Welcome to Texas Talk.

I'm Gilbert Garcia, opinion writer and columnist for the San Antonio Express-News.

On this show, we bring you one on one conversations with some of the most fascinating figures in Texas politics, sports, culture and business.

If you wanted to learn about Texas music and you were allowed to talk to only one person about it, Hector Saldana would be the ideal choice.

Saldana has been on the front lines for nearly half a century as a musician with his acclaimed pop rock band The Krayolas.

As an entertainment writer and music columnist for the Express-News, and most recently as the Texas music curator for the Wittliff collections at Texas State University.

On this episode, we talk about Saldana’s music career, his journalism work, and his valuable research exploring the roots of Texas music.

Let's get started.

Hector, thanks for being in Texas.

Hey, Gilbert.

Thank you for having me.

Well, you've been involved in music in a major way for more than 45 years.

As a musician.

Yes, as a music journalist and now as the music curator at Texas State's.

We live collections.

But for all of us, it begins as a listener.

And I was curious, like what music you heard around the house growing up and what was it that first kind of grabbed your attention?

Probably the girl groups.

You know, my mom was a young mom with a lot of kids, and the ham radio was always on.

So, you know, the Motown sound.

I'm a child of the Beatles era and the Monkees, so things like that.

So.

Well, pop radio of the 1960s.

I think I saw somewhere where you said that as a as a really young kid, you sang Johnny Angel Sally February to your mom's friends and did The Twist Months.

Yes, but my mom put me up to that.

We also all dance radio.

We also all danced around a little phonograph, singing to, you know, children records.

But sure, my mom encouraged or indulged us when one of the one of the two.

Were you and your brother David ended up forming the band Creoles, which has had a long history in people who follow Texas music.

You know a lot about this band.

I should also mention that at the same time you were getting involved in music as a teenager.

You were also an all district center on the Lee High School football team, which I think is a really interesting.

I was a jock.

Yeah, you were.

But you didn't music at the same time, right?

I mean, you started get involved in music.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We were practicing in the carport and in the bedroom.

You ended up playing guitar.

Your brother David ended up playing drums.

How was.

How was that decided?

And when did you all decide we're going to get serious about this thing?

I think we both wanted to be drummers because in court we grew up, we were born in Houston, but we grew up in Corpus Christi.

So there was a garage band across the street and the the guy that lived at a house with the drummer and he was always throwing his drumsticks away.

So he would go there to play on boxes and, you know, play pretend guitar.

But my dad bought me a guitar.

And so then we broke it, fighting with each other, my brother and I.

And but then I got another guitar, some type of an 11.

Yes, we landed on it, but then I started to learn the chords.

And then David just naturally became the drummer.

We always sang together.

We always could naturally harmonize.

The band started around, what, about 77, 1977?

No, actually, the roots of it is in the early seventies, and it started playing in bars in 1975.

So we became The Creole is in 1975.

But when I read like the early things that were written about the band, there's a lot of focus on how I was kind of a sixties throwback then.

Yes, But at the same time I hear and when when I see clips, two of you are performing, I also pick up on a lot of the the energy of what was happening in late seventies music.

Elvis Costello, the Jam, maybe Cheap Trick, maybe, maybe others.

I mean, how did you all see yourselves?

We saw us sort of somewhere between the jam and the Who.

You know, we really you know, we love the Beatles, loved The Kinks.

I don't know.

You know, we were really young.

I mean, there was the Creoles with the cave.

Is that from The Kinks?

Is that Nigerian?

Yes.

But, you know, we're 17 and 18.

Not exactly sure how to articulate it.

You know, we we kind of had our had written a few little I had written some original songs, little, you know, pop type songs here, a lot of Beatle songs, Rolling Stones, who, Bad Company, just whatever was around.

But when but when the New Wave and like the punk thing started happening, we were really in tune with that.

You know, we thought what meant that the New York thing was very cool, like Talking Heads.

There was a group called the Marbles.

I remember the Feelies, sure.

But, you know, then when the jam cans, like I think we were, you know, I think people forget sometimes that at least I can.

I'm speaking for myself.

You know, our ears weren't quite attuned to such a raw sound that was coming out, you know.

So I think we were a little like, yeah, like, is this us?

