Meet Mas Bouzidi, the twenty-four-year-old writer/director of Concessions—a new independent feature enjoying its US premier this week at the Woodstock Film Festival in upstate New York, not too far from where it was filmed and where Mas grew up. Concessions is an ambitious, edgy, beautifully made ode to the disappearing ritual of movie going, and is both close to home and far-flung.

Concessions wears its many cinematic inspirations charmingly on its sleeve, and as the photo above suggests—one of those inspirations is my brother Eagle’s film, Last Night at the Alamo. Mas’s instinct was to strengthen that connection by reaching out to me, and happily, I ended up contributing some of my guitar music to an already vibrant soundtrack(lots of intriguing needle drops and some evocative cues from New York musician and sound man John Keville)—and brought in two Austin luminaries, Rich Brotherton(banjo) and Guy Forsyth(harmonica) to help create the magic. Cinema Paradiso, Dazed and Confused, and Clerks are some other notable points of Cinema connectivity you’ll find in Concessions—but Mas’s film is also a thoroughly original piece of subjective work and I’m very proud to have interwoven some Austin music into the tapestry.

In August, Concessions had it’s world premier at the prestigous Edinburg Film Festival in Scotland, where it was in competition with nine other films for best in festival(The Sean Connery Award). The prize went to Mortician, an Iranian film made entirely with an iPhone—which says something I suppose and certainly played with a certain frustratingly poignant edge against the 35 milemeter standard bearer that is Concessions.

Well, truth to tell, I’ll be releasing an iPhone album in 2026…it’s the world we live in… but three cheers for Mas Bouzidi who has lovingly made a wonderful first film to remind us what the word film, really and truly means.

Concessions is making its way in the world nicely and I know for a fact that some industry heavyweights are taking notice—so look for it—it will be coming your way sometime soon.

And hey, the music is great !

My brother Eagle Pennell and I grew up in College Station, home to Texas A&M University, which is now also home to a vibrant liberal arts school. The department is staffed with brilliant scholars—and one of their many innovations is to help sponsor a burgeoning local film festival—Visions of Texas. I was invited to the 2025 festival for a conversation with Dan Humphrey, Professor of Film and Media Studies, and to introduce Eagle’s indie classic Last Night at the Alamo at the historic Queen Theater—great honors both. And lots of fun.

Growing up in College Station was like growing up in Mayberry, only the man next door was the absent minded professor about to make a major breakthrough in some weighty field of study. Our father, Dr. Charles Pinnell, was one of those professors. His weighty field was Civil Engineering and his big breakthrough came in developing computerized traffic control technology—in the 60’s quite a cutting edge endeavor. College Station was a small town with big ideas and big doings, and you just had this sense of unlimited horizons. An excellent place to spend one’s formative years.

Our first experiences of the magic of cinema happened at the Palace theater in nearby Bryan, directly across the street from the Queen Theater—back in the 50’s and 60’s a run down ugly step sister to the grand Palace—a place for B movies and sketchy characters and off limits to us. The Palace is now long gone but the Art Deco Queen survived and is now home to the Visions of Texas Film Festival, and has screenings and events all through the year.

I had a great conversation with Dan at the Black Box theater in Texas A&M’s brand new Liberal Arts Building; about growing up at odds with Eagle and then discovering our true bond in Independent filmmaking, about the enormous boot print he left behind with only two films, about my own evolution as an artist, and we finished with a discussion of my novel The Irish Singer. A lot of ground was covered in that conversation—altogether an intriquing and unlikely history that began in a little house not a mile from where we sat.

It was also amazing and poignant to introduce Last Night at the Alamo at the Visions of Texas festival and to field some interesting questions afterwards. A fantastic restoration of Last Night is what is available to watch now, thanks primarily to Mark Rance, Rick Linklater, and Louis Black—with kudos to the film’s Screenwriter Kim Henkel and Cinematographer Brian Huberman, and of course to Sonny and Lou and everyone else involved for giving us such an enduring cinematic treasure. My minimalistic guitar score, kind of rare then but less so now, also survived nicely and I wonder what influence it may have had. The film is 42 years old and is as relevant and enjoyable now as it was in 1983—the enthusiastic audience response at the Queen proved that once again—and Eagle, a talented and troubled soul, would’ve loved this full circle homecoming.

The Audubon Suite. (click here to listen)

The first time I ever heard much of anything about the incredible life of John James Audubon, other than that the Audubon Society was named after him, was during a drive to the Austin airport with the late and great Academy Award nominated director, Al Reinert. I had just recently collaborated with Rich Brotherton on the score for Al’s CNN Films documentary, An Unreal Dream, and the story of John James Audubon was to be his next project. By the time I got Al to the airport I was hooked and hoping I could be involved. It took a couple of years and a lot of very hard work, but ultimately the film got made and in addition to Al’s wise and calming presence, came to involve a number of other very talented people; including celebrated bird photographer Tim Barksdale, Artist Jamie Wyeth, Actor Sam Eliot, producer cinematographer and editor John Aldrich, sound designer Wayne Bell, the composing genius of Peter Stopschinski, and me somehow landing indeed in the glorious middle of it all with a Collings guitar.

