Bill Oliver oral history | Briscoe Center Digital Collections

Transcript

Very good.
All right. Well, good afternoon,
David Todd here.
And I have the great privilege of
being on the
line with Bill Oliver.
And with his permission,
we plan on recording this interview
for research and educational work
on behalf of the Conservation
History Association of Texas
and for a book and a web site for
Texas A&M University Press,
and for an archive at the Briscoe
Center for American History, which
is over at the University of Texas
at Austin.
And I really want to stress that he
would have all rights to use the
recording as he sees fit,
too.
And I wanted to
just confirm before we go any
further, that that's a good
arrangement for you, if that's,
that's okay with you.
That's wonderful.
That's okay with me.
Great.
Gig 'em,
Aggies.
Raised by Aggies.
Okay. All right,
well, let's gig 'em.
Let's get started.
It is Monday, July
11th, 2022.
It's about 3:10
on a Monday
afternoon, Central Time.
My name is David Todd, as I said.
I'm representing the Conservation
History Association of Texas and
I am in Austin.
And we are very lucky
and fortunate to be conducting
a interview with Bill Oliver.
This is a remote interview,
but I understand that he is also
in the Austin area.
Remote!
At a secure, undisclosed location.
I am in a gated community
at the end of a dead end cul-de-sac,
and by the wrong ,the right
side of the tracks. It depends.
Well,
wherever you are, is the right side
in my book.
It's remote.
Okay.
Well, Mr. Oliver
is also widely known and fondly
known as Mr. Habitat,
and he is a singer, a
songwriter and a teacher.
Since the 1970s, he and his band,
"Bill Oliver and the Otter Space
Band", have played for audiences
across the country, entertaining
them, but also educating
them about conservation.
And we were
actually able to visit
with Mr. Oliver 20
years ago, in April of
2002.
So we feel doubly lucky to
be back sitting with
him again.
And the goal
today
is to get an update about
his life and career
and to
give people a taste, an
introduction to how
he does what he does.
And
we thought that it might be helpful
to try to
dissect some of his
songs, a number of which
deal directly with
animals that have been
a subject for this project,
the Texas Fauna Project.
One is called, "Pine Away, Pine
Bark Beetle".
Another is called, "Turtle Island",
another, "Rio Grande Valley".
A fourth is "Queen
Invicta".
And the last that we thought we
might talk about is "Welcome back,
Black-capped Vireo".
And I
think it'd be really interesting
to find out, you know, how
you go about
creating and producing
and performing
these songs.
And then what sort of reactions
you get and why
you've been taken to
do this?
And so I thought maybe we could
just start with what's
that the general idea behind
"Pine Away, Pine Bark Beetle",
and what
instigated it?
What spurred you to write it?
Well,
there's munching in the song.
Munching, munch, munch, munch.
There was a munch track that was
a, that was a highlight of
that recording session.
The pine bark beetle issue
was part of the east
Texas wilderness campaign,
led by Ned Fritz
of Dallas, Texas Committee
on Natural Resources and
the, preserving the wilderness,
the literally kind
of small, relatively small
wilderness islands in the east
Texas wilderness
was the goal of this
campaign to protect to
get those protected, and get
more, get more wilderness out of
the much larger national
forest, which is multi-use,
which mostly means clear cutting at
the time.
And so,
the pine bark beetle was an
infestation that came
through and devastated a
lot of trees.
And the
devastation is, is, perhaps,
it killed them,
killed them.
However, it was more complicated,
naturally and politically and
actually, in that,
it was the way they
were taking the
pine bark beetle out of the
wilderness area was making it
worse and
was not
letting nature take its own course.
I am not
a professional biologist, but I play
one on TV.
No, I play one on
guitar and I was
hanging out more, I hung out in the
late '80s and '80s, into the
'90s with biologists,
more than, as much as I did,
songwriters and musicians.
My girlfriend was on the biology
department at ACC
and I was taking courses there and
writing songs in the margins.
And this was a mid
to late '80s issue, as all
of these songs are - funny.
And, but I
was getting
my resources from these folks
working on the issue that
it was, the pine bark beetle
was, yeah, it was tough on trees
but it was actually
thinning the weaker trees,
in the tree, and making the forest
stronger, thinning it out
and the stronger
trees were evolving or
surviving.
Or, the ones that survived evolved.
So, that
was the science and I just started
making little expressions
about it all and
sort of put them together and
started seeing which rhymed
and which felt good to play.
It's a very simple melody, as all of
mine are, and
the arrangement is very simple.
I was lucky to
work with very talented artists on
most of these songs
- Bob Livingston, Paul Pierce,
John Inman, Lost
Gonzo - Gonzos, the last incarnation
of the Lost Gonzos - worked
together with them in studio for 15,
20 years, even more.
And so these are simple songs
that these guys could learn fast
and they'd bring the
arrangement pretty much, the
arrangements are very
straightforward folk singer /
songwriter like Western, you know,
"Doo doo dah".
And they just made a tight little
arrangement and played it.
And we added
the "munch" at the end.
And how did you make
the "munch"?
"Smack, smack, smack." That was it.
I don't know how that's going
to translate in a
transcript.
It was just, you know,
a short, short munch, actually.
Very nice.
But the thing is that they'd cut
down, they would cut these trees
down as a ruse.
Forest Service was actually
going along with it.
And they would take the trees
and sell them and they would haul
them down the logging road,
spreading the beetles.
They made a mess of it.
Instead of letting him just die in
place, they spread it around
and
plus there was, there was money
exchanged - that
it was, in
the salvaging, salvaging in these
areas and lots of damage
to get in and take them down.
So, these, these wilderness
areas weren't that big,
David. Maybe, you know, I'm talking,
what, 20,000 acres out of a
surrounding 100,000 acres,
chunk of national forest, of which
there was 500,000
acres in East Texas?
And we got a very small
amount of
the, relatively, of wilderness
protection. And
this was an excuse to
harvest more of it.
Condemn it, that's what we thought
felt. That's what we felt.
Do you recall anything about
the groups that you worked with or
the biologists that, that helped
you?
Well, well,
Texas Committee on National
Resources out of Dallas, that
is, lots of groups around,
lots of those folks, members and
then scattered around
East Texas that were
out of Lufkin and Nacogdoches.
What are some other towns over there
that we remember?
So, and many
of these folks were
not officially scientists, but they
were smart and
informed and concerned.
The Sierra Club, Audubon Society.
Of course.
Yeah. And they would all, you know,
there was, it was quite a bit of
networking.
So it was
a,
it was a novelty hook, the
Pine Away, Pine Bark Beetle, turn
the wilderness over to nature.
Now it's you know, we could talk, we
could move on to some other songs, I
guess, but you go to
beautiful places - Colorado,
Arizona and other forests and see
the beetles are at work out there.
They, it's scary, it's nuts, I
wouldn't want to, it's not
my first song to call out
at the campfire,
but at the time it would address
that issue in East Texas.
