On Monday 26th May, a Steven Fromholz Memorial Concert will be held at Threadgill Theatre as part of the 2014 Kerrville Folk Festival. A reminiscence of the Memorial Concert will form the fourth and final part of this tribute to the late musician. A Steven Fromholz interview dating from 1986 constitutes Parts 1 & 2, the Part 3 is a full Biography including details of Steven’s exploits 1986 – 2014.
Part 2 – A 1986 Interview
The interview with Steven Fromholz was conducted in Room 216 of the Y.O. Ranch Resort Hotel, Kerrville on the evening of Tuesday 27th May 1986. Steven had just played the interviewer, a tape of his latest recording which, at that time, was titled LOVE SONGS. Part 1 of this interview closed with insights into the release of Steven’s 1978 album JUS’ PLAYIN’ ALONG on Willie Nelson’s short-lived, Phonogram Records owned imprint Lone Star Records. The interview continued………..
Then we come to Felicity Records.
Which was founded to do a live album.
At one time, you had a set up called One Man’s Music, was that a precursor of…..
That was just prior to Felicity Records. Felicity came into being – One Man’s Music finished up on the second day of January 1979. Felicity Records came into being, like, on the 23rd or 24th of September of the same year.
Was One Man’s Music a promotional company formed to promote your songs.
Yes, and that was also my managerial organisation. My sister Angela and I were One Man’s Music. We did my publishing out of there. My booking. Publicity, whatever it was, all came under that umbrella.
At one time you had worked for Moon Hill Management.
I was with Moon Hill from late 1972 till the middle of 1977, I guess. Late 1977 perhaps.
Was that where you first encountered Craig Hillis.
I came across Craig Hillis when Dan and I were together in 1970. Craig was living at a place called Moon on the Hill with John Inmon and some other great players. Donny Dolan, who is a wonderful drummer, was there. Also Layton DePenning, a great bass and guitar player. He accidentally came into the place we were playing, and heard me and Dan. We were playing at The Chequered Flag one night and he liked us. Craig Hillis introduced Daniel and I to playing folk music with electric guitars and other instruments behind us. He was a guitar player in Captain Duck and the Farmers Electric Co-op Band and is one of my best friends to this day.
So you went into partnership with Craig Hillis and formed Felicity Records.
Yea, we formed Felicity Records and we were going to do a live recording at Steamboat Springs 1874. We recorded it, and had to name the company something – three days after the record was finished my daughter Felicity was born. Felicity Rose. That’s how we named the company Felicity Records, with a rose in the logo. We’ve still got the company together you know. We’ve done three Xmas albums as you’ll probably have heard.
Yes, I want to come back to that. A single appeared in Britain a couple of years after the FROMHOLZ LIVE album was recorded. One side featured a duet with you and Willie Nelson, singing Hondo’s Song. Was anything else cut at that time.
No, just that. That was an idea which was ahead of its time. Craig had the idea to do it. We cut the thing, and it was difficult to cut – the timing was weird. We didn’t get it mixed for a long time. It hung around for a long, long time. I guess that it’s a collector’s item now. We cut that at Wink Tyler’s Studio – Austin Recording. It was a weird project from the beginning. It was a good idea, but it wasn’t quite executed well enough, to suit anyone. (ED. NOTE. Hondo’s Song was a Fromholz composition. Issued in the U.K. in 1981 by Youngblood Records, Index No. YB 122, the B-Side was I’d Have To Be Crazy, drawn from the LIVE album. Hondo’s Song finally made it to CD as part of the 2011 release TEXAS TRILOGY GOES TO G’NASHVILLE).
LIVE and the Christmas albums apart, there have been a number of other Felicity Records releases. FRUMMOX II, for instance, features all new songs including another three song cycle The Steam And Diesel Suite.
