WINNSBORO, Texas – Once upon a time in this town of 3,584, nestled in the Piney Woods of East Texas, live music meant only a sock hop, played by a high school band in the local gym.
RANDY ELI GROTHE/DMN
Jimmy LaFave (with guitar) and his band, including accordion player Radoslav Lorkavic (left) perform at the Crossroads Coffeehouse & Music Co. in Winnsboro, Texas.
"But all of a sudden," says optometrist John Whorff, 42, "we have heart and culture. The sidewalks don't roll up at 5 o'clock in the evening. The impact has been tremendous."
In the past 12 months, Winnsboro has seen its sales-tax revenue climb 80 percent, according to Shane Shepard, 27, the town's Main Street/community development director.
The catalyst is Crossroads Coffeehouse & Music Co., which provides some of the best live music in Texas on Saturday nights, Mr. Shepard and other residents say. The intimate venue occupies a 100-year-old building once used as a mortuary and hardware store on the town's Main Street.
Crossroads' popularity is part of a live-music boom that has infiltrated pockets throughout rural Texas. Coffeehouses and other acoustic venues have come to outposts such as Athens, Teague, Linden, Archer City and Mineola. And in tiny Point, artists including Mark Chesnutt and Gary Busey have performed in a converted cotton gin called the Cotton Pickin' Theater.
"I used to come [to Crossroads] when this was a hardware store, but I like it much better now," says Larry Tucker, 56, an English teacher and basketball coach from nearby Yantis. "Three years ago, I drove to Linden in Cass County to see Jackson Browne, who gave the best concert I've ever seen."
It would have been unheard of before, say, the year 2000 for Mr. Browne – a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – to perform in a town where the population hovers barely a guitar string over 2,200. But in 2004, he played a sold-out show in Linden, home to the 420-seat Music City Texas Theater, which months later welcomed native son Don Henley, another Hall of Fame member.
Mr. Whorff was one of about 150 patrons lining up outside Crossroads on a recent Saturday to see Jimmy LaFave, who was born in Wills Point in Van Zandt County but now lives in Austin. A rising star, Mr. LaFave once shared a Dallas concert with Bruce Springsteen and is a prime example of the kind of performer now playing sold-out shows in areas where "entertainment" was once confined to cable TV.
Mr. LaFave says Texas may have spearheaded the rural music boom but that it's now spreading to the rest of the country. "You see places like this springing up everywhere," he says. "Some are house concerts, some are in places like this, some are in churches."
His own musical hero, Woody Guthrie, was "an American troubadour who went from town to town singing, and that's what's happening now. Music is flowing back into the community," Mr. LaFave says. "But you don't make people travel to see you. You go to them."
Mr. LaFave and his band, including lead guitarist John Inmon – who carved out a legend as a member of Jerry Jeff Walker's Lost Gonzo Band in the 1970s – dazzled the standing-room-only crowd for three hours and closed by leading a singalong finale to Mr. Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land."
Richard M. Bowden, 62, who launched the effort to convert Linden's abandoned American Legion hall into a pristine music venue, hears Music City Texas patrons "complain all the time about the corporate mentality and what it's done to radio. I think it's also damaged the aesthetics of music."
What Linden and Winnsboro offer is very appealing, he says. Upcoming shows at Crossroads will feature artists such as Ray Wylie Hubbard, Ruthie Foster, Sara Hickman and Billy Joe Shaver. Linden has Robert Earl Keen booked for Dec. 1.
"To have something intimate in a rural setting, hey, it was bound to take off. There's also the safety factor," Mr. Bowden says. "People don't have to go through metal detectors, like they do at big-city shows, and you don't have somebody lurking a quarter of a mile away in a dark corner of the parking lot."
Lynn Adler, 51, moved to Winnsboro from Dallas six years ago and lives at what she calls the Spring Hollow Organic Song Farm, where she and "soul mate" Lindy Hearne, 58, share the same land. The two opened Crossroads together in November 2005. Now, Ms. Adler and the ponytailed Mr. Hearne often share the stage at the venue, where pickers and singers peer out at the crowd from what resembles a creaky front porch in the Mississippi Delta.
"Lindy was the fearless one," Ms. Adler says. "Absent his heart and vision, this wouldn't have happened in a place like Winnsboro."
Mr. Hearne doubles as a guitar and songwriting teacher, and Ms. Adler says Crossroads has been a nurturing ground for the town's youths, including Mr. Hearne's gifted guitar-playing daughter Kate, who's 17.
"I think it's been a remarkable transformation of our town," says Mr. Hearne.
Ms. Adler says Crossroads' rural isolation may be its biggest plus. As with Music City Texas in Linden, Crossroads is a draw for people from Dallas. Some of those constituents actually own second homes in the Piney Woods.
