Hooked on music at Hooker’s

Robby White and Jon Arnett

Story and pix by Mary Jane Farmer

One tiny room in a out-of-the way Texas saloon — the one used in John David Kent’s video “My Girl” — was filled with so much talent Saturday night that it overflowed into the breezeway. It had to — the main room was capacity crowd.

Hooker’s Bar & Grill hosted the self-named North Texas Music Mafia,  with Robby White, Jerrod Medulla, and Chuck Allen Floyd at mid-mafia. They brought a bevy of other singer-songwriters and together blended their guitar licks with their live songs for hours from the quaint corner stage.

Together, these musicians played together like the professionals they are — courtesly, complimentarily, harmonies mixed with guitar licks — and yet some had never even met others.

Jerrod and Chuck Allen have a total of seven Texas-charted hits. Robby’s songs off his last CD, “Backroad Therapy,” have had heavy airplay.

Saille Branch was one of those who also played. Saille, a man always with a surprise facade, has a song hitting the radio stations now, “Life I Chose,” a powerful number about life on life’s terms. Nate Kipp, a metroplex-area songwriter, has also been heard quite often on the radio, especially through the Dallas-based Americana station KHYI.

Hank Van Hawkins, who has partnered at times with former Shiner Rising Star top band singer Richard Paul Davis on some duo work,  was new to the mafia mix, as was Jon Arnett, who drove down from Oklahoma with Chuck Allen. Both amazing songwriters and performers.

Chuck Allen said that the music-mafia trio is planning a couple of unique ways to blend their bands and talent, one being a “Front Man” band consisting solely of singer-songwriters who usually front the bands. Hide and watch, is all I can suggest, which is what I am going to be doing, eagerly waiting to watch this unique concept.

Hooker’s Bar & Grill is in the tiny town of Westminster, Texas, which sets, although officially in Collin County, about exactly in the corner of Collin, Fannin, and Grayson counties.

For photographs, click here

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