This is sort of an aside, but
one of the things I've always been
intrigued by
your songs,
the lyrics and some of the sound
effects, is that you
try to take these subjects, which
are pretty
dire and dismal and,
and you try to inject a little bit
of humor and a little bit of uplift.
And can
you comment about that?
I mean, why you don't go
with the
more heavy-handed approach?
Well, I don't want to
be argumentative, but actually
I do have a bunch of dirges - minor keys.
And I just don't
get played very much.
Why? Why?
Because it's, it's my nature.
I'm just, it's second nature to be
more of, you know, a
wise guy joking around.
First, my first band that I,
actually, well my first high school
band was called, "The Court Jesters'
Music for Just Any Old Occasion".
Class clown kind of a
personality,
you know.
Need I say more?
That's it.
It sounds like it, you came
by that naturally.
That's, that's great.
Besides, you find out what works
and, and
stick with it.
You know, it stays and you notice.
I was never encouraged
to be an entertainer
and much less a musician.
I mean, I just was kind of a folk
set of chords, handful of
chords.
But as an entertainer that never,
that didn't come around until the
last day of high school.
Some coach I thought was
really didn't like me, "Aww, you're
all right.
You know, you're going
to be an entertainer someday.
You could be an entertainer."
What? Why didn't you ever say that
before?
That would have been encouraging.
I hadn't thought of it, and I
actually didn't think of it that way
for a while, but it just crept
up and stayed there
and
just started being out
front with the
style, my style's to be more
jovial and up-tempo, when
it works. In an irony,
of course, I fell off the fence
politically and that really hurt,
as far as
being liked and being,
taking things lightly, because I do
wind up with a lot of more serious
songs and,
or double entendres that don't
work in the bars anymore.
Yeah.
By "anymore", I'm talking, mid-'70s.
I would, you know, I started
having more fun playing container
deposit songs and
getting commissioned
to do
recycling songs
for the city.
And that was more fun, than
trying to play those same songs in a
bar.
I could do it in school.
Schools liked it and they paid a lot
better and that attentive audience.
And so all of that
was good.
I love kid, kid shows,
tapping into that energy.
Yeah.
Especially when it's the same song.
It works in a, you know, I worked in
a family show and a campfire, in a
national park.
Right. So, so more
diverse kind of audiences, if maybe
you keep
things up-tempo and
jovial and ironic.
One ballad, one ballad, per set is
about all you can get away with
for most shows.
Okay, that's, that's a very
good clue there.
And the next two songs would be
those ballads, Turtle Island and Rio
Grande Valley.
It was hard to do the both of those
in a 45-minute
school set, but one of them.
Kids like, kids like serious songs.
That's interesting.
They want to be taken seriously, I
guess.
Well, let's talk a little bit about
Turtle Island.
You know, we've been lucky
to interview a number of people
about just one kind of sea
turtle that we see here in Texas,
the Kemp's Ridley sea turtle, but
you've written this wonderful song
and played it - Turtle Island -
which I think is, is
more broad-based.
From my understanding, it sort of
touches on the lives and
species of a number of different
kinds of sea turtles.
Can you talk about where that
song came from and where
it went?
Well, I.
I hope that song is,
you know, outlives me, so
to speak. But the,
the short, short - there's no short.
The introduction I give to this song
is, is that all,
all species of sea turtles have been
endangered, throughout their
range, for as long as,
pretty much long as I've been
singing this song, and
officially endangered by U.S.
standards. And some
maybe are
lapsing back into threatened, and I
don't want to get too technical
here, but there's some good
news here and there.
And it comes and goes, you
know, and I,
I but at the time they were all
severely threatened, Kemp's
especially.
And Kemp's being a Texas issue,
very much so.
But they all were, all species of
them, were on our beaches.
I always, you know,
turtles were
always, have been attractive to
people and it's lot of people's
favorite totem.
And cultures
found their, the
markings on their shells
to be very accurate
as calendars and
these are cultures
around the world with no contact
with each other. So there's some
great, great turtle mythology there
based on, based
on that.
And their skeletons show up
as calendars.
But, the
turtles are
just so great, and throughout
history and natural history and
stories and mythology.
And we have
had a couple of shows in Taipei
over the years. We went two years
over there for the
Taipei American School,
Glen Waldeck and I, and
stayed about a school
week, a whole school week, so we can
have a concert at the end.
The school had several thousand very
hard-working kids from
elementary to high school.
Very hardworking, very sweet, very
great kids.
Very well taken care of.
But they worked hard anyway.
Anyway, and we stayed with that family,
a very active family.
One of the first nights in
town, we went down to the market,
a very, very serious
market in Taipei on the waterfront.
And they were extremely
colorful and, you know, rustic
and rough.
And, there was a
pen of turtles, sea turtles, five
or six of them, or more.
Most of them very large - greens
- all lethargic.
Just pitiful.
No, hardly any movement at all,
crammed in.
One Kemp's ridley.
And we just, Glen and I,
were just, we were astounded.
And there were crates of other
turtles - freshwater turtles.
Crates and crates of them.
I mean, you know, four feet by four
feet, stuffed with turtles.
You know, live turtles, and so on,
most of them.
So, it was terrible,
to our sensibilities.
So, we asked around, talked
about it a little bit there.
And fast forward
to the end concert we did,
we put our tape sales towards a
turtle purchase and
we came down to the market after
our final concert with
the family, fine family, a
teenager
and his mom in
their mini, minivan
and a couple
of others. And we went down and
went to that pen and
the Kemp's ridley was gone and there
were several greens left and we
bought one for our, ah, tape money,
which was a little over $300 U.S.
And the thing must have weighed 150
pounds.
And we bought
the turtle and.
And took her to the beach.
And it was pretty late at night.
And it came awake and
just took off for the water as soon
as it ... well, it didn't really
take off, but it
became awake and
shook off its lethargy
and moved out.
So that was fine.
That was, that was really exciting.
I'll always remember
that.
Turtles are
great indicators of
our culture and our,
our interests, our concern.
What a nice story. That's, that's so
sweet. I mean, that you
went and rescued
this creature,
set it free.
There's some, so much disturbing,
um, you know, irony.
That was a very rugged market down
there.
It turns out many of the turtles
were bought by, for religious
purposes, by the,
I used to know a little bit more
about it. But Feng Shui
of some kind.
They were
bought by religious areas
and
consumed with
some kind of ceremony,
but it was
brutal on the population.
I think, yes, that's right,
Southern turtles crossing the road.
A lot of those, our turtles
are exported to
Asia because they were running out.
This is just ten
years ago, something, I don't
remember. It's
atrocious.
Turtle traps. Who wants to trap
turtles?
But there was a market
and when
we bought this large turtle,
we had, our translator very to our
teammates friend that we stayed with
- very nice guy -
he said the guy that's selling
it tells us that he can do an
engraving on the back of the turtle
before we take it to the beach
to protect the turtle.
I went, "What?
Does that mean...?" And it says
that the, if it gets caught again,
the engraving will make it
like unfit for ceremony.
It says, "Nope. Used turtle",
or something about it, or it's
already been claimed by
another
religion or
tradition.
