The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture

HUBBARD, RAY WYLIE (1946– ).

A founder of the “Texas outlaw music” genre, singer-songwriter-guitarist Ray Wylie Hubbard became famous for his early 1970s classic “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother,” an “anthem” for musicians in rebellion against the traditional “Nashville Sound.” He was born to Royce and Helen Hubbard at Soper, in Choctaw County, Oklahoma, on November 13, 1946. Hubbard’s family moved during the mid-1950s to Oak Cliff near Dallas, Texas. He attended Adamson High School, which also produced such future stars as B. W. Stephenson and Steve Fromholz.

During those years Hubbard learned to play guitar and met Michael Martin Murphey. Their folk duo performed in The Rubaiyat, a coffee house, where he met the legendary Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and newcomer Jerry Jeff Walker. After attending the University of Texas–Arlington and North Texas State University (now University of North Texas) Hubbard put together folk groups that included The Coachmen, Three Faces West, and Texas Fever, which toured around the nation. Later moving to Red River, New Mexico, he opened his own club, The Outpost.

In the early 1970s he began to establish himself in Texas. In 1972 he performed at the first Kerrville Folk Festival and continued with similar venues in California, New Jersey, and elsewhere. Moving back to the Dallas area he wrote and performed with Walker, who recorded “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother” on the Viva Terlingua album in 1973. A phenomenal success, the song and album brought Hubbard instant cult status in Austin’s progressive country music community.

Hubbard also organized The Cowboy Twinkies, considered by many to be the first “cowpunk” band. Another Oklahoma musician, Terry “Buffalo” Ware, was a band regular. They played music forms ranging from Merle Haggard to Led Zeppelin. Hubbard’s band released a self-titled but unsuccessful debut album, Ray Wylie Hubbard and the Cowboy Twinkies, in 1975 for Warner Brothers’s Reprise label. After that, the band broke up, and Hubbard briefly dropped out of sight. In 1978 he reemerged with a debut solo album, Off the Wall, on Willie Nelson’s Lone Star label. A year later, Hubbard reorganized Jerry Jeff Walker’s old Lost Gonzo Band, renaming it The Ray Wylie Hubbard Band.

Hubbard had a prolific recording career in the 1980s and 1990s, releasing numerous live and studio albums. They included Something About the Night (1980) and Caught in the Act (1984). He briefly stopped recording but returned in 1992 with the album Lost Train of Thought on his own Misery Loves Company label. The release included a duet with Willie Nelson on “These Eyes.” Loco Gringo’s Lament followed in 1994. It received rave reviews. He followed it with Dangerous Spirits (1998), Crusades of the Restless Knights (1999), Live at Cibolo Creek Country Club (2000), and Eternal and Lowdown (2001).

The next album, Growl (2003), returned to his roots. Heavy on blues constructs, themes, and instrumentations, the album offers a dark view of the music industry in “Rock and Roll is a Vicious Game.” “Screw You, We’re from Texas” is a potential anthem for musicians south of the Red River, but he explained that the title “is not screw you, Oklahoma or Arkansas or any other state. It’s screw you, people who don’t appreciate cool music, because we’re from Texas, and this is the kind of music we do.”

He continued exploring the dark myths disguised as truths in Southern, rural, and swampy environments of the South and Southwest. The album Delirium Tremolos (2005) exhibited these musical and lyrical themes in “This Mornin’ I Am Born Again,” “Roll and I Tumble,” “Cooler-n-Hell,” and “Choctaw Bingo.” His 2006 disc, Snake Farm, included “Snake Farm,” “Mother Hubbard’s Blues,” “Live and Die Rock and Roll” and “Resurrection.” The album A. Enlightenment B. Endarkenment (2010) featured more blues references in “Whoop and Hollar,” “Every Day is the Day of the Dead,” “Pots and Pans,” and “Down Home Country Blues.”

Hubbard remained prolific in the 2010s and 2020s. Mining familiar veins of American roots-music forms and writing notable lyrics, he recorded The Grifter’s Hymnal (2012), The Ruffian’s Misfortune (2015), Tell the Devil I’m Gettin’ There as Fast as I Can (2017), Co-Starring (2020), and Co-Starring Too (2022). He also published a biography and memoir, A Life...Well, Lived (with Tom Jurek), in 2015. He continued to perform into the third decade of the twentieth-first century.

Hugh W. Foley, Jr.