Feast Day of St. Victor of Marseille
Patron saint of feet? Something like that. Saturday night was Billy Bob’s, the “largest honky-tonk in the world,,” according to the hype.
Personally, I just think it’s an okay place to see music performed. The local folks always added a much-appreciated dose of color. The headliner was Michael Martin Murphy, a vestige of the cosmic cowboy movement, the original outlaws, back “in the day.” Back in the day, it was Michael Murphey, and he was one of the originals.
Admitting that I was influenced by that music at a certain time, in my life, obviously leaves some wide-open suggestions as to age. Something I lie about, as often as possible. According to some sources, I’m really suitable for retirement living.
Yet, the song Michael Murphey opened with on Saturday night was a familiar tune, and one that I’m particularly fond of, “Southwestern Pilgrimage.” To suggest that the song was a big influence in my life is weird, because, it’s melody haunted me for years and years. Drifted out to New Mexico, then further, on into the Arizona territories, doing my own version of a Southwestern Pilgrimage. I think the lyric is something about, “and where the wheel stops, nobody knows.”
Throughout the show, the banter between songs, the singer was clearly a real cowboy these days, a singing cowboy, like Roy Rogers et al, and the Michael Murphy was clearly grown, matured and walking a fine line. Member of the NRA, so he said from the stage to a rousing display of audience approval, and yet one of his early songs was a protest song “Geronimo’s Cadillac.”
Folks with a Western American heritage don’t have trouble reconciling such points of view, and I found it interesting that the singer pleaded for more grazing animals. Not more cattle, not more horses, but more grazing animals on the prairies. Only makes sense, too.