Yea. They’re new Frummox songs to the record, but we used to perform them. This was put together because a bunch of folks wanted another Frummox record. We had no control, and have no control over the original Frummox record. I’m going to get it sooner or later, because I know where it is now, I think. This is a collection of songs that Dan and I did, towards the end – the songs were mostly written after the first Frummox record was recorded. This was what Frummox was doing when we broke up. Let me see – The Angel – I wrote that song in 1965. The Steam And Diesel Suite was written either the winter of 1970 or early spring of 1971. Dan and I were on the road. In a Pueblo, Colorado nightclub called the The Irish Pub, we met a man named Jack Frost. He was a brakeman in Santa Fe. He set us off. I wrote Get Outta My Way first, Dan wrote River Queen, and we wrote Jack Frost together. Talkin’ Trucker Blues, is one of Daniel’s fairly recent songs. New York Goodbye, Dan and I wrote in Philadelphia during 1970. The Porter Makes The Train, Dan and I wrote on a Santa Fe train going from Denver to Fort Worth in 1970. White China Canyons, Dan and I wrote in a mountain town in Colorado – I forget what the town was – probably around 1970. It was the last thing he and I did together. Folks wanted to hear us singing together again so we did this album.
Even though Felicity was your own label, did you feel that pressure to do the FRUMMOX II album, was being exerted by your fans.
Oh, no, no, no. I enjoyed doing it. I think Dan and I, when the ABC record came out, we wanted to make another. Frummox broke up because interest in our area of music died down. Two piece folk music duos with people like Brewer and Shipley – because they were our main competition – they got hotter than we did. We were a bit more esoteric than they were, plus I got a job offer that I couldn’t refuse. FRUMMOX II was done to satisfy our fans and ourselves.
The album is Felicity # 03. FROMHOLZ LIVE was Felicity # 01. There’s an album called AUSTIN ALL STARS, Felicity # 04, which –
There’s a band – a group of musicians called the Austin All Stars who play cover music and they play it great. # 02 was the first Xmas record, THE AUSTIN CHRISTMAS COLLECTION. # 05 and # 06 are the two other Xmas albums. We got Arthur Brown on the last one. He lives in Austin now and he’s a housepainter. He wears some weird shit. He did Lord Of The Dance, the British Xmas carol. It blew him out of his mind. We got Willie Nelson on the last one, singing Silent Night. We’ve also had Bill and Bonnie Hearne, and the Austin All Stars did one song. We did a video of the Bell Carol. There’s an Austin band called 14K, and this next Xmas there will be a video out on MTV of Xmas Bells featuring 14K. We did it late last year, too late to get them to play it, but they love it. Beto and the Fairlanes are on there, and Marcia Ball, and Bob Livingston of the Gonzo’s. My jazz singer friend Mady Kaye, with whom I’ve worked in concert, has also done a song. A lot of Austin bands you may, or may not know – Carolyn Hester was on the second volume, Allen Damron will be doing a song this next winter.
What about distribution of the Austin Xmas albums.
We haven’t made a God damned penny. Craig and I did the first one, because we argued whose idea it was. I think it was mine. He’s sure it was his. I mean, I’m a very sentimental guy and so is Craig. But, an Austin Xmas record – because Austin is kinda different. It’s not Nashville, and it’s not better or worse than – it’s just different. We wanted to give something back, so we decided to sing for ourselves and for our friends. It just progressed from there, because there were are so many great talents there. We’ve done three records and we’ve lost lots of money. The year after next we’ll do another one, and we’ll get Townes Van Zandt on that one. There’s not enough love in the world. Craig and I both recognise that this is trying to give something back. Austin has been very, very good to me and Craig. Craig owns Steamboat now. He didn’t when we made the LIVE record. He owns it now, and it’s important to give something back. With those Xmas albums, we put some people on record and took them into the studio. They had never been there before. Never. Well, not never, not as soon. I can’t say never, but they didn’t have a chance before to do this. Everybody wins and if we lose money, we can tax it off. We haven’t got that much money to lose, but a couple of thousand bucks – we’ll put the record out by God. We got the records on the streets and some folks bought them. It’s a great Xmas gift. When I come to England and Germany this next year, I’m going to bring boxes of those albums because you folks need it.
Returning to movies that you have made, we’ve covered OUTLAW BLUES and you mentioned SONGWRITER.
