"Hey, buddy. Bill Hearne here. Sorry I missed your call. Been watching the damn Dallas Cowboys game on TV [they were losing], so I haven't had a chance to get back to you tonight. Call me when you can — tomorrow, maybe. Bye."

I played a two-week game of phone tag with local folk-country singer

Bill Hearne. As a fellow Texas transplant, his voice message made perfect sense, and I immediately understood his priority. Even during preseason play, it is normal for us reformed hicks to ditch daily routines and responsibilities for a chance to watch the pride of Dallas strut their stuff on the field. You can take the man out of Cowboys country, but you can't take the cowboy out of the man. Just ask Bill. He'll tell you all about it — and everything else, too. Talkin' ain't exactly his weak point.

Dallas-born Hearne started playing guitar at the age of 9. "Because of my visual impediment [Hearne is nearly blind, and his wife, Bonnie, is legally blind], my parents realized that I couldn't do a lot of things that other kids could do in school and sports," Hearne explained over a plate of enchiladas at The Shed last month. "Because my own parents couldn't afford it, and not having childhood playmates, my aunt and uncle began to foster my love of music." His guitar teacher, the Western-swing picker Charles Tyler, enlarged sheet music for Hearne, but "Charles found that trying to read music was inhibiting me more than helping. After a while, he just turned me loose and said, 'You're hearing what needs to be played, so just play.' And then everything just clicked."

Hearne didn't start playing professionally until he was well into his teens, around the time that he had a poignant encounter with Buck Owens, whom he calls "his first hero": "I started loving country music at a very early age. I gravitated toward its simplicity, and even though I wasn't old enough to understand anything about lost love, heartache, or adultery, I loved the energy in the songs. ... Here's what happened: it was about 1966, and my older brothers, who really looked old enough to be my dad, snuck me into this honky-tonk club in Dallas. It was huge, like 2,000 seats, and Buck Owens was there with his band, The Buckaroos. Somehow, my brothers and I got separated, and me — this 16-year-old kid — made his way to the front of the stage. I was taking in every guitar lick, every vocal nuance, every lyric, and boy, was I singin' it out loud. About that time, this good ol' redneck in front of me turns around, and he says, 'Would you shut the hell up?!' and I did, too; he put the fear of God in me. After the show, I went up to Owens to have him sign my picture book, and I said, 'Man, I know all your songs.' And he looked up at me and said, 'Yeah, boy, I noticed.'

He noticed. That was that."

So how did honky-tonk duo Bonnie and Bill end up in New Mexico?

"Bonnie and I knew this folk trio in Austin, Texas, back in the late '60s, and they played at this club we hung out at called the Chequered Flag. It was the center of the emerging acoustic singer-songwriter music scene in Austin at the time — where Bonnie and me met, became an entity, cut our teeth. These guys called themselves Three Faces West. It was Ray Wylie Hubbard, who's famous for writing 'Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother' — which Jerry Jeff Walker ran away with and eventually exploited, unfortunately. Then there was singer-songwriter Rick Fowler, who still lives in Red River, and another guy [Wayne Kidd] who still lives in Taos. As kids, their parents would take them to Red River, and they all found jobs there. The guys eventually started up a little coffee shop there called The Outpost, an alcohol-free joint that seated about 90 people. In the summer of 1970, they said, 'Y'all come on up; all these Texans will love ya.' And sure

enough, they did. We fell in love with Red River and went back the next year and did the same thing. In '72, we were asked to come up for the whole summer, and they paid our room and board. Didn't give us much money, but they took care of us. We'd open up with about a 30-minute set at The Outpost, and then walk right across the street to this bar called the D Bar D, you know, like a ranch. It's called the Motherload now, but at the time, it was sort of a redneck, roadhouse mountain bar. And me and Bonnie'd go over there with our bass player — other musicians would sit in — and they gave us $125 a week. We were playing about six steady gigs a week, and that was fantastic. We ended up staying in Red River for about 18 months, had let go of our apartment in Austin, and started playing in Taos, Santa Fe, and other places. We did end up moving back to Austin for a while, but we kept coming up here, playing bourbon blues country-type stuff."

By the late '70s, life for Bill and Bonnie had taken a nose dive in Texas: "Around '78, things in Austin got really ... bad for us. Country-music mania had died. The whole scene was fading. Cocaine cowboys and club owners were going out of business, goin' broke. In Austin, it seemed like you could make more money starving than playing music. In the spring

of '78, we got a call from a couple that ran the Alpine Lodge in Red River, and they owned a bar called The Red Onion. When we started playing there, folks started calling it Chubby's Tavern. Now, I don't know if they named it after me, because I was pretty chubby at the time — but I'm not anymore.

