by Jane Roser
“Snake Farm, it’s just sounds nasty/snake farm, it pretty much is/snake farm, it’s a reptile house/snake farm…oooogh.” Drive-By Truckers artist Wes Freed sang this tune when his band The Mag Bats performed at Cary Street Cafe in Richmond a few years ago. I hadn’t heard it before and my friend Kathleen Larrick told me I should check out the song’s author Ray Wylie Hubbard. I did and have been listening to Hubbard’s tunes ever since.
Combining humor, storytelling, wit, sarcasm, sassiness and honesty at times so biting and brilliant, if his brain were a rifle he’d shoot the stinger off a bee. One example is Hubbard’s famous song “Conversation With The Devil” where he says: “What you won’t find up in Heaven are Christian Coalition Right Wing Conservatives, Country program directors and Nashville record executives.”
“The lyrics are important to me,” says Hubbard, “and I love story songs, they’re almost like old movies where you can become that character; you can really get to know that person.”
An iconic singer-songwriter with humble folk singer beginnings in Texas and New Mexico during the late 60s/early 70s, Hubbard eventually became an inspiration to contemporary alt-country/Southern rock bands such as The Black Crowes and Blackberry Smoke (Blackberry Smoke even paid homage to him in their song “Good One Comin’ On”). Over time, Hubbard gained cult status with songs like “Snake Farm” and “Screw You, We’re From Texas”; his fans are extremely supportive and loyal. In fact, one iTunes reviewer commented that “Ray could sing the phone book while playing the washboard and I’d still give it five stars.”
Hubbard’s own contemporaries included Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Willie Nelson and Jerry Jeff Walker (who originally recorded Hubbard’s famous redneck anthem “Up Against The Wall, Redneck Mother” in 1973) and he notes how each of these artists were important to him. “I feel very fortunate to have met a lot of these musicians that I really liked and were accessible; I’ll always remember how caring they were. I mean, I once watched Willie Nelson sign autographs for almost an hour.”
When I ask Hubbard if he recalled any advice Townes Van Zandt gave him, Hubbard laughs and says, “well, I don’t know about advice, but I knew never to gamble with him. I learned that. Townes was a mess, but he was a brilliant songwriter and we always had fun together. Once, he and Guy Clark were doing a song swap at this place in Dallas called the Three Teardrops Tavern. I showed up and was just hanging out at the bar when all of a sudden Townes goes: “Hey! There’s Ray Wylie Hubbard! Ray, come up here and sing a song.” So I walk up there and Townes hands me his guitar; him and Guy walk off the stage and I start playing this song, then I see the front door of the club open and there’s Guy and Townes getting into a cab, so I played the song and said okay, we’re gonna take a short break; it was always an adventure.”
All photos by Courtney Chavanell
Hubbard’s 16th album, The Ruffian’s Misfortune, released April 7th on Bordello Records and produced by Hubbard and bassist George Reiff, packs 10 songs into one of his best albums yet. The record is the middle child of what is set to become a trilogy covering his triumphs, tribulations and acknowledging those artists who inspired him along the way. His critically acclaimed The Grifter’s Hymnal was the first in the series that will eventually conclude with The Rogue’s Ascension.
“We have four or five songs done for the next album,” says Hubbard, “and there’s a couple more I’m working on, but The Ruffian’s Misfortune kinda goes back to the early records that I listened to-the old Lightnin’ Hopkins and early Buffalo Springfield albums, the way that they sounded which was very roots-rock-blues infested, but with folk influence in the lyrics.” Explaining the album names, Hubbard says he likes titles that sound like old American gothic novels, such as works by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe.
Hubbard’s 21-year old son Lucas, along with Gabe Rhodes, plays lead guitar on the new album which was performed live and completed within five days, often with tracks finished in just a few takes.
“Everything today is so electronic and auto-tuned,” laments Hubbard, “George Reiff and I wanted to make a record like the first Black Crowes record, the first Stones record where these bands just went in and played into their amps, so you can hear the pedal squeaks and string noises; we wanted to make a record like that, most of it was just real organic and letting it happen. The idea was you may not like the singer or the songs, but you’ll like the way it sounds. Someone asked me the other day who do I listen to and I actually listen to my friends. You can hear the humanity and soul; it’s just them performing and singing their lyrics to express what’s inside them.”