Before SONGWRITER I was in a picture called CLOAK AND DAGGER with Dabney Coleman and Henry Thomas. Henry is the kid who played Elliott in E.T. I play a big guy with a beard and I have four lines in the picture, but I get good video play. I get good money from that. I’m getting paid. I made another movie this last August, a Dallas production with a similar budget to CHAIN SAW MASSACRE. That kind of deal but I don’t know how good it is yet – It’s called POSITIVE I.D. and I have a legitimate, honest to God acting part. I play an undercover cop. I get third billing in the movie and we’re premiering it soon. Andy Anderson, a movie maker of some renown, directed it. He’s out of Florida originally and is now based in Texas. He spent a long time with the U.T.A. Film Department as head of that Department and he has made award winning short movies. This is his second feature. They’re premiering it at the Munich Film Festival, and that is wonderful – because I didn’t know, till I saw Andy about three weeks ago – he said “Yea, we’re going to the Munich Film Festival, and the promoter in Munich asked who was in the picture.” Andy said, “I told him so and so, and so and so and Steven Fromholz.” The promoter said, “Steven Fromholz, I love his music” (laughs). This is Munich, Germany man. That’s why my new manager and I, want to go to Germany as quickly as possible. It could be a real nice step. I like movies. I like acting. Like Willie says, “It’s better than work, and it sure beats work.”
Tell me about the play WILLIE THE SHAKE, which you performed in during 1983.
The play was written by my publisher Tommy White. I was cajoled and marooned into doing it, by a very strong willed director. I had a great time. It was put on at a place outside of Austin. Every summer they have a Shakespeare Festival there for students. They have students come out with a good director/teacher person and they do Shakespeare. This was a – not a parody of that, but based around that experience. I played the head of the Shakespeare Department, and directed the kids. I’d done a bunch of acting in Colorado during the sixties. McCrimmon was stage manager at a College there – a Catholic girl’s school. They didn’t have enough men for parts. I had a lot of spare time, so I did a bunch of acting out there. I hadn’t done much of that since. This would have been like 1969 and 1970. I hadn’t done a play in a long time, but I really enjoy acting and playing parts. It was the culmination of a lot of connections, with Tommy White being my publisher. He’s a good playwright. It was an experimental situation, and it was really good P.R., plus the play was good and interesting.
Have you been offered any other parts in stage plays.
No, but I’m feeling myself getting into that position, where I want to do it again. I still have a bunch of good friends in theatre. Like I said earlier, in the last five years I’ve been doing more and more and different things. I figure that I’m in show business now. When I did my second movie, I figured I was in show business. As my nightclub act gets better and better, and my comedic timing gets better and better – then, I figure that I’m in show business. When I can do more things, I’m in show business. I love doing more things. I like being all the things I can be, but I’m not sure what the sum of those things are yet. Acting is great sport. I’m just learning about that really.
Do you think that acting is something that is going to become more prominent in your life.
Oh yea, and I’d really like to make some more movies.
But surely you would never give up playing music entirely.
No. Nanci Griffith and I were talking about this earlier. I’ve got to sing and play. I’ve got to go out, and get the light on me, just where I want it. Get my guitar out and bullshit with the folks. Just to see that I’m doing OK. Sing some songs. Entertain the folks. I like to entertain the folks. I enjoy being enjoyed.
Back in 1977, MCA released an album by a guy called Dan McCorison, who was supposedly a friend of yours.
I’ve never heard of him. It was probably a mistake for Dan McCrimmon. It’s just one of those little things, the names are so similar. I remember one time, I played in this PRO-AM – well, I would have if it hadn’t rained – at the Greater Greensboro Open. It’s a big golf tournament that the PGA arranges early in the PGA season in the States. At that time, Susan St. James was hanging out with Stephen Stills. They were, I think, engaged for a short time. Well, somehow they got me mixed up in that, and thought either I was him, or she was with me. I got invited to play this damned tournament, so of course I went. It was funny. That must have been just after we made OUTLAW BLUES about the March of 1978. (ED. NOTE. Susan St. James played the female lead in OUTLAW BLUES, opposite Peter Fonda). It was funny being confused with somebody else. Not even being confused with somebody else really, but the situation was convoluted, if you understand what I mean.
The new album that you have just recorded, you mentioned earlier that you had found a studio in Austin that you really liked.
I recorded this tape at Arlyn Studios in the Austin Opera House. A guy named Freddy Fletcher owns the place (ED. NOTE. Aka Fast Freddy and a drummer, he’s also Willie Nelson’s nephew). It’s a delightful studio, roomy, and was built by a fine acoustic engineer out of Nashville. He kitted it out for a lot of money, and it sounds great. They run it well. This is the first thing I ever heard out of Austin, that I felt was really quality stuff, and it’s mine. I’m not knocking anybody’s product at all, by making that comment.
