yeah, And and Brooks was there, our twenty year old
and he's just nonplus and he's grown up in the
music business, and it's like he didn't want to go
to anything. It's like, you know, what's the green room
food situation? You know that you can entice them with
it they have cool ice.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Cream or something, you know.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
And so I was like, I said, now, I know,
you're really dick it this. This is really cool. You're
like all right? And then he was we were done,
and he had this look on it, and I had, like,
really I sung some great songs and brought down the
house and all this, and Brooks has had this look
on his face and that was fantastic, Daddy, that was awesome.
I said, well, I'm so glad you came. He goes,
(22:59):
who the hell was that? Bob Livingston? Guy, Boy, he
kicked your ass, that's.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
The truth, that's and he.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Doesn't like anything anybody. And just Bob just killed him,
I mean killed him. He went and got all all
the all the records. It's so cool.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
That's great. Yeah, so this is hard, and both of
your hearts bless you.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Well, you know what I mean. You're so part of
the fabric of our DNA in our life. I mean, yeah,
that's why we do the stuff we do because of you.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
I mean, really, every time somebody plugs a guitar into
an amp in Austin, whether they know it or not,
they owe a debt of gratitude to Bob Livingston. And no,
that's true, that's absolutely true, and just people need to
know that.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Bob Livingston Teals and Broken Spoke. More tales come up,
and again, get the book when it comes out in
a few months.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
Tales from the Broken Spoke is recorded live but The
Broken Spoke in Austin, Texas, hosted by Country radio Hall
of Fame broadcaster Bob Pickett and Monty Warden, recorded mixed
down and produced by Mike Rivera
Hey, it's Bob Picket. We are on our way to
the legendary Broken Spoken. Come on, let's get out of
the truck and head inside.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
You're proud of it.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Come on, it's going side. Get ready for another tale
from the Broken Spoke. Hey it's Bob Pikett. Hope you're
enjoying our conversation with Bob Livingston tells Broken Spoke. Now
let's uh, let's get to the final part of the
conversation talking about the historic album Viva Terry Lingua more
from the Broken Spoke with Monty Warden, myself, Bob Pickett
(00:40):
and the legendary Bob Levingston. Do you ever go back
and listen to Viva Terry Lingua. You probably listened to
it a lot differently than we do.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
I know, right, yeah, because I listened and I hear
myself and I go, God, what a funky tone that is?
Oh my god. But I mean I do listen to it,
not if I can. I mean, I'm not going to
put it on, but it has come across, you know,
and and I like, you know, London Homestick Blues is
(01:09):
such an exciting, you know song and at the end,
you know what happened with that song. We didn't know
it really. We rehearsed it a couple of times, but
when we played it, the place went crazy, and you know,
and it there was apparently a clam or whatever. But
(01:31):
our engineer Sundance Marty Leonard came running in with with
Michael Brobskin said, the tape broke. We got to do
it again. And so what you hear on the record
is the second time through, and that's when Gary says,
I got to put myself back in that place because
it was so crazy, you know. Uh and uh by
(01:55):
that time, everybody kind of knew the song and the
crowd was singing along from the first chorus.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
So is that so was that two takes spliced together?
Speaker 3 (02:04):
The only thing that was spliced together was the end
when the crowd goes absolutely berserk the first time through,
the second time through, they didn't go that crazy for
some reason. But we we spliced it right three the
women you ever same badam bomb. That's a that's a splice.
(02:26):
And then the crowd ray screams for ten minutes and
then we go back into I Want to go Home.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
And you know, and that's real, that's actual razor cutting
take people to.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Go out to Lucenbach though, to even find Lukenbach back.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Hondo Crouch he was like his surrogate father. He met
Hondo and he was just like he just imagined he
wanted to be like Hondo. He would he wanted to
have crows feet like Hondo. He lay in his in
his swimming pool, you know, and okill squinting at the sun,
and I said, what do you doing. I'm trying to
get crows feet like Hondo.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Have you seen that the Hondo and Jerry Jeff statue.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
I think, yeah, yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
I mean it's just like you know you're doing it
and you know it's a good record or it's you know,
a record's good enough to tour for a whole year
or something, and then you and then like I mean,
I think of Beaver to Lingua. That is like the
one of those major trunks of a tree, because you
(03:30):
look at all the branches that went out from Beaver
to Lingua. It is it's you know, danger created an
entire genre.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Well you know I didn't, I did not say this,
but I'll quote it. Hector Saldonia that has this great
exhibit at the Whittliff Collection in San Marcos. I urge
everybody to go see it, he said. Forget Willie, forget Whalen.
