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Kendalia
Halle
Rachel Newton
Mitch Baranowski
Kendalia, Texas
Click on image for larger view
The sign is an advertisement, yes. But it is also
a directive. Dance, it says, in crudely hand-painted block letters.
Dance to remember. Dance to forget. But dance. Ask a stranger or a lover
to the ancient oak floor and waltz through the blowsiness of the summer's
evensong. This is what we do in the Texas Hill Country on a Saturday
night, the sign says. It is what we have always done.
German immigrants built this hall 100 years ago.
Men named Syring, Kneupper, Kunz, Lux and Ludolph. They imported red
fir timbers from Oregon rather than use local cedar planks. And once
they got the hall built, they played here as the Syring Musical Club.
Brassy arrangements of uptempo pop tunes mixed with old-world oom-pah-pahs.
The farmers came by horse and buggy, later by Chevy
and Ford. They propped open the slatted windows and danced in the cross-breezes
until dawn. They bedded their children in dark corners and under long
benches lining the hall. They drank in the beer garden, sometimes chaining
rebel-rousers to a giant oak tree until they sobered up.
Over time the Musical Club gave way to the Zoeller
Band, which gave way to an endless stream of hillbilly outfits, birch-thin
Stetson-hatted men who bowed fiddles and plucked pedal steel guitars.
The songs spoke less about God, Mother and Country and more about Drinkin',
Cheatin' and Hell-raisin'. The children, now grown, dreamt less of cotton
and cattle. Most fled the farms for factory jobs. Only a few returned
home to Kendalia.
Dance, the sign says.
Photo © 2002 by Rachel Newton
Essay © 2002 by Mitch Baranowski
Born in Los Angeles and raised in New York, photographer Rachel Newton first became interested in honky-tonks during her seven-year tenure with the Fort Worth-Dallas Ballet, where she learned to dance the two-step
en pointe for a performance with the Dixie Chicks. Rachel holds her bachelor's in architecture from Pratt Institute, where she also concentrated
on photography. She recently completed a photo essay on New York City's Fulton Street Fish Market, which is set to move from its historic location
by the end of the year.
Writer-producer Mitch Baranowski is a fourth-generation Texan who, during this project,
located the former site of Brazos River Hall, where his cotton-farming grandparents worked dances during the forties. With degrees in journalism
and radio-television-film from the University of Texas, Mitch has written about music for Atomic, No Depression and Spirit, while recent TV projects have found him trailing street musicians, tracing the roots of break dancing and learning the moves of extreme inline
skaters.
The husband-wife team
recently collaborated on a photo-text essay about Texas honky-tonks
for Texas Folklife Resources, an Austin-based organization dedicated
to celebrating and perpetuating the living, traditional arts and culture
of the Lone Star State. Entitled Honky-Tonkin' - A Journey Through
Dim Lights, Thick Smoke, and Loud, Loud Music, the exhibit will
be on view from September 5 to December 24, 2002. Mitch and Rachel live
in Brooklyn and are working to expand this exhibit into book form.
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