Rex Foster – Poet, Songster, Jewelry Maven

You have a new album out – That Extra Mile, and there is a great picture in there. It’s the Texas road sign that says Austin 98 Comfort 1. And there is a longhorn steer in the the picture that looks like Bevo. How is life in Comfort, Texas today?
You know. I’m a blessed human being, the way I look at it, to be able to hang out in Comfort. It’s got “community.” It’s a non-incorporated little village, and very community oriented. My folks moved there in 1955, so it’s been home for a long time. I grew up and the Guadalupe was my backyard. My folks were from San Antonio, by way of Kansas. They figured out Texas first, spicy food!, then Comfort. Kansas is a little bland. Pepper is a big jump for them! My dad was called in for the Korean War, teaching people to fly, and after the war they came to San Antonio, and after a while thet decided they didn’t want to be “city” people, and we came to Comfort. And at that time you had to “want” to come to Comfort, it was not too easy to get to. You first had to find Fredericksburg road, then take it up into the hills. That’s what got me to the hills and I’ve loved it ever since. Of course, I have been around the world a few times since then. But this has always been home.

When did you start playing music?
I was a junior in high school when I realized I could sing, about fifteen. And it was theater people who discovered my voice and trained me to sing. And I actually went into the theater because I liked acting, one act play, the sort of thing that they do in high school. So I got into acting and the feel of the stage then I got into professional Summer Stock theater between school years, so I really was getting directed, and was learning the craft of “stage.” And I was getting trained to sing vocally, most chorus stuff, but some solo as well. This was when I was very young, my voice was just coming in, then I went on to sing for the first band I ever sang for, The Centuries, in San Antonio. That was when I was a senior. I went back to Alamo Heights to graduate. I got an apartment my senior year, so it was a good time, plus getting to do music as a frontman for a band. I graduated in ’64.

The music scene in San Antonio was on fire then.
Yeah, it was Augie (Meyers) and Doug (Sahm) and all those guys, and The Beatles hadn’t quite hit yet, they were just getting ready to, as I was getting into this. And Augie and Doug had been around a few years before this. It was a pretty fun scene there. But I went into theater in college for a couple of years at Trinity, under Paul Baker, but I realized it was the “team sport” thing I really didn’t like. Too many other things going on, so that kind of took me off the theater route. And I picked up a guitar when I was a freshman in college. I picked up a guitar and was reading Woody Guthrie books, and about the time I was senior, (Bob) Dylan was about to explode, so I started writing songs after the first three chords I learned, and I basically never stopped. That took me way farther…

Folks of my generation will know your music as what is perceived “folk”…but you delved into the psychedelic world as well.
Yeah, actually, the folk part of my life didn’t happen till later. I was in the Centuries and we were a cover band. Then I went to California, and that’s a whole chapter we could spend a day on, but jist of it is, I came back from California with a custom-made guitar I had bought from a guy in a coffehouse, and he had it tuned in open tuning. Nobody in Texas had even known of, thought about or played in open tuning, E Modal tuning, both E’s tuned down. And a bag of Timothy Leary’s medicine. That and an open tuned guitar is what I brought back to my music buddies in Texas. That was in late ’65 I guess. This is when the Rachel’s Children thing began to form. My main music buddy was one of The Centuries, Will Wright. He and I got together when I got back and started playing in this open tuning and writing songs. And we picked up a guitar player friend, Don Earl Harding, and Rachel’s Children was basically a trio to begin with. Then we started really writing songs, and this open tuning and the whole psychedelic area was really just blowing everyones mind. And mine too. Not only were we getting together to play, we were developing a new music.

Did you ever run across The 13th Floor Elevators during that time?
Oh yeah! We opened The Mind’s Eye in San Antonio with the Elevators. And that’s part of the the story. The Conqueroo (austin) Rachels Children and The Elevators were the three psychedelic bands that started the psychedelic movement in Texas.

