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Ray Wylie Hubbard
When F. Scott Fitzgerald issued his classic conclusion that ‘There are no second acts in American lives,’ he failed to envision the career of legendary Texas troubadour Ray Wylie Hubbard. A willing conspirator in the late seventies Cosmic Cowboy revolt that ushered in the mythical Outlaw era, Hubbard was a catalyst in the cultural upheaval that led to the peaceful coexistence of Lone Star music enthusiasts who comprised each end of the social and political spectrum of that troubled time. In the stellar company of iconic colleagues like Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Doug Sahm and Jerry Jeff Walker, Ray Wylie Hubbard was an architect of the musical legacy that continues to inspire subsequent generations of up-and-coming Texas talent.
It is no small irony that a songwriter of such proven depth and originality would come to acclaim through the unlikely ascent of a tongue-in-cheek parody like Hubbard’s anthemic “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mothers,” a key component in Walker’s landmark 1973 album Viva Terlingua. The song’s immediate success was a mixed blessing for Hubbard, who spent much of the decade following the song’s impact trapped in a Catch-22 of alcohol and drug abuse that was facilitated by just enough name recognition to perpetuate the gradual self-destruction that played itself out in the tired and lethal cliché of ‘living one’s art.’
  
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