In
Center the other night, an elderly man
in the audience was bemoaning the lack of old-fashioned cowboy music in East
Texas.
“How old are you?” I asked politely.
“Well, I’m somewhere
between eighty and dead,” he laughed.
That explains the lack of cowboy
music. Musicians today seldom play the music older folks remember best.
But,
thankfully, I was able to recommend at least one place where the old cowboy music
is still played with enthusiasm.
At the Camp
Street Cafe and Store in Crockett,
brothers Guy and Pipp Gillette perform traditional cowboy songs in a downtown
building once owned by their grandfather, rancher Hoyt Porter.
Some
of the music they play today originated during the time of the Civil war and blends
in songs performed by cowhands and medicine show performers.
When Guy and Pipp are not performing, they’re running a ranch near Lovelady.
The property was also owned by Hoyt Porter and, as youngsters, the Gillettes punched
cows on the ranch.
While
Guy and Pipp are best known today for their cowboy ballads--and specially for
their skill in playing cow bones as an accent sound for their music--they were
largely influenced by the Beatles.
The sons of a New York photographer,
they saw the Beatles perform on an Ed Sullivan show in the 1960s and knew
immediately they wanted to become musicians, too.
So
they joined one of Guy’s classmates at an acting studio and formed a rock and
roll band known as the Roadrunners. Their singer was Diane Keaton,
the actress.
The Roadrunners played up and down the East Coast for years.
But when their grandfather passed away, Guy and Pipp decided to come back to the
ranch they loved as young men in 1983.
After the Camp Street building
was renovated in 1998 and reopened as the Camp
Street Cafe, Guy and Pipp became popular all over Texas
as musicians who had a special knack for cowboy songs.
As
an early Crockett business,
Hoyt Porter’s Camp Street building housed a variety of businesses, including a
cafe, pool hall and cafe. In the 1940s, a legendary blues musician often came
to the cafe to play for tips. His name was Lightin’
Hopkins. A statue
of Lightin’ stands near the Camp
Street Cafe and Store.
When Guy and Pipp decided to reopen the tin
building as a music venue, they started with performers they had known on the
road. Today, ten years later, the Camp Street Cafe is a popular venue for musicians
all over Texas. But
some of the biggest crowds come to Crockett
to hear Guy and Pipp bring back the sounds of cowboys on the range.
For
a schedule of the Gillettes’ performances, call 936-544-8656 in Crockett.
Bob Bowman's East Texas
February 15, 2010 Column
A weekly column syndicated in 109 East Texas newspapers
Copyright
Bob Bowman
Crockett
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