The first song is called Lady’s Man.
Yes, Lady’s Man. Three ladies sing back-up vocals. Eliza Gilkyson you may have heard of. Karen Kraft you will hear of if you have not, and a girl named Gwen Newsome who I met on the sessions. They’re all singers of different types and qualities, but they work together now and then. Ladies Man is about a year old. My wife loves it. I’m pleased that she likes that song.
Next is a real smooth arrangement of Isla Mujeres. It’s nothing like the version on your LIVE album.
That’s very tropical that song. I’d like to sell that song to – nah – to nobody. I offered it to Rodriguez once and to Ronstadt as well. They weren’t interested. Next is In My Solitude, the Duke Ellington tune. I learned that song with Mady Kaye, my jazz friend, on one of our concerts. I love the song, and I had Budameyer play trumpet, and Bobby is a great player – Johnny Gimble played fiddle. Riley Osbourn played keyboards on all my sessions. Spencer Starnes played bass and Art Kidd was on drums. That’s so you can mention the rhythm section, because the rhythm section make this record. We’d been in the studio for one day, sat there for six hours and went over ten tunes. We wrote all the numbers down, like I play them on stage. The next day and every day after that, doing basics, we’d hit the studio and I’d go in with them. I’d play – like warming up – and get everybody familiar with the songs. Taking my guitar out and go sit down, so that they knew how the songs went. They knew how I wanted them to go and they’d play it. I play on stage so much to back up myself, because you have to – I have to. When I play with other players, I can’t do it like I do onstage. Onstage I’m playing four parts or three parts by myself. I was hip enough to say “Wait a minute, let them play” and it worked. I went back when they’d finished, and laid down real straight rhythm parts. Like your hired Nashville men play – just straight chonk, chonk, chonk stuff. When I’m playing for myself, I pop and I zip and I slide. I’m not a great guitar player, but I move around a lot and it looks good.
Then we have I’d Have To Be Crazy. The girls singing back up there sound black.
One of them is. Gwen Newsome. We’d just recorded another song that comes later on the tape, A Candle Burns. There’s a real sweet country “ooh” part in it. Gwen with her gospel soul couldn’t hack it. It wasn’t in her chops. Not to say that she is not a great singer, but that wasn’t in her repertoire. She’d never had to do that before, so I had Eliza sing it. After that, we started working on I’d Have To Be Crazy. When I said what I wanted on that song, Gwen just took it and did that gospel stuff. That’s why they sound so black. Gwen made them sing, under my direction, what she was singing. I said, “You sing what she says to sing, because that’s black southern Baptist gospel.” That’s what I wanted. The song starts out – it’s like a pyramid – it’s like a Mayan pyramid with a nice smooth flat place on top at the very peak. The song builds up to where the girls come in. On electric mandolin is Paul Glasse who works with the Festival here a lot. He’s a geat mandolin player. He whips this lead out of her vocal. He whips it right out of Gwen’s screaming top note and keeps it up there, at this lovely peak. Then the girls come back in, and it goes back out, on that pyramid structure. I was able to just get, what I by God wanted. Without Gwen in there, I couldn’t have got it. It made her feel better too, because she had a hard time on the song just prior to that. Boy, did she have a tough time with it.
Next up is the song you said Gwen struggled with, A Candle Burns.
My old manager Larry Watkins publishes that tune, and I was at his house one night –
So who is the songwriter, Shane Davis.
I’ve never met the man. I heard the song and I thought how simply lovely, and how sad. I said, “Man, I’ve got to cut that song.” I wanted to cut some songs by other people anyway. I’m trying to show some versatility on this record, as opposed to getting in a groove and staying there in one style. I think I’m doing that and that song – I already had a song called Cheatin’ Home To Me, on the flip side of the tape we heard – it’s a real good two step country tune, with a brim-to-brim dancing feel. This song balanced that one off. I’m trying to balance both sides of the record. If it comes out, which it will I’m sure on vinyl, I want it balanced. You play one side, then the other. You’ll not hear the same thing, but a balance in there and that’s what that song supplied. It’s a good tune.