John James Audubon grew up in the French countryside near the Loire river outside the city of Nante, the bastard son of a wealthy merchant. Even though a bastard, the boy was fully welcomed into the Audubon fold and was afforded a nurturing childhood amongst idyllic woods and fields. There he steadily developed a life long passion for nature, and for birds. Again, wanting to protect his son and ensure that he would have a bright future, John James’s father sent him to America to escape soldiering in the Napoleonic wars. When the eighteen-year-old Audubon first arrived in America, Lewis and Clark were just gearing up to begin their great expedition to the West. What John James would accomplish over the next thirty years would exceed even their remarkable achievements—for Audubon himself became an authentic self-made American hero (despite the heavy French accent)—and a giant in the worlds of both Science, and Art.

That story is vividly told in Al Reinert’s gorgeous documentary swan song; with much of Audubon’s magnificent ground breaking bird art on full display, along with eloquent passages recited from the artist’s journal, gorgeous bird photography, Peter Stopschinski’s magnificent score, and my guitar providing a leitmotif for the man himself.

Peter and I first encountered each other during the making of An Unreal Dream. His old friend, editor John Aldrich, suggested he compose a string arrangement for the finale piece—and it was a perfect addition. A decade later we’ve now worked together on five film projects, also one of the finest Austin albums of the past few years—Erin Ivey’s Solace in the Wild, and we’ll be mounting a concert series in 2026 to showcase an intriguing selection of our best efforts.

Al’s film was originally made for PBS and can now be seen on Amazon Prime. And whether you’re familar with the Audubon story, or looking into his life for the first time—Audubon is the definitive watch. And happily there are even two versions to choose from; here is a ninety minute offering with French choreographer, Pascal Rioult, as Audubon, and here is an hour long version with Sam Eliot in the lead role. They’re both excellent interpretations; with Pascal being the more authentic to Audubon (and 30 minutes more of fascinating story, exhilarating cinematography, and gorgeous music), and Sam’s being the more concise and resonant.

This album has been a long time coming but here, in strange times, finally, are my Strange Dreams.

Subscribe now

The sound of the classical guitar has been vibrating in my ears, heart, and soul since I first encountered it’s magical timbre and spirited repertoire in the early 1970’s. I learned how to produce that timbre and play the repertoire—and I’ve done so happily, for many years now. But decades after I began the journey, when I finally had an idea for what I thought would be a great classical guitar album, the inspiration for it shimmered and swirled around the piano, not the guitar.

I found I had no interest whatsoever in trying to make a traditional solo classical guitar album. But the idea of creating a new repertoire largely from romantic and early modern piano miniatures—(an expansive, enigmatic, and mystical genre to say the least)—and bringing them to life with highly textured layers of classical and acoustic guitars, and mandolin—was a fascinating, cinematic, and enduring proposition. I spent years curating the repertoire, finding the unique sounds and layers and textures I was after, and ultimately, getting them well-recorded. For every nocturne or waltz or ballade that worked, there were five that didn’t…

Fortunately, I had under our roof a great shared protools studio space complete with my housemates top shelf classical guitars and my own collection of acoustic guitars and mandolins. I was living with the late great classical/flamenco guitarist Chris Vincent and the studio was always humming—he worked the day shift and I took the graveyard. Our studio ethos was to be completely obsessed with recording the classical and acoustic guitar as true and quintessential as possible; he pursued a definitive flamenco sound while I chased my strange nocturnal dreams. Sadly, after a long run the house was sold and the studio closed down—without either of us finishing the albums we had worked so hard on. My perfectionist friend and ally, the estimable Mr. Vincent, never quite found the recorded sound he was after. And a succession of compulsive incoming film and singer-songwriter projects sidelined my Strange Dreams album, indefinitely. A decade went by and I kept thinking one of these day I’ll get back in there and perfect the mixes… then the hard drive it was stored on crashed for good and all that was left were the CD’s I had burned and the mixes they contained.

Turns out that was enough. In truth, the job was done many years ago and all that was needed was a bit of current mastering magic and little bit of letting go.

The music of Strange Dreams is mostly from the mid to late 19th century, a very interesting and explosively creative time for the strange virtuoso piano geniuses that propelled classical music into the 20th century. Composers like Schubert and Schumann, Mendelssohn and Chopin, Debussy and Satie. Their music was revelatory, fantastical, obscure, enraptured, and entranced—all at once. And the men behind the musical legends were as obcure and fantastical as their music. The ethos of a pale, sickly, otherwordly genius was entirely in vogue. And the two very strange men who embodied that ethos more than anyone else were Frederick Chopin and Erik Satie, both in their dark musical genius and personal eccentricities.

