Biography

What do Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Butch Hancock and Lloyd Maines all have in common with the name Eddie Beethoven? Aside the fact that these songwriters and musicians all grew up together in Lubbock, Texas...they're all featured performers on a new, much awaited and long overdue album. That album, is Eddie Beethoven's "Blame It On The Wind". It's a collection of songs and recordings that define the sound of West Texas rock and roll, with lyrics and poetry that is almost a trademark for Lubbock-based songwriters. Laying down the musical foundation for the album is The Everydudes...an Austin-based band that is appropriately made up of true and honorary Lubbock musicians. To top it off, are performances by some very talented and special aforementioned guests.
Some of these songs might sound familiar to you, and not from performances by The Everydudes. Joe Ely has recorded and released several of Eddie Beethoven's songs over the years. Joe and Eddie being long-time friends, spent their youths as free spirits, traveling the country as hobos. They wore out the soles of their cowboy boots, hopping freight trains, hitchhiking, and walking endless miles of two-lane blacktop. They would write songs and poems, selling them on street corners for food money. It was a time they would write songs they'd not only sing, but songs they had lived. Many songwriters and musicians from Lubbock, now call Austin their home. These are the artists that have built the strong musical connection between Lubbock and Austin, that has become so understood in Texas music. Though Eddie Beethoven has kept his roots in Lubbock, he's an artist that's given that musical bond its strength. And the album release of Eddie Beethoven, "Blame It On The Wind", will once again give Austin and the rest of the world, a sweet taste of Lubbock, Texas rock and roll.

BIO Long Form:


If you so boldly ask the question as to how Texas has produced such a vast number of great songwriters, musicians, and artists...you'll find yourself in a conversation that simply has no end, no stopping point. Ask the same question about West Texas, and one place in particular...Lubbock, Texas...you'll walk away perplexed and confused, knowing less than you did before. And Lubbock will laugh at you, as it knows its mystery is too sacred to reveal to anyone.

Lubbock is the Texas desert. It's in the middle of nowhere, not close to anyplace in any direction. It's flat, dirty, and windy, surrounded by cotton fields and dryland crops. It is a vast and violent emptiness, full of isolation, desolation, and desperation. A place you learn to accept and adapt to, just in order to keep your sanity. But then again, sanity is relative in Lubbock.

So, when you look at the songwriters and musicians born and bred in Lubbock, you can understand the tools and the pallet in which they've had to work with. It would be the songwriters and musicians that would do their best to embrace, describe, romanticize, and translate their take of West Texas, only to get the rest of the world to understand it. This would mold a very distinct style and sound all of it's own. Some will go as far back as Bob Wills and Lefty Frizzell to present the sounds of West Texas. But it would be the 1950's that would put Lubbock on the map. Lubbock songwriters like Sonny Curtis, Bob Montomery, a very young Waylon Jennings, and an unknown kid named Buddy Holly, would have people looking to see exactly where Lubbock was. These gentlemen would gain success of their own, while their songs would be recorded by other big-name musicians all over the country. To understand the impact, both The Beatles and The Rolling Stones claim Buddy Holly to be their biggest influence and inspiration.

Flashforward to the 1970's. While Waylon Jennings was standing firm on his own creation of "Outlaw Country" in Nashville, a movement of "alternative" country music was starting up in Lubbock. Singer/songwriters such as Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, and Jimmie Dale Gilmore individually...also known as The Flatlanders collaboratively, Terry Allen, Jesse "Guitar" Taylor, Lloyd Maines and The Maines Brothers, and even the Legendary Stardust Cowboy. These creative troubadours, vagabonds and court jesters were flooding Lubbock and West Texas bars and honkytonks with THEIR music. A sound and style that could not be compared to anyone but themselves. Within this circle would be another songwriter as solid, talented, and equal to his peers, Donald Elwood Dykes. But he would go by the name of the shortest poem he'd ever written....Eddie Beethoven. Joe Ely and Eddie were great friends. They lived the life of free spirits, traveling the country as hobos. Hitchhiking, hopping freight trains, catching anything that had wheels, when they weren't wearing out the soles of their cowboy boots, walking for miles on end. It was this time that Joe and Eddie would refine their writing skills, and pen some of the songs that would go on to be the most well-known songs of today. They stood on street corners, selling poems and songs to anyone...just so they could buy something to eat. To survive. What would be songs they would sing, they would also be songs that they had lived.