And then there’s Blue.
The full title is Blue Would I Be. That’s a pretty new song.
It has a real neat hook line.
It’s full of them. I love that song. That’s a song that everybody is singing right now, who has heard the tape. They like that song. It’s not more than six months old. With the way I write, that song is recent.
Cheatin’ Home To Me, comes next.
That is a song I had to write. I couldn’t help it. There was no way to avoid writing that song. Wes Kalauza supplied the steel guitar licks. It’s a Czechoslovakian name. He lives up in a little town in West Texas, North of Waco (ED. NOTE. Wes is credited in the liner as The Waco Kid). I’d played with him, one time, on a Governor’s Sesquicentennial Ball. He was part of the band, and I wanted a steel player. My engineer Dave McNair – great engineer, wonderful ears – he said to try Wes. Wes doesn’t say much. He’s the kind of guy who you say, “Hey, say something in the microphone to see if it is working alright on talk back.” He says “Talk back” and that’s it, but he plays great and sweet. The next song is Making My Getaway.
That seemed a strange track in the context of the rest of the album. It’s a real piece of rock ‘n’ roll.
It’s not going to be in that position on the record. That tape was my first attempt to put the songs in their positions. In my mind, I’ve already changed three or four things. That’s a getaway song and that’s the truth. That’s the song that says “Get me out of here. I’ve had all I want.” That’s the song that scared managers to death (laughs). Making My Getaway – I liked that song a lot, because I mean exactly what I said. I also enjoyed putting that song together as a producer, because it’s hot and it moves. It’s not overbearing. It’s not as though somebody is going to jump on your head and beat you down, but it moves and it moves good. I learned that offbeat shit from Stephen Stills. It’s offbeat, backbeat stuff. There’s not another backbeat, offbeat song on the record.
Who is playing saxophone on that track.
A man named Tony Campisi. I met him when I was doing a radio show. He’s a Sicilian dude from Houston, who moved to Austin looking for musicians to play with. He does stuff with the Houston Pops and the Houston Symphony. When ZZ Top were on the Johnny Carson Show here in Austin a week or so ago, the charts that the band was playing were Campisi charts. He and I became fast friends. My respect for him as a player – all the horns, all the flutes – all that stuff on the record is him. Everything. He also played on the next song, Rainy Day, the Jimmy Van Heusen tune. That’s a bass flute he is playing and it blew me away. The tune comes from 1953. My friend Bud Shrake suggested I record the song. The ballad record was his idea anyway. I did it for him. By the time I finally learned the tune and sang the vocal, I’d fallen in love with the song. It’s like Nanci Griffith said, it’s her favourite cut on the record. If I can have a hit on a standard then, doctor my eyes. It’s a very good tune. Then there’s Jane’s House where I live – where I’m lucky to live. I’m gonna take it back and get my guitar player and my squeezebox player to cut that song again.
So recapping, which tunes on Love Songs didn’t you write.
I didn’t write A Candle Burns, Here’s That Rainy Day and In My Solitude.
Where are you going to try to push this record.
I’m going to go to New York City first and approach – I have good connections with CBS. I have connections with Warner Brothers. Of course I have a good record with Capitol. I’m going to approach the folk I think would like this record. It’s gonna be hard to and hard not to, classify some of that stuff as real country stuff. But it is. Some of that stuff is real country stuff. I think there are folks who ought to listen to love songs, and that’s what I’m selling.
Even with your own label Felicity Records, are you looking for another record company to place this album with.
Well, if nothing else happens and if no one buys the rights to release my record, I’ll put that sucker out on Felicity Records so fast, it will make your great British head spin.
Having set up your own label, do you feel happy about trying to deal with other record companies.
Yes, because I feel I have something they will like. Like I said, the worst I have is a really great demo tape –
And at the best –
The best demo tape that you can make. The best however, is an album that comes out and which folks love to buy and dance to. I wanted things they could dance to. I wanted songs that would touch people in a variety of ways, but based around love. They’re all love songs of one sort or another. Making My Getaway is freedom – a love of freedom. I enjoy singing ballads, especially standards like In My Solitude. The first time I sang that on stage, I stopped an audience of four-hundred folks in the auditorium, and eight-hundred folks standing around the outside of the amphitheatre. I nailed them. They all just went – “Oooh.” I thought well that’s a real good tune, I’d better sing that song again. Rainy Day I just learned for this record – that and A Candle Burns are songs I had to learn to do. It touches me, you know. It’s a sad song and it gave me a chance to sing all of my range. Rainy Day goes from way up here, to way down here. In My Solitude moves around that low edge. Rainy Day goes through a vast warehouse of musical notes.
