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J,
Steven Fromholz:
Frolicking in the Myth
By John T. Davis
"Many performers of lesser talent than
Steven Fromholz (are) making a living off their
records," wrote a journalist in 1973, "and
many people know that." For better or worse,
that is still the case, almost 15 years later.
But no one is thinking about that on this
night. Fromholz is standing in the lobby of a
movie theatre, surrounded by family and
friends, including his wife, Janey, and
Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower.
There are no searchlights, no limos, no TV
crews. But this is the closest, given Fromholz'
presence, that Positive I.D. will have to an
"official" premiere. The shoestring-budget
thriller, shot in Dallas and directed by Dallas'
Andy Anderson, features the Texas-born
singer-songwriter in a pivotal role as a bar-
tender who befriends a woman with the shad-
iest of pasts. It is by far the most substantial
of Fromholz' four screen performances.
People exiting an early showing do a double
take as they spot Fromholz lingering by the
popcorn stand. Several come up to offer con-
y gratulations. Someone even solicits an auto-
graph before the party troops in with the rest
of the eight o'clock crowd. "No hissing and
booing," says Fromholz lightly. The theatre
goes dark.
A couple of weeks later, the movie star is
taking his ease on a front porch in South
Austin and nursing a cup of coffee. He's
wearing a Willie-and-Darrell (as in Nelson
and Royal) Invitational windbreaker. The sun
gleams off the small blue diamond in his ear.
"I don't know much about making movies,"
he says, "But what I do know I like a lot. I
can do what a director needs me to do, and
the camera's my friend."
It should not be inferred, however, that
Fromholz is abandoning a 23-year music
career. It's just that the movies offer a new
direction to stretch. And he is old enough to
live comfortably within his capabilities. "I
feel like now I can do whatever I'm called on
to do, be it in movies or music," he says com-
t>anionably. "I want to learn more about that
craft. Be a crafty actor."
Iromholz's speech wanders like that, eliding
into bad puns, slice-and-dice metaphors,
offhanded wordplay, and sleight-of-tongue
gymnastics.
Those who have seen him play over the years
in the beer joints, coffee houses, concert halls,
ski lodges, folk festivals, gin mills, cowboy
bars, university halls and living rooms that he
frequents have seen the skill displayed in
songs like "Dear Darcie," "Late Nite Neon
Shadows," "Bears" and, especially, "Texas
Trilogy." The latter song (actually a suite of
three) was penned in 1968, when Fromholz,"One day 1 was a folk
singer in Denver hunting
for work, and the next day
I'm on a plane to L.A.
Three days later, I'm on
an airplane to England,
and then on a 54-city rock
and roll tour. "along with folksinger Dan McCrimmon, was
part of a duo called Frummox. Today, it is
still his tour-de-force. Author Jan Reid best
described it as "a Larry McMurtry novel
reduced to song."
But there have been a lot of other songs
along the way, beginning with Fromholz'
participation in the Folk Music Society at
North Texas State University in Denton in
the early '60s. "They made me president
'cause I could sing, I knew a lot of songs, and
I wasn't afraid to talk."
Rushing out of high school and into college
and matrimony, Fromholz was given a banjo
for a wedding present by his fiancee. The
noise he made bashing away at it at his bach-
elor party so infuriated Travis Holland, an
upstairs neighbor, that he stormed down,
vowing to either "take that banjo away or
teach him how to play it." "I was too big for
him to take it away," recalled Fromholz, but
the incident ushered in a long association that
would see Holland serving as Fromholz' foil,
bass player and country-fried Sancho Panza.
The guitar, not the banjo, was his instru-
ment of choice, and Fromholz was enlisted in
the Dallas County Jug Band, a group of
NTSU alumni that also included country
singer Michael Martin Murphey. k_Iw
It also set the stage for a hitch in the Navy
that landed Fromholz in San Francisco in
1966, where he got his first steady music
work. Afterwards, a steadily expanding cir-
cuit of gigs took him across much of the West
and Southwest. Ever since playing a concert
with the Jug Band in Zilker Park, Austin had
become a favorite stopover. "Austin in 1965
was totally heaven," he sighed nostalgically.
