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My name is Nori Guthrie from the Woodson Research Center Fountain Library Rice University. I am interviewing Ryan Trimble. One of the original co-owner of Liberty Hall today is June 13th, 2016. This is part of the Liberty Hall Oral History project. So to get started, could you

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explain how you became interested in music? I became interested in music at about the age of seven years old. I used to like to listen to the old blues songs on the radio and my father forbade me to listen to the radio. He thought it was

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a waste of time. So my neighbor was Ikey Sweat and his family had a gospel group and I spent a lot of time with them. They were more like my family and they taught me how to play the banjo and guitar and I did gospel music

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with them for two or three years until me and Ikey who introduced me to Johnny Winners and was with the Johnny Winners band for several years. Uh, we branched out into rock and roll and, uh, that's basically how I got started with gospel music with my

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neighbor, Ikey. I met Johnny Winter when I was 14. He was in a totally black room bedroom with black sheet satin sheets. And uh I wanted to introduce me to him when I was 14. We went there, knocked on the door. This girl answered is Johnny

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here and she said, yeah, he's in his room. We went back there and I was totally shocked here was this albino, totally white with pink eyes and the whole room was black and he was naked. He was laying on the bed in black satin sheets. And

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I thought, wow, I never seen anything like that. And so Johnny said, sit down on the bed, right? Actually, he called me Jal. I can. Johnny always called me Ryan. Jal is to sit on the bed, right? Gerald. And we started talking and he was one

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of the most nicest interesting person I'd ever met. We talked about music. He was very nice to me and we talked for at least an hour. And when I left, I was in love with music. And uh from there, I uh started playing guitar every day

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just about. And when I was 17, I graduated from high school early and I had New Mike Core from uh his club, the Inferno in Beaumont, which he had to close down. He lost his lease and he was gonna open up this new club called the

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Halfway House. He had already picked out the name. And uh a friend of mine said, let's go see this new place and it wasn't open yet. So we drove over there, I had a red tr three really nice car. I'd worked for him. We drove up,

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Mike was out in the yard and I said, well, you got a nice place. He says, yeah, I'm burned out. I don't think I want to open it up. And he looked at my car and he says, I'll trade you my club for your car. I

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said, are you kidding me? He said, no, I said, well, I don't know a thing about running a music business and I knew he had run the inferno. I said, I'll do it if you'll stay on a few weeks and show me the ropes and help

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me run it. So that was our deal. I gave him the car, he gave me the halfway house and he also gave me a pair of Italian suede brown shoes, which I love pointed shoes. They, although they're really neat and Mike stayed on and helped me

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for about a month. Um, and we booked people like, uh, Guy Clark Thomas Van Zan, um, Dickie Lee and Janis Joplin was a friend of mine who I had known since I was about 14. And I had a, been playing guitar with a friend of mine

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over at his house when I met her and she was a singer. She could sing, but she didn't know a thing about the guitar and we had our guitars there and I said, do you want to learn how to play the guitar? Janice? She said yes.

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So I showed her E A and B seven and she picked it up real fast. And those are the old blues cards for people that don't know. And so that's how she started her song. Uh going down to Brownsville, it was an E A and B

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seven. So we got to be friends. And when I was 17, I had the club. She used to come, I had four bedrooms upstairs. It was a very large Victorian house with a stage in the kitchen and art rooms and a chess room downstairs. It was

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mainly a beat neck place. I started in 1964 and Jess would come stay with me. Me and her were good friends. We had uh similar likes and we just got along great together and I'd let her spend the night feed her and stay for a week

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or whatever. And she'd always say Ryan and I play and I always said yes because I liked her and she sang really good, I thought and uh so I had that club and a lot of people played there. John Kerry played there, I believe, Don Sanders

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from Houston and Jerry. Jeff Walker. Just a lot of I met, I lived with a lot of people and I got to love the musicians and the writers and my life was like heaven and I was in college or in a place at, at night. And

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so me and Mike got to be friends. And when I graduated from college, I went to work with Hartford Insurance Company. My second job, my first job was with the government, with the labor relations board and with Hartford, I didn't like it. I didn't like being

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an executive. I didn't like working in an office all day. I didn't like, you know, dealing with hundreds of people and being in the office. And so I would go over and uh hang out with Mike and Linda. They had the family hand and I also

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went to their first place jubilee Hall, which was, they didn't have too long, but the family hands served home cooked meals and had bands all the time. And friends of mine would play there. So I would go over there after working for Hartford. And finally, Mike

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and Linda said, well, times are rough. We don't know if we can make it. So they asked me since I had a degree in economics, if I would look over their books and help them put it together. And so I did, I spent a couple of

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weeks going, putting their books together. And finally I said, this place is not gonna make it, you're never gonna make money here doing what you wanna do live shows. And I said, we need a bigger place and I said, I'm sick and tired of being an

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executive. I love music. I'll do it with you. So we had an agreement. I had some money. They had very little. They were almost broke and their cook. Thera was a real nice black lady who cooked really good and I was real good friends with her.