One thing I came to Texas for was to see Steven Fromholz. I didn’t think I would see the same Fromholz who made the LIVE album, but it was an opportunity to see a legend.
Silly boy (laughs). I’ve got longevity and I’m a survivor.
Onstage the other night you mentioned that you missed Kerrville last year because you had to go to Alaska. I guess you went to visit Darcie.
That was to go to Darcie’s High School graduation, and bring Darcie back to Texas – which I did. She’s 18, going on 27 (laughs). She’s lovely, and quick as a whip, though she’s calming down a bit. When she first got to Texas – having come from Fairbanks, Alaska to Austin, Texas – it was a remarkable change, and it shocked her hard. She was a kid at the time and now she is a young woman. It’s very obvious. She was at my house for dinner last Thursday night and we’re really good friends. I love her dearly and she loves me. Our relationship has been such that we can tell each other things that fathers and daughters might not necessarily talk about. She’s been to see me since she was eight years old, every summer – until now. That’s not a full-time relationship. I’ve always been a musician and a player, and she has travelled with me on the road. She toured with me in 1978, over Xmas – me, Leon Russell and Willie Nelson. I took my whole family and went on the road. Me and Janey and Darcie, and a friend of ours named Karla Marshall, who helped us with her. Darcie has been out there with me. She met Willie Nelson and Leon Russell, and knows all those folks. She told me, “Oh, I quit smoking daddy, when I was six years old.” She’s a hippie’s kid. She was born in 1967 when we were in California. She grew up in a guitar case almost, till her mother June and I broke up. She’s a joy and she’s really fun and we’re getting closer and closer. She likes what I do. I took her in the studio one day, when I was doing a bunch of stuff. I started out by playing the mixes for her. Especially what is happening right now and she likes what I’m doing, so it must be OK.
Can you tell me something about this radio show which you did in Austin.
It started in April of 1984 and lasted till the September of 1985. It was a two-hour long radio show, with a live nine-piece band and two comperes – myself and Sammy Allred as the host and co-host (ED. NOTE. Sammy is one of the Geezinslaw Brothers). It was presented on the Austin Opera House stage – we began at the Continental Club, but after a few weeks, that venue got too small. It didn’t take long. We went to the Austin Opera House and in two hours featured five bands a night and all sorts of music. Broadway shows that played in Austin with local casts. Fats Waller shows – conjuncto music, like the Mariachi Estrella – rock n’ roll of all sorts and other genres – folk singers, individual songwriters, lesbian quartets. Big Xmas galas with weird people and fantastic music. It was eighty weeks of live radio on KTXZ, which is a small local AM station. I was working with them in different associations, and I owned part of it for a short time. Almost all the people we had on were Texas players, although we did have for instance, the City Lights Orchestra from Kansas, Missouri who are a knockout. I had some really good friends of mine come down from Arkansas. Pals of mine, from all over Texas. I had, God bless him, Steve Goodman on the show just before he died. He was down the street playing and we had been friends for a while. I ran down to where he was playing and said, “Hey man, I’m doing a live radio show. C’mon up.” He came up and played – that was about two months before he died. Maria Muldaur. Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. Anybody who we could get, people passing through town. Roy Head. Blues people. Jazz people. Bebop. We were on, from eight to ten on Monday nights and I sang a couple of songs every show. I introduced commercials – introduced my friend and pal Sammy Allred, one of the funniest people on radio – in the world, for that matter. We had jugglers on the show, my friend Turk Pipkin came on. He said he was going to juggle white mice. He had three balls, that squeaked – that kind of weird bullshit. We had a belly dancer on the show one night. We had comedians that travelled through town, who played the Last Stops and Comedy Stores. We entertained Austin. And we had a live audience, every night we were on. It varied from 40 people to 300 people, depending on what was going on, and what kind of night it was. There was a bar. It was a nightclub radio show. We had commercials every fifteen to twenty minutes, and it worked, for eighteen months. Just on Monday nights. If it had been seven days a