And so it's, it's not,
it's a safety marker
on the turtle.
It was large: three characters.
We took a picture of it.
We have it somewhere.
So we got that extra.
And it didn't hurt the turtle.
It was hard to tell.
Didn't hurt the turtle.
That is fascinating.
Well, so tell me about the song
that that I guess
maybe grew out of some of these
experiences with turtles -
"Turtle Island".
Well, that's straight, straight off
of the Native American, and other
turtle origin stories.
And, there's some
great, Google that and you'll find
turtles all the way down, which is
another
adaption of that,
where there's a turtle on top
of a turtle, on top of a turtle.
And at some point there's a thin
crust of earth. And that's us.
I.
It works for me as much as any
others.
So, that's how the song started.
And then it got a little more
specific and it
stretches out to
all endangered species really, or it
can be applied to
all of the others and the
efforts to
share,
share our domain
with these creatures that
are slipping away.
Song, of course,
there's the song, of course,
you know, a subliminal
accidental, total accidental lift
that from two or three Jimmy Buffett
songs, bound to be, even better.
That's, that would be easy to trace.
I don't think there's a lawsuit in
it, but there hasn't been any money
either. So that's how you find
out if there's a lawsuit.
But I did
try to give it to Jimmy Buffett and
that didn't work out.
So and then I kept thinking,
maybe you're turning yourself in.
Well, you know, it's wonderful.
How do you figure out that one
of these songs will have
some currency, will, you know, have
legs and travel?
And I guess one way is to use
a melody that's familiar
to people. You know, you change the
lyrics and it has a different
meaning. But maybe
the ditty, the,
the chords, you know,
seem to to resonate
with people because they've heard it
before.
Well, I, yeah, it's
a...
You hear that?
David, I hear thunder.
I hear thunder.
Ah, yes.
Welcome sound.
Right here in South Austin. So,
this, I do a lot of parodies,
straight parodies that are, make
that, that use that
familiarity, you know, for, you
know, we use the same words, if
possible, for instance, and the same
rhyme schemes.
I do parodies a lot and
I always have.
That was a, yeah,
the lowest, it's the lowest form
they say. But
who are, what do they know?
It's a good kind of flattery.
Thank you.
Yeah, yeah,
yeah. A review in the Chronicle
said, "What do we need, another 200
weird Als for, something like that?
And I said, "Oh, I'm in the top 200
at least."
But,
but, the, this
Turtle Island, I got to say, as
was the, those are honest,
just derivatives.
That wasn't, these are not parodies
or attempts to ...
that's, that's subliminal
lifting of pretty basic stuff
actually.
It's, it's
not that,
I'm fine with those
songs and melodies, even though
they're, they sound like some other
stuff but they,
that's just what happens with an
art form with three chords
and seven notes, 26
letters.
I don't
know,
it's similar.
That's for sure.
But nobody's a ...
I haven't gotten harassed about it,
so.
They think they work.
Well, so I think part of what...
Oh, you find out, you know, how do
you find out? You find, you just
either, you probably after a while,
you do a few of these things, you
get to know what, a sense of,
what will work or what won't.
Plus, a lot of these
songs are written, too, got to get
to the rally or there's
an event coming.
Let's write it in the car on
the way, driving to the
campfire, you know, kind of thing.
And so you just try it and
select, see what works and what
doesn't. And
pretty soon you could kind of
predict what'll work or what won't.
Well, so you mentioned
campfires and rallies,
do you do you remember any
times that you've performed Turtle
Island in public?
I guess you mentioned this school
in Taipei.
Were there any performances
in Texas that
come back to mind?
Oh, well, sure.
They still do. We
now have five-foot
cardboard, very thick cardboard
turtles, costumes
to go with this, and the hula
hula beach party.
We have some props.
I like, my little festivals
generate props.
Kids walk around with these turtles
on and we've got a
whole herd of turtles.
They're anatomically correct,
and about the shells,
the shell patterns.
And
there're, we have a bunch of
big ones, five or six big ones,
and now we have three or four little
ones because we had too many
big ones. Bunch of little ones.
They're reversible for pumpkins on
Halloween. But,
they're like cardboard, you know,
signs, sidewalk signs.
But you wear it; your head
sticks out of it. There's a turtle
shape.
They even have fins.
So, we, we continue
to dress kids
up like sea turtles and sing the
song. And they dance around.
They're in the beach party.
What fun!
Well,
while we're talking about
your songs and I guess
about some of these turtles
that appear on South Texas beaches.
Do you think you could tell us about
Rio Grande Valley:
it's a big feature
of South Texas.
And I think one of the animals
that has a cameo
appearance in the song is the
ocelot, which is
something that we've managed
to hear a number of biologists
talk about. But I was curious
if you could talk about that song
and how it kind of weaves together
the ocelot and a number of other
creatures that are native to south
Texas.
Well, of course, the ocelot is
one of the most, the premier
megafauna, the glamor
poster child.
It's the indicator
of what is a wilderness and
what isn't. And
its southern
border, northern border,
I should say, has been the river
and the corridor along
the Rio Grande Valley.
And
biologists, and organized biology,
and environmentalists - Valley
groups - National Audubon, local
Audubon, Weslaco and
Brownsville, all the way through
to many, many
great birding areas.
And all the birding groups joined
together to put aside
as much of this
wildlife corridor as possible.
And they worked hard on it for about
20 year - '70s,
'90s.
And this song is
inspired by that
and trying to connect all these
dots for, if you
do that for ocelot and the
jaguarundi, which is even more of
an elusive mammal,
if you do that for those,
you're protecting
quite a few other
birding species, for instance.
So, it's
a major campaign and one they could
focus on
and were successful until,
until the wall came around.
And the wall politics and
wall restrictions were just
devastating.
And I really don't know what the
story, what the story is on
that right now.
But that
song was commissioned actually
by Dede
Armentrout.
You know her?
With Audubon.
Yeah, and
she's so much fun.
And we did a lot of Audubon
conferences.
She said, "We need a, we need a
little theme song." And I had, I
don't know what
I had as a placeholder for that.
But she really wanted
more of a theme song in the Valley
and
several other folks were involved
too.
Dede - so much fun
- we wrote that theme
song. She wrote, "Ought to be an
Audubon", which is on that Audubon
Adventures Collection.
The,
oh, David, the deal, she said,
"The deal with, the commission was
that I would be able to
bring Glen from Philadelphia
to the rally, to
the gathering, to the conference
that, where the song would be
premiered.
So that's, those are
the kind of deals: she
would, she would bring Glen down if
I wrote this song.
So that was a good one
and a
good exchange there.
The song is long.
It's that long, repetitive,
Marty Robbins kind of feel to me.
Of course, you
know, wishful thinking there.
It's not a vocal stretch like he
would do, though.
But it was, I had
a lot of help,
and a lot of
folks down there
that are very knowledgeable
about
the species
that are mentioned, and the
creatures, and the
situations there,
and their personalities were
fun to
hear about and write down.
Let's see, this song
wound up, I wound up
going in elementary schools in a
little tour, so, you know, a week or
ten days, several
of those, and several school
districts. One, we would
go to the Gladys Porter Zoo and then
some schools.
