It’s Friday night in Luckenbach, Texas. The solar has simply began to dip behind the stay oaks that tower over the well-known nineteenth-century dance corridor and neighboring common retailer. Recent rains have greened the grass and cooled the ultimate days of this sizzling, dry summer season. Day drinkers linger within the shade at wood picnic tables, and simply past them, tall cypress bushes line a shallow stream often known as Snail Creek. I step out of my truck and head towards the dimly lit bar tucked behind the final retailer. It feels somewhat like going dwelling.
Inside, I discover a abandoned nook, order a Lone Star, prop my boots up on the empty stool subsequent to mine, and watch as of us trickle in. Some go to Luckenbach to see a sure band or attend a pageant or tour the Hill Country again roads on a Harley. Others make the pilgrimage as a result of they’ve heard the Waylon Jennings tune—you understand the one, about getting “again to the fundamentals of affection.” To Luckenbach’s many devotees, the place embodies a healthful, laid-back Texas the place issues are less complicated and steeped in historical past.
Tonight, there are bucket-listers in tie-dyed T-shirts and bikers with telltale stains of again sweat. A lady in shimmering purple shorts and boots to match scans the drink menu for bubbles. (Disappointed, she settles for rosé.) A paunchy rancher in a dirty straw hat units a wood beer token on the bar. The bartender slides him a Miller Lite. A person sporting Ecco sandals over socks wanders via, appearing as tour information for the little group that trails him, their heads swiveling to gawk on the muddle of artifacts.
For a room this small, no greater than twenty toes sq., there’s quite a bit to soak up. Neon glows towards weathered wood partitions lined in yellowed newspaper clippings and framed pictures of Luckenbach legends: Jerry Jeff Walker, Willie Nelson, and Sheriff Marge, to call a couple of. Signs in German hark again to the venue’s roots, as does a cobwebbed chair suspended from the rafters. The seat is reserved for Benny Luckenbach—lifeless practically fifty years—one of many many regulars who as soon as frequented the joint, swapping tales in a specific German accent heard solely in Gillespie County. At the room’s heart is a cast-iron range that warms the bar when the temperature drops, and the sight of it brings again recollections of chilly nights I’ve spent selecting my guitar round its toasty glow. Overseeing all of it, hanging over the middle of the bar, is a portrait of John Russell “Hondo” Crouch, the fabled raconteur who owned the place from 1971 till his premature loss of life in 1976.
Hondo was one thing of a redneck Renaissance man: a author, humorist, musician, goat rancher, summer season camp counselor, chili cook dinner, and, as his card learn, “Imagineer.” (His use of the time period seems to predate Disney’s, although he overtly admitted to stealing it from a wealthy man he as soon as met in Dallas.) Originally from the small city of Hondo, forty miles west of San Antonio, he earned the nickname from reporters who lined the cowboy wunderkind throughout his all-American swimming days on the University of Texas at Austin. While at UT, he was impressed by J. Frank Dobie, whom he known as “Uncle Frank,” to review Texas folklore.
He married into appreciable wealth—in 1943, he wed Helen Ruth “Shatzie” Stieler, the daughter of “the Goat King,” who constructed his small empire on Angora mohair—and the couple ultimately settled on a ranch close to Comfort. There, his expertise for showmanship and a penchant for good occasions attracted company starting from jeweler James Avery to Jerry Jeff Walker, the rowdy New York people singer turned Texas icon who grew to like Hondo as a surrogate father determine.
Some thought of Hondo’s public persona, which was akin to a hillbilly pagliaccio, an absurd caricature. He wore a battered cowboy hat that regarded as if it had been trampled by his goats, a purple bandanna tied haphazardly round his neck, and a tobacco-stained shirt tucked into denims that have been tucked into boots. Friends and household knew his nation bumpkin character was a curated entrance. Hondo had a shrewd wit and wrote a satirical column for the Comfort News a couple of make-believe city known as Cedar Creek. He was a gifted performer who captivated audiences with a mixture of poetry, wild yarns, and Mexican corridos sung whereas strumming a worn guitar. Toward the tip of his life, he was incomes as much as $100 a minute for talking engagements.