They include Dallas banker Craig Bevil, 60, and wife, Mary, 59. Mr. Bevil believes the success of such musicians as Miranda Lambert, from nearby Lindale, is helping fuel the small-town live-music phenomenon.
But Ms. Bevil contends that Crossroads is a charismatic draw by itself. Whereas big-city venues are large and impersonal and dominated by ticket scalpers, this one, she says, is warm and intimate.
Many who came to see Mr. LaFave say they want to be in a venue where they can hear the words, where they're not bombarded with billowing smoke and flashing neon, and where the message of the music strikes more at the heart than the pocketbook.
For most shows, Crossroads' ticket prices range from $15 to $20. Ms. Adler says the Internet has helped widen the fan base. Those who like Mr. LaFave, for instance, see that he's playing in Winnsboro and make plans to go, having no clue about where or what Winnsboro is.
"People come here for the first time and say, 'Oh, my God, I had no idea there were rolling hills and winding trails and all this water, all these pine trees, all this beauty,' " Ms. Adler says. "You can just feel the stress fall off of you."
Of course, Dallas and other cities are experiencing their own acoustic boom. Venues such as Uncle Calvin's Coffeehouse, a no-smoking, no-alcohol club in North Park Presbyterian Church, have never been more popular. Fort Worth has the Jefferson Freedom Cafe, Lake Dallas has the Town and Country Coffeehouse, and Plano has the new Amphitheater at Oak Point Park.
Jimmy Wilson, 64, and wife Patsy Wilson, 64, drove to Winnsboro from Hughes Springs to hear Mr. LaFave. They're also fans of Music City Texas in Linden, where Mr. Henley's show drew fans from as far away as Germany and Japan. But the Wilsons say the live-music surge has more to do with basic survival than with being entertained.
"Let's face it, a lot of these towns are dying," Mr. Wilson says. "I see this as an effort to bring a little back in."
Mr. Bowden agrees, saying that Linden turned to Music City Texas and tourism in hopes of reviving a sagging economy, which was hit hard when a Wal-Mart opened in nearby Atlanta and took business from mom-and-pop stores on the town square.
Music is also drawing tourists to Winnsboro, which revels in not having a Wal-Mart and where chain restaurants have been limited to Sonic and Dairy Queen. Crossroads now counts as its neighbors LouViney Winery & Bistro, a New Age spa, a pair of bed-and-breakfasts and, soon, an eagerly awaited gourmet Italian eatery.
James Peal, 58, who drove from Garland to Winnsboro to see Mr. LaFave, says live music is thriving in small towns because baby boomers want good music.
Some, like Mr. Tucker, a recovering alcoholic, appreciate the no-alcohol, smoke-free environment.
"I come here because I can feel comfortable," the Yantis coach says.
With age comes wisdom, and Bertie Kirby, 85, who lives in nearby Hawkins, says she came to see Mr. LaFave because no place showcases his music better than Crossroads.
"You don't go to a honky-tonk to see Jimmy LaFave," she says. "It's listenin' music."
David Hyatt, 65, from nearby Holly Lake Ranch, says Winnsboro looms as a sweet tonic. "I was at Woodstock," Mr. Hyatt says. "But now, this is the kind of music that we – the Woodstock generation – want to curl up and listen to. If anyone can tell me a better place than Crossroads to hear such music, please do so. Because I want to know where it is."
Crossroads Coffeehouse & Music Co. is at 216 N. Main St. in downtown Winnsboro. For more information, call 903-342-1854 or 1-888-342-1854, or visit www.crossroadsmusiccompany .com.
Upcoming shows include:
Albert & Gage on Nov. 10
Ray Wylie Hubbard on Nov. 24 (Crossroads' second anniversary celebration)
Sara Hickman on Dec. 1
Ruthie Foster on Dec. 15
Billy Joe Shaver on Feb. 2
Other places in Winnsboro worth checking out include:
Thee Hubbell House Bed & Breakfast (1-800-227-0639)
Oaklea Mansion and Manor House, a bed-and-breakfast (903-342-6051)
LouViney Winery & Bistro (903-342-0485)
ciboVino, an Italian-Mediterranean restaurant opening in late October
Double C Steak House (903-342-3111)
Music City Texas Theater is at 108 Legion St. in Linden, about 150 miles east of Dallas. For more information, call 903-756-9934 or visit www.musiccitytexas.org. Upcoming shows include the Bellamy Brothers on Oct. 20, Robert Earl Keen on Dec. 1 and Gene Watson on Dec. 8.
Annual events include the Piney Woods Cowboy Gathering and the T-Bone Walker Blues Festival.