week, they’d have had to have paid me a whole lot of money. It was remarkable. After we did that show, suddenly all over the country, shows popped up with a similar format. Dallas had a live show. Another radio station in Austin had a live show. I’ve been ahead of my time, all my life. I hope I still am. No, I hope I’m catching up right now. I want to catch up now, and go with it for ten years. That radio show was fun. I made contacts on that show. We had Steve Gillette on the show, and Peter Rowan came on the show. Tried to get John Hartford, but we couldn’t get him, coming through town. Omar and the Howlers were on the show, as well as the LeRoi Brothers, Marcia Ball and Angela Strehli. Most of the blues singers in town came on. We had the cast of OLIVER on the show, with the kids singing their songs and Fagin sang one of his tunes. A pretty strange mix, but it worked. Then the money ran out. The budget wasn’t ever that high, anyway. The station was – the night time signal was such that we weren’t reaching the demographics we had to reach to make it work. On a Monday night it was hard to draw folks in, in the numbers that we needed to draw. It just went off the air. They brought it back in another form. We did interviews and all kinds of bizarre stuff. Its back now, out of Alley Oops in Austin, with Sammy Allred and his partner Rockin’ Bob, the morning guy off the radio station. It’s a different kind of show. It’s not the same. It’s not doing well I understand. It was great experience with a nine -piece stage band every week. I could sing anything I wanted.
Did you ever perform any of your Love Songs on the show.
Yes, I did Isla Mujeres. I also did Ghost Riders In The Sky. I did For What It’s Worth, the Stephen Stills tune. I did Dixie Chicken. I had the kind of band who could play anything, and would. We had a rehearsal every Monday, from four till about six or seven, went through our stuff and their stuff. It wasn’t much of a rehearsal, but it worked for those guys.
Who were the players that you had in the band.
They were just really good friends of mine. One of my cohorts – one of my helpers put the band together – they were great horn players. Campisi would sit in with us. We had a player named Michael English, one of the most technically proficient guitar players in Austin – he’d play anything you wanted played. They could all read music and were not afraid to write charts and shit like that. We had charts on all our tunes. Walked on stage and everything fell in place.
Steven Fromholz in 1986 looks great and seems to feel comfortable with his life. Don’t you feel that you’ve got to go out to the edge anymore.
Oh, I go out to the edge now and then. Not as much as I used to. All I have to do now is go ahead and play and sing. Entertain the folks and keep myself healthy and looking good. Otherwise, it ain’t worth it. It’s all there for me to do, and the time is right I think. What I want to do is popular music. I want that front edge of the wave. Hank Williams Jr. for instance, his latest hit is something like My Blue Heaven – or some oldie like that. My ballads might just be the way to the top. I don’t care if husbands love it. It doesn’t make any difference to me, at all. Their wives probably buy more records than they do in the first place. This album – it was really funny for a while, because I’ve always been hard to put in a box. They say, “Where do I put Fromholz records. What part of the shelf do they go on.” Janey, my wife said “Man, you’ve got to make your own box. Take it to the record store and that way, you’ll get a Fromholz bin.” I told the kids at the Songwriters School today “You don’t have to sound like anybody else. Be yourself” (ED. NOTE. At the 1986 Kerrville Folk Festival, Steve Fromholz and Nanci Griffith assisted Bob Gibson with the Songwriters School). I do lots of stuff. One of my next projects is that I want to produce other artists. You know, if someone approaches me. One of the things I got out of this project here, which is clean as a whistle, is that I feel I can now help some performers to produce their records. I’d like to do that for somebody else. I think that I can do that now. I know enough and I don’t know enough, where I can do it. My techniques are my own, I think. The next project I want to produce of my own music is a string band record, including Texas Trilogy and Man With The Big Hat. It will also feature some other string band things that I have written in the last ten to fifteen years. The songs lend themselves to that string band style, which is damned near like an English skiffle band. It gets real close to that. It’s goodtime string band music.
Not bluegrass.