And I say, "we", because they, there
was a school
that the teacher
was very active, very instrumental
in all this.
And their
whole class,
15 or 16 kids, learned the song.
She said, "We know your song, Rio
Grande Valley song. And so, we will be doing
it with you. And I said, "Well,
which part?
The song doesn't have a refrain.
It only repeats.
It doesn't even have a refrain."
And so, she said, "The whole thing."
and I went, "The whole thing is 5
minutes long!" They'll do the whole
song.
And every time we played it, I would
always mess up.
I would mess up one place.
And it was never, never the same
place.
And it wasn't a big deal
when I was a soloist, you know.
But now here's this, this
group. And it got to be really
terrifying for me because I knew I
was going to mess up somewhere and
they knew I was and they were just
staring at me, waiting for it.
And, uh,
but they, they kept, they
kept it strong. I'd mess up a word,
and they'd be right on it.
So that was the fun part, doing that
song with this group of kids
that sang the whole song, all the
way through. But I probably did that
ten times.
You know, the performance of Rio
Grande Valley with that group of
students reminds me that
they're, I've heard
recordings of a lot of your songs
where there are these very
accomplished, professional adult
musicians.
But then there's this, this chorus
of young voices.
And I thought maybe you could
talk a little bit about
why and how you incorporate that in
your recordings and performances.
Well, why?
Because it's fun.
And how? Because it's usually pretty
easy.
There they are.
It's happening.
You know, it's different.
That's about it.
It ought to be.
It seems like the thing to do.
That's why.
And it's just
the,
well, the learning and doing
is more than just, you know,
is more powerful, I suppose, to the
participants than,
than just being an audience
member.
In fact,
we did some conferences where,
it was a three-day conference,
Audubon, Sierra Club.
Glen and I, I say "we".
But we did,
we had two days with
and we'd meet with the
day care people, these conference
kids.
People would bring their kids and
there would be stuff for them
to do while everyone really went to
the workshops, the adults.
But the kids would be taken care of
- you know, five, ten kids, maybe
more.
And so Glen and I
hung out with them and
set up a
show, got, recruited
people for Habitat and Turtle Island
and a couple others, a
couple of Condo.
And we went off and found props
and made stuff, made turtles
and turtle costumes and
the kids made them.
We showed them and then we would
try to do it together.
And as adults, they needed arts and
craftsy things to do.
So we're looking forward to this
conference to actually
show, I think, at some
point, I thought they're learning
more about these turtles while
they're making these costumes.
Because when they're singing the
song, they're just, they're just
petrified. You know, it's on stage;
it's a show.
They're not thinking about the
content when they're doing the show,
but they're thinking about it when
they're making the costumes.
See what I'm saying?
That kind of involvement is,
is
exciting, fun to be around.
So
every now and then we get a chance
to do that.
We're doing that soon, at the
Kerrville Folk Festival teen
music camp, doing that
sort of thing with them,
to get on the water with those guys.
It's about 60 teenagers,
and the hottest week of summer,
and Kerrville
Folk Festival site,
and for
four days.
They had about
15 to 20 kids
a day. I
take them canoeing on the Guadalupe
at Center Point while the other
kids are learning songwriting.
But for one day they get to go
on the river.
And then we do little programs in
the evening and have a final concert
at the end where we break out
some costumes, get pretty silly,
spontaneous.
Teenage Saturday
Night Live, but with original
material right away, you know, that
they've made up.
Pretty fun.
It sounds great.
And I love your thought about
learning and
doing and maybe learning by
doing.
Maybe that is the way to really
get things to latch on.
Well, that's what, that's what
teachers do all the doggone time,
and we've worked with a bunch of and
we just ... It's just incredible to
go into classrooms and see all those
projects and they say, "Oh we
and we've, you know, we have your
song going in the background."
That's like, "Oh, all right!"
The kids, so exactly
what, thrilled
to hear that.
Yeah. So anyway, what I'm saying is
that what we do is, yeah,
just nibbles at it, compared
to the pros.
Well I would put you in the category
of pro,
but, so,
I'm curious: we've just, we talked
about
three songs so far, the Pine Bark
Beetle, Pine
Away, Pine Bark Beetle", "Turtle
Island", "Rio Grande Valley"
and a fourth that I thought
would be interesting to,
to discuss, just as an example,
I mean, you've got so many songs.
But
I think that Queen Invicta
tells a powerful story
about a little creature
that had a very big impact.
And I was hoping you could talk a
little bit about where that comes
from and what spurred you to do
it. And, you know, some of the
experiences of writing
and performing it.
Well.
Gee,
it was panic.
It was a panic.
It was written out of panic.
I mean, not out of panic, but in
response to that.
And so what I'm rolling through my
head right now is, is it really
changed, or are we just, you know,
we're just fine.
We're living, living with it.
We dealt with it.
We're dealing with it.
I have fire ants all over my place
here. I just brush them off and move
on.
But the,
so, I'm
curious because that's what the song
says is, don't,
don't burn down the barn
to get rid of the ants, you know,
kind of idea.
The song was a commission
from when
Hightower roamed the land, when
he was at Ag.
And some of his folks, they were
coming up with a more
benign
approach to fighting the fire
ant scare and
more benign than the
commercial, the more
mainstream conservative.
I don't know; I
hate to say conservative, but the,
the way it was going at the time was
a lot more poisons, and it would
overkill.
It was getting into food supplies,
and waterways -
just tough and bad to work around
or be near.
But my, I had
several people, that whole
Department of Agriculture, to
help me with it as far as the
science and the technical stuff.
So
I did that.
I hung out with those guys
and those folks and
got ...
I believe that
Beth Brown Bintner had moved on to
Ag with Hightower
from Austin's Recycling,
and I think she was pretty
responsible for me getting that gig,
something like that.
And so we wrote, we got the song
and finally got the hook.
It's a simple, "Ouch, ouch!
And then the slap of finding a fire
ant.".
You know, the
history of the fire ant was kind of
fun. So that was, that was easy
to get into that
melodrama.
And then we got this gal,
Vicki Fowler, to do the "Ho, ho, ho"
- the Queen.
I went after the Queen
part and then Invicta, the name,
Queen Invictus.
And so,
that just kind of
bespoke, haughty,
you know, silly, making
fun of British
setting.
So that's how the song kind of
worked out.
Plus, it's straightforward, simple,
almost slow bluegrass,
which, it's still fast song.
And we had a great band, once again.
Champ Hood plays fiddle on it.
And the,
let's see, john Emmett has a great
muddy part, he said, "Oh, I can get
muddy!" Brunnnabrunnna.
And he went out and he had a smile.
He went out in the car and came back
and with this thing, I haven't used
this in years. This is perfect.
But so
that's the going in story.
It was a very fun session
and
well-financed: it wasn't
as rushed as a lot of
them.
Had a budget, by gosh.
How exciting.
So, the real interesting
part of this is at the end.
The song got, finally they made
a video out of it, and we used kids
from elementary school, which was
just perfect.
