Day One of LJT Texas Music Festival

This past Tuesday, Becky and I made our annual April trip down to the 22nd Annual Larry Joe Taylor Music Festival and Chili Cookoff at Melody Mt. RV Ranch north of Stephenville. We started attending the festival when it was moved to Melody Mt. from Meridian back in 2003, so this made our eighth time to attend. The year it moved to Melody Mt, Larry Joe held a pick your campsite party a couple of months before the festival. At that time, Melody Mt. only had around 100 campsites with water & electric hookups, but several hundred others for dry camping. Tickets were given to each person entering the park that day with a number and later in the day, a drawing was held to determine the order in which people got to select their sites. We ended up being 72nd in line to get our campsites, and since people could select and pay for as many sites as they wanted when it came their turn, it soon became apparent that the electric sites would be gone long before it came our turn. Fortunately for us, we were able to find someone who was the 5th person in, and, with a little cajoling and begging, were able to talk them into selecting sites for us along with their own. Good thing too, since all the water/electric sites were taken by first 17 people to pick along with the right to renew the same sites each year from that point forward which has allowed us to have the same spot each year since.

We arrived at the front gate at 11 AM in hopes of being one the first in when the grounds opened at Noon, and we ended up being eighth in line, and were able to get our trailer into it's spot without a problem. Our friends who camp next to us, Doug and Debbie Martz, from Corpus Christi, came in right behind us and we both had our rigs set up, the water & electric turned on, some lawn chairs out in no time, and sat around for the next hour or so visiting and having a few cool ones.

Around 2:30 PM, someone told us that people were gathering backstage to watch the dedication and unveiling of a sculpture of Rusty Wier that Larry Joe and some others had commissioned to be created by a local artist.



We walked over where several other friends and acquaintances had gathered next to the artist ramp leading up to the stage where a sculpture was attached to the concrete wall covered by a black shroud along with Rusty's hat and guitar which sat in front of it.


Eventually, the ceremony began with Larry Joe telling everyone about wanting to do something to honor Rusty and deciding to have a sculpture made of him. Doug, of Texstar Ford, who, along with others, contributed to paying for the sculpture and a couple of other people spoke about their experiences with Rusty over the years, followed by the unveiling.








After some more visiting, we returned to our campsite and had something eat before walking over to the stone stage where the Tuesday night campfire was to be held starting at 7 PM. There was a rope across the entrance into that area with a sign saying NO ADMITTANCE until 6 PM.





It was 5 PM at the time, but we went ahead and took our chairs in and sat them up front and center with intentions to leave and come back at 6 PM, but some of the artists playing that night began to arrive, including Deryl Dodd and Marc-Alan Barnette, and those in our group decided to visit with them and just stayed where we were. As a result, we got to watch Deryl, Marc-Alan, Larry Joe and Joe Ely do their sound checks. We also visited with a few others who came in early including Richard Leigh who didn't perform until Thursday aternoon, but came early to just hang out.



The show didn't get started until almost 8 PM with Joe Ely playing about a 45 minute set.






After his set ended, Larry Joe, Marc-Alan, Deryl and David Perez of the Tejas Brothers all came on stage and passed songs back and forth for the next hour or so.



All in all it ended up being a great night of music under clear, cool skies. After the show Becky and I decided to pace ourselves and called it a night and headed back to our 5th wheel to get a good night's rest and be ready for the second day of the five day festival