Why you been gone so long?

Catching you up

Some of you will know this, some of you won’t: The title’s from the late, great Mickey Newbury’s song of that name. Check out this version from 1988 by Tony Rice, also late and great.¹ Both men died much too young.

In a distant way, Newbury’s connected to the reason I’ve been gone so long. He’s one of the Texas songwriters I’ve mentioned to publishers to benchmark my estimation of Walter Hyatt’s songwriting chops.

My last post was in January, a week before Flor and I left for Nashville to visit Heidi Hyatt, Mark Michel, and several fellow songwriters and musicians who knew Walter well. When we returned to Galveston, I began writing the first chapters of a planned biography of Hyatt, and last week, I submitted the last of eleven book proposals and queries to publishers.

Hyatt died at age 46 in the infamous ValuJet plane crash of 1996. He left behind a body of work that will live as long there are people who love songs. The introduction to my book is, in part, a preliminary brief of this argument.

It would have been less brief if not for the critical wisdom of Flor, Emily Polivka-Searle, and a former journalist whose name I’ll withhold. Along with Mike Kelley, for many years he was the best writer on the American Statesman when I lived in Austin. He wrote a long feature on Hyatt in 2008 and knew his music well. Big thanks to each.

The last person I spoke with before finishing the proposals was Hyatt’s brother, George. Weeks earlier I’d spoken with two close Austin friends of Walter’s, one of whom had never met George until Walter’s funeral. The two friends sat together at the funeral, and when George began a short eulogy, the friend who knew George told me the friend who didn’t began to quake.

I never met Walter, but I’ve listened to interviews, and listening to George was uncanny. The leisurely pace, the beats between questions and answers, the southern-genteel expressions, the thoughtfulness – I felt as though I were listening to Walter. I very much look forward to meeting George in person.

Another recent treat was hearing Walter’s godson and Champ Hood’s son, Warren Hood, with Marshall Hood and Willie Pipkin, play five Hyatt songs – “Going to New Orleans,” “Motor City Man,” “If I Don’t Stop Crying,” “Lean on Your Mind,” and “As the Crow Flies” – at Houston’s Mucky Duck.

Warren Hood

The publishers have told me it will take up to three months to review the proposal. In the meantime, I’ll write, both the book and this Galveston-centric Substack.

On the latter front, I will have some things to share soon. One of them is about Project Rosenberg, an effort of locals to raise $2.2 million before July 1 to buy the land where the shuttered and soon-to-be-demolished Rosenberg Elementary School now sits. The goal is to convey the land back to the city so it can be used as a public park.

I know little about Galveston politics, so I’ve been surprised at the controversy this wholesome-seeming project has generated. The heat comes from the fact that the Board of Trustees of the Galveston Independent School District has given the folks behind Project Rosenberg extra time to raise money to match the bid of the Sealy & Smith Foundation, which wants to build affordable housing for employees of the University of Texas Medical Branch. More on this soon.

The other Galveston topic is – true story – something I’m not at liberty to talk about yet (I’ve always wanted to say that), but one sure outcome is that I will no longer be as clueless as I am now about local politics. Give me a couple months. Maybe by then, I can write with a smidge of authority about Galveston politics and something of greater moment than a condescendingly dumb op-ed of our Congressman or a carelessly expressed opinion of a fellow reader of the local paper.

One other thing happened since my last post. Decades ago, a co-worker told me I was an old soul, so old that in a previous life I was a merchant in Palestine when Jesus was alive, had rejected him, and had been paying the price ever since. My body’s caught up with my soul: I turned 65, the official threshold of old age.

So far, I like my new status.

Flor turned the occasion into a five-day celebration. On my birthday, my brother bought me drinks at DTO’s, then Flor took me to Vargas for the most expensive dinner in my life. The next night, Flor & I went to see Houston’s own Jason Moran and the amazing jazz band of the Kinder High School for the Visual and Performing Arts.

The emcee told us to save the program because in 20 years some of the kids on stage would be famous. Afterward, I believed him and followed his advice.

Moran played next door to the Alley Theater, where 49 years ago, with three fellow writers on Alief-Hastings High School’s Bear Facts, I witnessed Bob Dole debate Walter Mondale in the first debate between vice-presidential candidates. When I realized where I was, I wrote John Miller, fellow Bear Facts scribe and attendee. He texted back a picture of his VIP pass from that night.

(A week later, John and I wrote dueling editorials on the 1976 presidential race: John was for Carter, I was for Ford. John kept that editorial, too, and sent me it. Pro-coal stance aside, he got the better of me.)

The night after Moran, we had my brother and our dear friend and neighbor Miguel over for Flor’s grilled pizza and her watermelon-lime-mint-vodka drink, perfect for our summer-like spring. Finally, she and I will return to Houston tonight to hear the Merz Trio at the Menil Collection museum. On the way, we’ll see the Great Elephant Migration exhibit at Houston’s Hermann Park.

Somewhere in there, she also bought me a boxed set of Randy Newman’s last seven records, not counting soundtracks, on vinyl. One of those songs, from Trouble in Paradise, is “My Life is Good.” Irony and the pitch-black humor of the song aside: Indeed.

1. If you don’t know Rice, appreciate flatpicking, and have 20 seconds to spare, skip to 1:35 of this. Hold tight.