We went to Zilker Park
and went to the studio
with the cameras and the kids.
The final product, it took
a while to get the video together,
and almost by the time they finished
it, Hightower was
no longer agriculture
commissioner.
Rick Perry moved in
and all of this kind of stuff was
shelved or forgotten or lost.
So it seemed, I guess.
Until a year or two later, somehow
Good Morning America calls up
and there, they had right
before it all got cleaned out
by Rick Perry's people,
it (sorry, Aggies)
it
moved the, somehow that video
got to Good Morning America, the
science editor, and now he's
doing a special on fire ants
and he introduces it with, "And it
even has a protest song!"
And they roll tape, video, the video
that the, from
Texas, that
had not been used for anything else.
They were going to use it in schools
and some other stuff but
nothing happened until this little
Good Morning America segment.
So, I heard
about it after it happened and
had to dig it out,
video.
Somehow we got it, a VHS copy, a
very rugged copy of it.
And they used the whole song.
And in and out of the whole song,
it played even in the background.
So that was pretty exciting.
They
were,
like they had a much longer segment.
They used it to come in and out of
the song.
Now. Let's
see if I can keep going.
The really
extra interesting part about this
was that I
got paid royalties,
the only decent royalties I ever
got, and it was BMI, Broadcast
Music International.
They didn't believe me.
I said, "It was used on ...", and
they said, "Oh, it was probably 30
seconds here or there." And I said,
"No it's more than that." And
they said, "Well, send me a copy.".
And that was that was not easy to
figure out how to copy this.
But we did. I sent it to them and
they wrote back saying, "You're
right, it was the whole song."
And so I got publisher
and writer - $2400,
David, in 19, what was it,
87.
Whatever it was.
And I got my first computer, so.
And it's the only payday I've ever
had, I think, it seems like.
But it was all just
an accident.
Or maybe a happy accident.
They're the best kind.
Well, it was a surprise.
But, you know, one thing that you
mentioned just in passing for
this
production
is that you had some
pretty noted musician,
Champ Hood.
And then earlier you were talking
about how
Dede Armentrout managed to
get Glen Walbeck to come
down and join you.
And I thought this might be a chance
to talk about the many
musicians that you've pulled
together in the Otter Space Band and
your other incarnations.
Some really talented
folks that, you know, play
mandolin and guitar and fiddle
and flute and sax and
trumpet and accordion, and, I don't
know, drums.
It's an amazing assembly
of musicians.
And could you
give us some examples of people
you've played with and how you
recruited them?
Well, the first one recruited me.
Doug Powell, our
electric mandolin player, puts the
outer space in the Otter Space Band.
And it was a, when was
that? In the mid-'90s or something,
I was playing at the Colorado Street
Cafe and he came up said,
"Hey, you need a band, and I'm
it", or something like that.
And he he had already, he
was playing with
several really great - "Ain't
Misbehavin'", and CPR -
small vocal ensembles
with a kind of jazz.
More, way more jazz.
Much harder, much more complicated,
sophisticated songs,
and tighter vocal harmonies.
But he's always been generous and
friends and a real go-to guy
and way more than just
than just, just the music.
But so that was a good start.
And Doug Powell gave me a truck.
I
needed a truck.
And he bought a boat when I needed
to sell one.
Stuff like that.
I guess all the turtles right now,
we have to get those swapped
out.
Let's see, Beth Gallagher is a
multi-instrumentalist.
She plays quite a bit with
us, flute and sax
and she's
classically trained on the flute,
but fiddle.
That's a brave group of
different instruments to take on.
And sings and
knows her way around a keyboard.
She gives lessons and teaches
and I,
she, she plays, her
and Doug, and Dean
on bass, these
guys will play for rallies.
We play for a lot
of events that have no,
don't have a budget, but they
are fun and interesting
and they're real,
real tight, loyal
groups.
A lot of fun to be with those guys.
Let's see,
Dean Stinsmuehlen's our
more recent, just a few years,
our bass player, he
plays with so many groups
and has over the years, with
Balcones Fault in the early days.
Big hair!
I had big hair then, but his
was, he was on stage in lights, with
Balcones Fault,
doing these great songs in big
productions at Armadillo World
headquarters and I was just
blown away by, saying, "Wow, man,
I want to do that so
bad!". How that never happens, but
closest
thing we got it.".
Dean on bass and
he's actually with lots
of other bands in town too, as
the other players do.
But now this is the pretty much the
current version of the Otter
Space Band. And we have
Oliver Steck, multi-talented
Oliver Steck, he's a guest
Otter that frequents us.
And really, it's like a secret
weapon, turning him loose, he can
round up the whole crowd,
people of all sizes, and have a
conga line going
right away, and makes up songs
and plays multiple instruments,
accordion and horns.
And just a
funny guy, too, on the spot.
So that's fun to have him.
Oh, my sweetie, Virginia
Palmer, she
provides a lot of energy.
She's in the band a lot.
Let's see. Moving back in history,
we had the Los Gonzos I mentioned -
John Inman and
Bob and Paul showed up (Paul
Pearcy, Bob Livingston), they
were on the Texas Oasis
recordings,
several songs there and
four of them,
three of them.
And that was the most professional,
exciting, magical
session
that I'd ever been in.
And it was
just like, "Oh, that's
how it's done." It went very fast,
when they took over, right.
Right, appropriately, and
just knocked these songs out.
"Texas Oasis", the title song,
"Watt Won't Do" and "Shopping
Maul".
And it was so much fun: the power of
John Inman's guitar playing, and
the tightness of their rhythm.
And it was
exciting. Bob Livingston helped a
lot through getting
me up on stages
and groups and events
and meeting
people.
And Paul Pearcy, he's probably
one of my better friends,
and on a river level, too.
He spends a lot of time off in New
Mexico now, going to Colorado -
Paul Pearcy.
And John Inmon
remains a studio Otter.
And every now and then we can get
him in a, we get a gig that'll
support his playing, which is
large, really, just
doesn't work everywhere we need
a full band, seems
like it, have a good part.
But John's there and
has a great little studio.
Bob is, Bob Livingston has
just taken off on his solo career
so much, we don't see him very
much for, well, even before the
pandemic that happened.
But it'll be, he'll come
around.
And then before that, before that,
there was a Glen Waldeck.
He and I were a duo.
We were a band for 20
years, and it was a lot of fun.
He was a multi-talented
threat and I was the straight guy.
That was a great, fun band.
And we also had Fishbait and
the Nightcrawlers in the '70s.
That had a lot of people come and
go.
In fact, Esther's Follies is where
that was, kind of had its
heyday.
Hey, David, I have a gig
at Esther's in the end of July this
year.
So that'll be interesting.
All right!
A little opening slot.
First time, in I don't know, what,
30, 40 years?
That is great.
That is great. I'll have to check that
out. Yeah.
Well, it sounds like you've had
this wonderful rotating cast
of, you know,
multi-talented
people that, you know, brought good
humor and loyalty
and all their instruments
as well.