Hondo, although, is finest identified for his position in Luckenbach’s historical past. The well-liked story goes that in January 1971, he and William “Guich” Koock, one other Dobie disciple and a much-younger buddy of Hondo’s, noticed an advert within the Fredericksburg Standard providing a “city on the market.” Hondo and Guich (pronounced “Geech”) hopped in Hondo’s previous pickup, drove to Luckenbach, and purchased the entire place from the septuagenarian homeowners, Benno Engel and his spouse, Elizabeth Klier, for $29,000 (the equal of about $212,000 right now). By most accounts, Hondo rescued the little city, about ten miles southeast of Fredericksburg, from the brink of extinction. He now had his personal real-life Cedar Creek and a canvas for his creativeness.
The much-abbreviated model of what occurred subsequent is that this: due to Hondo’s magnetic character, Guich’s knack for staging outlandish occasions, and their uncanny potential to generate press protection, the cult of Luckenbach grew. In 1973 Jerry Jeff went there to file his masterpiece, ¡Viva Terlingua! The album went gold and have become a seminal assertion of the outlaw-country motion. That identical 12 months, Luckenbach hosted its first World’s Fair, drawing 20,000 guests over two days. Other festivals adopted, normally with a cadre of nationwide reporters in attendance.
Hondo died instantly of a coronary heart assault in 1976. He was solely 59. That might need been the loss of life knell for Luckenbach as we all know it, however the next 12 months Waylon Jennings recorded “Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love).” The tune—written by two Nashville composers who’d by no means set foot within the tiny city—was a sensation. Soon of us from around the globe began streaming in: convoys of bikes, automobiles, and, for the primary time, tour buses. Beginning in 1995, Willie Nelson gave the place one other jolt of vitality by holding 5 consecutive Fourth of July picnics there. Then, within the mid-2000s, a girl named Abbey Road, Luckenbach’s occasions supervisor on the time, helped spur a revitalization of the venue’s musical legacy. Most weekends the dance corridor was filled with Texas nation followers, and through the day, you might typically discover gifted songwriters akin to Walt Wilkins or a younger Ryan Bingham internet hosting pickin’ circles beneath the massive oak bushes.
This was the period when I discovered Luckenbach. While a scholar at Texas State University, I spent many weekends driving the gorgeous again roads from San Marcos to drink beer and play my Alvarez in a single such circle. In 2009 I used to be one of many 1,868 volunteers who confirmed as much as assist Luckenbach break a Guinness World Record for “the biggest recorded guitar ensemble.” The tune we performed was—no shock—“Luckenbach, Texas.”
But the recollections I cherish most are the occasions I spent there enjoying songs with my late mentor and friend, Kent Finlay. Kent owned a honky-tonk in San Marcos known as Cheatham Street Warehouse, which he’d been impressed to open in 1974 by his hero and mentor, Hondo Crouch. On a couple of events Kent and I made the hour-long drive to Luckenbach collectively, stopping alongside the best way on the Blanco Bowling Club for a burger. I wrote about one of many wintry nights we spent swapping songs across the wood-burning range. When I confirmed it to Kent, he urged me to ship it to Luckenbach’s tiny month-to-month newspaper, the Luckenbach Moon. It was the primary freelance article I ever revealed. That night time stays top-of-the-line of my life.
So, late final 12 months, I used to be deeply troubled once I acquired an e mail from Kit Patterson, Hondo’s grandson. “A rich developer is actively working to construct a mega-development and distillery that over-commercializes the realm and endangers the magic and ecology of Luckenbach,” he wrote. The menace he described sounded existential. I wrote again and promised to satisfy up quickly.
Over spicy bowls of purple on the Texas Chili Parlor, in Austin, I advised Patterson about my historical past with the dance corridor. He nodded. As the president of Luckenbach Texas Inc., or LTI, the company that owns and runs the dance corridor and common retailer, Patterson has heard numerous tales like mine. “Our mission at Luckenbach is making mates, music, and recollections,” he advised me. “But Luckenbach’s grow to be well-known and well-liked, and folks have concepts. They wish to do issues which are going to make them cash.”