Marcel Proust fits into this curious group quite well. I found in his book, Swan’s Way—which has much to say about nearly everything, and particularly about the relationship between love and art—a long passage recounting the eponymous character’s obsession with a piano composition from the period I’ve been discussing, and it is well-worth sharing. Although it’s full of those infamously long Proustian sentences—his description of music is a most remarkable distillation of what this kind of music is.

From Swann’s Way:

But ever since, more than a year ago now, the love of music had, for a time at least, been born in him, revealing to him many of the riches of his own soul, Swan had regarded musical motifs as actual ideas, of another world, of another order, ideas veiled in shadows, unknown, impenetrable to the intelligence, but not for all that less perfectly distinct from one another, unequal among themselves in value and significance. When, after the Verdurin evening, he had had the little phrase played over for him, and had sought to disentangle how it was that, like a perfume, like a caress, it encircled him, enveloped him, he had realized that it was to the closeness of the intervals between the five notes that composed it, and to the constant repetition of two of them, that was due this impression of frigid withdrawn sweetness; but in reality he knew that he was reasoning this way not about the phrase itself but about simple values substituted, for the convenience of his intelligence, for the mysterious entity he had perceived, before knowing the Verdurins, at that party where he had first heard the sonata played. He knew that even the memory of the piano falsified still further the perspective in which he saw the elements of the music, that the field open to the musician is not a miserable scale of seven notes, but an immeasurable keyboard still almost entirely unknown on which, here and there only, separated by shadows thick and unexplored, a few of the millions of keys of tenderness, of passion, of courage, of serenity which compose it, each as different from the others as one universe from another universe, have been found by a few great artists who do us the service, by awakening in us something corresponding to the theme they have discovered, of showing us what richness, what variety, is hidden unbeknownst to us within that great unpenetrated and disheartening darkness of our soul which we take for emptiness and nothingness.

I’m keeping the present tense, journalistic, Capote-esque, it’s hapening right now approach that I employed in Vol 1; but the first three chapters are set years before the timeline of Vol 2 begins in earnest(immediately after the 5 day battle in Lincoln)—and I chose to present those first chapters in past tense.

So here goes, another unusual glimpse into the untold real story of Henry McCarty, aka William Bonney, aka Billy Kidd, aka Billy the Kid…

Chapter 2

Silver City, New Mexico

Summer 1875

Joseph Dyer’s magnificent sporting hall, The Orleans, rested solid in its gilded place along the prospering establishments of Main street. The discovery of rich silver deposits had brought capital, voracious industry, and even a brickworks to the flourishing boomtown. Proud buildings of red brick were now a common sight in Silver City—but The Orleans lifts high above them all. From top down an Italianate marvel of cornice, corbels, crescent-topped windows, and tight masonry basking a flaming orange in the afternoon sun. Its ornate double doors thrown wide open beckon for all to enter and have a go.

The threshold christens with a sharp embracing waft of pine boards, stale alcohol, and rank sweat—a breath of urine-soaked feculence drifting under as well—from the row of privies out the back door. An immediate gasp for fresh air follows, yet the view inside is stunning. Pious shafts of light reach across the chandeliered nave to the engraved bar, and behind it, to La Belle, the naked beauty in all her glory.

Under the generous roof of the Orleans, on any given day or night—a boisterous congregation of miners, assayers, muleskinners, carpenters, bricklayers, sharpers, danglers, demons and poets—dig for the heart’s satisfaction and wide latitude granted. And day or night, La Belle reclines to one side serenely regarding her crowded parish: a full triumph of beguiling face and elegant neck, lifting breasts and fertile pubis, long graceful legs and the consummate sublimity of delicate feet. But the itinerant painter who’d created her, arriving one day like a mystic out of the wilds, saved his greatest magic for La Belle’s alabaster skin. He’d given the naked Queen a brilliant roseate luster with here a blush and there a shinning dew of moisture.

One devotee in a blue silk shirt stood gazing up at La Belle as if she were a deity—intent on the golden moment and oblivious to the uproar around him. An artfully canted felt hat slouched on his head and a glass of aged bourbon waited in his left hand. He brought it to lip and sampled the smokey contents without taking eyes from the demigoddess.

“Ho, watch yourself friend,” a rough looking fellow barked, turning from the gaming tables and nearly stumbling over La Belle’s disciple.

“Excuse me sir, just admiring the birth of Venus.”

“Suit yourself then, I need a drink,” the man said, looking askance at the odd little fish below.

“Allow me to stand you a round of bourbon, Tilton Sadler’s the name—scrivener by day and dreamer by night,” he replied, flashing an honest smile that overcame the big man’s first reaction.

“Will Jorkins, bricklayer by day and gambling fool by night!” his own reluctant grin appearing now like a wounded soldier. “Say, whiskey is too rich for my blood, just some tanglefoot’ll do.”

