We hope this message finds you both healthy and well. Our organization continues to monitor the current COVID-19 situation while working with music and community leadership for guidance and planning towards a 2021 TxHSA Hall of Fame Weekend. Like many of you, we are evaluating the different scenarios which can affect our outcome. We also recognize that our valued songwriters, supporters, and sponsors are struggling with this challenge.

The uncertainty around timelines for life returning to normal can be unsettling. Like many of you, we are monitoring executive orders issued by Gov. Greg Abbott towards an ongoing plan of opening businesses and activities in Texas.

As you can imagine, our organization faces important decisions in planning for a 2021 Hall of Fame, including venue availability, artist participation, and sponsor tolerance. The successful execution of this annual celebration requires extensive planning and time; therefore, we will continue to evaluate the feasibility of a Hall of Fame Weekend while entering the summer months.

We encourage each of you to continue following social distancing guidelines and health standards. As our governor stated, with every Texan doing their part, we will contain COVID-19, we will unleash our entrepreneurs and make it through this challenge together.

We wish you good health and prosperity and encourage you to contact us with any questions or feedback. 

Respectfully,

Michelle Johnson
Executive Director, TxHSA

TxHSA Board member Joe Ables revealed the new class of songwriters during its Key West Songwriters Festival Texas Music Showcase, a production co-sponsored by the Texas Music Office. This evening included special performances by TxHSA Hall of Fame members Aaron Barker, Lee Roy Parnell, and Liz Rose, along with Alyssa Micaela, Jack Ingram, Jamie Lin Wilson, Heather Morgan, Rob Baird, and Wade Bowen at the Key West Theater.

The 2020 TxHSA Hall of Fame Weekend will return to Austin February 21-22, 2020, celebrating the songwriting achievements of its latest class of inductees.

A VIP sponsor-only DKR Pickin’ Party at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum will kick off the weekend on Friday, Feb. 21. Saturday’s public Hall of Fame Awards Show at the Paramount Theatre will both honor and celebrate these new honorees, bringing them into the spotlight and inducting them into the TxHSA Hall of Fame. Sponsors and patrons can expect a weekend celebration packed with performances and appearances from past inductees, Grammy Award winners, renowned songwriters, and recording artists.

Texas’ self-styled culture is unique in ways that are respected and envied around the world, and so is its songwriting. Jerry Jeff Walker is strongly associated with the progressive “outlaw” country scene that centered around Austin, Texas in the 1970s and included such notable figures as TxHSA Hall of Fame members Willie Nelson, Guy Clark, Billy Joe Shaver, and Townes Van Zandt. Walker’s “Mr. Bojangles” is perhaps his most well-known and most-often covered song. His best-known album, Viva Terlingua, was recorded in 1973 in the tiny Texas town of Luckenbach with the Lost Gonzo Band and went gold.

Nacogdoches-native Jim Collins has charted seven singles on Billboard, and had more than 150 of his songs cut, including singles by Kenny Chesney “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy,” “The Good Stuff,” and “Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven”; Chad Brock “Yes!”; Jason Aldean “Big Green Tractor”; and Gretchen Wilson “I Don’t Feel Like Loving You Today” which was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Country Song. 

The late Larry Henley of Arp, Texas, first reached success as the lead singer of pop group Newbeats, charting two hits in the top 20 of Billboard magazine with one of the two, “Bread and Butter,” reaching No. 2 and selling over a million copies. Henley co-wrote “‘Til I Get It Right” for Tammy Wynette, a 1973 No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot Country Singles, later covered by Barbra Streisand and Kenny Rogers. Other No. 1 country hits were his songs “Is It Still Over?” performed by Randy Travis, “Lizzie and the Rainman” performed by Tanya Tucker, and “He’s a Heartache (Looking for a Place to Happen)” performed by Janie Fricke. Henley is a 2012 inductee into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and best-known for co-writing the 1989 hit “Wind Beneath My Wings,” a U.S. No. 1 hit for Bette Midler.

Born in Atlanta, Texas, the late Susanna Clark was an American artist and country/folk songwriter. She wrote the No. 1 hit “I’ll be Your San Antone Rose,” recorded first by artist Dottsy. She co-wrote “Come From the Heart,” which Don Williams first recorded and Kathy Mattea took to No. 1 in 1989. Her songs have been covered by the likes of Carlene Carter, Emmylou Harris, Miranda Lambert, and Jerry Jeff Walker.

The late Aaron Thibeaux “T-Bone” Walker of Linden, Texas was an American blues guitarist, singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who was a pioneer and innovator of the jump blues and electric blues sound. In 2018 Rolling Stone magazine ranked him No. 37 on its list of “The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.” Walker is credited with influencing Chuck Berry, B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix, and Steve Miller. Some of his most notable songs include, “Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday Is Just as Bad),” “Bobby Sox Blues,” (a No. 3 R&B hit in 1947), and “West Side Baby” (a No. 8 on the R&B singles chart in 1948). Walker was posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.