"The owners invited us to play during the main tourist seasons, and we said, 'Yeah, man, we'll do it.' We'd book shows in Taos, Santa Fe, and Texas during the off-season. It was all about stability, solid income, and having a reliable gig. In the fall of '79, we moved; we just packed up — lock, stock, and barrel — and left Texas for Red River. My nephew, Michael Hearne, had already migrated up there, along with a couple other Austin folks. Michael Martin Murphey had already moved to Taos, and he'd take the Motherload house band on tour with him. Through pure serendipity, a whole new sort of mini-Austin music scene evolved in Northern New Mexico. And six nights a week, the Motherload was packed. For several years, it was a youthful, happenin' spot."



Unfortunately, the party for Bill and Bonnie in Red River wouldn't last either. To hear Bill tell it, generation gaps, a sagging Reagan-era economy, and the fringe lifestyle whittled away at the patience of Red River's new guard: "Around 1986, money got tight for everybody up there — and everywhere, for that matter. The town stopped building condos, working-class folks had no spending money, and a whole generation that had once been a fixture at the bars was all grown-up. I mean, there just wasn't a younger generation to replace them; they were starting businesses and families of their own. Things started really waning in the late '80s. The family that hired Bonnie and me at the lodge sold their business, and the new owners were right-wing religious fundamentalists — which is OK — but they weren't too keen on honky-tonk bars or live music. Sadly, The Red Onion bar is now closed — but, dammit, a lot of good music came out of there.

"Come 1991, we were saying, 'We gotta go, we gotta do something.' Being visually challenged, we felt very isolated. We had to go to Taos to do anything at all: grocery shopping, dry cleaners, you name it."

By that time, Bonnie and Bill's notoriety in Austin was ancient history. They thought about going back, but the clubs had adopted a new music scene and attracted a whole new generation. "We were dinosaurs back there. As much as I missed Austin and loved it, moving back would have been a disaster. So, on a leap of faith and not looking back — almost 12 years to the day after setting up camp in Red River — we moved to Santa Fe."

Partly because of their physical disabilities, the Hearnes planned well in advance for their move to the City Different. They scouted venues and made a lot of new friends, including the owners of El Farol and the Inn of the Governors' bar (called The Forge at the time). "We played regularly there in the mid-'80s with our bass player, Steve Lindsay, who also used to play with Jono Manson. The bar had a beautiful acoustic piano that Bonnie used before we had a keyboard for her."

Around that time, there was a rank change at La Fonda in Santa Fe. Evelyn Martinez took over as food and beverage manager, and she and hotel owner Samuel B. Ballen [who died in February 2007] were thrilled that the Hearnes had moved to town. "Martinez is a big fan of two-steppin', which worked out well for us. She's solely responsible for bringing me and Bonnie into the La Fiesta Lounge and making us an institution at the hotel — and in Santa Fe — over the past 15 years or so."

Hearne wears his feelings on his sleeve, and although he appreciates Santa Fe's long embrace, he isn't shy about offering a few opinions on the state of country music, and, more specifically, on Santa Fe's music scene, which he sees going the way that Red River's eventually did. "Santa Fe has kind of stagnated musically. ... And don't get me wrong, there's a bunch of great musicians here, but some of them seem to be standing around with their hand out, and they're not really dedicated to working at it all too hard. Also, in Santa Fe, there aren't a lot of young professionals — and by young, I mean in their 30s — who have the discretionary income to support a local live-music scene week in and week out.

"Besides, country music today has shunned just about all of us dinosaurs, and it ain't even country music anymore. I'm not a songwriter; I just sing what I love. And I'm not cryin' or whinin' or saying 'poor me,' but in the industry, there's this pervasive attitude that you have to be a songwriter to have any merit. It chaps my hide. Nevermind that I can play the guitar the way I do or choose the songs I sing with a tough-as-nails attitude. Why should I put out mediocre songs I've written when I can spread great music by folks like Guy Clark, Delbert McClinton, and Merle Haggard? That's all I want is to play great music and be respected for what I do. There are songwriters out there that should be sung, and that's what I'm here for and why I keep on keepin' on."

details

• Bill Hearne, honky-tonk
• 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 22, Second Street Brewery, 1814 Second St.,982-1160, no charge
• 8-11 p.m. Friday-Saturday, Oct. 19-20, 7:30-11:30 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday, Oct. 24-25. La Fiesta Lounge, La Fonda Hotel, 100 E. San Francisco St., 982-5511, no charge

SIDEBAR ***



Listen up

For health reasons, Bonnie Hearne bowed out of performing regularly with her husband, Bill, in 2003. With encouragement from friends and devoted fans, Bill still holds court with his duo and trio at

La Fonda's La Fiesta Lounge every Wednesday and Thursday night, and his Roadhouse Revue band continues to tour and play in Taos and Santa Fe. Bill Hearne's Roadhouse Revue debut CD, Heartaches & Honky-tonks (Frogville Records),was released last April and has had local, national, and international airplay, capturing respectable positions on the Freeform American Roots Chart and the Euro Americana Chart, both compiled in part by radio DJs.