4 more chosen for West Texas Walk of Fame
Four West Texans have been chosen by Civic Lubbock Inc. for induction this fall into the West Texas Walk of Fame.
The four 2018 inductees are award-winning singer-songwriter and band leader Josh Abbott, the late musician and actor Donnie Allison, world-touring singer-songwriter Bob Livingston and world-renowned sculptor Garland A. Weeks.
They will be inducted at 7 p.m. Oct. 3 in a free public ceremony at the Lubbock Memorial Civic Center Theater, 1501 Mac Davis Lane. Seating is general admission, and first-come, first seated.
The Walk of Fame was born shortly after the 1979 unveiling of a life-size statue of Buddy Holly, sculpted by Grant Speed. Larry Corbin, Jerry Coleman and entertainer Waylon Jennings initiated the idea of an award for musicians and others working in the arts from the West Texas region who found national fame. The first inductees were Buddy Holly in 1979 and Jennings in 1980.
In 1983, Civic Lubbock, Inc. began its tenure as administrator of the West Texas Walk of Fame, and that year inducted Mac Davis.
The West Texas Walk of Fame honors those individuals with a strong connection to Lubbock and the West Texas area who have devoted a significant part of their lives to the development and production of the performing and visual arts, and whose body of work has been influential nationally in one or more of these areas.
DONNIE ALLISON
Allison will be inducted posthumously. He lost a four-year battle with cancer on May 24, 2011. He was 49.
His widow, Stephanie, will accept Allison's plaque on his behalf.
Allison, a musician and singer who later began acting on stage, was born in Wichita Falls in 1962, and he moved with his family to Lubbock in 1970. Allison was a Coronado High School graduate, and attended Texas Tech before graduating from South Plain College.
He is best remembered for his legacy of writing and performing music. He began his early career with the band called Impeccable. He later joined The Nelsons as lead vocalist. The Nelsons won an MTV Basement Tapes Competition, receiving national notoriety via the song and video "I Don't Mind," composed by Allison. The video can still be seen on youtube.com. After seven years with The Nelsons, Allison became lead singer for the P.J. Belly Blues Band.
He also starred in a Texas Tech summer production of the musical "Jesus Christ, Superstar." Allison co-starred with Lesley Sawyer and Kenny Maines in playwright Andy Wilkinson's "My Cowboy's Gift," directed by the late George Sorensen, and Allison earned raves for his work as Lubbock-born icon Buddy Holly in a Cactus Theater production of hit musical "Buddy! The Buddy Holly Story."
Allison became an integral member of the company staging concerts at the Cactus Theater, providing many memorable performances between 1996 and 2011. Allison also is remembered for forming local doo-wop group The JDs, who often performed at the Cactus.
JOSH ABBOTT
Abbott was raised in Idalou. He attended South Plains College, and graduated from Tech with a degree in communications in 2005.
He began writing songs in 2004, but said he first picked up a guitar a few years earlier to strum along with favorite Pat Green songs.
Abbott founded The Josh Abbott Band in 2006, while pursuing a masters degree at Tech, where he was a member of the Texas Epsilon chapter of Phi Delta Theta. In 2007, the band recorded a four-song demo, including "Taste," and the next year began touring Texas.
A decade later, the band has released five studio albums and an EP (extended play), with millions of records sold and growing success on regional and national music charts.
Lead singer and acoustic guitarist Abbott has become one of the biggest household names in Texas country music, with People magazine even writing about his July 2018 wedding to Taylor Parnell in Austin.
In 2011, The Josh Abbot Band won Song of the Year, Single of the Year, Album of the Year and Video of the Year at the Texas Regional Music Radio Awards.
The band's 2015 album "Front Row Seat" debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Independent Albums Chart. The band performed "Wasn't That Drunk" on "Jimmy Kimmel Live in May 2016, and played popular song "Amnesia on "Conan" in January 2017.
The Josh Abbott Band tours extensively in Texas, and also in Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico and on the West Coast.
Band members are Abbott, vocals and guitar; his fraternity brother Austin Davis, banjo; Preston Wait, fiddle, guitar and steel guitar; Edward Villanueva, drums; Caleb Keeter, guitar; and David Fralin, keys and mandolin. Abbott has announced that his 2018 JAB Fest concerts in Lubbock will take place Oct. 5 and 6 at the Lone Star Amphitheater.
BOB LIVINGSTON
Robert "Bob" Livingston, 69, was born in San Antonio and raised in Lubbock. He began sharpening skills as a guitarist and singer while attending Lubbock High School and Tech. By the mid-1960s, Livingston already was active on the Lubbock music scene, along with fellow musicians Jimmy Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, Terry Allen, Jesse Taylor and David Halley. He met a number of musicians while performing in Red River, N.M. and Aspen, Colo. Livingston moved to Austin in the early 1970s, where he eventually became a founding member of Austin’s legendary Lost Gonzo Band. He is considered a key figure in the Cosmic Cowboy, progressive country and outlaw country movements.
