The Tentpole of Texas Music: LJT

It’s that week again. Larry Joe Taylor Fest is nigh upon us.

Out in Stephenville, the gates are opening, the campers are rolling in, and the long arc of Texas Music is bending back toward Melody Mountain Ranch for another year of LJT.

No matter how many festivals pop up, no matter how many lineups get debated, this is still the flagship and tentpole of Texas Music. It’s the one everything else quietly measures itself against.

We had our run of attending, twenty years straight. We were the Cal Ripken and Lou Gehrig of bad decisions, good music and better memories/stories. The stories. Ragweed at the teepee. Jack Ingram napping in our camper. Josh Grider and Drew Kennedy tent camping at our site and nearly missing their early set. The tractor rides with Josh Abbott and Evan Felker. And many more that will live in our hearts and minds and not on the internet. Some of those names will be there this year. But, there's a new crop of kids out there chasing adventure and song. Presley Haile, Race Ricketts, Cameron Allbright, Hank Weaver, Ashton Naylor, Shelby Stone, Tanner Usrey and more.

Twenty straight years of dust, sun, songs, and the kind of nights that don’t really exist anywhere else. We saw it when it was smaller. We saw it when it surged. We saw artists pick around campfires for a couple of years to virtually us and nobody else, then come back later as headliners with crowds that knew every word.

But LJT isn’t the kind of thing you “used to go to.” It sticks with you. It becomes part of how you understand this whole Texas Music world in the first place.

LJT isn’t just a lineup.

It’s the campsite you build out like a temporary hometown. It’s the walk between stages where you catch a chorus that stops you in your tracks. It’s the neighbor you didn’t know on Thursday who’s family by Saturday night.

Daytime belongs to wandering and hanging out. Acoustic guitars, breakfast tacos, bloody marys, discoveries, stories. Nighttime belongs to the main stage, when the whole place turns the rowdy meter up a tad and the songs hit a little harder.

There’s a rhythm to it. If you’ve been, you feel it immediately upon driving in. If you haven’t, you’ll understand by the second night. In year's past we referred to it as magic. There's definitely magic on Melody Mountain. It's exhibited in the Rusty Wier statue and felt everywhere else across the grounds.

For decades now, LJT has been more than just a stop on the touring calendar. It's been a checkpoint and a measuring stick. No different than getting booked at Gruene Hall or Billy Bob's.

Artists prove something out there. Fans discover something out there. And the scene itself, this stubborn, independent, deeply Texas thing, reaffirms what it is every single April.

You can trace careers through that stage. You can trace your own life through it, too, if you gave it enough years.

We’re not loading up and heading out this time. But plenty of you are. And that’s exactly how it should be.

The next generation is pulling in right now, setting up campsites, cracking the first cold one, chasing the same feeling we chased for twenty years without quite knowing what to call it.

They’ll figure it out eventually. Their neighbors that have been twenty plus years will help them. And that’s kind of the point.

You can have your opinions on who’s playing. You can debate which year was the best. You can swear it was better “back then.” That’s all part of it.

But the truth is simple: when LJT fires up, it’s still the biggest thing happening in Texas Music.

Always has been. This week will prove it once again.