Mary Jane’s original logo
This is the first article I ever wrote on music, as a stringer to the weekly Kerrville Mountain Sun in Kerrville, Texas. We kept this up until I moved to north Texas in 1996, and I earned $10 every week for an article, plus a local music calendar. I’m just resubmitting this as my own trip down memory lane. Dated Aug. 26, 1987, with byline Mary Jane Farmer, American Music Management, and the attached logo was used each week. (I have the original, somewhere in a “safe place.”) This is scanned from a newspaper. Bobby Rector, also a musician, created the logo for me, by hand, and it was in three layers, for however I wanted to use it. He was quite an artist!
“I began listening to Kerrville music in 1980, while working for the Kerrville Festivals, and moved here in April 1981 from Dallas via Austin, both cities saturated with a variety of entertainment on a nightly basis. My city pace changed rapidly, and I found myself driving from the Inn of the Hills and the Club Texan on the west side to the Holiday Inn each weekend night, and passing the same cars an the same people also going back and forth. Those three establishments certainly presented the best in top-40 country and rock n roll, but no other options were open to a person hooked on acoustic, folk, original, jazz, bluegrass, or original or progressive country.
“Slowly and certainly, other rooms began to spring up, such as the now-closed McStip’s, where Beth Williams was featured quite often, the Kerrville City Limits, the Long Branch, and the YO Ranch Elm Watering Hole. With these clubs we got a choice of which rock n roll band or which top-40 C&W band to listen to, but still no venues for originality or variety. Rocky Joe’s was the first to continuously provide a room for listening to songwriters, acoustic acts, and original music groups. Many a good evening of music has been presented there.
“I am still a patron of the Inn of the Hills, and the country-rock bands they bring are among the finest in the state. And hopefully someday the Holiday Inn will again feature live music. Their’s was a jumpin’ place!”
It goes on, and talks about bands I haven’t heard of or from in decades now… the Bow Brannon Band (full contact folk), Steve James (name changed from Steve Chichetti), Brian Young, Southern Image, Mark Ebson, Chuck Price, Dub Blackwell, The Note-Ropers with Ron Knuth on fiddle, Steve Gillette playing at Bobby Mac’s… and you get the drift.
Over time, I wrote about Wayne Kennemer, now deceased, who was involved in the making of The Alamo for that big fancy theater in San Antonio, singing a 1830s song he found, about the Salvation Army Captain who was a songwriter, the Jimmie Rodgers Jubilee, and so much more.
So, if you ever wonder how long Mary Jane Farmer has loved a variety of music… that would be since 1974, when I moved to El Paso and began working with the Border Folk Festival, as a volunteer. And now I remember I’ve been writing about it since 1987, one year after I produced a major, 7-stage, 2-day festival for the State of Texas and Governor Mark White.
Been there, done that, still being there, still doing that!