I just call my style of music Cap-Rock
Mason Server
When the original outlaw songsmith Terry Allen wrote and recorded his hit “Amarillo Highway,” I believe he set the tone for what the future of Texas Music was to become. At the same time he was only doing music the way that it had been done in those rolling plains of the panhandle for so many years before.
Amarillo highway has been covered by many of my personal favorite musicians including Robert Earl Keen and Sturgill Simpson.
So much great music has come out of the Panhandle in my lifetime. Before me, there was so many I can think of, just off the top of my head I’d pick Buddy Holly, Waylon, Delbert McClinton, and the Maines brothers.
Without the panhandle influence, I doubt that Flatland Cavalry would have the sound it does today. I mean Cleto was pretty good when he made his start in Midland, but playing places like the famed Blue Light in Lubbock honed his skill as a performing musician. The same went for Boland and William Clark Green. There’s a new breed now like Mason Server, Dave Martinez, and Travis Roberts who are still playing that little stage at the Blue Light and keeping up with that Hard Amarillo Highway on their way to pick into places like Hoots Pub or The Golden Light, Amarillo.
Before those guys were there there was an artist playing in those same pubs named Brandon Adams. He and his Sad Bastards had been there before and are still doing that same style of panhandle music today.
I saw a Mason Server and Brandon Adams show once in the Blue Light. Mason told me then that he simply called this style of music – “Cap-Rock”
I believed it then and still do today, that Cap-Rock should be it’s own musical genre.
I’m a panhandlin man handlin post holin high rollin daddy.
I don’t wear no Stetson but I’m willin to bet son…
Pancho.