Last year’s inductees included Billy F Gibbons, Bob McDill, Christopher Cross and Steve Earle. Other past inductees include the likes of Cindy Walker, Guy Clark, Kris Kristofferson, Lyle Lovett, Willie Nelson, K.T. Oslin, and Townes Van Zandt, to name a few.

A limited number of seats for the 2020 Hall of Fame Awards Show will be made available to the public in January.

Parties interested in sponsorship opportunities should visit texasheritagesongwriters.com/sponsorship or contact sponsorships@texasheritagesongwriters.com.

In collaboration with both the TxHSA and The Austin Convention & Visitors Bureau, Texas songwriting troubadour Robert Earl Keenannounced a new class of inductees during the Key West Songwriters Festival last week. The TxHSA will honor the late Roy Orbison, Joe Ely, JD Souther and Will Jennings in 2016.

These artists join past inductees, who embody the spirit of Texas and its distinctive culture through songwriting, such as Kris Kristofferson, Townes Van Zandt, Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, Guy Clark, and many more. Both Ely and Souther will deliver a featured performance after accepting their awards.

Every year, one person is also recognized for their support of the songwriting community with The Darrell K Royal Texas Music Legend Award.

“The 2016 Hall of Fame show will be a music aficionado’s dream,” said Joe Ables, Texas Heritage Songwriters’ board member and founder of Austin’s landmark Saxon Pub. “If live performances from Joe Ely and JD Souther aren’t enough, just wait until you hear which great artists will be performing some of the incredible songs of Roy Orbison and Will Jennings!”

Sunday’s Hall of Fame Awards Show will finish out TxHSA’s weekend-long Homecoming celebration, which takes place February 19-21, 2016, packed with performances from past inductees, Grammy award nominees and recipients, and renowned songwriters and recording artists.

For sponsorship inquiries, contact Meredith Hannon: meredith@texasheritagesongwriters.com.

About TxHSA:
The Texas Heritage Songwriters’ Association (TxHSA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to honoring and celebrating Texassongwriters who have played an important role in defining and interpreting Texas’ distinctive culture. Started in 2006, TxHSA has annually produced a weekend-long Homecoming celebration, including their Texas Heritage Songwriters Hall of Fame Awards Show, a public event which serves as an induction ceremony for its honorees each year.

For more information, visit www.TexasHeritageSongwriters.com.

Media Contact:
Jason Z. Guest
Guest Public
jzg@guestpublic.com
512.703.0426

Photo – http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150514/216108

The other landmark composition was the theme song on a TV show that debuted in 1970 and ran seven groundbreaking seasons. Curtis received a four-page synopsis of a show about a 30-year-old woman out on her own in Minneapolis after an engagement breakup, and two hours later came up with “Love Is All Around,” aka the theme to “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

The garage rock holy grail and a beloved TV song that came to represent feminism with a thrown hat in the air. Two songs that had nothing in common except they came from the creative mind of Sonny Curtis, born in a dugout his daddy built on a farm outside Lubbock during the Great Depression.

Curtis, who will be inducted Sunday into the Texas Heritage Songwriters Hall of Fame, along with Ronnie Dunn of Brooks & Dunn and the late Roger Miller, also had hits with “Walk Right Back” for the Everly Brothers (which he wrote in Army basic training in 1960), “The Straight Life” for Bobby Goldsboro and “I’m No Stranger to the Rain” for Keith Whitley.

But even if he had not written a single song, Curtis would be a notable figure in rock ’n’ roll history for his close association with Buddy Holly, less than a year older, with whom Curtis played guitar and fiddle before Buddy formed the Crickets. Curtis was in the band — along with Jerry Allison on drums and Don Guess on bass — when Buddy Holly opened for Elvis Presley at Lubbock’s Fair Park Coliseum in 1956.

Read the full article from the Austin American-Statesman here.

Roger Miller’s career spanned many musical genres and many milieus. He was a songwriter, a singer, an entertainer, an actor and a family man. If you have ever sung along to “King of the Road,” watched Disney’sRobin Hood or seen the Broadway musical Big River, you’ve been touched by the creative brilliance that was Roger Miller.

Miller is one of three Texas songwriters being inducted into the Texas Heritage Songwriters’ Association Hall of Fame on March 3. Mary Miller, his wife, will accept the honor on her late husband’s behalf.

“You know he first and foremost was a songwriter. He loved songwriting and he loved songwriters so this in particular would have been one that he would have been very proud of, and that it’s in Texas would have delighted him,” she explains.

Read the full article on CultureMap Austin, here.