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We told Thera we wanted a bigger place and Thera said, I'll find one for you guys. And I swear about two days after we told her she come into the place, I found it. I found the place and me and Mike Linda were all excited. Linda

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had a citroen and that's one of those French cars that you can raise up and down. I remember that. So we all jumped in her Citro and we went over there to Liberty Hall and it was, it wasn't Liberty Hall yet, but we walked in the

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place and it became Liberty Hall that day we walked in and it was an old American legion hall that once been a church and they had soldiers painted on the walls and all these army scenes. And we went, wow, it had a kitchen. It had a

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balcony, had an upstairs room for entertainers. It had a basement, had an office up front. It was just made for us. And acoustics were just great, didn't have a stage, but that was ok. And so we're all standing there and said, well, what can we call

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it? And so we were thinking of a name and Linda says Liberty Hall and everybody went. Yes, that's it. We'll call it that. So that's how Liberty Hall started. And we recruited our friends. We had a lot of friends. It was a hippie time and we

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had a lot of friends that love music and like to have a good time. So we said to about 15 of them, if you help us fix this place up, you have lifetime membership to Liberty Hall. And wow, everybody wanted to do it. And George Banks

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and a guy named Ham, uh helped us with the sign. Uh George is an architect by trade and he designed the sign and him and Ham fabricated out of metal and George had a printing company, he printed posters for us and tickets helped us with our

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mail outs and it was a community thing. Uh We all got together and, and within about a month, the place was painted and fixed up and, uh, we started off with a play, we ran into a play up in Austin called the Earl of Ruston, which

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is so funny and good. We just, we had to have it. So we talked to those people and, uh, they agreed to come to Houston, I think for a month. And so we opened with that play and it was a success immediately and we even read

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it more than a month, I believe. And this gentleman from New York City, a producer named David Black came down and saw the play, liked it a lot. He wanted to take it to Broadway at the Billy Rose Theater and I talked to him quite a

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bit and I said, what makes you think this play will go over in New York? He says, well, it's just got something and he said, I like it. And he said, tell you the truth, Ryan, I've been doing this a long time and people are like

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sheep. He said, when I open a play up, I give away the house, give away all the tickets for the first two or three nights, invite the cri critics. They see these big lines out front because we'd have these tickets to sell and the place is

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full and they're all free and the critics didn't know it. And that's the way he opened his shows and, and the critics loved it because all these people were his buddies. They all, hey, hey, hey. And so they took it to New York and it fell

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flat on its face. It was a regional thing. It was from Louisiana, New York. People were a different type people. Some considered them more sophisticated as a matter of opinion, but it fell through. And then we wanted to do music. Me and Mike love blues music.

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I saw Fats Domino once in person. I snuck in to Pleasure Island in Port Arthur when I was about 15 because I could drive early because my father was sick and I had to work early. So I had a driver's license and I went over there

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because I love Fats and the place was full of black people full. And uh I was the only white guy there. I was a kid. So I just walked in the door. Nobody said a word. I walked all the way in right up to the front

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of the stage and watch Fats play and, oh, man, I loved it so much. And so I love Jimmy Reed and, you know, I love the old blues players that were on the radio and Mike loved them too. And so did Linda. So we said, let's

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do six weeks of the blues and call it the, I think we call it the uh All Star blues show, something like that. And of course, the blues didn't sell that good, but we didn't do that bad. We paid a few bucks. We had people like

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big Mama Thornton Lightnin Hopkins, uh Willie Dixon, um John Hammond. Big Mama Thornton Lightning. I, I said those, I can't recall them all. It was so long ago, a man Lipscomb. But anyway, it was all blues people and we enjoyed the hell out of it. That's

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why I did it in the first place. I was sick of being an executive. I didn't care about money. The hippie generation was on the Vietnam War was on. I thought the world was going to hell and have a good time, you know, while we're here.

