Radney Foster
Story and pix by Mary Jane Farmer
STEPHENVILLE — Sometimes the stories around the songs are as much fun as the songs, especially when it’s someone like Radney Foster telling those stories.
Radney opened the Larry Joe Taylor Texas Music Festival Tuesday night with a 95-minute set that included hit after hit he’s written in the past 30-someodd years. And with many of those, he told how the song came into being.
Larry Joe opened the campfire stage, which is like an outdoor house concert set around a campfire and illuminated with tiki lamps. Soft, fun, friendly, interactive with the audience, not only for Radney but also for the foursome who followed him — Matt Martindale, Deryl Dodd, Larry Joe, and Dave Perez.
Josh Abbott was also on hand, with a gift for Radney, a gift from the heart. Josh explained that he had won the Texas Regional Radio Report award for his song, “She’s Like Texas,” a fan-voted award. Josh said he was so grateful for the award and for the loyalty of his fans. But, he said, it wasn’t, in his opinion, the best song in the category. Instead, Josh said, Radney’s “Angel Flight,” which was also nominated, was the best song.
So, in front of hundreds of fans and friends, Josh handed over the prize on stage to Radney, who took it with a perplexed look in his face, then shook Josh’s hand with a grateful grip.
Josh said later that “Angel Flight” is the type of powerful song that evokes emotions every time it’s heard.
“Very few songs move you like this one,” Josh said.
Josh Abbott re-awards his honor to Radney Foster
Radney’s set included a multitude of songs made popular across the years. He opened with “Call Me Lonesome” without a lot of clarifying chatter, but before he performed his “Just Like Texas in 1880,” he explained that it was not a song about cowboy-ing quite as much as it was a song about dreaming big. Then, he said, he wrote “God Speed” for his son, who was 5 years old when he moved out of the country. God speed, sweet dreams, little man, the hook lines, told the tale, with the verses adding accent. He said he recorded it five consecutive times on a cassette tape, so his son could go to sleep listening to it every night, knowing his dad loves him.
He told of Keith Urban’s recording one of his songs. He introduced it as saying it was an Australian singer who likes to marry movie stars who called him wanting to cut a tune of Radney’s “Raining on Sunday.” He told of Keith’s wife, Nicole Kidman, telling him the song was sexy. He told of that twice, smiling all the way.
Dave Perez, the anchor accordionist with The Tejas Brothers, also talked about a particular song he wrote for his father’s 75th birthday. He said he asked his dad, as he did every year, what he wanted for his birthday. Usually, he said, his dad didn’t offer any suggestions, but that year he said he wanted a birthday party. He had never had one. So, Dave and his family planned a party they knew would be to his liking, then family and the Tejas Brothers sang him “I Am A Rich Man,” taken from knowledge of dad’s lifestyle as a roving crop-picker and the hard labor jobs he had held since to raise his family.
DD,MM, and LJT also told stories about their songwriting, but similar to what Gary P Nunn says in his lyrics, “Our DJ friends gotta do their job, so 3 1/2 minutes is all we got,” I’ve run out of time here.
And so it went, and it all begins again Wednesday and continues through Saturday night.
Go to larryjoetaylor.com for more details.
For more pix of Radney Foster, click here
For more pictures of the songswap, click here (Sorry, they are dark, but very limited light that night.)