“We’re goin’ to Luckenbach, Texas…” or, we did when we were in the Fredericksburg area. When you are in the Texas Hill Country you have to take some time to visit some of the legendary dancehalls. Gruene Hall, which is the oldest dancehall in Texas, and Luckenbach, which ilegendary just for being Luckenbach.
We visited on a Saturday night. You can walk in any time but I would recommend the evening hours. There are lights twinkling and it has a picturesque quality that might not come through in the daytime. Luckenback is afterall, just a collection of old wooden buildings gathered in the dirt. At night with someone strumming a guitar and singing cowboy songs and the lights twinkling, you can be transported to the idea of the old Texas dancehall. The place where farmers and ranchers gathered of a weekend night to blow off some steam, see some neighbors and just relax after a hard week’s work.
Luckenbach was a busy little town in the 1800s but by the 1970s it was pretty well deserted. The Engel family, which had originally founded the town, put it up for sale. Hondo Crouch and some friends bought it up and made it their own personal playground for silly festivals and other diversions. And, it was a place to just hang out, drink a cold beer, play some checkers and strum a guitar. Eventually more and more people came to drink those cold beers and hear some music and in 1973 country singer Jerry Jeff Walker came to Luckenbach to record an album. He was looking for a laid=back Texas place and he found it. That album really put Luckenbach on the map and more and more country singers came to play the now famous hall. And in 1977 Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson made “Luckenbach, Texas” a hit song all over the country.
And still, when you go visit, it’s a laid-back, Texas kind of place. Sure, you can buy a Luckenbach t-shirt in the little store but you can also buy a real, old-fashioned limeaide and a hot dog for a few bucks too. The beers are cold and everyone we met was friendly. Luckenbach doesn’t seem to know it’s famous and that’s just what keeps it perfect. On a cool fall evening with the moon overhead and some country music drifting through the air, you can believe the Luckenbach is the same as it always has been.
