In January 2017, I was 31 years old and wandering the vast landscape of Texas for the very first time. Entering the Lone Star State via Texarkana, I’d find myself in Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Corpus Christi, Port Aransas, Galveston and Houston along the unrelenting journey.
Throughout that entire experience, my most cherished memory was rolling into New Braunfels for an evening. That night, Hayes Carll was playing a sold-out show at the legendary Gruene Hall, the oldest dance hall in the state. I also found myself face-to-face with Carll. While we interviewed in the back of his tour van on a cold prairie night, Carll took sips of Jameson from a small plastic cup, leaned back into the bench seat and kicked up his boots.
Now 50 years old, Carll is regarded as one of the finest singer-songwriters to ever emerge from Texas, a place known for cultivating some of the best to ever walk this earth: Willie Nelson, Townes Van Zandt, Waylon Jennings, Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen, Guy Clark, and so forth.