Is not, you know, we didn't want to just a lot of groups jumped on that bandwagon.

We had already had been playing gigs.

We just kind of wanted to stay, try to stay true to ourselves, and we felt maybe simpatico with what was going on.

Now you got like record company interest along the way, right?

Like what?

What happened?

And like, what was what was the closest that you got to getting?

Probably the closest that we got to times one.

The guy that I'm Greg Shaw, who owned Bomp Records, liked a couple of cassettes that we had sent him.

But then what?

You heard the rest of the music.

It was too diverse, you know, We like you know, we like ballads and we liked rock and roll and we liked, you know, experimental kind of stuff.

I guess you would call it experimental.

I think that was the one they wanted, one set.

You know, we didn't sound just one way.

And then Kim Fowley also took an interest in us.

You know that with him he was much more direct.

He was just saying, Hey, you guys are terrible, you suck.

But I could make a great.

That was his attitude.

And he liked one song called All of the Time, which made us feel good.

But then, you know, you kind of understand everybody's sort of into their own trip.

And we were we were sort of unmanageable in a certain way.

You know, we were we were complete novices, didn't exactly know what we were doing, and we just didn't I don't know.

There was just something that we were just thinking.

We just didn't want to give up all that control.

Now you all split up, what, about 86 or something?

Yeah, we kind of fizzled out, I would say around 80.

So it wasn't like one big thing happened, so we just kind of ran it.

So just, yeah, we by that point, you know, we'd had we had had success like on, you know, different cable networks or big gigs that we were playing, opening act things like for Joan Jett and sort of was quintet and had toured with Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds.

And, you know, we, we had had that taste of it.

But, you know, you and we had the booking agents booking us.

But it just I don't know, it just kind of ran its course now about 20 years later, I think was 26 or so.

You all reformed.

I think there was a compilation that you all did, and then it kind of led to other things.

And you've had this amazing period of creativity since, I think this period from 2006, 2007 to now has been the most remarkable, you know, phase of the group's career.

And I'm wondering, like, what made you decide let's let's just start this up?

I think it's like I can you know, I think it's not only about music, but just any kind of encouragement sometimes, you know, and Augie Meyers had heard that little collection and he had, you know, Augie is always pitching a song.

I mean, like a real song.

Oh, yeah, he did.

He had one from 67 and I was like, Oh, okay.

You know?

And then he called Little Fox.

You know, that didn't say the word little fox, and it went all over the place.

But I kind of he just, you know, but he gave us the encouragement.

He goes, I like your stuff.

Just make it sound like the cradle.

So I feel like I'm the songwriter of the group, but I'm also a fairly decent arranger.

So I try to to take those elements of that song composition and then turn it into a Crayola song.

And then my mother wrote Spanish lyrics for it.

And I think you were even at the session that we all became in a place.

That's right.

Yeah.

It was crazy.

I couldn't believe it.

And it's like that little bit of boost confidence just said, Hey, you know, let's follow our heart.

And you start getting I mean, you start getting airplay from like Dave Marr's legendary music critic and he was praising you.

You've gotten airplay over the years from Steve Van Sant's Little Steven's Underground Garage radio station, various others.

I mean, it must be an amazing feeling to start seeing these people.

I mean, these are five people that you were reading.

Yeah.

Or in the case, Steve, as that listening to.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, Ben Fong Torres and Dave Marshall and Holly George-Warren, I mean, just chip flip, I couldn't believe.

Yeah, but you also learn like, don't believe the hype kind of kind of thing, you know, it's just nice to be noticed.

And really, though, as much as I wish people could have seen the trailers as a kid Bandito or Chicano boy band, whatever you want to call us, you know, a bar band, the fact that you can find us now, thanks to technology, because of satellite radio, because of streaming and stuff where, you know, we're obscure, but at least you can find our music.

It was a lot more difficult, I think, in the late seventies, early eighties.

And you have two of your sons playing in the current lineup, the band.

Yeah, we can.

We have that working.

They keep me in their uncle in check, I guess they're very Jason and Nick.

They play bass and lead guitar.

They sing, they're excellent musicians and they bring, you know, youthful energy to it and they allow us to play, play it live.

And really what you know.