Did everyone know what the others were doing?
No. We weren’t getting together to jam or swap music. Stepping up to another level of thinking, it was part of the “collective conscience” in the evolution of man, and at that moment, this thing happened in lots of different places at about the same time through this consciousness awarness thing that was going on. Young people were at a very prime and ripe place to approach reality differently, and they did it through music. And you could tell the difference in music that started happening in the mid ‘60’s. The Elevotors, Rachel’s Children and The Conqueroo were all building this at basically the same time. The Vulcan Gas Company was basically a production company at that time. Rachel’s Children had the only light show at that time. And that light show, with the overhead projectors and mirrored balls and all that were new here. When we would go do shows with these other bands, we would bring the light show, and it was as good as any out on the West Coast. Vulcan Gas Company was out of Austin, and they were just some guys producing shows. They had to use the Doris Miller Auditorium in East Austin to hold these live shows, that were not a normal thing in society, at that time. That was where some of the earliest psychedelic era shows happened in Austin, with Conqueroo and Rachel’s Children. Later, after Rachel’s Children had to disband, The Vulcan Gas Company became a venue, and re-morphed again into the Armadillo World Headquarters. I was off in Europe for a year, recording an album, and I came back and the Armadillo was open. So I got back and was doing some headlining there, with this new record, and that’s where I first saw Willie (Nelson). He was opening for me, in his wing-tipped shoes! We were sitting backstage, and here was this guy with with duck tales, mis-matched sport coat and slacks, and we kept asking “who is that guy?’. They finally said, “have you ever heard any of these songs? Well, he’s the guy that wrote them”!

You not only make fantastic music, but you have a rather unique “side job” as well.
Here again, I was blessed. I continue with these blessings. I just seem to sit still and it all hits! And this thing hit with me in the early ‘70’s. My dad picked up some old bones out in the pasture and figured out if you polished and sanded on them they looked like ivory. I got back off tour from California with a bracelet on my wrist that he’d sent to me. I got home and I asked him what he was doing. He said “I’m picking up bones, some old deer bones, and old cow bones, and look what you can do”! Well, I’d always been pretty good with my hands, I was a mechanic and built hotrods, had all those side-bar things going on, so it was not a big jump for me creating things with these bones, and creating tools was one of the other things I enjoyed too. It was figuring out how to manipulate the materials, and I knew I could make myself some thing nobody else would have. So I made a hatband that was really unique, and I gave Hondo Crouch one, Hondo was like my surrogate father, then Jerry Jeff (Walker) had to have one, so the hat band thing got out there pretty fast. Manny Gammage from Texas Hatters had to have one, then earings and trinkets for girlfriends, and then it was any excuse I could have to design something, I would jump on it! After a year or two, I had to decide if I wanted to keep doing this or was it getting out of hand. So I developed an artform. It’s been about 37 or 38 years of a developed artform that nobody else does. I’ve got a permanent display at the Downright Texas Gallery on Highway 27 on the west side of Comfort. They do a great job there.

Is there one art form you enjoy more than the other?
Well the jewelry I call my hard art, and the music is my soft art. What probably pulls at my deepest soul is my music. The jewelry comes from the same source, as far as the creativity and the joy of interaction with the audience, because I sell jewelry to people personally most of the time, at the shows I go to, so I have this relationship of these people who take this jewelry into their lives, and it’s very much like you taking my music into your life. But there is a different resonance with the music when I’m on stage, I can resonate with a hundred to a thousand people all at the same time. And it’s just a different kind of resonance that goes on that hopefully brings us all in to that same source.

Rex Foster can be found in Comfort, Texas, in the phone book, and more conveniently on -line at www.rexfoster.com. A true Texas Original, Rex’s music, and his jewelry,transcend the normal, everyday, garden variety. This man is an artiste, in every sense of the word. If you are looking for a one-of-a-kind piece of “art” and a truly one of a kind sound, check him out. Buy a cd, buy a piece of jewelry your friends will want to covet, and get caught up in a truly important cog in the Texans wheel. You will not regret it. The full interview will appear in the upcoming book “Behind the Microphone: Stories of an Overnight Radio Show in Texas” or “How Big G captured The Groove of his Youth”.