But, like any good-hearted Texan, Curtis (who now resides in Tennessee) tells this tale with charm and light laughter, showing that even a legendary career of six decades can’t water down a poetic West Texas soul…

Click here to read the full article on CultureMap Austin.

“I really look at the world, I feel like, through Texas eyes,” he tells me. “Now, if I’m pinned down and asked to have to define that, I’m not sure I can.”

This March, Ronnie Dunn will return to the heart of Texas as a 2013 inductee of the Texas Heritage Songwriters’ Hall of Fame. Dunn will be inducted alongside West Texan Sonny Curtis and the late Roger Miller, completing a trifecta that represents the very wide, often romanticized, Texas music landscape…

Click here to read the full article on CultureMap Austin.

Each year, the Texas Heritage Songwriters’ Association (TxHSA) honors songwriters during a live Awards Show and induction ceremony—the Hall of Fame inductees are those who embody and celebrate the unique history and culture of Texas through their songwriting. This year’s roster includes legendary artists Ronnie Dunn, Sonny Curtis and Roger Miller.

“My music journey started in Texas, and I’m proud that Texas Heritage Songwriters’ Association is bringing me back home to accept this award,” said Ronnie Dunn. “It’s a privilege to join the hall of fame with other talented artists I consider friends and mentors.”

“Starting out in West Texas, my songwriting career was profoundly influenced by those musical beginnings,” Sonny Curtis said of his time as lead guitarist with Buddy Holly and the Crickets. “I, like so many other writers and artists, owe a large part of my inspiration to Texas and its musicians.

Honorees Dunn and Curtis will offer a featured performance after accepting their awards. Plus, Jack Ingram will open the show; TxHSA Hall of Famer Larry Gatlin will perform; and country music superstar Toby Keith will deliver a special performance in honor of one of his most loved songwriters of all time, Roger Miller.

“Roger Miller was so intelligent that many of the greats would follow him around just for inspiration, just to hear him talk. He said some of the most famous quotes ever,” said Toby Keith. “If you want to hear cleverness, you want to hear wit, and you want to hear charm—you want to hear a ‘Class A’ songwriter, it’s Roger Miller.”

This event brings together past Hall of Fame inductees and honors those whose contributions allow Texas songwriters to continue doing what they do best.  Every year at the Hall of Fame Awards show, one person is recognized for their support of the songwriting community with The Darrell K Royal Patron Award.  This year’s recipient is the late Robin Ratliff Shivers, Founder of HAAM, longtime philanthropist and enduring supporter of the music community in Austin.

“This year marks our biggest show yet,” says Joe Ables, Executive Producer of the show and owner of The Saxon Pub, a renowned live music venue in Austin. “Some of the biggest names in country music are coming together in celebration of the Lone Star state’s extraordinary music, unique history, and distinct heritage.”

Sunday’s Hall of Fame Awards Show will close out TxHSA’s weekend-long Homecoming celebration, which takes place March 2-3, 2013, and is packed with performances from past inductees, Grammy award nominees and recipients, and renowned songwriters and recording artists.

On Saturday evening, TxHSA will host the Darrell K Royal Songwriters’ Homecoming—a VIP/sponsor party at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum—where Chris Stapleton, Scotty Emerick and Mac McAnally will take the stage for an intimate acoustic performance.

Sponsors of this year’s TxHSA Homecoming Weekend include Walmart, Stratus Properties, AT&T Hotel and Conference Center, The Saxon Pub, Texas Monthly Magazine, KOKE-FM, BMI, ASCAP, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Beam Global, CultureMap, Country Line Magazine, BE Music and Entertainment, London Broadcasting, Osborne Advisors, The Salt Lick, Jack and Amy Ingram, Red Fan Communications, the GKW Co. and Strait Music.To learn more about becoming a sponsor, contact Michelle Johnson at info@texasheritagesongwriters.com.

About Texas Heritage Songwriters Association:

Founded in 2005 by 6^th-generation Texan Terry Boothe, the Texas Heritage Songwriters Association (TxHSA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to honoring and celebrating Texas songwriters who have played an important role in defining and interpreting Texas’ distinctive culture.  Since 2006, TxHSA has been producing an annual public event, the Texas Heritage Songwriters Hall of Fame Awards Show, which serves as an induction ceremony for that year’s honorees. In addition, TxHSA is involved with both the Center for Texas Music History and the Southwestern Writer’s Collection at Texas State University in supporting young songwriters and further protecting the State’s musical heritage.  TxHSA regularly donates a portion of its proceeds to organizations that support Texas musicians and songwriters, including the Health Alliance for Austin Musicians (HAAM).  For more information, visit www.TexasHeritageSongwriters.com.

Media Contact:

Red Fan Communications

Bristel Bowen

Office: 512.551.9253

Cell: 512.917.4319

Bristel@redfancommunications.com