And there's probably, there's 10
to 15 or 30 really
great occasional
Otters - Richard Bowden on fiddle
and folks that we'd meet
through different, oh,
causes and events.
But over the years
it's become fairly regular.
Yeah, go ahead, David.
No, no, that's, I
just admire what you've been able to
do to bring
people in and have them
contribute their
part of the puzzle
to making a really fine song.
Well, so speaking of songs,
I want to ask you about one last
production, the "Welcome
Back, Black-Capped Vireo".
And, you know, this rare
bird we have in the Hill Country.
And,
you know, it's making something of a
recovery. And this song
seems to, to tell that story.
Can, can you go through where
the song came from and
the career that it's had?
Well, it was a definitely
on purpose to
tell those stories that fill that,
that fill that spot.
It's sort of like if I was a
painter, I'd have to have a
bluebonnet painting or two, you
know. So,
actually I do have a bluebonnet song.
But the,
so, no, this was required
reading for a songwriter, for me,
I guess.
And it was
probably
the opening hook, "welcome back,
black-capped vireo".
The opening line set it all up and
the rest of it was pretty easy,
after that. Somehow, somehow, that's
the way some songs g.
You can
wait forever, try to, you can try
to force a opening line.
But, eh, they're so much better
when they pop
in and then just
write it out.
I think that's how that song
happened.
And it was
welcomed at Wild
Basin and the places that are
the name-dropped spots.
Right.
Yeah.
Is that got
Enchanted Rock in it, or am I
thinking of,
I'm thinking of another song, "April
in Austin".
No, but
the black-capped vireo,
and the warbler is, of course, in
the second line,
so it's for both of them.
And I like the
part that they've
been coming here since the
Pleistocene,
whenever that was.
That wasn't so long ago.
I think that's only what,
20 or 30,000 years.
But they've,
they've been here long enough
to deserve, deserve some more
respect.
So, another
endangered species
song that we want
to,
you know, help put those,
there's our pedestals.
There's our heroes.
The people are fighting for them.
It reminds me a little bit of
Turtle Island that you,
I think, get some, some moral
power from just the idea that
these creatures,
and our relationship with them, is
really ancient
and that we shouldn't be so
negligent to just cast them aside,
you know, for short-term benefits.
Is that fair to say?
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
And.
Well, we're the only creatures that
I, I guess that have
guilt or care
on this level. On this, like this,
maybe, or
the influence.
Yeah, the influence to do something
one way or another.
So,
how you know, how does that work?
Do you just, just
move on and...
Like,
my bubble is
with activists and
engaged and enthusiastic people.
But this
is like, I guess pre-pandemic.
But,
I also read a lot
and try to keep up and it doesn't
sound like we're winning
a lot of the battles
we had, like solid waste,
for instance, of course global
warming, climate change.
It's,
it's hard to tell
how we're doing,
because I'm with
people with a lot of optimism, but
they're worn out. And you
can't tell,
day to day, what
that the progress
is, or the prognosis is.
What do you think?
I don't know. I think the jury
is out.
But, you
know, I think it's interesting that
the people that you
sing to and, you know, you've
talked about how these songs
were put together, the lyrics, the
melodies, the orchestration.
But I guess,
from what I can tell, you, you
really have a rapport
with a lot of your audiences where
you're trying to pass
a message on to them.
It's not just a,
you know, feel-good enterprise.
It seems like you're, you're a
teacher in many respects.
And
I was wondering if you could talk
about some of the audiences that
you've worked with, especially the
kids. It seems like you
have a following
among young people.
Why is that?
I mean really young people, not
even teenagers.
But
little people.
Well, I have a connection.
I don't know about the following.
But it's
just eyebrows, man.
And you've got good eyebrows.
I just, it's just, well,
wiggling those. I can get silly.
I don't
think that it's just because
they're an easier group
that I do it,
I don't think.
And they may be easier because
I guess I'm
willing to
go get a little silly
and bring that out
with those groups.
I'm not too, I'm not too
nervous around a large group of
kids, for 45 minutes
anyway, if it's going well.
Naturally, actually, if it's going
badly, let me out of here!
But it usually goes
pretty well.
But, as
opposed to adults.
And
they're can be more demanding.
And I
guess it depends on the adults,
too.
It was the rally of
EarthFirsters, I've use the same
songs practically, or I
can put an edge on the
doom and gloom songs that had some
silliness to them and well,
it would be fun.
The, I
forgot what we're talking about...
Just about audiences and
you know how you build that
connection and
...
Well, just,
just ...
I don't know. Our
goal is to, you know, whatever
the, whatever the audience is,
you're supposed to rock the room.
Just go out there and
try to entertain
or perform, give a, make
it worth their while for a little
bit of time.
So, you just do
what you have.
And after a while, it's,
it's, you know, that part's,
that part's just second nature.
You just do it, it's not a lot of
analyzing going on.
Interesting because we spend this
team camp going over all this, and,
and for the life of me, I haven't
figured out how to, how to really
...
I'm not one of the real teachers,
actually. I take them on the river
and we do produce
little skits.
But the teachers are there
and they're, they really...
It's much more tedious,
that's for sure.
So it's a different
kind of work, but,
and those are older kids.
And they're motivated they're there
for teen camp.
Motivation. Returning a circle,
as I used to try to describe it as a
cycle, a circle, of inspiration.
I can be
inspired, or,
or I can be the inspirer.
And a funny bass player said, he was
talking about sometimes the music
makes you happy, and sometimes you
make the music happy, the other way.
Got to, you know, you,
you got to
be there and deliver.
So,
and the cycle with
kids is particularly
rewarding when they,
they come up with
reactions or content, even,
help the content, that
gee, I hadn't thought about or put
an angle to it.
No, it grows itself.
It's a cool, it's a good gig.
Well, and you're good at it.
So, do you feel like
the audiences
are much the same
as they were, you
know, when you started performing, I
guess, in the late '70s, maybe
earlier?
Do you, do you see that
they respond, they
show interest in the same things, or
are they changing?
Oh...
I mean, this is 50-plus years
into the environmental movement and
I'm sort of curious how
the beast is evolving.
Well, there's certainly a lot less,
my
prime days or years
are behind in numbers and
sheer, you know, bookings.
That's for sure.
So,
and I, ambition and
this follows my ambition.
I don't really, I,
I don't have a lot
of energy
or patience for the tedious
that comes with that business part
of it. So it's just mostly
what comes, comes towards
me.
And that's been enough, I guess,
and it'd better be.
So,
to answer your question.
I have had, it does
seem the same, but less of it.
But it's less of it.
Why?
There's over the years, of course,
my particular niche
has a lot more.
There are a lot more folks
that are actual environmental
troubadours.
And two or three
of them have been, have
come through my festival.
Lucas Miller, he's fantastic, the
singing zoologist.
He's hard working, he has ambition
and he has a family,
he has responsibilities
and that he has to
work hard.
And he does and he's very
smart and he's a very authentic.
Part of my work ethic was to have
time off, lots of it
- river time, we called it - like
spending, you
know, spend it in a kayak somewhere.