“Please, I spend my money on the color, and it’s worth it,” Tilton clarified, pointing towards a space just opening at the bar, close below La Belle. The oddly combined men exchanged a wary grip; one palm coarse, the other smooth and all but swallowed up. Yet, with libations poured and in hand, their disparities began to vanish.

“Who’s this Venus, says right there her name’s La Belle?” Will asked, with a curious look, first at the painting, then at the dark amber, and finally at Tilton in his blue silk.

“Venus is the Roman goddess of love, beauty, fertility, desire … and victory!” The dreamer answered at length. “That’s who La belle is to me.” A sweeping gesture towards the painting completed his argument, as if the life-sized nymph could explain it all. “To your health sir.”

Will paused with the smokey caramel in his mouth. Warm and smooth and flush but no real fire. It was almost sweet, certainly nothing like the panther piss he usually drank, which wasn’t whiskey at all. The miner swallowed distrustfully and gazed at the painting. He took another drink, downed it quicker this time, and forced his indelicate mind over the scrivener’s rapturing description of Venus. Both bourbon and jezebel were somehow unsettling.

“That’s a hell of a big job for one gal.”

“Indeed, it is.”

“She’s pretty … but it’s just another shameless saloon paintin,” said Will, as he traced the curves round about and began to grin in earnest.

“No, I believe this one’s different. She’s alive.”

“Well, thanks for the education and the drink, but I got to get back to the Faro tiger,” Will answered back, looking sideways at his new friend once again. He set his empty glass down and the gaming hurly-burly of the main floor continued—loud and heedless—it called out to the miner like the hot burn and quick redemption of busthead.

“May lady luck be with you friend. You must join me later for a Whiskey Punch, or perhaps a Stone Door!” Tilton offered with a broad smile.

“To Victory,” Will called back, looking at La Belle then nodding to the scrivener. The big man turned and headed back into the throng, into the breach where fevered clusters of men wagered and swore like their very lives hung in the balance.

A more rarefied atmosphere prevailed in the great upstairs Opera Hall. At the crown of the room foot lamps cast an ethereal glow back onto the naked odeum. To one side of the little stage a rumpled clutch of musicians were encamped like weary soldiers awaiting the next battle. Down the long room patrons huddled with drinks and comrades—shadows overhanging all.

The Arkansas Traveler suddenly burst from the fiddle, then a scrap of Oh Susanna from the banjo, the music stopping mid-phrase for a twist of the pegs. And a few chords from the elaborately carved mail-order piano proved conclusive—it would once again ring throughout the hall like the incomparable ambassador of popular taste that it most certainly was.

Entertainers of bracing assortment wait in a narrow hallway for the walkdown. A juggler of improbable items, a female Hercules with an “iron jaw”, an eccentric dancer, a local Irish singer of surprising youth, a minstrel artist, and a rustic bard who peppered famous quatrains with vulgar rhymes—making his turn on the boards an infamous success. The most experienced, a true veteran, applied blackface to his black skin. Cards and whispered banter and a steadying touch of the ardent being the order of the night—he took a long drink, nodded to the others for luck, turned a card on an empty chair and recited a bit of Shakespeare under his breath.

“Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.”

Some of these players were sadly shopworn and some possessed great talent. Regardless, they all took their turn at the end of the passage—then out to the boards and the lights, and the audience. Bent over in a stretching ritual, an eccentric dancer readies himself as the manager and emcee brushed past. Looking like a satyr of old, Quinn McGregor indulged a pat to the dancer’s hindquarters before he crept out onto the proscenium: “Ladies, and Gentlemen!—(If there are any of either category!)—Let me introduce to you—(If you've not already made his acquaintance, perhaps in the fevered fulminations of some fantastical dream!)—all the way from Philadelphia, that extraordinary prophet of the peculiar, that tippling titan of Terpsichore … Ellllllbert Latimer!”

The rustic orchestra struck up Little Brown Jug and a spindly hoofer leapt onto the stage. First, he seemed to trip and nearly fall before catching himself with an artful splay-legged kick. Then one inebriated capering step stumbled skillfully into another and the rowdy guffawing of the Orleans Hall grew continuous.

‘The Drunken Sailor’ and ‘Whiskey-O’ followed, and there seemed no end to Mr. Latimer’s curious maneuvers and escapades. Finally, the dancer took his florid bow, with a belch, and one last pratfall before wobbling out of the lights.

McGregor was quick out onto the proscenium to introduce the second act: “And now … a talented and completely astonishing young melodist of Irish descent will grace our stage. A magical son of Erin and a wondrous American, a true artiste, I give you Silver City’s own...Henry McCarty.”

Amidst jeers and howls, an unusual-looking boy strode out confidently onto the boards.

“Another fuckin paddy, little bog-trotter better trill like a bird.”

With an elegant bow and a nod—he began to sing, and a shimmering tenor voice rang out in the great hall.

Darling, I am growing old,

Silver threads among the gold,

Shine upon my brow today,

Life is fading fast away.