Viva tre Lingual was the first Texas outlaw country album.
(03:59):
That's why I believe that. Yeah, and it was before
those guys got town.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Anyway, you sang right, and it's hard to refute that. Yeah,
you know, and then you just look back and you go,
that's just a piece of damn history. And then you
know when you talk to somebody like you, that it
was such an integral part of that record. And then
you look back fifty years later and you know, of
course y'all had no idea who you're happy to be
(04:24):
making a record, you having to have a.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Gig, you know, I can't believe it's fifty And again,
that's exactly I've said this many times. That's the record
that made me want to.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
And you think how many guitars that album sold to
kids wanting to learn GC and D and see if
they can write a song.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Well, you're like a real estatee. How many people did?
You're the reason for Austin's growth, right, Really music, you know.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
And a lot of people have said that you know
when we did the fiftieth We did the fiftieth anniversary
at Luke and bach I was in the band. Craig
hillis Herbsteiner. But then they had Chris Gage and Steve
Samuel on the drums and that guy from the Texas
(05:07):
Music Brendan Anthony. Yeah, he's he's great pick he's a
great picker. He and a few people. So it's a
lot of fun. But why was I telling you? What
were you? What were you saying right.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Talking about the fiftieth album? How much you've influenced everybody?
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Well, it's just that we did the the Oh yeah,
so they decided who could who could sing what? And
of all, you know the songs and can play these songs,
and so so Dennis Quaid is coming and and we
said okay, because I had met him a couple of times.
Maybe but he so he Dennis Quaid shows up and
(05:44):
he's going to sing London Homesick Blues because Gary Nuns
not there. Gary Nuns was not invited to this thing.
That's a whole other, you know, story episode, and so
he's so Gary's not there, So who else is gonna
sing London Homesick Blues? But Gary Nunn, I could never
figure that out. But Dennis Quaid is society. He's gonna
sing it. And what Dennis says is when I was
(06:07):
eighteen nineteen years old, I was going to high school
in Houston, and viaver Tlingua came out and we all
bought it. All my friends bought it. We learned every song,
we all bought guitars. We'd sit around campfires and we'd
sing song after song. It was our sergeant Pepper.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Oh that's so great, that is cool, that.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Is so cool.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
And and I I remember one of the one of
the first gigs I picked. It was out at the pier,
you know, and I was fourteen, and so this is,
you know, I'm just can't believe I have a gig.
You know, I feel like I'm so excited to have
a gig. And this guy comes up and like, and
when you picked at the pier, the uh, the fry
(06:51):
cook Mike overrode the PA. So you're singing a song
and then it's say number twenty seven, your fries already
you know.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Yeah, I didn't care showsiness, you know.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
So so I remember this guy came out and he goes, hey, man,
play something off of Beaver to Lingua, and I went, well,
I don't. I was fourteen, and goes well, I don't.
I don't know anything. Oh, come on. And then he
went to his car and got the cassette and he
would read off song title, go what about this one?
Speaker 3 (07:22):
What about?
Speaker 2 (07:22):
I said? I said no, I said I know that album.
I don't know well enough to play in front of people.
I don't don't I want to, you know, I didn't
want to insult the thing that's insult the music. And
then and then it's like and I didn't see the opening,
goes well I do, like, oh my god. And so
the bass player was a little bit older than me,
and I'm fourteen. He's like nineteen, so he's a seasoned vet,
(07:45):
you know. And he goes, you can you can have it.
You can sing anything you want off Viaver to Lingua.
It'll cost you fifty bucks a song, And that son
of a bitch sang the whole record, didn't drop a lyric.