Patterson, who’s 51, sounded at occasions like a religious cousin of Matthew McConaughey. He exudes the identical Texas-surfer vibe; his speech is peppered with zenlike idioms about transferring “on the tempo of grace.” He remembers being 4 or 5 years previous, hanging out on the final retailer’s porch along with his grandfather Hondo, whom Patterson described as “a mixture of Will Rogers and Peter Pan.” The white-whiskered “mayor of Luckenbach” would sit and whittle whereas chewing Tinsley tobacco. This was the mid-seventies, and his grandfather was already well-known.
As we plowed via our chili, Patterson expounded on his e mail. Stewart Skloss, the CEO of Frontier Spirits, was constructing a sprawling 117-acre improvement lower than 5 miles from the dance corridor. The plans, which had initially included a music venue and recording studio, now known as for a 28,000-square-foot distillery together with a resort, a Harley-Davidson dealership, a Salt Lick BBQ joint, a Mexican restaurant, an condo complicated, and twelve dry items shops. There wasn’t a lot Patterson may do about many of the deliberate improvement, however Skloss’s new distillery was one other matter. He was calling it Luckenbach Road Whiskey. So LTI challenged the whiskey plant on the premise that utilizing the phrase “Luckenbach” in its identify would confuse clients and siphon off income that might in any other case belong to LTI.
LTI had despatched a number of stop and desist letters claiming trademark infringement, however Skloss was defiant. His Luckenbach-branded whiskey is now in shops. “It virtually makes me escape in hives speaking about federal courts and judges,” Patterson advised me. But he and his aunt, Cris Crouch Graham, who owns the opposite half of LTI, had determined to go forward and sue Frontier Spirits.
A couple of months later, on a heat June morning, a preliminary injunction listening to was held on the fifth ground of the federal courthouse in Austin. It felt about so far as you might get from the easygoing appeal of Luckenbach. The wood-paneled courtroom smelled like espresso breath. Patterson watched the proceedings on Zoom as a crew of 4 legal professionals represented LTI. Across from them, Skloss’s attorneys clustered round a protracted desk, together with one named Lance Luckenbach, a distant relative of the pioneering German household who settled the realm. At the pinnacle sat Skloss. Wearing a darkish swimsuit and chunky-framed glasses, and along with his thinning black hair slicked again, he regarded as if he might need stepped off a Texas-set Scorsese movie—a swaggering robust man who, I’d come to study, drives a bulletproof SUV and tends to brag about his dimension 14 boots.
For each events, the stakes have been excessive. If the injunction have been granted, the decide may power Skloss to droop the manufacturing of Luckenbach Road Whiskey and have bottles pulled from the cabinets. According to Skloss’s legal professionals, such motion would trigger “catastrophic hurt” not solely to his new whiskey enterprise but in addition to the Pura Vida tequila firm he’d launched again in 2011.
Karen Burgess, LTI’s lead lawyer, made the opening assertion. “The Luckenbach identify has been constructed up for 50 years. Hard to consider {that a} cowboy poet thought of logos, however he did.” Now, she stated, “Luckenbach Road Whiskey has are available in and brought that confusingly related identify to reap the benefits of that fifty years of funding.”
Nick Guinn, Skloss’s lawyer, countered that LTI had no foundation for its swimsuit, claiming that the identify “Luckenbach Road Whiskey” was chosen to not draft off of LTI’s recognition however as a result of the distillery is positioned at 21 Luckenbach Road. He argued that buyers wouldn’t be confused partially as a result of LTI was inflating its identify recognition. “Elvis is legendary,” he stated. “Luckenbach, Texas, just isn’t. It could also be well-known to some, nation music followers maybe, however a trademark-law fame is a particularly excessive burden to point out.”