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And so, uh, I did it for the entertain myself mainly and to make other people entertained and happy. And that was the same reason Mike and Linda did it. We agreed when we started it, that the ticket prices would be like two bucks, three bucks. We

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didn't do it for the money. We sold beer and wine and food. A lot of red beans and rice and we had a hell of a good time and we had all the name acts that wanted to become acts like Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Jimmy Buffett,

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what we would do? Me and Mike would collaborate and decide who we wanted and then we would decide how much we could pay. And then Mike would call the agent who booked them and I would call the record companies and I would tell the record companies,

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hey, we'll book your new act and introduce him to Houston. He'll be in the papers on the radio and, uh, you have to put up so much money because we have a small place. We only held 500 at the most. We did two shows a night.

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That's 1000 people, but you can't pay for Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel with 1000 people. And so I got the radio, uh, um, the record companies to buy time for advertising and subsidize the shows. So we had these fantastic shows that we sold for cheap cause

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we wanted our friends who were mostly hippies and, and music lovers who always seemed to be poor. But we also had mayor, Mayor Fred Hines would come by. Marvin Zindler would come by. We had celebrities that liked us. And when we had Kinky Friedman, all the

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wealthy Jews in Houston showed up with their diamonds on. So we had a, a real assortment and it was so much fun. Uh And we worked all week long, seven days a week. I remember Linda be down there in the office, we'd be designing stuff and

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doing advertising and ticket sale. We did everything, three of us. And so it was a whole lot of work, but we really loved it. It was, it was our life. We even lived together with all we did was put on shows and, and I used to

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meet May maybe 200 people a week. All these entertainers come in and I love hanging out with them asking what do you do? Why did you write this? What is this? I'd ask people that most personal stuff. And I guess they like me because they would

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tell me like one time, Big Mama Thornton threatened to shoot me because we booked her on Christmas Eve and she showed up without a ban in her contract call for a ban. So Mike gets on the phone, he says, can you guys play tonight? Back up

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Big Mama Thornton? So we give him $100 a night. So after four nights, we had to pay everybody off. And Big Mama came in there to get her money. She only showed up with a sax player. This white guy we knew who was good, but just

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one sax player is not a band. I said, Big Mama, we had to hire a band for you. So you sound good. You can't just get up there with a sax player. And I said, I paid him $100 a night and I said, that's $400 out

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of your pay. So she really got upset. She says I got a shotgun in my car. I'm gonna go out and get it and I'm gonna shoot you. And so we're s I'm sitting there at my desk in the office and I said, well, go get

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it. I said, I got one in the closet behind me. I said, well, see who shoots first. She looked at me and I looked back at her and she said, oh, ok, she forgot about it. But Big Mama was a hell of a character one time

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we booked her with Lightnin Hopkins and Lightnin played first and people love lightning. They went crazy and Big Mama got jealous and she was drinking, Lightnin got off the stage and he went out in the audience, he was gonna sit and watch her because they were

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related, distant relatives and she's mad. She goes up towards the stage and she detours and goes over to where lightning is sitting and pushes him down on the floor. And she was a big woman and I couldn't believe it. Poor lightning. You know, he didn't want

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to fight. And so I ran up there and I grabbed her, I said, big ma leave him alone, leave him alone. Get up there and sing and, you know, poor lightning just laid on the floor. Finally, she went up there and sang but she was a,

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I got to where I really liked her. And another person we had for the blues when we first started was John Lee Hooker, who I got to be great friends with John Lee. We booked him several times. And the first time he walked into Liberty Hall,

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he stuttered so bad. I didn't know how the heck he was gonna sing but he couldn't talk. And later I found out he could sing good. He just had trouble talking and he was sniffing the air and Thera was back in the kitchen cooking up food

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for the night. What's his smell? So he headed towards the kitchen and he met Thera and from then on the first thing he would do when he would get to Liberty Hall was head to the kitchen to eat. And we would tell the, we're having John

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Lee again and she would cook up these fancy soul dishes and then they got to be great buddies. And John Lee loved it. He loved coming there and we had him a lot and the first time we were raided by the police first and only time

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we were raided by the police, John Lee was on stage and he could really boogie Woogie man, he would really get the crowd going. And a couple of young policemen came in and went to check in I DS like, you know, 11 o'clock or 12 o'clock

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at night, people are drinking and other stuff and they walk in and they get about halfway in the place. And they ask this white kid who was drunk for his ID and the kid took a swing at him which was stupid and the cops drew their

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guns and everybody backed up and the cops, you know, they were scared to death. Only two of them and about 500 people joined John Lee, one of them went up there and kicked the plug off the stage and shut the music down. But John Lee kept

