Trammel first left home for
Trinity University in San
Antonio, where he went to play
football and study pre-med.
His first foray into higher edu-
cation lasted only a year, but it
did lead to a lasting friendship
with a musician named Will
Dupuy. A singer, songwriter
and upright bass player, who
has since played with the South
Austin Jug Band and La
Tampiquena, Dupuy encour-
aged Trammel’s interest in
music, and the two continue to
collaborate.
Trammel was recruited to
play football at Sul Ross in
2000 – and he took to the town
and its frontier sensibility
immediately. After graduating,
Trammel stayed on with the
football program, coaching
offensive and defensive line for
five years.
Soon after his arrival in the
Big Bend, Trammel began to
make trips to La Kiva, the
Terlingua bar, for open mike
nights there. The 160-mile
round trip became a weekly
event, and Trammel hosted the
open mike for years.
La Kiva provided a recep-
tive and forgiving environment
for Trammel. He credits an
older generation of Big Bend-
area musicians – Charles
Maxwell, Pablo Menudo,
Roger Moon, the Pinche
Gringos – as well as the area’s
historic connection with
Woody Guthrie and Butch
Hancock – with helping him to
find his own feet as a musician.
Soon, Trammel was playing
in the bars and restaurants
around Alpine – covering the
Texas country songbook and
beginning to introduce his own
songs.
Over the years of perform-
ing in the region, Trammel’s
confidence as a performer and
a songwriter has grown, and his
own songs have come to the
fore. The Hogwallops have also
plugged in and expanded their
musical palette, playing driving,
electrified rock and roll that
draws from the Band more
than George Jones.
“I’ve got a distaste for Texas
music right now – it all sounds
the same,” Trammel said.
“Back in the 70s, when Willie
or Waylon had a new song out
you knew right away who it
was, even if you didn’t know
the song.”
The band’s commitment to
the basics and its consistent
energy have won a loyal local
following.
The mix of
influences the band has incor-
porated and the sound that has
emerged are distinctively Big
Bend phenomena, Trammel
said.
“What we play has been
spawned by West Texas,”
Trammel said. “It’s a very, very
magical place.”
“Things weren’t working out in the
city so I moved out to the prairie.
Here in the country, things are simple
people follow through with what they
say they’ll do.
I found a job building my home it
ain’t it hard – it’s just dirt and
stone.”
from “Dirt and Stone,”
Trevor Reichman
Reichman says that “Dirt
Trevor Reichman: photo courtesy
Trevor Reichman
and Stone” was inspired by a
drive through Marfa and by
observing transplanted New
Yorkers finding a “solution to
the housing situation we’re in”
by building their own homes or
revamping ruins, but it also
describes Reichman’s own
journey to Far West Texas.
Born in Johannesburg,
South Africa, Reichman lived
between Austin and Portland,
Ore., for years, before discover-
ing the Big Bend on a visit with
friends several years ago. Soon,
he’d bought a 5-acre plot in
Terlingua Ranch where he is
building a house with his own
hands.
The care, the humility and
the quiet attention to building a
home in the desert are also
hallmarks of Reichman’s songs.
Reichman writes songs of dis-
arming simplicity – the direct-
ness of his lyrics and of his
delivery can hit the listener
with an unexpected force.
As is the case with other
musicians who have gravitated
to the region, Far West Texas
offered Reichman a solution, a
way to live with integrity and to
put music at the center of his
life, outside the consuming
demands of urban life.
Some of Reichman’s songs
chronicle the shift from city to
prairie and the shift in priorities
it represents. “Dirt and Stone”
talks about the disconnection
with friends and family whose
lives are defined by the city,
“paying for their homes and
paying off loans,” while the
singer has decided not “to
waste time,” but to focus on
“working on my rhymes, work-
ing on something I could leave
behind.”
Reichman’s impulse to pare
things down to their essentials,
to find the simple, overlooked
path, extends to his approach
to touring as well. Reichman
and fellow songwriter Elam
Blackman, who met at the
Kerrville Folk Festival, were dis-
cussing touring together in
2008, but were daunted by
what were then astronomical
gasoline prices. They settled on
a novel solution.
“The gas prices were pro-
hibitive for a couple of self-
funded independent songwrit-
ers,” Reichman said. “We fig-
ured that the only way we
could do the tour without
going into debt was to buy a
month long Amtrak pass and
build a tour based on the train’s
itinerary.
The tour, which Reichman
and
Blackman
called
“Railroad Folk,” took them
from Texas to California and
up the West Coast, through the
northern Rockies to a series of
shows in the Midwest, then
back to Texas via New Orleans.
The two are talking about
doing another Railroad Folk
tour – this time through the
East Coast to Canada – in the
future.
Like Trammel, Reichman
has found in the Big Bend a
culture that supports songwrit-
ers and live performers.
Reichman has been writing
W HITE C RANE
A CUPUNCTURE
C LINIC
Acupuncture
•
Herbs
•
Bodywork
Shanna Cowell, L.A.
Quilts
Etc.
by
Marguerite
505 E Sul Ross • Alpine
432.837.3225 Made in the Big Bend
Mon. - Fri. by appointment 432.371.2292
continued on page 27
Cenizo
HWY 118 • Terlingua
3/4 mile N of HWY 170
AYN FOUNDATION
(DAS MAXIMUM)
ANDY WARHOL
“The Last Supper”
MARIA ZERRES
“September Eleven”
Brite Building 107-109 N Highland, Marfa
Open weekends noon to 5 p.m.
Please call 432.729.3315 for more information.
Open by appointment.
First Quarter 2010
17