LTI legal professionals quickly produced emails suggesting Skloss himself didn’t consider Guinn’s argument. Skloss had mentioned a doable whiskey collaboration with LTI way back to 2015. Patterson’s associate Cris Graham, alongside together with her husband, John, have been initially open to the thought. Patterson was not. For the subsequent few years, Skloss continued speaking with the Grahams anyway. In 2017 he and John batted across the thought of a Hondo-inspired whiskey, however in an e mail to John, Skloss made it clear Hondo wasn’t the identify he was after: “Everyone in Texas is aware of the Luckenbach identify, solely those who know the Luckenbach story will know of Hondo. That could be a $20MM gamble that I realistically can’t afford and don’t assume my investor base would both. I’m certain Kit [Patterson] will come round, willingly or not.”
But Skloss’s makes an attempt to courtroom Patterson failed, so he went his personal manner. Skloss contracted with MGP, a large Indiana distillery that produces spirits bought beneath lots of of name names, to start out producing Luckenbach Road Whiskey. (It’s bottled on-site at Skloss’s makeshift distillery.)
Throughout the day, LTI’s legal professionals repeatedly pointed to what they thought of Skloss’s historical past of impropriety. Over the previous three many years, he has been sued a minimum of thirty occasions whereas working in quite a lot of industries, from building to grease and gasoline. He even owned a now-defunct San Antonio restaurant known as Renob Café y Cantina (Renob is “Boner” spelled backward). All the whereas, the legal professionals stated, he left behind a path of contractors, collectors, landlords, and an unbiased college district who alleged he owed them cash. (At the trial, Skloss denied any wrongdoing and stated he doesn’t owe anybody something.) Several of those fits have been dropped or settled, however some have gone to abstract judgments. One swimsuit echoed LTI’s present grievance. In 2012 the makers of Cointreau sued Skloss for importing a Mexican orange liqueur beneath the identify “Controy.” A federal decide dominated that Pura Vida had infringed on Cointreau’s mark and ordered Skloss to stop utilizing the identify. “You can see what he’s achieved,” Burgess, the lead counsel for LTI, advised the decide. She went on to quote Skloss’s personal phrases from an earlier deposition, that to promote an alcohol model, “it’s essential have a narrative, a star, or a ton of cash.” She paused. “Here, he’s obtained a narrative as a result of he’s obtained Cointreau. And now he’s obtained a narrative as a result of he’s obtained Luckenbach.”
Skloss’s legal professionals struck again by alleging malfeasance on the a part of LTI. Just months earlier than Luckenbach Road Whiskey hit cabinets, LTI introduced out its personal limited-run whiskey, a partnership with Balcones Distilling, in Waco. Skloss’s crew argued that this was a violation of Texas’s tied-house legal guidelines, which prohibit all retailers (bars, music venues, and shops) from manufacturing alcohol. In different phrases, they claimed it was unlawful for LTI to make any booze, as long as it remained within the bar enterprise. Though it’s unclear how a collaboration between Skloss and LTI would have complied with this statute, his attorneys known as upon a former agent of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, who testified that the licensing settlement between LTI and Balcones is “illegal.” (A TABC investigation is presently ongoing.)
Even so, the case towards Skloss was mounting. Then, because the continuing neared its 5 p.m. cutoff, Skloss’s legal professionals known as one final witness. Paul Engel, a peach farmer from Fredericksburg, strode from his seat behind the room to the witness stand. The 49-year-old wore darkish slacks and a black-and-white plaid shirt—the one man within the courtroom not sporting a blazer and tie—and his messy brown hair perceived to have a cap again on it the second he was exterior.
“My identify is Paul Engel,” he started. “I stay in Fredericksburg, Texas. I’m a lifelong farmer there. . . My household was a few of the founding individuals of Luckenbach.” From there, the story he advised started to upend every thing I believed I knew in regards to the origins of Luckenbach and the legacy of Hondo Crouch.
In early September I met Engel for lunch at Hondo’s on Main. The Fredericksburg restaurant and bar is owned by Cris Graham, and the within is a type of shrine to her late father, lined with framed pictures and journal covers. As we ate enchiladas, Engel advised me how he got here to take the stand that day. “I feel the common particular person could be fairly disgusted in the event that they knew the entire story.”