Gilbert Like what they did too, they made it sort of focus on the most important elements and the fun part, again, you know, kind of tap in not to the headaches, but just the fun, energetic part, which is a big part of the cradle, is, you know, because the set you were speaking about, Crail is 2.0.

Right?

So a lot of the a lot of that I don't want to call it a phase, but that rat run, you know, was sort of tapping into our Chicano roots and yeah, you know, doing some pop songs and social commentary, social commentary, you know, singing about fruit cups to beheadings, you know, But with the boys, you know, it.

We've been playing a lot more gigs, right?

So there was a part of the young Creoles, you know, which was all just high energy.

And so we're we've tapped back into that and it's a good balance.

What got you started as a music journalist?

What made you decide that that that you not only you want to be involved in music in that way?

I was actually discouraged for being a music journalist.

Now I tried my hand at writing a manuscript and was just, you know, having problems with that and then a friend of mine said, Well, you know, you love writing when you, you know, go go to the newspaper, maybe see if they need a writer, which they didn't need a music writer.

But they said, if you're willing to write about comedy, we'll give you a chance.

And so I took that leap.

And then within, I want to say within about two weeks I was helping on the, you know, the spillover on music coverage.

And then you became the primary.

Yes.

Yeah, I was at the Express, you know, I started when I started there.

It's when we had a music columnist and a Tejano music columnist and we had a country music columnist.

And I kind of covered the, you know, there in the mid-nineties, that whole sound that was happening.

You know, anything that wasn't blues or or roots rock I kind of covered, you know, So all that, you know, Soundgarden stuff.

Sure.

The sky and the hip hop and stuff that kind of felt to me.

Any interviews that stand out to you as being particularly great or particularly terrible because we anybody who's done this and I used to be a music writer.

Yeah, you're going to have some some you're going to have some really good ones.

You're going to have some that you write, right?

Well, some of the funny ones are like Sebastian Bach, who seem to not get right so much in sentences as sounds.

And I'd be going back to describing, which is just amazing or trying to understand exactly what John Entwistle of the Who was saying his accent was so heavy, being very nervous or not nervous.

But, you know, when I had a chance to interview Yoko Ono twice by telephone, you know, but I found her very engaging and very funny, very, you know, straight forward sort of interview, you know, So probably some of the most memorable and memorable ones were like people like George Carlin who were just so honest, you know, I learned to sort of appreciate when an interview seemed to touch on something different than I had even thought about.

So go there.

Yeah.

So I though I'm talking now I learned did really interviewing.

Is that listening?

You interviewed Beyonce at one point you know.

Yeah.

What was that?

Extremely she had a deep voice and I had I remember she was amazing And she was so funny.

I mean, talking about how her dad would make, you know, the group run behind the car, sing because you had to be in shape and be able to say, oh, yes, they were right.

Yeah, that yeah, That was another part of the music that I covered.

A lot of that teen pop from Instinct.

You know, Backstreet Boys to no doubt, you know, Beyonce, Destiny's Child.

It was amazing.

One of the music pieces that you wrote for the Express-News that stood out to me was one that you did in 2013, which was, I think, the 35th anniversary of the Sex Pistols, you know, infamous show at Randy's Rodeo.

And I had to tell you, and for people who don't know that, I mean, the Sex Pistols only ever did one tour of America was a very brief tour.

And I think they deliberately picked cities in the southern part of the country for the most part because they figured they were going to get a more hostile reaction.

They wanted to get a rise out of people.

And so one of the places they played was San Antonio.

And there was this legendary story which had, you know, been perpetuated for like 35 years, that there was someone in the audience taunting the band.

And bass player Sid Vicious swung his bass around and hit that person in the head.

You actually went and found that audience member talked to him and found out what really happened.

Yes.

Yes.

If there was contact at all, it was sort of a glancing blow.

He says.

The guy he did, he wasn't hit.

Yeah, that's right.

He says he wasn't hit.

And I was right.

Not that far.

You know, I saw, you know, I mean, Sid Vicious, did you know?

Oh, yeah.

I was there.

It was general admission.

So, you know, maybe three bodies, four bodies over.

He was, you know, as he told me, he had been screaming it said the whole time, you know.

