The Coppersmiths

I am a poet, song writer, singer, playwright, and visual artist whose native country is the Llano Estacado, the flattest land on Earth. My distant uncle, Charlie Goodnight, said “the people of the Plains will have to solve the problems of the people of the East for on the Plains a person is forced to see a great long distance, and such seeing makes the mind active.” I agree, and have found our 360 degrees of horizon and 180 degrees of sky to be the principal drivers of my curiosity, and my creativity.

I’ve recorded a baker’s dozen albums of original music, all of which remain fashionably obscure. I perform often as a solo singer-songwriter, though almost as often as part of bands or small ensembles. I frequent folk festivals and cowboy poetry gatherings, along with coffee joints and wine bars and house concerts. Of late, I have been partnering with a composer-arranger from Brooklyn — on the eastern boundary of the Llano Estacado — to write choral pieces, among them a cantata for migrants. Having come of age in the 1960s, I am a mixed-breed musical mutt, bred by folk song and pop radio hits and rock-and-roll and old cowpunch ballads.

Regarding the printed page, I’ve written seven plays that have been performed on a variety of stages across the nation, all by excellent actors, many of whom are well-known. In addition to magazine articles and chapters in various non-fiction books, I’ve written a half-dozen monographs published by three different presses, ranging from non-fiction to memoir to novels to poetry. My visual art works are principally done in gouache, pencil, or pastel, many done en plein air, none of which hang in museums — famous or otherwise — but most all of which have found homes with my small but significant and delightful group of patrons.

I’ve also had a variety of day-jobs: chopping cotton as a kid, sacking and checking groceries as a teenager, a dozen years in police work as a young man, and a decade in financial services in middle age. Since 1991, I have made my way in the arts as a performer and practitioner. As part and parcel of my creative works, I have been affiliated with Texas Tech University, having served as Artist in Residence at the Southwest Collection, as an instructor in songwriting in the School of Music, and as a teacher in the Honors College. Retired from my regular duties with the University, I continue teaching.

Though I’m not the least bit famous, I’m grateful to have stumbled into several famous awards, among them the Kerrville Folk Festival’s New Folk Contest, the Texas Historical Foundation’s John Ben Shepperd Jr. Craftsmanship Award, and seven National Western Heritage Wrangler Awards in five different categories.