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playing anyway. And Mike went out there, Mike saw it happening. I saw it happening too, but I figured I better stay back. Somebody's got to bail us out and Mike went up there to stop, stop and he stopped those cops and they call for backup. So

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about 20 cops showed up and they arrested a dozen of our employees and the kid that took a swing and I went in the office and stayed there and grab a bunch of money. And as soon as they left, I went down to the police station

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and bailed everybody out before they got booked except for the kid who swing at the cop. I said, screw him. He could have got people killed, he can stay and get his own way out. And that's just a funny story. What happened. But it's true. And,

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and as soon as the cops left John Lee plugged back in and kept on playing, he was a real trooper and he was a very good singer. I went on a double date with John Lee one night we had him and he said, right, I I

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got these two girls come, come, come, come to do from Detroit. He says I can only handle one of them. Will you go out with me and take care of the other one? I said, well, I'll, I'll double date with you John Lee. I don't know

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about taking care of anybody. And he was staying over at the hotel mainly white. And so he says they're gonna meet us over there at the bar at the hotel and went, oh hell man, this is, here's a black guy and they were white girls pretty

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as can be. So we go over there and me and Charlie sit at the bar waiting for the girls to show up and everybody's looking at us anyway, just a white guy and a black guy together and these two beautiful white girls walk in, one of

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them goes up hugs and kisses John Lee right there and I'm going, oh hell. And I told John Lee, I said, man, we gotta get out of here. And so we did, we escaped fast and everybody gave us dirty looks but we went to the room

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and John Lee got his girl went to, we had a suite and he went back there and I was uh pretty particular with women. And so I just sit there and talk to the girl the whole night for she was interesting and I didn't even kiss

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her. But you know, John W John Lee, thank me. Thanks Ryan. Thanks man. And uh that was really a funny time but, and uh I have probably 1000 stories but you know, mainly I think you probably want to hear about, you know, running Liberty Hall, which

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was fairly difficult. We sold tickets in advance. We put posters up. I put thousands and thousands of illegal posters up on telephone poles in Montrose in downtown Houston because that's how we advertise a lot. And we get these posters. I get my girlfriend who had a

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little Volkswagen bug who I'm married to. Now, I'd say Dorothy, you be the driver. You drive up to the pole, keep the car running, watch out for cops. I'm gonna jump out, put the poster on the pole and we're gonna take off man. And we did

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that for a long time. We never got caught, which was a miracle. And, uh, we used the telephone pole advertising a lot. Although I think Nori has some of the posters now, but that was one of our trademarks. We did posters for everybody and stuck them

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up all over town in stores, poles and radio advertising. We advertised on KPFT. We would do stuff for KPFT. They would do stuff for us and I help KFPFT get started and they helped us get started. And, uh, they would record, they wouldn't record, they would

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bring their mics and stuff and do our shows live, which was great. I mean, people who couldn't afford to come or couldn't come to the show, they could sit home and listen to it, which was what we wanted, you know, spread the entertainment. And, um, Bruce

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Springsteen debuted Fever there. That song Fever. It was before he recorded it. He was on stage one night and he said to the crowd, he says, well, I think I'm gonna do this song. I just learned called Fever and he sang it was a great song,

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but it went out over the air and I don't think he realized, you know, that everybody was hearing it and his manager got totally mad because we did that before he recorded it. But, you know, KPFT, you got a scoop and we did a lot of

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shows like that and, and, uh, KPFT got kicked off really good and I really wanted to succeed because who the hell likes playlists? You hear the same songs over and over again. Who the hell likes the Slanted News they put out? I mean, you know, this

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has some reality, man, real news, real music from different people. And so I supported them because I believed in what they were doing and they are still doing it. They still, they, they do it off public money donations. And I went over there last week and

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did an interview when they were having their, I guess, to start out radio fun for money and, you know, told a few tales and asked for money and, and they had about 15 volunteers over there. It was fun. We took some pictures and I did about

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a 15 minute interview. They stuck it on the internet and I hope it helped them. But, uh, that's a good station and it helped us a lot. And another station that helped us a lot was Klol. We bought a lot of ads from them and they

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would play our acts. I remember when we did little feet and body rate. I love that song. There's the fat men in the bathtub singing the blues. It's on one of their first albums, Dixie Chicken, I think. And I said, wow, this is a great line.