Appealing from first glance, the singer had pale blue eyes, an aquiline nose, a strong jawline and a crooked grin. Just an obscure little fellow skylarking in a green suit, yet there was something commanding in his presence, a kind of sorcery in his voice.

Quinn observed the charged atmosphere with eyes set on the performer and the thundering crowd—only his third night and already slaying the hall. Young McCarty bowed low, doffing his hat in a graceful arc. ‘Silver Threads Among the Gold,’ a wildly popular song, quite new and delivered with a flair, had won the room.

“To the fuckin manor born!”

“The little mick is alright.”

“He's a rip-staver that’n!”

“Give us another, lad!” Tilton Sadler yelled out in a rapture. La Belle’s eccentric enthusiast had climbed the wide staircase to the Opera hall, had discovered there a new wonder and pressed himself forward to the very edge of the stage.

The blue silk shirt caught the singer’s eye and he nodded down to the dreamer before bending low into another hat waving bow. There was another song, ‘The Wild Rover’, a well-timed one liner, and then a third and fourth and a fifth song before the crowd would let go of their young hero.

McGregor's pocket-sized office reeked of stale sweat and lavender pomade. Fried onions and eggs and opium and flatulence were also known offenders there. Everyone gave it wide berth, except when absolutely necessary. This night Henry McCarty found it necessary, for everyone had been paid off except the novitiate.

After three cycles the second-floor variety had concluded for the night, but the amusements jangled on with reels from the jaded band and an awkward snarl of dancers pounding the floor. McCarty made his way through the crowd and down the hallway to McGregor’s lair. Intent on collecting and promptly exiting, the boy knocked, and entered.

“Shut the door,” McGregor commands in a tight voice, then laying his pipe down he exhaled a pungent cloud of narcotic and leered at the boy. “A fine choice of material, and a superlative act. May I offer you a drink, or a pipe?”

“No, thank you, I do not partake,” Henry stated, his attention turning to the broadsides on the wall. One was of the legendary actor Edwin Booth and another of Irish dancing legend Johnny Diamond. The boy couldn’t help but imagine a companion poster of Henry McCarty—The Irish Singer.

“You shine like a diamond yourself, Henry, like blue fire. You've jumped from schoolhouse theatricals to the stage in one mighty leap,” McGregor declared with a broad dramaturgic gesture. “You're a fine singer, Henry, soon an absolute master of the ballyhoo as well. And ha! you could make a stuffed bird laugh. With the right manager you’d go all the way to the top!”

“Thank you for the kind words, Mr. McGregor,” said the boy, grinning wide.

“Call me Quinn.”

“You might be right … Mr. Quinn, I am starting to dream of such things, it's true. But tonight, I'll just collect my pay and be on me way,” Henry answered, his head canting to one side and thumb jerking theatrically towards the door.

“Ah yes, of course. It's just that I'd like to help,” said Quinn, lowering his eyes to the boy's crotch. The manager stood up, moved closer. “In fact, I'll pay you double for an encore right now.”

“I don't partake of that either,” the boy said backing away. Henry turned to leave but suddenly grabbed from behind and yanked into a stifling embrace—he raised his hands, as if to say—you’ve got me. McGregor had been rehearsing this very scene for some time and breathing heavily, his prey caught and pliant, he began to knurl his chubby hips.

“Let me have what I'm after, easy now, that's a good lad,” he groaned out the words and reached around to unbutton the boy’s pants. “You’re a talented little rabbit and you’ve got everything I want.” McGregor’s nuzzles into the boy’s neck. “We'd go far, you and I.”

Suddenly jerking backwards, Henry head-butts McGregor with the hard parietal crown of his sixteen-year-old head. He wheeled around sharp with a knee to the testicles, dropping his boss to floor.

“Well shite, I’m sorry, Mr. McGregor. Much as I love working your stage, I'm not up to cuttin didoes with you,” said the boy and McGregor writhing below, blood flowing, eyes wild.

The money lying on the desk was fair game now and Henry sorted out only the amount owed, at first. But then a moment passed considering the other bills, and a hand strayed back to gather more. “For the encore,” Henry said, with a degree of heat before spinning out of the foul room. McGregor's lumbering pit boss had just entering the narrow hallway as the boy squeezed past.

“How do ya, Ben? Does mother know you're here?”

“Save it for the stage, little prince,” Ben grumbled, a mock punch flying out and Henry ducking under, grinning back as he slipped away into the big room. Skirting around the drunken horde and along the back wall then down the stairs two at a time. Nothing would stop him now and it occurred to him he might have just changed his entire life.

A lamp hung above the back door of the Orleans obscurely illuminating the alley and the way to other mysteries—a warren of crib tents down to the left and Johnnies to the right. Both in full swing while Henry’s friend’s, Chauncey and Gideon, waited in the ruddy light and threw bones to pass the time. Gideon had just tossed when the back door slammed open and Henry bolted across the threshold. In a flash he leapt from the stoop and past his confederates at a dead run.