No, it’s not bluegrass music at all. It’s probably closer to jug band music, than it is to bluegrass. Thinking about it, it’s probably closer to bluegrass than it is to skiffle band music. It’s string band music – almost that Appalachian string band kind of music. It’s living room music, with guys with upright basses, banjos and mandolins and stuff. They’ll be playing my songs, the way I want them played and I know the players who can do that. The Trilogy is my greatest challenge, because I’ve got to cut that just right. To do that, I’ve got to sing it with emotion and meaning and musical fulfilment, and I’ve got to have the musicians where they can play along with that – where I’m not screwing with them too much. I’m working on that now, in performing. In my performances, I’m trying to get it where I want it. To sing it just right.
When you sang Texas Trilogy the other evening, it sounded fresh and new.
It was a very good rendition, that night. I’ve slowed things down. I’m not in a hurry with it and sometimes I get in a hurry with it. The songs should run about thirteen and a half minutes. Sometimes I sing it in about twelve forty, twelve forty five. That’s way too fast and means that I’m rushing something. What I usually rush, is the whole song. When I don’t rush it, it feels like it did the other night. It gets laid back. The first part is not too fast and not too slow. The second part starts off slow, and gets a train to go in. The third part kind of rolls back down to a nice steady pace and stays there. When I get in a hurry, they all rush. They all sound frantic, and I’ve got to watch that. Man With The Big Hat, is a hit song for somebody. It will be the longest hit ever in country music, except for something like Delta Dawn. I’ve got some other delightful string band things that are pretty, pretty. I’ve got one song called, The Pillars Of The Temple. That’s one hell of a tune.
Aren’t you worried though, that if you do a project like Love Songs and then follow it up with a string band album, that you will confuse the public.
No, not if I do it well, and if it sounds like me. I’m not afraid, is what I’m saying. Why should I allow anybody else to box me up, I sing and write different kinds of tunes. Nanci treats her songs as individuals. I feel I must do the same. I owe it to my tunes. They’ve lived long enough and served me well enough. I’m still cutting songs I wrote almost twenty years ago, which the Trilogy will be soon. I’ll cut it later this year or early next year. That’s damned near twenty years of that tune. It stands up real staunch. I’ve got mother’s daughters right now, who are eighteen years old, listening to that same song and raving about it. Their mothers liked it. I must be doing something right, somewhere. The trick is to make it believable to my audience. Present the song in such a way, where they say “That really is Fromholz” – and this really is me. This is how I see things at this point in time. There is a renaissance in the record business. If you look at the independents, they’re jumping – Rhino, Rounder – they’re jumping. 
The big ones are going to have to jump in too, in their own way. Well, I’m part of that business. I’m that something that’s a little bit different. I’m very listenable and this record is eminently danceable. My string band record is gonna make folks cry. Make folks do this (ED. NOTE. Steven snapped his fingers), and make folks wonder about shit. That’s all I want. Some folks like what I do. Some folks don’t think I’m worth a damn. Most folks seem to like what I do and I also give a good stage show. That is what I love the most. Studio is work. Onstage is pure pleasure.
It’s fun.
Damned right. Folks clap and lights are on, and it sounds good (laughs).
FOOTNOTE. I mentioned earlier that Steven Fromholz and Nanci Griffith assisted the late Bob Gibson with the 1986 Kerrville Songwriters School. Prior to the interview, Nanci was present in Room 216 when Steven played the LOVE SONGS cassette. In 1988 Griffith recorded an album titled LITTLE LOVE AFFAIRS.
Photo Credits: Interview Part 2
001 FROMHOLZ LIVE! [1979] album cover
002 L. to R. Fromholz & BW Stevenson, probably Kerrville Folk Festival (Photo: Brian Kanof)
003 FRUMMOX II [1982] album cover, L. to R. Dan McCrimmon, Steven Fromholz
004 Steven Fromholz, 1985 Kerrville Folk Festival (Photo: Merri Lu Park)
005 L. to R. Stephanie Rascoe & Steven Fromholz, a still from Positive I.D. [1987] (Photo: Andy Anderson, Universal Pictures)
006 LOVE SONGS [1988] cover of original cassette-only release
007 EVERYBODY’S GOIN’ ON THE ROAD accompanied by The Almost Brothers [1991] cover of original cassette-only release
008 Bald Eagles At Buchanan Lake [1992] cover of original cassette-only release
Brought to you from the desk of the Folk Villager.