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So, and it was man, it caught on like fire and uh, little feet played for us. I don't know how many times with Bonnie Wright, they were buddies. Bonnie Ra little feet. Bonnie Wright had this crazy guy go around with her named Frio who played the

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bass, who was a really nice California guy. And, and those were really good times with Little Fee Lowell George would play the slide guitar and every time he played I would go up by the stage because it made the hair on my neck stand up when

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he played the guitar. It was, it was so good. He was terrific. But we had a lot of acts that were terrific. We had Stilly Dan, they were terrific. Uh I can't begin to name it. And we, we had people like Mose Allison with Parchment Forum.

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We had jazz, we had the rock opera, Tommy. We had original plays. We did one floor over the Cuckoo's n before it was a motion picture. We call Samuel French in New York and bought the rights to the book the play and we put it on.

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I ran a couple of months or more and psychiatrists used to come by and watch that show. Then they would come in my office and say I want to shake your hand for putting this on the moral of that show was, you know, how bad lobotomies

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was. So we were kind of ahead of our time. Actually, it was the longest run in play in Houston's history. At that point. I think it ran out a little over three months and it was a big deal in town. They wrote us up in the

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Chronicle in the Post. It was, and it was a great show. But we, we did the San Francisco Mime Troupe, which was drug oriented and it was, you know, it was a really hot topic at that time and the show was called The Dragon's Lady Revenge.

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And we also did people like Robert Klein, the comedian. We had him several times and the guy cracked me up on an office stage. I lived with him for, we'd have him four days at a time. And I sit and talk with this New Yorker and

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I'm a Texan by birth and I just laugh and laugh and laugh. I mean, he was so funny and we had other comedians and then Shelly Duval, the actress I met before she became an actress. She's a little skinny girl. I met at a party and

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we got to be friends and Shelley called one day and said, I'd like to do a benefit for the children's hospital in Houston because her manager was Lou Adler, who was also the manager for Cheech and Chong. He says, I'm at Lou Adler's office now and

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Cheech and Chong's here, can we come to Liberty Hall and do some charity shows? So, of course, and I remember those guys, I took them all over Houston to the AM stations and all over and by the by the time they live, I had a kitchen

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outside from laughing. And then when I was in college, I was also the entertainment director for Lamar University. And I did shows, I did Towns and guy helped do some other shows, the first edition. And, and when I was gonna graduate, well, I had the halfway

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house, the club there, which is counterculture, beat neck joint. And they, they brought me into the college before I graduated. Uh, they had about seven or eight of the board members and administrators there. And they said, Ryan, we want you to tell us everybody, you know,

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that does drugs. Well, hell, you know, everybody does drugs, either they're legal or illegal. And I looked at them like they were nuts. And I said, no, I'm not telling anybody that I know that does drugs. I don't do stuff like that. And I said, if

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that's the way you feel about it, I'm leaving and I got up and I said, the next thing you're gonna hear from is my lawyer and I slammed the damn door so hard, he shook the room and I got about 30 or 40 ft down the

00:28:50.420 - 00:29:05.790

hallway and they come running after me. Oh, we wouldn't serious. We, we will let you graduate. But it left a really bad feeling in my stomach. And so I asked C and Chong, I said, you wanna go to Beaumont and play at Lamar University? That was

00:29:05.800 - 00:29:22.930

my revenge. And they said, yeah, I said, well, let's go down there for a night and they had a big auditorium held eight or 900 people. And that stupid administrator that hated me for the hippie culture and all that. He was still there. I can't, I

00:29:22.939 - 00:29:39.520

don't want to say his name, but he had hired about 20 deputy sheriffs. So every Sher deputy sheriff in Beaumont and he called me in his office before the show because they signed the contract before they knew who Cheech and Chong was. And they found out,

00:29:39.530 - 00:29:55.099

you know, they were dopers man, they had all these movies and records about marijuana. And so he called me in there. He says, Ryan, I have the deputy sheriff's here tonight and if there's anything wrong with this show, y'all are going to jail. And I'm a

00:29:55.109 - 00:30:10.739

quick thinker. I said, well, I said they've got a special show for colleges. They don't do anything like that. And so I left his office and I went to teach and Chong, I said, look, man, these guys are gonna arrest us if you do your show.