His household had been among the many first Germans to settle the Hill Country, in 1846. The Engels bought land within the space now often known as Luckenbach within the mid-Eighteen Eighties. In reality, Paul’s great-great-aunt Minna Engel gave the place its identify. In 1886, when Minna’s brother opened a brand new put up workplace, she selected to name it Luckenbach, after her husband, Carl Albert Luckenbach. The identify caught. The Engels went on to construct the dance corridor and the final retailer, they usually labored within the blacksmith store and cotton gin that have been as soon as a part of the property. It was Paul’s great-uncle Benno Engel who later bought the 9.124 acres that included the dance corridor and common retailer to Hondo Crouch and Guich Koock. The Engel household nonetheless owns massive tracts of land instantly surrounding that acreage.
In 2014 Engel opened the primary of six rustic cabins on the opposite aspect of Grape Creek, a stone’s throw from the Luckenbach common retailer. He known as his place Luckenbach Lodge. He had envisioned a mutually useful relationship with LTI. Maybe he may depart beer coupons for his company that might assist steer individuals throughout the creek to purchase a tchotchke or an “Everybody’s Somebody in Luckenbach” T-shirt from the final retailer. Perhaps LTI may deal with the reservations and acquire a reserving charge. Engel says he and Patterson mentioned a doable association over the subsequent couple of years, however nothing ever got here of it.
Then, in February 2016, LTI’s legal professionals despatched a letter saying Engel’s enterprise had till the tip of the month to cease utilizing “Luckenbach” in its identify and advertising and marketing. Eventually, in 2019, Engel was summoned to courtroom. Much like in its case towards Skloss, LTI claimed that Engel’s use of the phrase would trigger confusion between his enterprise and LTI’s.
Trademark regulation is notoriously obscure and subjective. It’s not permissible to trademark phrases which are geographically descriptive, such because the identify of a city. But if a geographic descriptor is used over time to establish the “supply” of a sure set of products or providers (on this case LTI’s leisure providers and merchandise), it may tackle what’s often known as a “secondary that means.” LTI was contending that the general public has come to grasp Luckenbach to imply solely the dance corridor and retailer. It additionally was arguing that Luckenbach was not truly geographically descriptive.
Engel selected to battle the swimsuit. Luckenbach, he countered, ought to by no means have been trademarked in any respect. It’s the identify of a group—a group the place his family and friends have lived and died for greater than a century. By asserting that Luckenbach is merely a personal leisure venue confined to the 9 acres Hondo bought, Engel claims that LTI is distorting historical past.
At the restaurant, he pulled out his cellphone and confirmed me an image of the Luckenbach common retailer, essentially the most iconic constructing on the property. For many years, a white signal has hung above the door studying, “U.S. Post-Office / Luckenbach, Texas.” “What’s lacking from that signal?” Engel requested. He zoomed in. Between the phrases “Luckenbach” and “Texas,” somebody had obscured the comma with off-white paint. That could seem a small factor, however right here was the core of Engel’s argument: after fifty years of constructing its model round Luckenbach’s id as an actual place on the map, LTI was now actually making an attempt to color over that historical past and deny that Luckenbach denotes a geographic location. Engel shook his head in bewilderment.
After lunch, we loaded into Engel’s dually pickup and drove southeast, ten miles down Highway 290 to his peach stand and orchard. The Engels have been farming in Luckenbach for 5 generations. It was close to the tip of the season, however the peach bushes on the far east finish have been nonetheless laden with fruit. Engel parked the truck. We padded via the neatly planted rows, and he paused to pluck a ruby-colored peach from one of many arching branches. With an financial system of movement earned via many years of repetition, he twisted it open and proudly positioned the fuzz-covered fruit in my palm. It was a bit small and had a particular tart-sweetness paying homage to a cherry.