So I guess, you know, Sid Vicious finally had it.

Yeah.

But now there was sort of, you know, but the main thing about that story was just it was so chaotic, but they were great.

They were incredible.

I mean, they always had tried to open for that show.

We we really tried.

Bessie Smith was a big one.

Our bass player was a big hustler.

So he he always had his.

But it was it was I think it was more fun actually being in the audience and seeing that and being just blown away and, you know, just watching the barrage of hamburgers and beer being thrown.

That's something I never see.

Now, in 2017, the Wittliff collections at Texas State University started their music collection, and they made you you were the first music curator that they'd ever had, right?

And I mean, the Wittliff collections basically is has been devoted to preserving and showcasing Texas culture and twice empty they moved into the area of music.

What was appealing to you about the chance to to be the music curator for Well, first of all, to be able to continue to be an advocate for musicians and musicians stories and their legacies and just truth.

Truthfully, I was just curious about what the possibilities were as far as preserving the music of Texas, you know, and could I, you know, could I add anything to that game?

I mean, I wasn't exactly sure truthfully, You know, I mean, I it was it was a long interview process as a national search.

And it I'm going now on my seventh year being there.

And it's just it's an amazing you know, it was I guess I'm answering that way because I wasn't the job.

It's just been completely different even than what I imagined.

And even what I was interviewing for, because there's just so many things that you don't anticipate dealing with people dealing with artists, dealing with their most precious commodity.

You know, they're they're their legacy and they're the artifacts that that support that.

But also the discoveries of something new that that, you know, in other words, the research that I always loved research.

So that research element is just amazing.

It's probably a dumb question, but I was wondering, you know, prior to the Wittliff music collection, when it came to Texas, artists there, their, you know, their handwritten lyrics, their their notes, demos, you know, all kinds of material with a lot of the material that you that you're dealing with prior to the to the music collection.

Where did this kind of stuff tend to go?

I mean, was it just scattered in different places in Texas or was some of it just lost forever?

Well, I you know, I mean, I guess if the artist was super big, possibly the Country Music Hall of Fame, you know, possibly the Briscoe Center.

But I mean, I think Bill Wittliff and Sally Willis, so Bill Wittliff came to fame as a book publisher, but especially with being the screenwriter of Lonesome Dove and doing other movies.

And then he was just early on in just committed to that preservation game, the preservation of the arts and and everything that that sort of entailed.

And I think I think with musicians in particular, those materials, they're either not valued, I don't say they're not value, but, you know, a musician's life is just, you know, on the road and there's ups and downs and, you know, sometimes great lows.

You know, they come along with the great highs and just hanging on to some of those materials.

I don't think I don't think that typically musicians have thought about necessarily hanging on to the scrap of paper that they, you know, wrote, you know, lyrics on like one of the artists that you you've really celebrated the wittliff, as is Jerry Jeff Walker and someone who donated his archives.

Yes.

To the witness.

And you had an exhibition, I think, early on when you started about him.

And now there's one, right that's looking at the album Viva Chilling with the 1973 album, which I think just recently had its 50th anniversary.

That's right.

And it and The Witness, What's a website I'm assuming this comes from from you you've it's referred to as that album is referred to as the big bang of Texas music.

That's right.

And I went to get your sense because I've over the years, I mean, I've talked to so many people about that album and the impact that it had.

I mean, I'm talking about Texans and the impact that it had on them.

Could you explain why you think that album was just so, so pivotal, such a catalyst?

So we're talking about the year 1973, right?

So just think about everything that's going on in pop music or rock and roll or country music.

And so you have people like Willie Nelson, you know, doing Shotgun Willie, you have Doug, Sam doing Doug Simon band.

You've got Michael Martin Murphy, Michael Murphy.

At that time, you know, doing the John was Cadillac and Cosmic Cowboy and you have Jerry Jeff Walker they they've and it's other artists too but you know there's the kind of forming and creating a sound there in Austin with different musicians why I think Jerry Jeff Walker is the in that album in particular revitalizing why it is so important.

And it was worth I mean, it'd be worth celebrating anyway, but I think you can't find an album like that one that is so important with regard to the songwriters that it's that it represents, you know, that are represented on the record, the songs themselves, where it was recorded.