00:30:10.750 - 00:30:25.079

And I said, you gotta clean it up, no cussing no drugs. And Tommy Chong says, ok, ok, we'll do it like you say, and I had a feeling that wasn't gonna happen, but I, I took him at his word. So I'm standing in the back with

00:30:25.089 - 00:30:47.329

this administrator and there's cops lying in the auditorium, man. And so Cheech and Chong, I, I don't, I don't know if you've ever seen their act. Well, it's just, you know, the first thing they did when they came out was Tommy Chong says, can I cuss

00:30:48.699 - 00:31:04.689

I'm quoting him. He says, hey, motherfuckers. And when he said that every one of those cops, they hand, you know, they all had big bellies, they, they all looked at me at once and I went, oh shit. I said, and then thank God Cheech and Chong

00:31:04.699 - 00:31:24.660

dropped down the floor and did their dog routine where they run around in circles smelling each other's butts and acting like dogs and all these cops started laughing and the people were sold out, they all laughed. But after that show, all these cops lined up and

00:31:24.670 - 00:31:52.540

shook my hand. They said that's the best show we've, we've ever ever seen it. It still makes me cry to this day because that was where I was from. The only person that didn't like it was the administrator and he was mad as hell at the

00:31:52.550 - 00:32:13.239

cops because they did arrest us. But that's how that turned out, which was just great. I had so many good times and, and so did the people. I remember Fred Hoff when he was mayor, he came there with his whole family and we had Waylon Jennings.

00:32:13.969 - 00:32:27.750

And so when Fred came there, I said, Fred, who I knew I was friends with Fred. I said, you wanna go meet Waylon, you and your family and your wife and his little kids. He said, yeah. So we trooped up backstage and I'm not gonna tell

00:32:27.760 - 00:32:45.680

you what was going on because it wasn't legal. But Fred, he got the biggest kick out of meeting Whalen and, uh, they liked each other and it was just a wonderful thing. And Marvin Zindler one time, I'll never forgive him for it. Bless his soul who

00:32:45.689 - 00:33:01.489

he, he loved us. And he was a deputy sheriff and he was a big shot with the Dallas deputy sheriff. And I knew that. And so I invited Marvin. He says, I want to bring down some people from Dallas. Well, hell, I didn't know he was

00:33:01.500 - 00:33:18.619

bringing out the damn sheriff's department, but that's what he did. And Marvin came in with all these deputy sheriffs and I went, Marvin, you know what happens here, man. People smoke pot sometimes and all this stuff and they cuss and you know, drink. He says, yeah,

00:33:18.630 - 00:33:36.160

I know, I think they'll like it and hell they liked it. But Marvin was a great guy and his camera lady, Dana Milliken was a beautiful blue eyed girl and she liked us and she used to come over and film the shows. I remember she filmed

00:33:36.170 - 00:33:54.030

Kinky Friedman and all the Jewish people there with her diamonds and put it on the, I forgot which channel he was on one of the networks. But, uh, we used to also get involved with politics and, uh, we used to, I love to do political shows

00:33:54.680 - 00:34:10.070

whenever the Republicans had $100 a plate dinner in town, I would do a dollar a plate, beans and rice. And that would always be in the news. The Democrats are doing a dollar a plate dinner and the Republicans are doing $100 a plate dinner and, and,

00:34:10.080 - 00:34:27.388

uh, Sissy Fental used to be a friend of mine, her and Gertrude Barnstone and they would come by and talk and one time we had the now National Organization of Women. I, me and Mike donated the theater to them for one of their events. And I

00:34:27.398 - 00:34:44.840

got to meet Bella Abzug and Shirley Chisholm. And uh Sissy Fental was there and, and Gertrude was there and Gloria Steinem was coming and hell, I thought she was beautiful. She had been in Playboy and I mean, she was a beautiful woman and so I just

00:34:44.850 - 00:34:58.840

couldn't hardly wait to meet her. And so I was, I kept looking for her to come. And finally here she comes with about four or five other women. And I go outside the door. I said, welcome to our place, Gloria and she turned her head the

00:34:58.850 - 00:35:12.030

other way and I said it louder. I said, welcome to her place. I'm Ryan. This is my place and she would not talk to me. She turned her back and one of the women came up and punched me on his shoulder says she doesn't talk to

00:35:12.040 - 00:35:29.699

men. I said, well, hell, I'm donating a theater to her and she can't say hello, but she would never did say hello. But Shirley Chisholm who had run for vice president, she was super nice. I saw before she died, I went to San Antonio, a black

00:35:29.709 - 00:35:47.439

college, had her speaking and me and my wife went there and we got to talk to Shirley again. She remembered the show and very, very nice lady. And Bella Absa was so funny and she wore these funny ads, but she was a New Yorker man. And