“My son loves this ag stuff,” he advised me, handing me one other halved peach. His son, William, is eight and has already thrown himself into the household enterprise. “He can do all of it out right here. He runs the bank cards and does the mathematics in his head. People are amazed. This little bitty fart,” Engel laughed. “About three years in the past, he began giving orchard excursions. At the time, he was saving 5 grand for his personal hay cutter. This 12 months he moved on from that, and now he’s doing magic tips for 50 cents. If he will get it incorrect, you get your a reimbursement.” Listening to Engel discuss his son, I noticed how private this battle is for him. It’s about his heritage.
From Engel Orchards, we drove down Luckenbach Road, previous the positioning of
Skloss’s deliberate distillery, the place transport containers housing barrels of whiskey occupied the caliche pad. At the doorway to the property, a nest of cameras pointed in each course.
Farther down the street, we cruised previous some land the place Engel runs a couple of head of cattle, previous cemeteries the place his family are buried, and got here to a cease on the Luckenbach School House. As we walked up, he identified his paternal grandmother’s home subsequent door. Back in 1855, one among Engel’s ancestors on his father’s aspect, Peter Pehl, deeded this land to construct the group’s first college. The unique log constructing was later changed by the spectacular limestone construction that stands right here right now. The college continued serving college students till 1964, when it was consolidated into Fredericksburg ISD. Since then, the Luckenbach Community Club has maintained the constructing, and it’s nonetheless actively used. In reality, Engel’s household could be assembly there for a reunion in just some weeks.
To Engel, this isn’t simply nostalgia—it’s proof. He argues that the varsity, which sits on Luckenbach Road about half a mile north of the final retailer and properly past LTI’s 9 acres, disproves LTI’s declare that “Luckenbach” refers completely to its property. This landmark and others prefer it, together with the Luckenbach Cemetery, are well-known to LTI. Engel cites a 1999 article within the Luckenbach Moon: “Our Luckenbach School is one among 10 remaining nation faculties out of the 12 in Gillespie County that’s nonetheless utilized by an energetic group membership for domino and pinochle events, reunions, and social gatherings. The Engle [sic] household, who nonetheless stay within the Luckenbach Community right now, have been constitution builders and college students.”
The article was written by Becky Crouch Patterson, Kit’s mom, Cris Graham’s sister, and Hondo’s oldest daughter. In 2018 she revealed a guide known as Luckenbach Texas: The Center of the Universe. In one chapter, she writes that there “are different Luckenbach residents scattered close to the varsity, the cemetery, and down nation roads, out round oat fields.”
Throughout the day, Engel rattled off a litany of different examples to again up his declare that Luckenbach is a particular geographic vacation spot: the Texas State Comptroller’s tax roll record, TxDOT’s official freeway map, and the delivery and loss of life certificates of assorted members of the family, together with his father. He identified different close by names on the map—Stonewall, Hye, Grapetown, and Comfort—all actual locations like Luckenbach, regardless of being unincorporated. At one level, Engel stopped at Behrends Feed and Fertilizer, a mile northwest of the Luckenbach common retailer. One of the state’s largest unbiased feed mills, the enterprise was established in 1955 and stays a busy hub for native farmers, ranchers, and hunters. I went inside to fetch a Coke and seen Behrends was promoting ball caps and T-shirts bearing the enterprise identify and its location: Luckenbach, Texas. The baggage of deer corn we loaded into Paul’s truck mattress have been printed with the identical.
Despite what Engel and his legal professionals really feel are clear examples of Luckenbach’s existence past one company’s property traces, LTI has argued that his proof “in regards to the purported ‘Luckenbach group’ ought to be stricken . . . as self-serving hypothesis and rumour.” Meanwhile, a number of different space residents have been despatched stop and desist letters, together with a cattle firm that has been ranching within the space for 5 generations.
Glen Treibs has lived in Fredericksburg for greater than seven many years and is broadly revered as an knowledgeable on Gillespie County’s historical past. He’s pleasant with the Crouch household, however once I spoke with him by cellphone, he was candid. “The complete space known as Luckenbach,” he stated. “I don’t see how [LTI] may trademark it. Who in God’s identify did they assume put a line round their property?”