That record was recorded in Luckenbach for years before we were ever singing, you know, Hey, let's go to Luckenbach, Texas, and that sense of fun, and also that Jerry Jeff Walker really found his voice with a group of musicians called the Lost Gonzo Band.

They came to be known as the Lost Gonzo Band.

It was just musicians that had worked with Michael Murphy, and now they had sort of left him and were working with Jerry Jeff.

And so they they create a sound that that is sort of the origin story of what we now call outlaw country and Americana.

I mean, you can really see it there.

I mean, and the reason I mentioned Willie Nelson, I mean, Willie was still recording his records in New York.

Yeah, Doug Sam was, too.

And Michael Martin Murphy was doing his records in Nashville for so for Jerry Jeff Walker, a man who wrote Who Who, you know, I'd written Mr. Bojangles and had not had the hit with it.

Yeah, we're still searching exactly for what he was about.

For him to have pulled that off, I think it's pretty amazing, you know, on that record, you know, he pulled from songs by Guy Clark, Terry Keenan, Gary Ray, Wylie Hubbard.

It was like an ambassador for Texas artists at that time.

I think that's one of the things that really stands out.

How much of your time do you spend trying to convince artists or the family surviving members of an artist family to donate their archives or trying, or how much of it is spent trying to track down rare material?

Yeah, it's not so much trying to convince them.

It's just sort of making them aware.

And they are, you know, they're they're pretty aware really, of nowadays, you know, of what they have.

But letting them know that that we're interested in preserving those materials.

First, we'll find out if there are materials for an archive and like for the people that are watching us, you know, that could be anything from correspondence, letters, posters, photographs, handwritten lyrics, audio recordings, things of that nature that help tell the story of of who who this artist is.

It's mostly about just beginning a conversation.

You know, a lot of times, I mean, you do try to find certain artists that are I, I don't want to say the right fit, but you know, where they might find you know, they might think they belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Yeah.

I mean, they rely on, you know, New York or they're or they want to sell their stuff at Southern Sotheby's, you know, so, so it's not my job to try to be in the be in the way or an obstacle to what they want to do with those things.

It's it's really to more to let them know, hey, have they ever thought that you know what all this effort in your career where it should win, is there something you've discovered in your research that that you're particularly proud of that since you've been there with them?

Well, in the current exhibit, the Victory Lane, where the Big Bang of Texas music.

So in 2016 and 2017, Jerry Jeff Walker and his wife Susan donated the then archive in in that archive is included many many master tapes including the multi-track tapes we have the multi-track tapes of Leave It to Languish.

We digitized that as part of our digitization effort and I had always held out hope, you know, could there be extra material on that?

You know, because I mean, it could have just and there was So we find them rehearsing, we find alternative versions of songs.

We found a couple of songs have never been released.

We found four performances from the iconic live concert that was the culmination of the recording sessions at Luckenbach from August 18th, 1973.

So it just, you know, first of all, there's an amazing part of it, and we learn a lot from from those recordings, you know, not only the performances, but, for example, one of the lost performances in the So when they were in looking back, they they're out there for several days.

They're using the local dance hall as sort of as their studio.

You know, that was their rehearsal environment.

So but it culminated in a concert, you know, the there's a pamphlet that for a dollar, if you go out there, you can go and see it.

So, you know, again, you know, legend has it there were thousands and thousands.

It was just, you know, a few hundred max, you know, But you can hear the enthusiasm on those tapes.

But one of the songs that they performed was a song called L.A. Freeway.

And the other song of Guy Clark's that that he had recorded previously.

And it makes you you know, it makes you kind of stop and think, well, wait a minute.

Of course, they wouldn't have just been previewing new songs.

They would have mixed in old songs.

Right?

So it makes you as a historian of context.

Yeah.

I start to wonder, what else could they have added?

What else did they play?

Did he play Mr. Bojangles at night?

So it's a picture.

Thank you so much.

I really enjoyed it.

Thank you, Gilbert.

That's all for this episode of Texas Talk.

Thanks for watching.

If you have any thoughts or questions you want to share with us, please email us at Texas, Talk at KLRN.org.

We'll be back next month with a new guest.

Until then, take care.