| Event Planning |
 Musicians Extraordinaire |
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Santa Fe Schedule: Santa Fe is privileged to have Bill and Bonnie in our midst most of the time, when they are not off recording new CDs. You can regularly see and hear them at the La Fonda Hotel on the Plaza de Santa Fe. The La Fonda Hotel is a beautiful old Western style lodge in the heart of Santa Fe. The food is great and Bill and Bonnie create a wonderful atmosphere for relaxing and dancing. Don't miss it when you are here! La Fonda Hotel, La Fiesta Lounge
Bill and Bonnie have just signed a recording contract with the new Virgin-Backporch label, a division of Virgin America, and will be releasing a new CD later this year. Keep your eyes open for this one. In the meanwhile, you can pick up their latest multi-artist CD, also from Virgin-Backporch, the I-10 Chronicles, which features Bill and Bonnie on three tracks. It also includes such great artists as Willie Nelson, Joe Ely, Eliades Ochoa and Charlie Musclewhite. The I-10 Chronicles is available in stores now or you can get your copy when you see Bill and Bonnie at the La Fonda Hotel's La Fiesta Lounge on Wednesdays or Thursdays. The Story of Bill & Bonnie: Bill and Bonnie Hearne are Santa Fe's musical jewel. Their western sound is now known far and wide and their famous friends attest to this. Why, the uninformed may understandably ask, are Nanci Griffith, Lyle Lovett, Jerry Jeff Walker and Tish Hinojosa lending their time and efforts to bolster the career of an obscure folk-singing duo from the wilds of New Mexico? One listen to Diamonds in The Rough or other CDs by Bill and Bonnie Hearne suggests part of the answer. But there is more to the story than meets the ear. The Texas-born couple have helped influence and encourage a host of celebrated Lone Star and Southwestern singer-songwriters. Though he grew up in Dallas in the Fifties and she in the Texas capitol of Austin, it seems as though fate conspired to bring Bill and Bonnie together; he is a singer and she is a songwriter; she plays piano and he plays guitar. Most of all, they harmonize like birds on a wire. Both moreover, have transcended daunting physical challenges--Bonnie has been blind since age nine and Bill keeps blindness at bay only by means of thick glasses. "I took piano lessons at the Austin School for the Blind," Bonnie recalled. "I got some classical training and then began to play the popular music of the day on my own--Fifties and Sixties rock and roll, folk music and Broadway musicals." As for Bill, growing up in suburban Dallas, "I wanted to be Buck Owens and the Buckaroos, all in one person. I learned all the lead guitar licks that (Buckaroos' guitarist) Don Rich played." Today, Bill is celebrated as a fleet and fluid flatpicking guitarist. Their professional life had its genesis in the folk music club scene in Austin in the late Sixties. Established stars like Carolyn Hester and Jerry Jeff Walker ("...he was a legend," recalled Bonnie) found an enthusiastic reception in Texas' bohemian-flavored capitol. A few years later, younger musicians such as Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith, Robert Earl Keen and Tish Hinojosa listened, and began to glimpse the outlines of their life's work. "Nanci used to talk about slipping into places underage to hear us," Bill recalled fondly. And, Bonnie added, "Lyle opened a show for us at (Houston' s) Anderson Fair." The Hearnes first crossed paths at the Chequered Flag in Austin around 1970. The sound that eventually evolved was multi-faceted, stylistically unfettered and eminently listenable. It combined the gospel roll of Bonnie's piano and the quicksilver flight of Bill's acoustic guitar, buoyed by vocal duets that twined together with an organic unity. In 1979, Bill and Bonnie left Texas for Red River, a friendly little Western-flavored ski town in the mountains of northern New Mexico. "We had a great musical community in Red River for about five or six years," Bill said fondly. "We didn't make a lot of money, but we had a lot of fun." By the mid-Eighties, Bill and Bonnie had recorded three albums, one in Texas and two in New Mexico. Suddenly, after a long hibernation in New Mexico, a brand-new game was afoot. In June and July, 1996, the Hearnes recorded in Austin and Nashville with a group of prodigiously talented session musicians, including Dobro virtuoso Al Perkins, bassist Roy Huskey, Jr., steel guitarist Lloyd Maines, fiddle player Stuart Duncan, and others. They combined those personalities with exceptional material by writers of the caliber of Ian Tyson, Eliza Gilkyson, Steve Gillette, Lyle Lovett, Roger Miller, Nanci Griffith, Chris Hillman, and others, including Bonnie Hearne, herself. Finally--call it payback, call it a nod from one peer to another, call it a chance to be part of something special--a collection of Bill and Bonnie's old companeros showed up to lend their talents to the project: Jerry Jeff Walker sang a duet with Bill on "Muley Brown," a tale of an oldtime rodeo cowboy; Nanci Griffith lent her voice to her own "Going Back to Georgia" and another tune, "Georgetown," Lyle Lovett took a turn on his own vintage piece, "Walk Through the Bottomland," and Tish Hinojosa performed with the duo on Bonnie's "Bluebonnet Girl" and the lovely "Alison Lives by the Big Bend." Contact Bill and Bonnie: For bookings in the Santa Fe area, please call: |