He was drunkard and hell it was great, and he
paid us fifty bucks.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
It it was.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
It was the highest pai gig I've ever had. That
time I was paid not to play. He loved that
that recommend so much him. And this was when it
was eight years old that he could not believe a
musician in Austin didn't know it backwards and forward.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Yeah, but there's only nine songs on that record, so
he didn't have to you know. Yeah, if there were fourteen,
it been a double album. I retired.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Yeah, you talk about this book that we've been waiting for.
The book. I know you. You've been working on it
for years. It's got to be a big book, especially
with the stories.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Well, they made me cut it and cut it and
cut it. It's a Texas tech Press and it's been sent. Uh,
they they've got it. Now. They do a thing with
peer readers. They send it to five or six people
that might be in your genre that have written books
or writers that kind of thing. And they asked for
(09:00):
or comments and notes and you know, should we should we?
And none of them made any one who said this
is great put it out?
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Not long enough?
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Said you see. The thing is is it can can
be too long with photographs, like right now I'm looking
at photographs and uh that adds to it, and they
just want a shorter book. Right now. It's about well,
I don't know why.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
But you know what also lends itself to volume two.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Well, like val, there's a lot of stuff taken out,
but it's mine is is a you know, it's being
on the road, it's it's uh. I did a lot
of tours in foreign tours for the US State Department.
I went to India and Pakistan and all over the
(09:55):
Middle East and Africa and played and so a lot
of that is in there too.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Good now in this book because just in just this conversation,
did you talk about the actual technical or lack of
technology aspect of recording. I think that's so important for
younger pickers and musicians to know the best music is
everybody sitting in the room picking at the same.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Time, exactly. I tell As a matter of fact, my
editor encouraged you know, Andy Wilkinson, I don't anyways, great guy,
a great songwriter. He is my editor, and he encouraged
me to write about Lubbock bands in Lubbock if they
had been recording or whatever, especially when I got in
(10:45):
a studio. What was the scene like? So, I mean
I explained Murphy's mood in my opinion, Jerry Jeff's what
he's like. The songs we did. Herbsteiner was a great
resource because he kept a journal all these years of
everything he ever did or got paid for on the show. Yeah,
(11:05):
great cat now unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
I wanted to ask you because there's uh as a songwriter,
a platinum record is a miracle. They're so hard to
get and you're just blessed if you're ever part of
anything that gets any type of heavy metal. But the
most fabulous story I've ever heard of a record selling
(11:30):
a million copies of something you've written is of course
hold On.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Yeah by Lloyd Bank.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
That's that's so great. Do you know the story?
Speaker 1 (11:38):
No?
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Would you tell it? Because the album went Warrior went
to number one? Yeah right, please tell a story.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Well, it's a little dicey, but Ray Hubbard and I,
Ray Wiley and I wrote a song called hold On
for your Life and it was back in like maybe
nineteen seventy six, and we wanted to He was trying
to get one for the Gonzo record that we were
making a new record, And so meanwhile we're on tour
(12:10):
with Jerry Jeff. We go to LA and down I'm
up in my room and Michael Brovski, the manager, calls
down the bar and says, hey, man, you need to
come down here and listen to meet these people. And
they were in a band called McKendree Spring and they
were from Scotland and I can't remember the lead of
the group. That they were looking for songs and I said, well,
(12:35):
I you know this song that we just wrote, and
I at the bar played the song and the guy went, oh, yeah,
we do it, and Broski said, let's cut it. So
they cut it, they recorded, and that's the last I
hear of it.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Now soon after you picked it for him, did they
cut it like right away?
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Yeah, they were in they were in town in the student.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
So they cut it in La.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Okay, so this is seventy seven, seventy eight, something like seventy.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
It can't be later in seventy seven. Okay, it's seventy
more like seventy six, and we may we cut the
we cut our thing. It doesn't come out yet. But
I'm out on the road with the James the Lost
Consol band had our own albums. We were on MCA
in Capital and so we would have a juggle around
on what we're going to do. So meanwhile, flash forward
(13:23):
twenty years twenty five years and the phone rings in
my office here in Austin, and this woman says, are
you Bob Livingston? Yes? Do you have a publishing company
called doctor Livingston? I presume music. That's the name of
my publishing country. He said, yees still are back then? Yeah?
