Album Notes

THE SEARCHING YEARS is put together in three stages that divid the music in different times. Stage One takes in the earlier years, which reflect the escaping from the complexities of city life. Stage Two has a little of that carried over with Big Ol' City and What's Gonna Happen to All Us Old Hippies. I missed the hippie years because of my military service, but after coming home to the states I found myself playing music with some of them. Yet, the times were changing and hippism was slowly dying out. I heard a lot of bad things about them...but I always found them to be good people...they just had different ideas and sometimes people don't like folks like that. I did and I am glad I met a few of them. Moving into Stage Three you find a some Texas music. I have worked and drove through Texas many, many times. Mexican Maiden and On a South Texas Highway give you a good idea of how I view Texas. Even "Would the Lady" fit into this CD because Texas has a lot of good places lonely people go. Yet, one can't talk about Texas without thinking about cowboys and here again, Stage Two and Three overlap. Cowboys From Utah and A Cowboy Ain't Nothing have that Texas aspect to them. I never was a rodeo cowboy, but my son "Pody" was, but he was out of Denver. Riding bulls was his thing...I couldn't understand it. I'd rather charge up a hill knowing what my enemy was all about...them bulls seemed a bit strange to me.

At any rate, the music on the CD is about other place than Arkansas, which I like to write and sing about. So being called the Arkansas Folk Music Ambassador doesn't keep me from singing and writing about other places or people...or visiting those places too.