The 1980's brought a new generation of musicians to Lubbock. By this time, a lot of Eddie's friends had migrated to Austin, TX, broadening their horizons and taking advantage of bigger and better opportunities for songwriters. But Eddie stayed loyal to his Lubbock home. He was a true gem hiding in plain sight, flying under the radar of the success and recognition his friends had received. Though, Joe Ely would be out there, singing songs that Eddie and Joe wrote together, and songs Eddie wrote that Joe wanted to record. Such examples would be "What's Shakin' Tonight", "(Don't Put A)Lock On My Heart", and "Cool Rockin' Loretta'. Eddie Beethoven was a hometown hero. He would pack or sell out every venue he performed. His high-level energy of West Texas rock and roll established a large and loyal fanbase. It was not uncommon to see his large crowds singing the lyrics to every one of his songs. His songs were catchy, addictive, and he made sure he had a tight, hard-driving band to back him and deliver his message in true rock and roll spirit. Enter the predestined "Everydudes". Dan Yates, Denzil Warner Smith, and Alan Durham were all sidemen of Eddie Beethoven throughout their time in Lubbock. And in that time, they all established themselves as talented, solid musicians.

In 1989, Dan, Denzil, and Alan individually moved to Austin, Texas...each to seek out their own musical and life's ambitions and dreams. And each would begin to fill their resume' with different bands and songwriters they would all perform with. In 2007, almost 20 years later, the three would find themselves together as a band, with a local powerhouse drummer, Frank Kriege, to fill the lineup. And The Everydudes were born. They got together for fun, as friends, to play some old songs they played together, back in those Lubbock days. As they started to perform, a lot of those old songs became Eddie Beethoven songs. They were simply too good not to share with the crowds and music lovers of Austin. The Everydudes' fanbase were quick to love and request these songs. They found themselves to be big and loyal Eddie Beethoven fans...though they'd never heard of him, heard him, or seen the man himself. Only through the music of The Everydudes, music lovers were somehow convinced that Eddie Beethoven did exist...in some way. Or, was this the Everydudes' prank on the Austin crowds that Keyser Soze was no other than a Lubbock figment of imagination?

It was at this time that The Everydudes decided the catalog of songs Eddie Beethoven had written, need to be documented and recorded. And it needed to be done right. Musician and Honorary West Texan, Joe Carroll, came to the rescue. Offering up his recording studio, Treehouse Productions, and his engineering skills, Joe Carroll was going to make it all happen. The project was meant to stay secret. But, when word leaked out that an Eddie Beethoven record was being made, the Lubbock mafia came out in full force to support it, to work on it. And why not? The one thing Eddie always wanted to do, but never got around to...was make a record. The Everydudes as the band to lay down the basic tracks, the talents of Lloyd Maines, Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Colin Gilmore, and West Texan, Jon Dee Graham. It would also see the talents of those with strong West Texas ties...Will Sexton, Mike Hardwick, and Carrie Ann Carroll. This talented crew, behind Eddie Beethoven, finally getting to sing his own songs on his own record. The album is a slice of West Texas rock and roll. As the music and lyrics of Eddie Beethoven fill the air, you'll swear you feel the West Texas wind on your face, the anticipation of that distant train whistling, and the warmth of "bright lights and chrome, running through your veins". For a Lubbock legend, the many folks that made this record will tell you...it was all out of love.

Jeffrey Duke Patterson