The Ruffian’s Misfortune’s first single “Chick Singer, Badass Rockin'” is a cheeky, edgy tune that gives props to female singers such as Joan Jett and Chrissie Hyde. “Bad On Fords” was co-written with Ronnie Dunn (of Brooks & Dunn). Hubbard remembers the day Dunn called him, “it was pretty amazing, I’d never met him before and he told me he’d been listening to The Grifter’s Hymnal and he just really liked it. Tony Joe White suggested we should get together and write some songs, so we met up and wrote “Bad On Fords”. Ronnie sent it to Sammy Hagar [with the intention of Hagar playing guitar on the song] and Sammy thought he was pitching it to him, so Sammy cut it and put it on a record. It’s a love song about an Oklahoma car thief.”
Another track, “Jessie Mae”, is about American blues singer Jessie Mae Hemphill whom Hubbard thought was just “as cool as she could be. We never met, but I just adored her because it was just her and a guitar. She had this leopard skin cowboy hat she would wear and was the epitome of cool, so I wanted to write a song to sort of acknowledge my debt to her as a musician.”
Along with the new album, Hubbard is putting the finishing touches on his 184-page autobiography aptly entitled A Life…Well, Lived (co-written with Thom Jurek and on track for a late June release) which includes a bunch of rogue stories and song lyrics, as well as his inspirations. “I also talk about songwriting, craft and purpose,” says Hubbard, “it was just time to do it.” An instructional DVD about fingerpicking and songwriting is also on the horizon.
Hubbard’s upcoming May 13th show at DCs Hill Country Live is almost sold out and his May 15th show at Sellersville Theater is completely sold out, but there’s still a chance to catch him at Baltimore’s Creative Alliance on May 14th if you don’t dawdle buying your tickets. It’s still important for Hubbard to tour and meet his fans.
“I love going to new places and meeting people. I’ve been doing it for a long time, so it’s just that old road warrior instinct. You can put up with the traveling and the lost luggage and all that stuff because being up on stage and seeing people’s faces-that’s why I do it. We’re all together at that moment and I can connect with the audience on a level that’s fun, but also throw them a line that might have some depth and weight to it that will hopefully inspire and bring them some enjoyment.”
What can one expect from a Ray Wylie show besides kick ass tunes? Excited fans passionately singing along, fun back-in-the-day stories (“Townes his old self told me one time that folk singers need to have some snappy patter between songs as tuning between songs without talking is death eating a cracker”) and no set list. “I usually know what the first three or four songs are gonna be,” says Hubbard, “and what the last two are gonna be, so in between we just see what’s working and what the audience is like, it’s just wide open and that keeps it fresh and in constant motion.” Then Hubbard chuckles and adds, “my band doesn’t always know what’s going to happen.”
Besides being a badass folkie blues poet, Hubbard is also renowned for his brashly clever, hilariously funny Tweets and for connecting with his fans by replying to or retweeting them almost daily. “I have fun with it,” he says, “you know, I’m an old cat and I say if it’s not fun, don’t do it.”
One of my all-time favorite Tweets was last year around Black Friday when a fan mentioned he was glad Hubbard didn’t have a holiday sale. Hubbard’s reply was: “You right. If I discounted my songs it would mean I didn’t think they was that hard to write, can’t give away anguish.” Or this gem of a reply to a Tweet sarcastically asking if he was excited about the upcoming CMAs: “I guess if some of the nominees were on fire, I might pee on ’em…”. Hubbard’s Facebook fan page posts equally charming banter: “Young bands take note: when someone asks you to do something on spec…you think they mean ‘speculation of possible future income; what they really mean is speck not to get paid.”
Ray Wylie Hubbard is one of the coolest cats in the music industry today; he works hard, respects his fans, truly cares about the business he’s been in for over 40 years now and writes songs that tug at your heart and blow your mind. You could say so much has changed about him besides giving up red meat, that some get spiritual ’cause they see his light and some ’cause they feel his heat.