So I, that
was, I was very successful still,
still am.
In fact we are going on the,
we go, we have a trip
Wednesday, Wednesday on Barton
Creek.
Music with the band.
But the audience that I go to,
it's so subjective that.
I mean, they still seem,
they still seem receptive.
We just finished playing Lady
Bird, its 40th anniversary,
and it didn't seem like
a large crowd, but it was very hot
and just barely
out of the pandemic.
But they said there were 600 people
there somewhere?
So a lot of it's the same.
But it seems to be
thinning out. I don't know
how Earth's days are.
It's been several years that I seem
to be
a little less charming to me.
Oh, of course.
And so, what are the typical
gigs that you've played?
Me, I think you mentioned,
I guess the recurring things that
might have happened at
a school, or
a rally for some event
or issue, and then and then things
like Earth Day,
you know, the 40th anniversary of
Lady Bird.
Are there other
sort of occasions that bring
you and an audience together?
Well, I've actually
20 years of producing our little
festival in Zilker Park, two of
them. And that
took up a lot of my
energy.
20 years ago, I was in the
middle of a failed attempt to
relocate to California, San
Francisco Bay area, and
that lasted about five or seven
years when I was really back and
forth in Austin a lot.
The irony was that that is when I
finally got to start my festival at
Zilker Park, Mother Earth Day
at the Springs.
So I wasn't really here,
oh, almost half the time.
But
everything, a lot of things
dropped off.
Schools quit having budgets.
And for one thing, it wasn't just
me, or my, or my
level of ambition.
Folks that tried hard noticed
it too.
But that was when I was cranking up
the festival. So I put a lot of my
energy into making this little
festival, that 500,
600, maybe 800 kids would
show up, and
for 4 or 5 hours at
Zilker Park. And I was trying to
make it especially about
the local issues that for
youngsters at
schools also
that I didn't see.
There was one of those still isn't
one like that.
And so,
there I became a promoter
and a festival producer.
And,
a side,
an interesting effect of that was
that teachers said, "Well, we don't.
I said, "I still go to schools, you
know." He says, "Oh, why don't we
come to your festival for free?
So we do that." So, great.
Shot myself in the foot,
market-wise.
But
we're still struggling to come back
from the pandemic.
We've been taking the festival to
schools and did
one out at Manchaca a few months
ago. That was great.
700 kids and we did a little mini
version and
had some of our booths
and some other folks, their art,
that..
Oh and Barton Hill
School: we had a
walk through the woods and
they hiked down, and had one class
of sixth graders hiked down and we
put on a mini festival at
Barton Creek, for
our full band and
some of our characters,
Lady Bird Lake, I mean,
Lady Bird Johnson, gal,
she talked about Lady Bird Lake.
And we had some poets
and put them on canoes
and kayaks for the rest of the,
rest of that event, for about two
hour and a half, then joined them
on our raft.
So that's an event that we're
working on.
Also, we've had two or three voyages
on the Lone Star riverboat.
We took about 100 kids
and did songs
and had Mark Twain and Lady Bird
Johnson characters
to give orations.
So that's where I'm looking at now.
And it's hard for
me to judge a larger,
the larger world
from inside these little
productions, but
it seems to be clicking along,
although the news
is frightening too.
But it's interesting and
heartwarming that you,
you know, try to reinvent
how to appeal and
pull people in when
budgets are tight and time is tight
and,
in the course of it all, you make it
fun. You know, whether you're,
you're on the
Lone Star riverboat or,
you know, you're taking a walk down
to Barton Creek.
That's good stuff.
You know, and the other thing that
strikes me is that a lot of these
people in the audience, especially
the children, are
probably getting education
through textbooks and
PowerPoints and,
you know, the droning teacher.
And you have found a way
to, I think, teach
with music and song.
And I'm wondering what you
think the niche is for that and
how you have come to
sort of develop that that way
of
educating people.
Oh,
well, it was certainly, lights
already well established
about when
I came on.
There was a group in
northeast New England that
Pete Seeger and
that generation
will be the first line
of elders.
They came to these events.
And there were
groups of, you know,
hippie, post-beatnik
musician, singer-songwriters,
mostly from the Northeast, but from
all over eventually, because they
were the most,
the most
well-lived, the established
traditional song or
singer-songwriters, they would
gather, gather together, political.
And a lot of the politics
eventually became
entwined with, oh,
younger,
with environmental specialties,
more specialties, teachers, lots of
teachers, so,
activists of all stripes.
And I was involved more
in environmental causes at the time
so easy to overlap.
And but that was one place
that opened my eyes to all of these.
There were lots of people that,
by that I mean dozens, of
acts and folks around the country
and the world that are
working about environmental and
nature issues
in their music.
Endangered species fairs - and
so I would go, I went
up and saw a conference or two and
that led to a conference or two and
more.
And we wound up
having a theme song. The Habitat
song worked really well.
Still does. I, I
always thought Olivia Newton-John
was going to cover it, but
it's going to have to be somebody
else.
So
I think that it's quite
a, there's quite a, quite a niche
now in Austin.
Texas Parks and Wildlife did a story
about Lucas Miller and Pearly
Gates, and I doing environmental
ed in schools through music.
And
there's three.
And there's several more right
around here.
But Texas Commission on the Arts,
you know, supports some of that.
I was with them for a while.
Lots of nature themes showing up in
storytelling. And not just showing
up, they've been there.
So, it's, I
guess it's partly storytelling,
in addition to,
you know, the rhymes. There's
a through line here,
a message that you try to
embed in these songs.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sometimes. Yeah.
Big wind.
They call me, "Big Wind" in Alaska.
And that's not Break Wind,
Big Wind.
But, you know,
like Ray Wylie Hubbard
and Ramblin' Jack Elliott and
Arlo Guthrie.
I'm not, I guess,
I'm not saying, I'm not saying.
That's more like back to weird Al.
And I'm not saying I have stories
or that kind of humor.
But those guys would they, you know,
they'll do their whole set building
up to one song in their
introductions.
Other people, the audience yells,
you know, "Shut up and play."
And so,
I'm somewhere in between there.
And Kerrville
is a "shut up and sing", "shut
up and camp" kind of mottos
on T-shirts there.
But you don't you know, you don't
say that to Arlo Guthrie.
You keep talking.
Whatever.
So there was once
in Hawaii, I was trying to, I was
getting into a little
long introduction to Turtle Island,
and
the audience, somewhere in the
audience, came this very droll,
loud, "Can't say enough
about it."
"Okay, I guess we'll
do the song now." But,
yeah.
Well, I guess we all get impatient
from time to time. We
want to know what
the bottom line is, what the, the
joke is, or what the
song is.
Well, and I'm chewing
up your day. And shouldn't
keep you all day.
But I really
always enjoy talking with you
and
hearing what's on your mind.
And I think as
we wrap this up, maybe you can just
tell us a little about where
you think
things are going from here, both
for the future of conservation
and environmental protection, and
also for you.
I mean, what is your next
gig, you might say, your next
chapter?
Oh,
well, those are two
subjects, that's for sure.
