DAVID BEEBE
David Beebe was born in Houston in July
1971, the eldest of three sons born to Eleanor and
Roger Beebe, an attorney. He went first to a
Montessori school in Houston for two years then
enrolled at the independent St. John’s School. He
was a loner, who enjoyed bike riding and listening
to the radio.
He credits St John’s, and its great facilities and
teachers, with introducing him to English and his-
tory. He also learned how to write. But his rebel-
lious personality did not mesh with St. John’s
structured style, and he was about to be kicked out
when he made a move to public Lamar High
School across the street. He immediately felt more
at home and spent his junior and senior years at
Lamar, from which he graduated in 1989.
Beebe had taken piano lessons as a youngster.
He joined the Drum Corps and learned to play
the harmonica, and he wrote songs in high
school. At the University of Texas at Austin he
made lots of friends, continued playing music
and formed a band. The Banana Blender
Surplus Band, which he launched in 1991, soon
became popular and busy, touring regionally and
occasionally nationally. The Houston Press wrote:
“The boys in the Banana Surplus Band have a
gift of self-awareness and perspective – a decid-
edly precocious gift.”
Their music was Blues/Rock, played with high
energy for four to six hours without a break.
Beebe managed the band, was lead singer and
played the harmonica and later the Farfisa com-
pact organ. The five person band played constant-
ly except when they were in school. Despite the
demands of the band, Beebe graduated in 1993
with a B.A. in history, minor in anthropology.
In 1995, he quit the band and at the age of 25
became manager of the Rockefeller Club and
later the Satellite Lounge in Houston. But that
ended in 1998 when he exited the night club
scene and went to lose himself in the Big Bend for
a few weeks.
Beebe had previously visited Big Bend
National Park as an eighth grader and “the raw
nature, open sky and clean air, all the opposite of
Houston” changed his perspective on everything.
So when he was approached in 2006 by Houston
friends with a love for Marfa who wanted to open
a music venue, he came on board. It took 18
months for an engineering, design and building
team of which he was a hands-on part to rehab,
redesign and rebuild the old funeral home that
became Padre’s Marfa. He then ran Padre’s for
just over three years, building up a clientele, hir-
ing visiting bands and taking personal charge in
the kitchen.
Ready for something new, he sold out to his
partners in the spring of 2012. Today he is in his
third term as a Marfa city councilman and has
opened a commercial recycling venture, combin-
ing social experiment and community service. He
hosts two programs on Marfa Public Radio,
where his boundless energy and love of music are
amply demonstrated: the late night show Night
Train Express airs Tuesday and Old School &
Oldies runs on Friday morning.
Skinner & Lara, P.C.
Certified Public Accountants
610 E Holland Avenue
Alpine, TX 79830
Phone (432) 837-5861
Fax (432) 837-5516
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