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Here's the thing.

I'd forgotten all about this Steve Fromholz song, "Texas Trilogy", until just the other day. It predates and foreshadows the Texas "outlaw" music scene, centering around Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, that exploded in the 1970s.

"Texas Trilogy" is interesting because it is a very long piece. In a jaunty honky-tonk / Texas Swing style, it tells an in-depth story about real people in a real place. From a Nashville perspective, it had no commercial potential. Lyle Lovett did a more polished cover of it, which was cool. But Fromholz' album never even made it to a CD. It is now out of print.

There's been several books and a film called "Texas Trilogy". Some are either directly or indirectly indebted to the song. And perhaps vice-versa. It's a theme that floats in the air.

Fromholz was declared Texas State Poet Laureate in 2007.







A whole string of country-style singing story-tellers followed in Fromholz' wake. Many of them were drawn to the scene in Austin, or were from Texas. Joe Ely. Jimmie Dale Gilmore. Ray Wylie Hubbard. Jerry Jeff Walker. David Allan Coe. Willis Alan Ramsey. Guy Clark.

Others working in that style had been around for a while, but found a new audience. Doug Sahm. Augie Meyers. Alvin Crow and the Pleasant Valley Boys. (Check out their "NyQuil Blues" -- LOL!)

Some looked, or are still looking, for fame and fortune. Others -- more like Fromholz -- eschewed the whole idea of market appeal, preferring to see music as an end in itself. Although Townes Van Zandt gets talked about alot -- and justifiably so -- I'd offer Butch Hancock, from Lubbock, in West Texas, who is perhaps less well-known, as an exemplar of that approach. Check out his "Boxcars".




So -- I imagine you are asking -- what the heck does any of that have to do with Beer Bear and Mousey Tongue?



Well. It's like this. I was waxing nostalgic. Thinking about all that different music I listened to back in Austin way back then, back in the day -- my college years, basically.

And that was just the "outlaw" country and singer-songwriter stuff. There was also Stevie Ray Vaughn, who I loved so much I'd go sit on the sidewalk outside the Continental Club to listen (being broke, and he played so loud, that worked fine), And his brother, Jimmie Vaughn and the Fabulous Thunderbirds, who I loved to dance to.

Not to mention just all kind of blues over at Antones, including living legends like my personal blues hero, Lightnin' Hopkins, whose hand I actually got to shake!




And then, like literally the Monday after the Sex Pistols show in San Antonio, just an enormous explosion of punk rock happened, which quickly sort of centered mostly around a dive in Austin called Raul's.





That was a whole 'nother amazing musical scene. At the epicenter of it were The Dicks.

So. Yeah. Along with Steve Fromholz and Butch Hancock, in that vein of "amazing music with no commerical potential", I was listening again the other day to The Dicks' classic 1980 punk anthem "The Dicks Hate the Police". (I still have my 45 of it.)


The Dicks were like the throbbing hardcore bass beat of the whole thing. Radical gay commies who took no prisoners. The number of bands and cultural sparks that spiraled around that scene was almost as phenomenal as the renaissance in country music that had occurred there, far outside of and as a rejection of the Nashville nexus.



Of course, many cities and towns had and still have amazing music scenes. There are countless local performers, songwriters, bands and artists all over this country -- and in many others -- who just love the music and don't give a shit about being "popular".


These just happened to be some of the ones I'd bumped into when I was first bopping around the world on my own, whose spirit still resonates with me.






So -- I imagine you are asking, right? -- so... PQ... what the heck does that have to do with Beer Bear and Mousey Tongue?


It's like this.

After I'd moved on into my Adult Life. While going to a trade school -- having completely "wasted" my college years, pretty much, on music, partying, politics, drugs and so on -- so I could learn a skill (computer programming) to pay the rent, and before things pulled together. That is, before I met my partner, before we adopted a foster son, before the AIDS crisis started to take up all of our spare moments.

For a brief period there, back then, in the early 80's, I thought maybe I could come up with a comic book with no commercial appeal. But one that would make me happy and maybe express something that was meaningful for some small group maybe who it might resonate with.

I was going to call it "Beer Bear and Mousey Tongue". It would feature...

A big ol' laid-back bear -- Beer Bear -- who drinks lots of beer -- and who deals with the affairs of men mainly by laughing at them, ignoring them, and refusing to take them seriously.

...and...

Not his nemesis exactly. Maybe even his friend. Mousey Tongue. A completely overwrought, over-the-top, emotionally-wrecked, very excitable little mouse who was constantly being offended by anything and everything that humans did, most of which, to be honest, is pretty awful.

I never got any further than drawing one scene for each them, where they are reacting to the news on TV that Ethiopia, sick of the superpower shenanigans, has declared war on BOTH the USA and the USSR.




This is supposed to be Mousey Tongue expressing his support for the Ethiopians...






And here is Beer Bear reacting to the same news...








Looking back over the bizarre range of stuff I've published in eRepublik since 2009, I think I probably still have both Beer Bear and Mousey Tongue lurking around inside me somewhere.












Until next time, xoxoxox, let the music play,
PQ