(13:45):
Back then? Still?
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Right? And did you write a song called hold On?
With Ray Hubbard? And I go, well, yeah, what's this
all about? And so I'll just add on my perception
of what the way I thought it happened. So there
was this rap artist named Lloyd Banks and his brother
and they're in New York and they're walking down some
(14:10):
dusty street in New York and they duck into a
discount record store and they're looking through it and they
come upon this record by McKendree Spring and it's called
Going to the Country or something like that, and they
thought cool cover, and they bought it with the two
or three others and they take it home and they
(14:31):
listen to the first track, which is hold On, and
they listened to that cool groove. Let's sample it, right,
So they sample and it becomes the bed of this
song that they're writing, and the lyrics are absolutely filthy
(14:57):
and I wish I could tell them to you, but
I think someone come get me. But needless to say,
it was somehow a big hit, and and Ray and
I each had a quarter of the song, and then
the two brothers had a quarter of the song. And
the first quarter it sold a million, two hundred thousand.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
And it's double platinum now if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
No, I really don't know that, but I think maybe.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
I think on R I A A it's CERTIFI. So
you're got some nice checks off of this big, big check, right,
you know. And that's his whole thing is like the
Angels or God goes. You know what, what the hell
I'm gonna give Bob and Ray Wyler platinum record this year.
Oh and the number one album, Warrior was the number
(15:46):
one album.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
You know. I don't know the song might have been,
but uh yeah, Warrior, and it had all this crazy stuff,
but that song was on the record. And uh, I
call Michael Corcoran up, and I I said, because hay me,
once in a while, i'd have a story for him
or whatever. And so I call him up and rest
in peace, Michael Corkoran, and I said, man, I got
(16:09):
a story and I tell him his story. He goes,
you're right, that's a great story. So he uh has
a photographer. We meet him in the hip hop record
store in East Austin and they had this big display
of Lloyd Banks, larger than life, like seven feet tall,
and he's holding all this money and they give us
all this what they call warrior money. And so we
(16:32):
have the warrior money and we're flashing around, they're taking pictures,
and that ended up on the cover of the Austin
American Statesman. The day that Lance Copeland Lance what's his name,
the writer the bike rider Armstrong, Lance Armstrong. The day
that that guy won the we were above him in
(16:53):
the front page France.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
And the byeline was keep Austin Weird.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Well, the byline was cosmic Cowboys hop on hip Hop
gravy Train. And he told the whole story.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
That when I when I heard that story, I think
it was somebody in Nashville told me the story, and
it's like, this is the greatest story of how somebody
sells a million records. And I was like, that's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Livingston's Saturday Night Buffett not about me, but he told me.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
He says, how does Lidby. Since Saturday he has two
Livingston songs, Livingston's gone to Texas and Livingston Saturday Night.
I think Livingston might be a town. But Livingston's going
to texa guy named Livingston. And he told me it's
(17:49):
not about you. It's about this guy named Lannie Feel.
And I don't know if you remember Lanny Fiach from Lubbook.
He's a he's a musician, artist and he was friends
with Buffett. He said, it's about Lanny Field. But I
liked your name better.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
So well, that's a compliment just to go back, just
because it's so cool. So your publishing company is Doctor Levyson,
I presumed.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
Yeah, that's so cool. That's so cool.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Oh man, man, what.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
We're gonna have to do about four of these.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
When the book comes out. Let's do another one.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
You know, I'll be so wild. And you know, I'm
sure your publishers like four steps ahead of me, because
that's not really any heavy lifting. But man, you got
to do some readings, man, Yeah, yeah, they were going
to Oh be fantastic.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
I wish I could, you know, I have it here,
I could get to it. I could read you the
first chapter three paragraphs you want me to do that. Yes, yes, please,
you need to be great. Nah no, yes, yes, of course. Okay,
here's the first little chapter, the first, but not the last.
(18:56):
Nineteen seventy two. He charged me, snarling and spitting and
cussing and slobbering. I'd already hit him a few times,
and it smashed him into my pickup door like a
rag doll. We wrestled around to the sideyard asses and elbows,
all dusty and bleeding, our bodies scraping on the limestone rocks,
poking like dull knives out of the hard hill country ground.
