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Rednecks, Armadillos, and me: thirty years ago my book told the inside story of the Austin music scene--and received what you might call mixed reviews from some of its subjects. It's time to revisit those freewheeling years.

Article Excerpt
I WAS 29 WHEN THE IMPROBABLE RISE OF REDNECK ROCK was published. I had been anxious to write a book but had little idea of how to go about it. Apart from a few months of toil at small-town newspapers, my published output amounted to an eight-line poem in the Texas Observer and four articles in the newborn Texas Monthly; on three of those assignments, feeling too green as a reporter and otherwise insecure in my craft, I had enlisted a collaborator. But one of those early pieces caught the eye of David Lindsey, a slender young man with a well-trimmed black beard and a penchant for stylish attire. Like me, David had blue-collar roots in the West Texas oil fields. Like me, he wanted to write for a living and was working up the nerve to try it. In the meantime, he thought he might make his way as a book publisher.

In the summer of 1973 he mentioned an article I'd written on Austin music to a pretty, dark-haired colleague named Melinda Wickman, suggesting that it might be expanded into a book. Melinda was a photographer with extensive studio training and impatient talent, and she knew me. We had dated briefly when we were growing up in Wichita Falls: Sunday night church followed by Cokes at some drive-in and a round of putt-putt. Neither of us had been fast aboard the roaring train of the sixties. We'd been out of touch for a while when she called. I met David and Melinda for dinner at one of the Night Hawk restaurants that then passed for Austin cuisine. After a couple of hours, we convinced ourselves that we had a book.

We were a very cocky team until an item in Texas Monthly announced that Jay Milner and Chet Flippo were writing books about the Austin music scene. This was chilling news. Milner was a veteran journalist and a novelist who had hitched on as the house writer with Willie Nelson's entourage. Flippo had been covering Texas music for Rolling Stone with great flair. Both were capable of selling their books to national publishers with much deeper pockets than those of Heidelberg, the small shop run by David and his wife, Joyce. In no uncertain terms, David told me that the first horse out of the gate was going to win the derby.

My working life became a blur. The duplex where I lived in New Braunfels was strewn with pencils, pads, recording reels, interview transcripts, album covers, dirty laundry; the faucet in my kitchen dripped for months because I wouldn't take the time to figure out how to change a gasket. (David's feel for the...

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