Biography

Native America’s prairie and wheat farm country of western Oklahoma was the boyhood home for Jack Hofman. Rolling landscapes like a Thomas Hart Benton threshing scene dissected by deep canyons with cool springs. His songs reflect the world of German and Welch immigrants who collided with other cultures and lived and worked for a few generations on small dry land family farms. The land, formerly Caddo and Wichita reservation land, was opened to allotments in 1901 when his grandparents moved in and settled. His song writing began in the quirky 1970s with influences from Bob and Neil and later from John Prine, Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark and all that comes between. Mostly gentle music with the sharp edges buried below the surface. Songs of love, living, dreams, and reality filled with well water, warm beer, and cold coffee.

The farm house where we lived was built about 1926, a four room stucco. Initially with no running water, no electricity, no closets, and a cedar shake roof. The house was built with boards from the Bridgeport, OK bandstand. Bridgeport was a Rock Island Railroad town and wheat shipping point with a key bridge across the Canadian River on the Fort Smith and El Reno to Tucumcari line. The branch line which ran past our place to Anadarko was pulled about 1938. I think there was still music in those bandstand’s boards which infused that old house where Mom sang Hank Williams songs while she worked in the kitchen. I graduated high school at 17, with a class of about 20 kids, and set out to find the elephant.

During harvest we would picnic in the shade of the shelter belt trees, all those tree rows planted by the CCC boys before the War. Smell of the wheat dust from the newly cut stubble flavored every bite and drink. Cool water from the well was carried in a quart jar wrapped in a damp dish towel, frail protection against the hot June sun and dusty south wind. Cicadas sang while we waited to load the trucks. The new grain poured smoothly like a million flecks of gold from the combine into the truck bed (with its corners lined with gunny sacks) until its springs were flattened. We would sit on the running boards, sometimes with a cup of coffee from Raymond’s thermos against the tired afternoons, while Midnight the Border Collie panted in the truck’s shade. We would chew on the raw wheat grains to make a short-lived chewing gum, and watch the puffy June clouds change shapes and imagine a world of strange creatures and far away places. Places like Tinian Island where Uncle Clyde was stationed during the war. It is all just another indication that we never know from which well music will spring.