(19:19):
I hit him hard with an almost virgin fist, and
he fell back for a few moments, then came after
me again. He whacked me a good one over my
left ear, the one that still rings. Some primal memory
took over and I actually got into a three point stance,
the one my high school football coach, Freddie Acres drilled
into me at Lobocai. I threw my glasses off and crouched.
(19:43):
Here he comes. I sprang up hard, my fist together
under my chin, elbows out, a perfect battering ram up
and out, smashing my forehead just under his chin. It's
a wonder I didn't take his head off. I tried.
He fell back in a heap, and I was on him.
He got the better of me for a while, but
I ended up on top in his face. Everything I
(20:05):
grabbed was sweaty, slippery and greasy, and I couldn't get
any traction. I tried to pull his hair out from
the roots, but it just slipped through my fingers. No
matter how hard I tried to do real damage and
rip his ears off or his eyes out, I couldn't
get a hold of anything, and my efforts were for nothing. Then,
with my hands around his throat and looking into his eyes,
(20:29):
I saw a fantastic sight. He was grinning like a
gargyle and laughing through the spit and blood, his breath,
reeking whiskey and beer. He was loving this. He wasn't
taking it seriously at all. I was beating the crap
out of him and he was laughing. It was surreal
and demonic in a funny sort of way. I'd only
(20:49):
had one other fight in my life, with Greg Cobb
in the fifth grade, and here I was about to
strangle Jerry Jeff Walker, and the day had started out
so promising.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
I cannot wait to read the book, man.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
That's fantastic.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Yeah, and then the second I'll just read the the second.
So that's the end of the first chapter. But then
the second chapter. It's called Indian Summer. It felt as
though there were two suns in the yellow afternoon sky.
The air was so hot. I was in a crouch
trying to find some coolness. Load to the ground. As
I scuddered along the filthy, dusty road towards the railway
(21:32):
station in South India. I was fighting to breathe see
all of a sudden boom and so I go back
and forth in time, trying to make it make sense.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
You know, beautiful man, man, thank you. Will you come
back from the book and oh.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Yeah, or anything anytime you want to hawk anything.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
It's just I don't have anything to hawk, but I
could tell let me just let me hawk this one.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Give your website, people can con okay.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
So my website is Bob Livingston music dot com. Bob
Livingston music dot com. I'm on Facebook. I got a
couple of different Facebook pages.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
You know, it's so cool. We were doing something at
the Saxon I think something being mind put together. I
don't know what it was.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Yeah, is that what it was? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Yeah, And and Brooks was there, our twenty year old
and he's just nonplus and he's grown up in the
music business, and it's like he didn't want to go
to anything. It's like, you know, what's the green room
food situation? You know that you can entice them with
it they have cool ice.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Cream or something, you know.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
And so I was like, I said, now, I know,
you're really dick it this. This is really cool. You're
like all right? And then he was we were done,
and he had this look on it, and I had, like,
really I sung some great songs and brought down the
house and all this, and Brooks has had this look
on his face and that was fantastic, Daddy, that was awesome.
I said, well, I'm so glad you came. He goes,
(22:59):
who the hell was that? Bob Livingston? Guy, Boy, he
kicked your ass, that's.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
The truth, that's and he.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Doesn't like anything anybody. And just Bob just killed him,
I mean killed him. He went and got all all
the all the records. It's so cool.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
That's great. Yeah, so this is hard, and both of
your hearts bless you.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Well, you know what I mean. You're so part of
the fabric of our DNA in our life. I mean, yeah,
that's why we do the stuff we do because of you.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
I mean, really, every time somebody plugs a guitar into
an amp in Austin, whether they know it or not,
they owe a debt of gratitude to Bob Livingston. And no,
that's true, that's absolutely true, and just people need to
know that.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Bob Livingston Teals and Broken Spoke. More tales come up,
and again, get the book when it comes out in
a few months.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
Tales from the Broken Spoke is recorded live but The
Broken Spoke in Austin, Texas, hosted by Country radio Hall
of Fame broadcaster Bob Pickett and Monty Warden, recorded mixed
down and produced by Mike Rivera
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