“Come on, lads!” He shouted back at them.

The two boys looked at each other, eyes perked. Gideon snatched up the dice, and both were on their feet and gone, past the row of fetid privies and around a corner. A moment later, Ben emerged from the red brick alcazar with his lieutenant close behind.

“Looks like the kid is clean away and gone,” said Jacob.

“He's a tough little mick and about time McGregor got what’s coming to’em," Ben allowed, after a silence.

“The taste of his own blood,” Jacob added with a nod.

The Orleans Club gendarmes were evidently in complete agreement on the matter.

“Let's stall a moment and have a smoke. Then I’ll go find the doc,” Jacob suggested.

“Hell, I can set his nose as good as any drunken sawbones.”

“While you're at it, then, you can yank the plums out his taint.”

Laughter ripped loose in the nether world of back alleyway shadows. Ben roaring out a jagged baritone and Jacob a cackling tenor harmony.

“Sounds like some’pin needs greasin,” a lady of the night let out as she passed.

Here is some thoroughly unusual soundtrack music from long ago and just now released—Cowboy Days. Talk about specimens from the boneyard! Cowboy Days presents a compilation of my guitar scores for The Whole Shoot’n Match (1978) and Last Night at the Alamo (1983)—the literal bedrock cornerstones of my career. These two highly influential classics were directed by my brother, the late great indie pioneer, Eagle Pennell. A handful of decades have slipped by since those halcyon days and its hard for me to connect with the young small town idealist who created this music, but it was me— I can tell because I’m still doing the same old shit! More refined I suppose, but the signature style is there in every track.

The opportunity to do the score for Shoot’n Match is what originally brought me to Austin, during Christmas of 1977. Except for three recent (and fascinating) years in Philadelphia, where I wrote The Irish Singer, I’ve been here ever since. The recording sessions for Shoot’n Match were done at a small studio on the eighth floor of the Littlefield building in downtown Austin. It was engineered and produced by legendary sound designer, Wayne Bell. Ample reason by itself to give this a listen. He captured the entire score in a live, “heads up” mix, on a Nagra (standard sound recording device from the 60’s to the 90’s), normaly used to record film dialogue but here pressed into musical service. We relocated to Wayne’s home in west Austin to record Last Night at the Alamo—and had benefit of a 4 track, stereo tracking, drums and percussion, electric guitar and an early synthesizer. Wayne did a phenomenal job engineering and steering, and that young idealist played his ass off, played his heart out, and created on the spot like his life depended on it. It kind of did.

I had no clear idea of what I was building at the time, but the lessons learned on these two worthy projects; in music, film, and life—became the template for all meaningful work to come. Of course, one of the lessons was how rare good work like that is. I did a lot of waiting. Eventually I got around to running my own projects…

Returning to 1978 and 1983 from this far flung moment was a bit of a mystical exercise and a deep rabbit hole. Kind of sorrowful really, but also grandly rewarding. I was given the isolated music tracks; including source music, dialogue and sound effect tracks. And then I settled in for the long haul. Gradually coming to grips with my early sophomoric shortcomings, wondering if it really was worth the trouble, eventually restoring and surpassing the sound we were able to achieve then, editing and sequencing it all into a cohesive story—and adding a few touches from the keyboard of my brilliant colleague Peter Stopschinski—ultimately, the work got done.

The Whole Shoot’n Match really cued things up for my brother back at the close of the 70’s, and for me as well. Robert Redford saw it at the USA film festival in 1978 and famously commented that it’s originality and maverick energy had inspired him to begin the Sundance Institute. Last Night at the Alamo propelled him even further. His trajectory went off into the 80’s like a rocket—as he was sometimes fond of saying—lots of things took off like a rocket for him. Sadly he crashed back to Earth, but that’s another story…

For me, Eagle’s success with Last Night at the Alamo coincided with my discovery of a story that 40 years later—would become a novel. Eagle and I, longtime childhood enemies, had learned to work well together and his burgeoning fame seemed to have arrived, most advantageously, at just the right time. I fancied I could become a screenwriter, as well as a composer and guitarist, and write him a film that would make us all rich and famous! Well, Eagle was certainly down with that, and I was right about some of it—I could be a writer and a composer, but it would take a lifetime to prove it.

It’s pretty much impossible to describe, exactly, what Eagle and his two bulwark films mean to me—but Cowboy Days just might do that job for me.

Hello friends. It’s a wet Spring Saturday in Austin and a perfect excuse to sit down and write, says I. This morning I’ve read an early chapter of Moby Dick(that Queequeg, he’s one of the greatest characters in all of literature) and turned down an invitation to go for a rainy walk—so I guess it really is time to discuss Whiskey and friendship—two enduring pleasures with great power to transform.