00:35:47.949 - 00:36:03.199

the way she talked and what she had to say about politics was the real thing. And it was totally funny man. It was totally funny. And we also did a newspaper called The Southern Voice which we used to sell on street corners. Mike wanted to start

00:36:03.209 - 00:36:19.260

a newspaper. He always wanted to be a writer and I wrote too. I like to write. And so we did the Southern Voice for a while. I forget how long a couple of years. And uh we ran mostly news about entertainment and musicians and put ads

00:36:19.270 - 00:36:45.080

in it and mainly use it to promote our theater. But it was a, it was an interesting thing to do. But mainly the thing about Liberty Hall was, it was one of the first clubs in town that had the black people and white people. Together. One

00:36:45.090 - 00:37:02.760

big reason for that was Lightnin Hopkins. Me and lightning got to be really good friends. I used to go on the road with him to Dallas and Austin and Louisiana and I used to go over his apartment and we would play guitars together and enlightened. He

00:37:02.770 - 00:37:15.070

liked me because I was always moving really fast. I was taller and skinnier than him now and I was just on the move the whole damn time. And one day light and grabbed me by the arm, he says, you move too fast. He said, I'm gonna

00:37:15.080 - 00:37:34.669

do a song about you. So he started doing this song. You move too fast. And he even dedicated it to me a few times. But a great guy, a great, great guy. I used to love talking with him and yeah, it didn't even seem like to

00:37:34.679 - 00:37:56.189

me, he was black and I was white. And uh one time he was telling me that he, when he got started in Nacogdoches, I believe he works on a cotton farm. And on Saturday night, he would play the guitar as they worked all week. And he

00:37:56.199 - 00:38:09.719

said, Ryan, that's how I got to be so good. He says, because I would start before sundown and I have to play the morning sun came up and he said, I couldn't stop or they killed me. He said they wanted to dance. And so I would

00:38:09.729 - 00:38:23.179

have to play all night long and he said, I didn't have a choice. He said they, they wouldn't let me stop. And he said I got to be good. I could play forever. And another time we were talking about all the record companies that cheated him

00:38:23.189 - 00:38:42.250

out of his money because most of the black people we hired were all cheated. The record companies would put their records out and they would never get any money and their managers and you know, they just stayed poor. And I asked lightning, I said, Lightning, what

00:38:42.260 - 00:38:56.110

do you think about uh them stealing all your money from? Cause lightning had, what? 50 albums or more out? And he never got any money from it. I said, what do you think about all these white people stealing your money, man? And he, he said, Ryan,

00:38:57.560 - 00:39:16.229

he says, the money is not the most important thing in the world. He says a friend is a friend where money was spent. I said, what do you mean by that Lina? He says, well, if we're out in the woods or in the desert, I mean,

00:39:16.239 - 00:39:33.689

there's nothing to buy. It's better to have a friend and I have some money in your pocket. So Johnny Winter had been in the hospital in New Orleans and Johnny was a friend of mine and he called me. He says, Ryan Gerald. He says, uh, you

00:39:33.699 - 00:39:47.479

got Jimmy Reed coming. I said, yeah, he says, I wanna come play with him and Johnny was a big star man. He had signed a million dollar contract back when a million dollars was a million bucks. I said, Johnny, I can't pay you, man. I said

00:39:47.489 - 00:40:07.409

I only got so much money to pay and I want Jimmy to make some money. I, I can't afford to have you. Johnny says you don't understand. I just want to play. So he did, he came down with two other guys in his band and played,

00:40:08.129 - 00:40:35.770

I think I gave him $100 total a night. He had to split three ways and he filled the house. Everybody loved Johnny winters and Jimmy got the money and Johnny, he uh thanked me and Jimmie Reed didn't know who he was. I said, Jimmy, you'll like

00:40:35.780 - 00:40:56.770

this guy. And uh, he bagged Jimmy Reed up and Jimmy got to like him. Johnny didn't overs overshadow him. He didn't put on all his legs. He backed him up and, uh, so Jimmy, he left and he uh left with a bunch of money. And then

00:40:57.000 - 00:41:14.840

what's really sad is Jimmy couldn't read or write his wife could. And on this record drill here, a lady singing in the background, that's his wife. And she used to sing along in the background. So Jimmy wouldn't forget the words. And, uh, his wife died. And

00:41:14.850 - 00:41:35.209

so one Christmas he called Roberto Gonzalez used to work with me. He called Roberto and uh said, man, I, I don't have any place to spend Christmas. You're the only people that helped me. So he came down and spent a couple of weeks with us during

