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Interview: Ray Wylie Hubbard
After cosmic cowboy country pioneer Ray Wylie Hubbard put the finishing touches on 2006’s greasy, gritty “Snake Farm,” a dirty-sounding but keenly intelligent journey into the backwaters of Hubbard’s imagination, the Oklahoma native and New Braunfels resident took the next logical step. He made a movie.
That meant a lengthy wait between “Snake Farm” and Hubbard’s appropriately lengthily titled 14th full album, “A. Enlightenment B. Endarkenment (Hint: There is no C),” which hits stores today. But then, it’s one heck of a movie. Need proof? It prominently features a gun-toting dwarf. “It’s a real dark, weird movie,” laughs Hubbard, 63, over the phone, speaking from the pristine powder of the MusicFest in at Colorado’s Steamboat resort. “It’s not ‘Transformers,’ that’s for sure.”
Hubbard found himself sucked into conversations with Tiller Russell, who directed two videos for “Snake Farm” and shared Hubbard’s enthusiasm for the dusty, edgy westerns of John Ford and Sam Peckinpah. For three years, Hubbard immersed himself in the project, penning the screenplay to “The Last Rites of Ransom Pride,” a story of love, vengeance and the acrid smell of gunpowder.
Russell directed the low-budget indie, lensed in Canada and starring “True Blood” vampire Lizzy Caplan, Dwight Yoakam and Kris Kristofferson. Plans are under way to release the film digitally early this year. For Hubbard, who forged a career of solo albums spotlighting intense, deeply imaginative characters, screenwriting was a natural — but invigorating — fit.
“I’ve had other people record my songs, and that’s great, it’s such a cool thing,” Hubbard says.
“But to see Kristofferson or Caplan say one of your lines, that you wrote, that’s a ‘Heck yeah!’ moment. That was really quite thrilling.”
For Hubbard, whose life defines long, strange and windy, a grim western is just another brick in the wall. He was born in Soper, Okla. — a town nearly wiped off the map by a tornado in “either 1954 or 1956” while Hubbard huddled for shelter in the cellar. His grandmother’s observation that heaven “pours down rain and lightning bolts” forms the centerpiece of the new album’s title track.
He went on to build a prolific career, rising to revered pioneer status in the progressive country movement in the ’70s, when he also penned the famous Jerry Jeff Walker anthem “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother.” But his career and his life stalled out in the ’80s as he struggled with alcohol addiction. His salvation came in the wise words of another legendary Texan.
“When I was younger I led a pretty rowdy life and it got really bad. In November 1987 Stevie Ray Vaughan and another couple of fellows came and talked to me,” recalls Hubbard. “And he was the first guy I had seen that had gotten sober but still had an edge. I was terrified that if I got sober I wouldn’t be able to still write and play music. That gave me hope.”
Hubbard kicked the bottle and emerged a fiercely inventive, raw singer and songwriter with a string of dark storybook solo albums in the ’90s and ’00s. “A. Enlightenment B. Endarkenment (Hint: There Is No C)” continues the trend. Rife with full, well-developed characters — the substance abuser in “Opium” and the intoxicated songwriter of “Drunken Poet’s Dream,” co-written with rising Americana star Hayes Carll — it also boasts contributions from an impressive array of musicians. Singing group the Trishas bring a splash of old-school gospel choir theatrics to “Whoop and Hollar.” The Gourds’ Kevin Russell sings and strums the mandolin on the thundering, Edgar Allan Poe-inspired title track. Seth James and Gurf Morlix also pitch in.
But talking to Hubbard, one gets the impression the most important contribution comes from someone a little closer to his own heart — 16-year-old son Lucas, who plays guitar on two songs. Like any teenager, Lucas’ interest comes and goes, but the slightest mention of his son’s fingerwork turns Hubbard into a proud parent. And Lucas’ contributions lend the album the feel of a family affair, a joyful celebration that plumbs dark depths but ultimately comes up triumphant.
“It kind of comes where he’ll go in spurts, where he’s really into guitar and then he’s really into Halo and then he’s really into building a Mustang. He’s all over the map,” Hubbard says with a laugh. “But I like the way he plays. Hanging around and learning from the guys I play with, such great guitar players that play the song rather than the lick, he’s really taking after them.”
Hubbard plays a free in-store at Waterloo Records, 600 N. Lamar Blvd., at 5 p.m. Tuesday, and a CD release show Friday at Antone’s (8 p.m. $15, 213 W. Fifth St. antones.net).
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