As 2023 got underway, I was delighted to be working again with my good friend the estemable composer Peter Stopschinski, on a film score which would become the album you see above—A Whiskey Serenade. Like the charred oaken barrels in which white dog matures into the ardent, and the wonderful amber colored distilation itself —A Whiskey Serenade is a sturdy and bracing musical journey— winding through old time Kentucky roots and on to a new Texas flowering of craft distillers. Such great traditions in both states of guitar, fiddle, mandolin, and barley-bree! It’s older in Kentucky, bolder in Texas. The album also features Austin phenom Carrie Rodriguez, and if you haven’t heard her play the violin you’re in for a bold treat indeed. The sojourn begins with Carrie’s fiddle and my mandolin in a fiery duet and never cools off!

Peter and I have been friends and collaborators for twelve years now, through a number of worthy film and album projects, and I’m here to tell you he is a crazy genius Mozartian composer. With such formidable chops you’d think el maestro would be all—mind the flat seven in the eighth bar and please bring the fortissimo on bar four down a smidge—but the real story is far more relaxed, intuitive, and fun. Although he always has an intricate scaffolding erected, whether creating a shimmering orchestral aura or a hoedown, he just as often will turn me lose to improvise to the screen and the piano and the strings, as best I can, with a mysterious twinkle in his eye. When it comes to blending guitar and other folk instruments with orchestral elements, in service to film and it’s flow of imagery and narrative, yes, I’d have to say the best stuff often comes from finding the right phrase—in the moment. It involves a level of trust that goes both ways and if Peter were not such a big-hearted clowning goofball, I would’ve been inclined to freeze up in his studio long ago, instead of transforming somehow into an overachieving one with the force guitar savant and film scoring sage. Ha—that’s a mouthful, but actually kind of true and I’ll let the scores for Audubon, Chasing the Tide, and Cowboy Bourbon stand as proof.

I suppose it’s partly me having the oportunity to reach my potential, after fifty years of playing, but man there’s also some kind of great magic in the right partnership! And I am certainly blessed to have been involved in some elaborate creative cahoots with Peter Stopschinski.

Believe me, I may be my own brand of cracked goofball, but this I Know.

Subscribe now

Hello again. So what am I on about with this blog and this title? I’ll be talking about things that last and survive; like the hard bones of the earth, the memories and momemts and ideas of a long life—that endure.

The photo is a sunset at Big Bend in February 2025. Talk about hard bones. My first trip there and it was life changing. An eight hour drive from Austin to the state park headquarters and another two hours on an impossible four-wheel drive two track to an extraordinarily remote campsite. We arrived after dark with the temperature plunging. The next morning a spectacular basin sunrise with flatiron hoodoos to the immediate North, a towering chimney rock peak to the South, a colossal basalt butte to the West—and no other human beings besides the small band of seasoned BigBenders I was lucky to have accompanied.

They say on the eight day of creation everything left over was tossed into Big Bend. Igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary concoctions in wild abundance. Written into the very bones of the massive formations and crumbled and jumbled into an ifinitely confused riot of broken rock that everywhere overspreads the ground and water courses. A rainbow of color and textures painted in red, blue, orange, yellow, and green. And there are bears and moutain lions and Sandhill Cranes far above working the Rio Grande flyway. But the most extraordinary thing of all is the complete silence and peace.

I went there desperately needing solace. The American world has gone mad, in my opinion. We have done well, all through our storied history, to at least champion high ideals and occasionaly achieve them. But in today’s Washington and in a wide swath of the populace—it’s now only about huckstering greed, petty grievance, and myopic isolation. Anything else is too expensive and asks too much of the mind and heart. Well, my Big Bend trip cost 130$ and at that was an amazing bargain. It renewed my faith in the good hard bones of the world, the sacred worthwhile things that endure, not just milenia but the ages.

Some years ago now I produced an album of re-imagined classics, some from the 19th century and some of them centuries old. It’s called Dark River and well worth a listen. There are stirring instrumentals that I led the way on, like The Last Rose of Summer, but it’s mostly vocals from some of Austin’s finest singer/songwriters. I had the idea to match up specific artists with very specific songs and that worked better than I could’ve imagined or hoped. James McMurtry and Red River Valley, Slaid Cleaves and She Moved Through the Fair, Warren Hood and Rich Brotherton and Shiloh, the late great Jimmy LaFave and Lorena. It was quite a journey to recruit the talent, to work with and get to know them, but most of all to travel deep into the music and discover more of the hard bones of the world, more of the sacred things that endure.

In finally settling down to write The Irish Singer, the untold story of William Bonney—I was fascinated by what I saw as the beginning of the tale; a solo trip across the northern Chihuahua desert at the age of fifteen. It was a desperate on the run adventure into the wild and over some very hard bones. An odyssey, a walkabout, a pilgrimage and a coming of age all wrapped in one.

From Chapter 2…

The desert spoke its secrets in a language he was just beginning to understand. An immense borderless field of arcane knowledge, at once intimate and remote, solid and immaterial, beautiful and terrifying—available to the uninvited for a price. The familiarity soaked into his head a burdensome thing, with no regard for human frailty. And every day it costs more and sinks deeper in.