00:41:35.219 - 00:41:57.219

the holidays. And that was the last time I saw Jimmy, but the poor guy was so famous and had his music played so much on the radio. He didn't have any place to go for Christmas. I always think of that when I hear people talk about

00:41:57.229 - 00:42:25.469

black people, hell, white people don't know how good they have. It just being white makes them better than black. But you know, the black people got ripped off so much, but they were so happy and nice to me. But it is emotional for me because one

00:42:25.479 - 00:42:45.370

reason is my partner, Mike Condra who I knew for 52 years, he died of cancer and we just had a party, a wake party for him where I saw maybe, you know, 50 100 people that I hadn't seen in 40 years. And I told Linda Herrera,

00:42:45.379 - 00:43:00.159

I said, well, I'll do a speech. She really wanted me to do it because I probably knew Mike better than anybody else. We did thousands of shows together and I used to play the guitar. I kept my guitar in the office and he says, what do

00:43:00.169 - 00:43:20.169

you play your guitar? And I thought hell because I'm not a performer, I, I cut C DS for fun and give them away. But I'm not a performer. And so Linda, she, she talked me into it because I kept flip flopping. Do I wanna do this

00:43:20.179 - 00:43:39.070

or do I want not? You know, because I get emotional, I, I'm almost 70 years old and I was born poor and uh I've been very blessed in my life. And so I said, yeah, Linda, I'll come down and do it. But, you know, when I

00:43:39.080 - 00:44:04.899

was talking about Mike and Linda in Liberty Hall, I cracked up a couple of times on the stage, like I've cracked up here. But you know, that makes me a human. So kind of looking back, kind of all your whole experience of Liberty Hall. What do

00:44:04.909 - 00:44:29.080

you think you've taken away from it from that time? I took away a lot of, a lot of happy memories. I took away stuff. Other people will never have, never have. I got to meet all these people. I got to be up close to him personally,

00:44:29.090 - 00:44:54.439

talk to them and I got to make a lot of happy people like to make people happy because I put on me and Mike, we put on the best shows I think ever in this town and it was uh not done for money and uh memories

00:44:54.449 - 00:45:24.959

are stuff you don't lose, you can lose your money. But you know, unless you get Alzheimer's and go completely batty, you don't lose your memories. And I have memories every day I worked for a year with Vicky Ao on this book, Boys from Houston. Book number

00:45:24.969 - 00:45:50.409

two. And I knew most of the people in the book personally because I knew music here in Houston. I mean, I lived it every day for over seven years in the seventies and working with Vicky, uh, brought back memories. I had forgot I had, but I

00:45:50.419 - 00:46:15.939

never forgot the memories. A lot of, I remember better than others. But uh I think John Lee Hooker used to tell me says nothing but the best and lighter for the rest. Is there anything else that you kind of like to? Well, I'll tell you looking

00:46:15.949 - 00:46:40.729

back on it all, I would do it again. I mean, I have brains. I have a degree. I could have been rich with the money, but I'm rich with memories and I have friends and I can play music. I've been taught by, by some of the

00:46:40.739 - 00:47:00.639

best people in the business. I love playing guitar and where the hell could I have gotten all these guitar lessons from all these stars if I wouldn't have done this? I set up with Leo Cocky one night in his hotel room because his wife had had

00:47:00.649 - 00:47:13.399

a baby and he had to be on the road playing. He's a 12 string guitar player. And after his first show at Liberty Hall, he says, hey Ryan, he says, I'm not sleepy, I'm not tired. And I said, what's wrong, Leo, I'll give you a ride

00:47:13.409 - 00:47:27.629

to your hotel. He says, oh, that's not the problem. He says, I miss my wife and baby. I said, well, you want me to go hang out with you a while. He said, yeah. So I took him to the hotel. He had three guitars. We sit

00:47:27.639 - 00:47:54.939

around after he had done two shows and played all night long. I mean, the, the music was a, is a drug for your head. When you do music, you don't think of other things. you think of the music. And now, you know, my music career, I

00:47:54.949 - 00:48:10.290

still play. I taught my wife how to play. I bought her a guitar. I made her learn how to write music. She writes folk songs. We've put out four C DS of her original songs and I put out a couple of C DS of my songs

00:48:10.300 - 00:48:31.489

and music is a big part of my life and always will be. And I have the memories. Thank you so much for sharing and for telling the story because you've done a really wonderful job. I didn't think it'd be so hard.