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Bill & Bonnie Hearne
Even when they were starting out as an unknown folk duo in Austin back in the early `70s, playing coffee houses and bars, Bill and Bonnie Hearne never once drove themselves to a gig. Which was not a pretension to stardom but a simple matter of ways and means. The Hearnes were then, as they are now, blind. Itinerant musicianship below the level occupied by Sting and Wynonna is
a tough enough road financially without requiring, as it does for the Hearnes, the paid services of at least one extra person to drive their van, wrangle
the sound equipment and find a Denny's at midnight. If that person can also play bass, all the better.
Many are the days and nights of the past 25 years that the Hearnes have coped with such economic and logistical challenges as they have sung their
way to a harmonious prominence in the oral histories of all the songpoet bars and sweeter honky tonks of Texas, New Mexico and Colorado. A few years
ago, Nanci Griffith notably singled them out for praise in dedicating her Grammy Award-winning folk revival album "Other Voices, Other Rooms"
to, among others, "Bill and Bonnie Hearne, who play the best darn folk
music I
Such younger and more famous Texas country-folk performers as Lyle Lovett and Tish Hinojosa have sworn oaths of influence and indebtedess to them.
"They used to play a place called Corky's in the Montrose area of Houston,"
Lovett explained recently on The Nashville Network. "I would get a
seat right up next to the stage and sit in front of Bill and try to figure out all his guitar licks."
Former University of Texas football coach Darrell Royal, one of the aficionados, said that listening to the Hearnes produced in him "the
same pure feeling as hitting a golf ball square in the sweet spot." It would appear that more people around the country at last are going to
get the chance to apply coach Royal's metaphor first hand - or, if they don't play golf, come up with their own. After recording a handful of
low-budget albums through the years which were largely available at their
For the first time, the Hearnes are on the charts and in the music stores, they're on the radio in Boston, they've done a showcase in Nashville and
played public radio's nationally broadcast "Mountain Stage," with
Ian Tyson (of Ian & Sylvia).
Reviewing "Diamonds in the Rough" in The Washington Post, critic
Mike Joyce said about them: "The history of country music is doted with recordings by great pairings - the Louvin Brothers, George Jones and Tammy
Wymette, and the Judds, to name a few. Now, Bill and Bonnie Hearne can be
"We're Bill and Bonnie Hearne - Warner Western recording artists,"
Bill announces from the stage of Gruene Hall in Gruene, Texas on a recent Sunday
afternoon. There's an ebullience in his voice that is very much at odds
with the usual world-weary pose of the country troubadour.
Backed by their latest "seeing eye" bass player, John Egenes,
Bill and Bonnie head off into a couple sets built around songs from the new album:
"New Mexico Rain," by Bill's nephew Mike Hearne; Eliza Gilkyson's
"Rose of Sharon"; and "Every Drop of Water," by Alan Shamblin and
Steve Seskin. The
"That song is their story," says Jim Rooney. "Every time
I hear it I'm touched by it. They found it on an old Ricky Skaggs record. They devour
albums."
Each number they do from the stage of this cotton mill dance hall built
in 1878 is a sample of the higher form of narrative ballad being written today by songwriters whose work is rarely heard outside of noncommercial radio
and live "alternative country" performances like this one.
Bill stands up front, acoustic guitar raised high on his midriff to
Bonnie thinks of their style as "bluegrass with gospel rhythm."
And you get all the words. "We would like for people not to need a lyric sheet
when they hear our songs," she says.
When they launch into Roger Miller's swing tune "Invitation to the
Blues," five or six couples get up and start to two-step around the dance floor
in the late afternoon light. "Both of them have great rhythm,"
says Rooney. "And Bill is an incredible guitarist. He plays rhythm and lead
at the same time. Which you have to do when people are dancing -- you can't
let the beat go. And Bonnie has a great left hand playing the piano. They have
a lot of movement in their music, which I really like."
Craig Barker, who is married to and manages Tish Hinojosa and was once the
Hearnes' seeing-eye bass player, says that to play with them, "You
had to be imbued with something other than the ability to count."
"There's no question that their handicaps have influenced the way they interact with the world and focused them intensely on what they do,"
says John Egenes, whom the Hearnes credit with nudging them repeatedly to find the backing to make the new album.
After the show, with rain from a sudden thunderstorm pounding the corrugated metal roof of the dance hall, Bill sits down and has his first
beer of the evening. "We've stuck to our guns," he says of their decades-long battle to sing the best songs by the best writers despite the
usual pressures from bar owners to do more current pop hit material. "We never sold out. We might have done some things to get by, but we never sold
our saddle, as Ian Tyson says."
Now 48, Bill grew up middle class in Dallas; Bonnie, 51, was born in Corsicana, south of Dallas, and spent her early years in poverty so grim
she was removed from her parents to a foster home. Eventually she was sent to the Texas School for the Blind in Austin.
Bonnie studied piano in school and, despite her Baptist upbringing, had played in her first bar by the time she was 16. "I was influenced by
the music I heard in church but later by Linda Ronstadt and Carole King," she says.
"Bonnie was more plugged into the folk thing than I was," says
Bill, who as a kid listened avidly to the Grand Ole Opry and local country music shows
in Dallas. Buck Owens and Merle Haggard were heroes. And Ray Price. "When Ray Price went pop it broke my heart," he says.
Because of his visual impairment, he not only couldn't play sports but also wasn't asked to be in any bands in high school though he had been
playing the guitar from the age of nine. Instead he spent long hours at
home playing by himself, trying to emulate the complete sound of Buck Owens' Buckaroos on record. Which, he says, is how he developed his picking-and-
A mutual friend who had gone to special education classes with Bill gave him Bonnie's phone number in 1968 just after Bonnie had graduated from the
University of Texas and Bill was a freshman there. Bill called her up, as Bonnie remembers, "And I said, `Come on over.' We started
playin' Gordon Lightfoot songs and Ian & Sylvia. I guess we could tell something pretty
Bonnie had been planning to get one of the jobs then open to blind people, transcribing medical records. Instead she married Bill and they joined the
long-haired Tony Lama boot brigade and Austin nightlife fandango that took over after Willie Nelson came home to Texas from Nashville in 1972.
For years, Nelson invited them to be part of the entertainment at his
"I learned more about chord progressions from Willie than probably
anybody else in the world," Bonnie says.
"The `70s in Austin were pretty crazy times," Bonnie says. "We
didn't do as many drugs or drink quite as hard as some of them. It was a scene, too
much of a scene probably for us."
But as Austin music friend and former restaurant owner Segle Fry puts it, "They disappeared into the New Mexico vortex for a few years."
Rooney first heard them play at Texas' Kerrville Folk Festival in 1985.
"I just thought they were great," the producer says. He tried to get them
a deal right away at Rounder Records, Griffith's label at the time. He was
Under Rooney's supervision, Bill and Bonnie recorded "Diamonds in the Rough" in Austin and Nashville with a supporting cast of all-star session
players, in addition to Lovett, Walker & Co. Warner Western bought the finished product not long after Rooney began to circulate it in Nashville.
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