He’d been traveling on from the sheepherder’s little kingdom for three days. And lost from all marked paths for what seemed an eternity. Not truly lost, for he knew his direction. But the panic of being outside the map is no small thing. Danger closes in, takes on a life of its own. The silence of day sometimes as unnerving as the uncanny bedlam at night. Still, he has courage and faith and looked for a miracle.

It’s out there for me, somewhere.

Subscribe now

.

Welcome to my Substack world!

Starting today and going forward this is the place where I’ll be releasing albums, commenting on life, music, and literature, and also sharing excerpts from my first published novel The Irish Singer, and from its 2nd and concluding volume, which I’m currently a little over 70,000 words into.

First up, musically speaking, is the guitar and orchestra score for Chasing the Tide, a new PBS Series about two scientists who walk the barrier islands of the Gulf of Mexico—to rediscover the past, find the present, and look into the future of our vital coastal wetlands. Season 1 is out there and production on Season 2 is about to begin! One thing I’ve discovered late in life is how much I love the ocean, especially the magic of the place where water meets land—the endless beach. Being a part of this oceanic adventure and finding the music of it—has been a dream come true.

This is the first of eight albums I’ll be releasing here in 2025; there will be five film scores, my first singer/songwriter album, Volume 2 of my Austin All Star compilation Dark River, and a highly unusual classical guitar album, Strange Dreams.

After the recent election I made an instant decision to unplug from the news cycle and media America, in all its forms. I figured anything big I’ll hear about first hand and that has proved to be a correct and healthy approach. For one thing a huge amount of space and time opened up immediately. Time to finally read Swan’s Way by Proust, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Joyce, Moby Dick by Melville, Go Down Moses by Faulkner. Time to do my own thinking about whats happening. Time to hike long rocky trails, time to write, time to create music, time to help and time to share. Sharing is what I’m here on Substack to do and I believe its the best way I can help the world.

I sometimes feel quite old, yet its confusing—because I more often feel youthful and full of energy, and that I still have so much to learn and to do. I’m still fired by an artistic ambition that seems to constantly renew itself and may it always be so. Two things are for certain; only the rocks live forever and I have no time to waste.

Looking back at a long life is like looking at layers of exposed sediment in an eroded riverbank, season upon season upon season upon season. The shear number of them is a daunting thing at 70. Some are more consequential than others. Here are a couple of layers of note.

When I left home for my first year of college in the fall of 1972, I had a vague intention of becoming a writer, perhaps a journalist. I had certainly enjoyed writing for my high school newspaper. I was good at it—but the guitar sailed into my life the next year and that changed everything.

Music held sway until SXSW 2016, when during the premier of the restored version of my late brother’s 1983 Indie Classic, Last Night at the Alamo--I realized it was time to go back to work on the revisionist Western that Eagle and I had wanted to make way back then. Our idea was based on a huge untold true story that I had stumbled on and we were both obsessed with from then on. Only I had no real inkling in 1983 of how long it would take, how many crooked alleyways I would wonder down, or how much work it would end up being, to finally tell that story.

If you’ve lost a brother or sister to an untimely death, and had big unfinished business, you know how that can come back to haunt you. It did for me.

Something came full circle for me that night at the SXSW screening. Eagle reached through the screen and spoke directly to me—hey little brother get off your ass and get to work. Well, no one thought it a good idea for me to suddenly become a writer, director, a show runner. Least of all me, but then I didn't really have a choice. Fortunately for me I did recieve encouragement from an unlikely but powerful source. Turns out Eagle’s friend and colleague, Rick Linklater, knew all about the Western Eagle and I didn’t get to make. Eagle had enthused about it to him often enough for Rick to know it was a worthy cause. He told me essentially the same thing Eagle did—great idea, dust it off and get to work!

I started writing without knowing where to go with it, other than to try and find the true narrative. In time I realized I had to write it as a novel, not a teleplay or a screenplay, and it was then I began to find my voice. I began writing in present tense, as if it was all happening—now. Later on I understood I was writing a journalistic novel in the Truman(In Cold Blood)Capote vein. Something with “the credibility of fact, the immediacy of film, the depth and freedom of prose, and the precision of poetry”, as Truman famously said of his masterpiece. We were both looking at a historical event and wanting to breathe new life into it. It certainly worked for him and I believe it worked for me as well.

Here is the first paragraph of The Irish Singer, set in 1870’s New Mexico with a prologue cast in 1931.

An ocean of parched buffalo grass stretches tight over the hard bones of the earth. Solitary straggles of mesquite stand like lost souls awaiting perdition. Old time New Mexicans called it La Ceja de Dios, the Eyebrow of God. Nothing moves on the great high plain but a Ford pickup, plying the dusty length of Mayhill Road and pulling for the highway.

See you soon, looking forward to it!

Chuck Pinnell

Austin, Tx

March 19th, 2025

View stats

1 Like

Subscribe now