Standing 6 feet, 6 inches tall and wearing size 16 cowboy boots, Ray Benson is an undeniably big guy. And over the past five decades, he has cultivated a proportionally large legacy in Texas music with his band Asleep at the Wheel. The eight-time-Grammy-winning Western swing outfit was the first marquee act to take the stage at a renovated Gruene Hall in 1975, appeared on the inaugural episode of Austin City Limits in 1976, and has played every Austin City Limits Music Festival since its inception in 2002. The group’s 32nd album, Riding High in Texas, comes out Aug. 22.
Benson embraced that well-worn adage about not being born in Texas but getting here as soon as he could. He entered the world in the suburbs of Philadelphia and began playing guitar at age 9. The musician and bandleader formed Asleep at the Wheel as a teenager in West Virginia in 1970, and the group moved to the West Coast and spent a few years touring California. But by 1974, Benson and his crew had made their way to the Live Music Capital of the World, guided by the encouragement of good friends Willie Nelson and Doug Sahm.
The cosmic cowboy ethos of Austin suited the group just fine. “We were long-haired, anti-Vietnam, counterculture kids who just happened to love country and western and roots music,” Benson said in the 2013 documentary Then and Now.
Equally as impressive as the group’s 55-year run is the fact they’ve accomplished the feat as ambassadors of a genre that was invented in the 1930s and peaked before World War II. But it fits Benson’s personality to find a way to make traditional music somehow nonconformist by snubbing his nose at contemporary trends. As Benson is fond of saying when he introduces the band before shows: “Western swing ain’t dead. It’s just Asleep at the Wheel!”
Texas Highways: You were born on the East Coast and lived on the West Coast before moving to Austin. What was your first impression of the city?
Ray Benson: I was like, “Who invented this place? Wow, this is incredible!” It was a very inexpensive town. There were dozens of places to play in Austin. We could play the redneck dance halls as well as the hippie joints. So, for us, it was perfect.
TH: Willie Nelson prompted you to move here. What did he say to get you to head south?
Rb: He said he’d put us on shows, and that was enough! Floore’s Country Store was the first place we played with Willie in ’73. Even though Willie wasn’t yet the cultural icon he became, he was our touchstone because he was that thing—a real country and western artist, one of the greatest songwriters ever. And by 1973, he had grown his hair out and was smoking pot and became the Willie we all know.
TH: As the song says, you’ve seen miles and miles of Texas. What are the most unforgettable parts of the state?
RB: Oh, the whole damn place. You go out into the Panhandle to Canadian and go, “Wow, the sky! This is beautiful!” The sky in Texas is enough for a newcomer. And then you go to the Hill Country, and you go, “Oh my gosh, this looks like Los Angeles’ Mulholland Drive.” Then you go to East Texas, and you’ve got the Piney Woods.
TH: Does your height often surprise people when you walk into a room?
RB: Absolutely. From the day I started. I was a child performer with my sister in a folk group when I was 10 years old. We were called The Four Gs. We played “This Land Is Your Land” and “On Top of Old Smoky” with the Philadelphia Orchestra when I was 11. I realized early on that when I get onstage, people notice me because of my voice and my size. There’s no way to learn charisma. You just notice that it works. You stand out because you’re above the crowd.
TH: Do you have a favorite venue to play in Texas?
RB: The Longhorn Ballroom [in Dallas]. In ’75 we were booked to play there, and we pull up and I get out of the bus. The guy says, “Have you heard Bob Wills died today?” Here we are playing the Bob Wills’ Ranch House [Longhorn Ballroom’s original name] on the day he dies. There was a guy from The Associated Press, and he says, “Are y’all going to cancel the gig in honor?” I said, “No, we’re going to play the gig in honor of Bob Wills, and we’ll play his music.” At that time, we would draw between 500 and 1,000 people. Well, 2,000 showed up. It was a very emotional night for everybody and very satisfying to celebrate the music of Bob Wills.
TH: What makes a show particularly memorable?
RB: The audience’s enthusiasm. In 1992, it was the 66th anniversary of Route 66. So, we did a tour from Chicago to LA on Route 66, and we played in Amarillo. We booked this new band that were friends of mine, Brooks & Dunn, to open the show. They finished their set, and they were like, “Oh, man, we bombed. Nobody clapped.” I said, “Did they dance?” And they said, “Well, yeah.” That’s Texas dance halls. As long as they’re dancing, they loved you.
TH: What makes a great country and western song?
RB: It’s all about a story. It’s either describing the love of your mother or describing the love of country living or describing cheating and the difficulty of relationships or just something a little silly. But they’re always telling a story because that’s what makes it so relatable to people.
TH: What was the most pivotal moment in your music career?
RB: Getting a record deal. We had moved out to California, and we were playing Berkeley, Oakland, Sonoma, San Jose. All of a sudden, Van Morrison mentions us in Rolling Stone and puts us on a couple of shows. We’re the hot number that week. We get a record deal, and we get $25,000. We had been working for nothing. We made the record the way we wanted. And the next great moment was hearing ourselves on the radio. We go, “That’s it. We’re forever. It’s going out into the ionosphere! The Martians will hear us!” We didn’t realize that that was not the end of the road—that was the beginning.
TH: If you were not a musician, what’s another path you might have taken?
RB: Documentary filmmaking. Before I started the band, I was an apprentice editor for Ely Landau in New York City in 1969. I worked on a Martin Luther King Jr. documentary called King: A Filmed Record… Montgomery to Memphis. I was in New York City all set to become a filmmaker and had all the credentials. But I wanted to get onstage. I didn’t want to be in a darkroom the rest of my life.
TH: Give me some advice that only a musician would know.
RB: Always take a p— before you get onstage. And don’t eat Mexican food north of the Mason-Dixon Line.
TH: Of all the milestones and achievements in your career, what means the most to you?
RB: The collaborations—the fact that these people who I have the highest regard for would agree to appear with us either onstage or on a record. I’m staring at three Grammys over there, another five over there. I am very honored, very humbled by that. I don’t discount the importance of those things, but when Willie or Merle calls, to me that’s the highest honor.
