“I started writing kind of a memoir about a year and a half ago, just therapeutic.”
Rick Fowler is an accomplished artist, know for his paintings of the high country around River Red and for his musical association with Three Faces West and The Great American Honky Tonk Band.
“I had a poster of the Echos of the Valley festival we had back in ‘89. I had a bunch of those and I put it by the door to give to you. Left it there.”
It’s 10 am on a Monday morning and Rick Fowler is sitting at a tall table in the Lost Love Saloon, talking about the 1989 reunion of Three Faces West at the Red River Ski Area.
The musical group which consisted of Fowler, Wayne Kidd and Ray Wylie Hubbard was a sensation in the late 1960s when they opened a coffee house and performing arts venue which became the foundation of the Red River music scene.
The Outpost was located on the current Copper King Trail, near The Lodge at Red River. Beginning in 1967, musical friends of the trio would visit during the summer and perform on the stage of the intimate room. “Steve Fromholtz, Dan McKrimmon, Rusty Weir…” Fowler recalls.
“Our whole deal was to do Murphey songs before they got out there. We did “Wildfire” and “Saxton County Wild Man” and “Fort Worth I Love You.”
Born in Chicago, his family moved to the Dallas area when he was less than a year old. His father was in the Air Force.
He grew up in Oak Cliff and attended Adamson High where he went to school with Hubbard and Kidd, B.W. Stevenson, Larry Gross and Michael Murphey.
“We kind of knew each other in junior high school. When we went to high school we found we had a mutual interest in music.
“I was a big fan of folk music. I got a guitar in junior high and started learning cords.” He also took up playing the 5-string banjo.
“Then I met a some guy – I think Greg Griswood was his name – who taught me ‘Cotton Pickin,’ a finger style of guitar playing associated with folk singer Elizabeth Cotton.
“He went to another high school and was in a really good trio with Murphey’s brother and Richard Dean.”
Of the trio that would become known as The Coachmen before eventually changing the name to Three Faces West, Rick says “We were really into all the folk trios back then, like Kingston Trio.”
He laughs when recalling the group’s first gig at a Mexican restaurant for the school Spanish Club.
“It couldn’t have been a worst disaster! The air conditioner was real cold and our instruments got all out of tune. We stayed back in the kitchen waiting for them to introduce us. I think everybody has a few of those.
“It was all uphill after that! If we’d been any smarter we would have hung it up right then!”
Rick remembers going to visit Jimmy Vaughn in South Oak Cliff.
“He was going to teach us the riff for “Paperback Writer.” There was this little kid in the corner picking his nose. I said something about ‘who is that’ and Jimmy said ‘Oh that’s just Stevie Ray.’”
After high school graduation, Rick, Ray and Wayne “left straight away” for Red River.
“We answered an ad in the Dallas Morning News for a summer job asking for talented musicians. We auditioned and got the job and we got into those chuckwagon dinners. I’ve got a chapter about that in my memoirs!”
The job was at the Red River Ski Area Chalet and consisted of a BBQ meal and The Coachmen entertaining with live music.
“He referred to us as ‘wranglers.’ That was a one and done deal for T.A. Painter, the guy who hired us and dressed us up for a photo.” The picture in question shows the trio in cowboy hats and string ties, holding their instruments and smiling big time.
While they did play following the meal, they also pulled busboy and cleanup duty.
“That was just the beginning.” That was summer of 1965.
The next year, Wayne got a job in Red River managing a little grocery store where Frye’s is now, and he slept in a little room with an ice machine while Rick and Ray attended a semester of summer school at UTA in Arlington.
“Then we took off in July, went all through Colorado performing as a duo, the Texas Two.
“We were still doing the folk music, but we weren’t doing all the songs everybody did. All of our songs were songs that nobody had ever heard before. We did a lot of Murphey songs and we had written a few songs at that point.
“We did more obscure stuff that we dug deep to find. You know: blues players, stuff like that. We had a pretty cool repertoire.
“Yeah, we just took off. No itinerary. No gigs, no nothin’ and eventually ended up in August in Red River, playing for Jack Emery who hired us to play the Riverview Inn. We were just roamin’ around the tables. We’d play people a song, and then Jack would come out from the kitchen with a washtub bass. Then Otto Barker would come across the street playing his jug. The cook at the time was a guy named Jess and was actually a good fiddle player and Jack would say ‘Come out here’ and we’d be goin’ at it, something like “Red River Valley.”
“Ray and I lived at any number of places. We lived back in the bunkhouse – located today behind Red River Angler & Sport – and were both drivin’ Jeeps for Don Dossett, next to the Dairy Bar. Jack just loved music, he was a patron.”
It was the summer of ‘67 that Rick, Ray and Wayne started The Outpost. First, they persuaded John Brandenburg, owner of the building, to lease it to them for the summer. Figuring they wouldn’t last but three weeks or so, he insisted they pay the full summer’s rent.
“We fashioned it after all the coffee houses we had played. First and foremost: The Rubaiyat in Dallas. We started going there when we were sophomores. The place was great, with coffee and hot cider. It always smelled incredible!
“We took their exact menu. They used a lot of these mixes for drinks. We weren’t even old enough to drink.
“The Outpost building was tailor-made, that little intimate room. It was great. We built the stage, had sound, lights, electrician spools for tables and had a painted backdrop on bamboo shade.” The backdrop would eventually be covered with autographs of the musicians who played there, names that would become legends from the Texas music scene of the 1970s.
“We handled the first summer by ourselves, because it was an unknown commodity. The people in town thought ‘you’re gonna charge people just to walk in the door and you don’t have any alcohol’ and all that kinda stuff. So we had a Open House Night, did our regular show for the townspeople who all turned out. They loved it and got the word-of-mouth going. You know, the lodge owners wanted something for their patrons to do and we were one of the things on their list, like ride the ski lift, go to The Outpost.
“Unwittingly, we decided not to open the doors until 7:30 for an 8 o’clock show. So instead of people trickling in, they’d line up all the way down to Main Street! People see a line… they just go and get in it ‘cause this has got to be something good.
“Everything was working for us and we did great that summer. We made some money.” Three Faces West leased the building for about eight years.
“There was this long counter when you walked in and there was this big, fancy cash register. Ron Burnham was our doorman. We had an album and it was displayed there. It just worked out great.”
Prior to The Outpost it had been sitting empty for a while. It had been Bob and Eva’s Cafe at one time, famous for their coconut cream pie.
“In ‘69, Ray moved back to Dallas and we got Steve Howard and kept on going. We winterized it and performed over Christmas.”
Eventually Fowler would be associated with Michael Martin Murphey and the Great American Honky Tonk Band at the Motherlode Saloon, but that is another story for another time.