Concert series percolates with talent from Texas
Sara Hickman joins new season lineup at Coffee House Live
Sara Hickman, a beloved songwriter who grew up in Houston before enjoying a successful career based out of Austin, retired in 2017. She has shown up on occasion since for a benefit concert, but the sort of large-scale performance schedule that she maintained from her teens in the early ’80s until 2017 is a thing of the past. So it was a pleasant surprise to see her name listed as the season opener for Coffee House Live’s new season of live music, which begins with a Hickman show on Thursday.
“I heard she’d retired, but I just sent an email and told her what we do,” says Pete Owens, who founded the concert series. “I just told her we’re about providing great live music to the community. Lo and behold, she said she’d love to do it. Sometimes, it’s really easy. Sometimes, it’s a headache.”
Owens has been booking Coffee House Live since 2013, operating the concert series with his wife, Donna, from St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church. Coffee House Live began as a one-off with Texas Johnny Boy playing in October 2013 with his band and Milton Hopkins.
The following year, Owens
brought in a pair of singer-songwriters in Darden Smith and David Berkeley, the great local gospel act the Jones Family Singers and local blues institution Ezra Charles. The season has grown to six shows per year, and though Texas artists comprise most of the talent, Owens has snared a few players like Chuck Prophet and Jim Lauderdale when their tours pass through the state.
The idea came from a low place in Owens’ life. He used to host regular house concerts, but a divorce shifted his life from a house to smaller apartments. Around that time, he began attending St. Andrew’s and found himself in regular conversations with his pastor about music. The church had a new family center building with a proper sound system.
“That was how it started, just a concept discussed between two guys,” Owens says.
He called on his friend, John Moschioni, aka Texas Johnny Boy, who didn’t cut any corners for the show, bringing his full band and mixing the sound himself. “Which was a good thing,” Owens says. “Because at the time, this was a one-man production, which was me, and I didn’t know how to operate any of that.”
The first show was mostly attended by congregants. As the series grew, Owens was able work with a slightly larger budget. And more listeners began to assemble to hear first-class talent playing in a warm sonic environment for no cover charge. They did introduce a donation box and found that listeners were more than willing to drop some bills into it, money that has helped increase the series’ budget.
The programming has been as broad as the music of Texas: Rosie Flores, Brave Combo, Los Texmaniacs, Trout Fishing in America. Joe Ely was one Owens was particularly excited to book.
“It’s funny, most of the people who have played are personal favorites of mine,” he says. “I guess it goes back to the house concert thing: What I enjoyed about those house concerts was presenting my favorite artists to friends or family or neighbors, who had no idea who the musicians were. And most of the time they’d leave as fans. I still love that idea of sharing great music. I believe strongly in music. And with this, it’s about music and community. Which sometimes feels like a lost thing in the world today.”