The
environment - like
we often would say,
you have to continuously
save
an old-growth tree.
Cut it down once.
You have to continuously save a
spring.
You can't, you just,
it's a lot harder to bring a ruined
spring back.
And so constantly
protecting,
protecting, protecting, protecting.
But looking down the long line,
like politics come and go,
let things level off, and then it
just becomes a philosophical tug of
war, of power
and circumstances.
So it's like, man,
we only need a couple of bad dips
to really mess up.
And I mean, climate change, of
course, is just such a huge,
you know,
that was the basic example there.
I mean, nature is not going to wait
for us.
So we're going to have to just
be adapting
on these things. And
then we're surrounded by our own
debris in the oceans
and the
rising tides.
So, look at 100 years, 50 years,
everything, 200 years
that these philosophies
and power comes and goes.
When will we come up with an
enduring ethic?
So you'd like to think that
some of the power and energy
and ideas
that people are trying
to
create or maintain,
hoping that some of that's on track
and durable.
So who knows?
It's kind of,
I guess, makes, you know,
the only, there's no
other choice but to try.
So,
yeah.
Keep, keep at it and
enjoy, enjoy it when you can.
Have some river time.
I don't do either one enough.
That's for sure.
But let's see.
Personally, I don't know.
Well, I'm looking down the last few
years of
kind of organizing a lot of loose
ends. I've got a lot of songs that
we've actually recorded and never,
never could afford to master or put
them on the next level.
And they were,
I don't know, they, they, seems like
I'm catching up where we will
finally squeeze
them out in a video or a still
photo or some form.
The pandemic, the
pandemic I made a, made a studio
- stimulus money.
I got some
cameras and stuff and it's been kind
of fun - our own little projects.
And we
hope to do more of that.
A lot more of that.
And as well
as the, the festivals are,
really want to do the festivals. But they're
a lot of work and physical
work. And I'm trying to
at least taper, taper
off on that if possible.
But so
need a crew. Need more crew members.
That might happen and in the
meantime videos and songs -
I need to write
a few more songs, that's for sure.
I haven't been doing that so much.
We got so much homework to
catch up on, it seems like.
So, I'm,
I'm looking forward to
the opportunity, to
the work and projects coming up,
although it's really
rather grim times, actually.
I take it pretty seriously - the
politics and the power that comes
with it.
So I guess we could
talk all about that.
But I.
Yeah, no, it's daunting.
Well, tell me what
possible songs might
be coming down the pike
from Bill Oliver and the Otter Space
Band?
Oh, man, that's tough,
huh?
Well,
got any titles that are swimming
around in your
creative mind?
Oh, well,
kind of, sorta.
I wish I
could answer that quicker.
I have a, I want to,
it's,
I want a song, to write a song about
Hippie Highway, which is the
road that goes through
South 5th here, South 5th
and Dawson.
It's a
song
about,
oh, some of my
political songs.
I wanted to do a song about the, but it
would be a dirge, though,
(I'm looking for my notes), a
dirge about
the, whatever, it would be, about
the Civil War monument in
Texas to the Freethinkers
that were massacred for
trying to
escape to Mexico, not sign
the pledge.
That would be a civil
rights song.
And so, uh,
but that's, that's not
what you're asking.
The gal who,
whose,
the gal, the new road that we have,
Robert E. Lee, that has changed
-
that gal,
that road going to Barton Springs?
Do you know what I'm talking about?
Yeah, sure.
Absolutely.
Morton. Morton.
What's her name?
Yeah, I should know
that name.
Well, one thing I think is
important.
Is that Azie Morton?
Yeah. There we go. Thank you.
Azie.
Sure. Sure.
I want to do a song about her.
She has an amazing story.
Gosh.
Oh, Lord.
Oh, I know what I'm trying to think
of.
Ned Fritz is having a big
resurgence and there's
a project.
This,
your project reminds me of that.
It's a legacy sort of thing, but
it's about Ned Fritz.
And Ned Fritz, of course,
has many forests
and trails and creatures
and stories.
And so a bunch
of songs for that, some of which
are barely, you know,
were just done in campfires.
So, we'd
want to be
working on that collection.
And,
right, Azie Morton.
Well, I wish you well.
And I'm one of your
loyal fans.
And I look forward to these songs
getting lyrics and with
funny rhymes and
catchy melodies and,
and always a very important
message. So keep at
it.
And thank you so much for
both looking back at some, some
old songs and then telling me about
some new songs that may be
in the percolator.
Yeah, man, this is inspiring.
Exciting, and thank you for your
interest.
Oh, always interested.
Thank you so much, Bill.
And give my
regards to Mr. Habitat.
I will.
Good luck with your project.
What is there? Is there a,
is there a launch?
Is this just ongoing?
It's not a something
that you're going to publish?
Well,
you know, the interviews are,
I think, have their own
life, which I hope will go on for a
long time. I really enjoy hearing
people like you talk about
their work, and their lives, and
their ideas.
But yeah, we
are trying to distill some of this
into a book
that Texas A&M
hopefully will
like and be willing to publish.
Well, so that's the goal.
But it's,
you know, you can't always think
about the end
of the road. Just driving down the
road is often fine.
And so...
Yes, I understand that for
sure.
Doing these
interviews is a little bit like
river time.
So good.
I like that term a lot.
I hope you don't mind if I borrow
it.
No. Go right ahead.
Okay.
Well, and Bill, as well, thanks
for being patient with our technical
issues.
I think we've got a recording,
and all I need to do is
hit, "stop".
And we will wait on the line
for just a moment to let the
recordings upload.
And then we should
be good.
So, thank you very much.
Well, if you need
to redo, need to do redo it,
probably won't get any better, but
I hope there's a good editor over
there. Is that you?
I
wear one of those hats, yes.
No, this is great.
Thank you so much, Bill.
You have a good day and
I hope we get to cross paths
really soon.
Right. Well, best to the family.
All right. Take care.
Thank you.
All right. Bye now.

In collections

Conservation History Association of Texas, Texas Fauna Project records

Details

Title: Bill Oliver oral history
Identifier: camh-dob-020435
Other IDs: Wildlife_Oliver_Bill_AustinTX_11July2022_Reel4120_Full-LengthAudio.mp3
Description: Oral history of Bill Oliver conducted by David Todd on July 11, 2022. Oliver is a celebrated songwriter, singer and educator based in Austin, Texas. He has entertained and taught generations of children and adults about habitat and wildlife conservation. In this interview, he discusses his life and career and songs that he has written.
Creator: Todd, David, 1959-
Contributor: Oliver, Bill (Musician)
Conservation History Association of Texas
Date: 2022-07-11
Date Created: 2022-07-11
Resource: Conservation History Association of Texas, Texas Fauna Project records
Subject Name: Oliver, Bill (Musician)
Subject Topic: Animals
Subject Geographic: Texas--Austin
Physical Genre: Oral histories
Interviews
Extent: 01:29:46
Collection Strength: Texas History
Use and Reproduction: Please contact the Briscoe Center for further information regarding the use of this material.