Livingston performed and recorded with such musical visionaries as Jerry Jeff Walker, Michael Martin Murphey and Ray Wiley Hubbard, Willie Nelson and Garth Brooks. He earned a solid reputation as a band leader, solo artist, session musician and sideman in folk, Americana and country music.
In fact, Livingston has recorded and toured for more than 47 years, and is one of the most experienced and world-traveled musicians in all of Texas music.
Traveling since the 1980s as an official Music Ambassador for the U.S. State Department, Livingston has taken Texas music as far afield as India, South Africa, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Although Livingston plays original music on these tours, he also teaches audiences how to yodel, sing Hank Williams songs and perform Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away."
Livingston recorded 10 albums as a solo artist, and has a long list of recording credits with the Lost Gonzo Band, Jerry Jeff Walker and many other artists.
His 2011 solo album "Gypsy Alibi" was named Album of the Year at the Texas Music Awards. In January of 2016, Livingston was inducted into the Texas Music Legends Hall of Fame.
His latest recording, "Up the Flatland Stairs," was released earlier this year by Howlin' Dog Records. Livingston is writing a book about his travels for Texas Tech Press.
Garland A. Weeks
Sculptor Garland A. Weeks was born in Amarillo and raised in Wichita Falls. He graduated from Tech and is a long-time resident of Lubbock.
As a world-renowned artist whose sculptures have been exhibited and collected nationally and internationally, Weeks is considered one of the nation’s most acclaimed contemporary figurative sculptors. He devoted 45 years to creating art based on his observations of Mother Nature’s native wildlife, insects, pets and livestock. But he is best known for, and always returns to, the human figure as his personal touchstone.
Garland was able to realize two professional sculpting goals by being elected to full membership in the National Sculpture Society and the National Academy of Western Art in 1990. He was also selected Official Sculptor of Texas in 1995 by the Texas Legislature, and was advanced to the status of Fellow by the National Sculpture Society in 2004.
Included among his many commissions is a life-size monument of "Old Yeller" to memorialize the classic book’s author, Fred Gipson, which is located in Gipson’s hometown of Mason; a life-size monument at the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson, Kan., to memorialize astronaut Gene Cernan, the last man to step off the face of the moon; a life-size Revolutionary War memorial honoring General Francis Marion (The Swamp Fox) in Moncks Corner, S.C., as well as on the campus of Francis Marion University in Florence, S.C.; a life-size portrait of U.S. Army General Adna R. Chaffee at Fort Chaffee, Ariz.; a portrait sculpted in high relief of former Texas Governor Preston Smith for Lubbock International Airport; and the Lubbock Regional Public Safety Memorial honoring first responders, located in Leroy Elmore Park.
1979: Buddy Holly
1980: Waylon Jennings
1983: Mac Davis
1984: Jimmy Dean, Ralna English and Bobby Keys
1985: G. W. Bailey and Barry Corbin
1986: Jerry Allison, Sonny Curtis, Joe B. Mauldin and Niki Sullivan
1988: Tanya Tucker
1989: Joe Ely and Roy Orbison
1990: The Gatlin Brothers and Bob Wills
1991: “Snuff” Garrett
1993: The Maines Brothers Band
1994: Virgil Johnson (of the Velvets) and Buddy Knox
1995: Glen D Hardin and Gary P. Nunn
1996: Cecil Caldwell, Woody Chambliss, The Hometown Boys, Paul Milosevich, Bob Montgomery and C.B. “Stubb” Stubblefield
1997: Terry Allen, George Ashburn, Dan Blocker, Glenna Goodacre, Los Premiers and Dirk West
1998: Don Caldwell, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Butch Hancock and John Hartin
1999: Jane Prince Jones: Ed Wilkes
2000: Eddie Dixon
2001: The Fireballs and Delbert McClinton
2002: Suzanne Aker, Brad Maule, Pete Morales and Helen Wagner
2003: Alvin G. Davis and Billy Walker
2004: Clif Magness and Richie McDonald
2005: Angela Strehli and Agnes Torres
2006: David Box, David Gaschen and Jennifer Smith
2008: John Gillas and Mary Gillas
2010: Bill Griggs
2012: Charlene Condray Hancock, Tommy X. Hancock, Lloyd Maines, Jesse “Guitar” Taylor
2014: Jay Boy Adams, Lew Dee and Diana Dee, Andy Wilkinson and Jaston Williams
2015: Jo Harvey Allen and Natalie Maines
2016: Ponty Bone, Terry Cook, The Flatlanders and Sonny West
2017: James T. Braxton, Thomas Braxton and Johnny Ray Watson
West Texas Walk of Fame