The road had its good points. Fromholz
(alone and with Frummox) worked a lot of
ski lodges. "The fettuccini circuit," he called
it. "I learned to ski at Breckenridge, courtesy
of some crazy people," he recalled. And it
had its downside: Drunks once poured beer
on his head in mid-song during an apres-ski
set in Winter Park.
Headquartering as he did in Denver in 1971
put Fromholz in a position to take a look at
rock 'n roll at it's gaudiest. From out of the
blue, he was hired by Stephen Stills to play
rhythm guitar and sing in the group that was
the percursor of Stills' Manassas band.
"One day I was a folk singer in Denver
hunting for work, and the next day I'm on a
plane to L.A. Three days later, I'm on an
airplane to England, and then on a 54-city
rock and roll tour," he recalled, amazement
still in his voice. "It was as much culture
shock as a man could stand - taking acid in
Ringo Starr's house, and Stills locking the
gates so no one could get out . . . It was nuts.
"I did it to the hilt. I wanted a real good
look at it, I guess. I sincerely turned a funny
green color. After I came off the road, Travis
told me, 'Fromholz, you look awful.' I told
him I had been living on Jim Beam whiskey,
cocaine and cheeseburgers for six months. And
he said, 'Them cheeseburgers will kill you.'
"All through my career, if somebody ever
offered me anything new and different, I've
taken it. I lived through 1971, and if that
didn't kill me, nothing will."
After that, there was nothing to do but
relocate to Austin, in 1974, just in time to
jump knee-deep in what he refers to as "the
progressive-country scare of the mid-'70s."
Timing has been my career," he mused. "It's
either been really, really good, or interesting."Fromholz' 13-year Austin sojourn has been
a bit of both. Though he disdains its hype, the
"redneck rock" boomlet enabled Fromholz
to get his waltzes, ballads and rockers on
vinyl in a series of records, including
Fromholz Live, which incorporates some of
the best of his hilarious stage monologues.
His golfing buddy Willie Nelson covered his
song "I'd Have to Be Crazy," instantly trans-
forming it into his accountant's favorite tune.
Then, in 1977, Outlaw Blues provided him
an entree into the movie business. Fromholz
played a sound engineer named Elroy in the
Peter Fonda/Susan St. James vehicle, the first
of a slew of dreadful big-budget films to use
Austin as a background. Roles in Cloak and
Dagger, Songwriter and Positive I. D. followed.
Next, he'd like to try some comedy. Or a
Western. "I'd really like to play a bad sonof-
abitch," he said with relish. "Ride horses
and shoot guns and all that shit. Like Willie
says, it's better than working."
In the meantime, his recording career is
cranking up again. After five years (his last
project was a Frummox reunion album),
Fromholz has a new album in the can. To be
called either Love Songs or Ladies' Alan, it's a
combination of a couple of standards by Duke
Ellington and Jimmy Van Heusen, a couple
of covers and seven Fromholz originals, in-
cluding the title cut, and remakes of "Isla
Mujeres,"" Jesse's House" and "I'd Have
To Be Crazy."
He describes it as "sort of cowjazzy. It's
got some horns and a sax on it. It's the kind
of record I'd like people to keep on the stereo
in their bedroom. It's love songs, meant to
cuddle and coo with. A fireplace record." It
should be out early next year.
And it may be that, again, many performers
of lesser talent than he will be selling more
records. "I'm in that nether-land with my
music," he said in a mock lament. "I have to
take my own bin to the record store that says
'Free form-country-folk-rock-science-fiction-
gospel-gum-bluegrass-opera-cowjazz on it."
And, having said that, he goes indoors for
more coffee, a balladeer with a character
actor's face and a poet's soul.Stephanie Rascoe is befriended by Fromholz in Positive1.D.
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Davis, John T. [Clipping: Steven Fromholz: Frolicking in the Myth], newspaper, December 11, 1997; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1818441/m1/1/?rotate=0: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.