Engel steered his dirt-coated Dodge down Ranch-to-Market Road 1376 and turned onto Luckenbach Town Loop, the place the dance corridor got here into view. “This discipline was stuffed with willows,” he stated, pointing to what’s now a caliche car parking zone. Just a couple of years in the past, you couldn’t see the final retailer or another buildings from the street as a result of the bushes have been so dense, however LTI had taken a bulldozer to the realm. He paused the truck in entrance of a flagstone home some 200 yards from the dance corridor. This was his grandparents’ home, the place the place his father was born. His aunt owns it right now.
As a child within the seventies, Engel spent numerous outing right here. He remembers his grandmother’s milk cow wading all day in close by Grape Creek and, with none prompting, moseying dwelling to her pen within the night. His grandmother bought recent cream and butter to guests on the common retailer, and his grandfather Armin would ship Engel all the way down to the final retailer to fetch him a recent pack of smokes—that’s, if Armin weren’t already within the beer tavern enjoying dominoes with Benny Luckenbach and different German farmers within the space who continued assembly there after it was bought to Hondo.
This group was initially often known as South Grape Creek, first settled within the 1850s by Jacob Luckenbach and a number of other different German immigrant households shortly after the founding of Fredericksburg. The Engels bought land right here in 1885 from Jacob’s son Carl Albert Luckenbach. August Engel Jr. opened the primary Luckenbach put up workplace in his dwelling in 1886, and someday shortly thereafter, the household constructed the dance corridor and the final retailer/put up workplace/tavern. (A white line nonetheless painted on the final retailer ground marks the spot the place the put up workplace started, thus indicating the place patrons have been prohibited by regulation from ingesting beer.) August’s brother William took over as postmaster in 1890 and ran the shop till he died instantly on the cotton gin in 1935. That’s when the enterprise turned over to Engel’s grandfather Armin and great-uncle Benno.
The point of interest of the group, as in lots of German Hill Country cities, was the dance corridor.
For the subsequent three many years, the Engel brothers ran the assorted companies—ginning cotton, buying and selling furs, working the shop, and farming fruit and different produce. They additionally developed a worthwhile egg route. Locals would convey of their additional eggs to barter for numerous items, and the Engels would package deal and promote them in San Antonio.
The point of interest of the group, as in lots of German Hill Country cities, was the dance corridor. Weddings, funerals, reunions, and group conferences have been held right here. The Luckenbach singing and capturing golf equipment met right here beginning within the late 1800s. Monthly dances drew households from the encircling hills. Notices for these gatherings have been positioned within the Fredericksburg Standard going again to at the least 1923, when this one appeared: “Grand Masquerade Ball at Luckenbach, Texas in Engel’s Hall . . . Good music and refreshments offered for. Everybody Welcome.”
Everything modified within the early sixties, when Armin and Benno break up the companies. “My grandfather wished to modernize and get refrigerated tools,” Engel advised me. “And my great-uncle didn’t wish to. So they’d a falling-out. My grandfather obtained all of the land, the farm, and my great-uncle obtained the 9 acres and the shop.” Benno ran the shop and served as postmaster for an additional decade, however by the tip of 1970, he was seeking to retire. In January 1971, he ran an advert within the classifieds of the Standard: “FOR LEASE OR RENT: Luckenbach common retailer. Beer saloon, dance corridor, warehouse and egg route. Egg route will simply pay for hire.”
What occurred subsequent turned Texas legend.
The most well-trodden model of the story, repeated in lots of of articles since 1971, goes one thing like this: Hondo was on the lookout for a spot to cease and drink an after-work beer someplace between his two ranches when he seen an advert within the paper—“city on the market, pop. 3” on this retelling—and he went and purchased himself a city. His associate on the time, Guich Koock, remembers it otherwise.
“Shatzie [Hondo’s wife] is the one who discovered the advert within the paper,” Koock advised me once I obtained him on the cellphone. “Hondo was having a tough time, staying out late within the bars and having plenty of private issues.” Shatzie thought that operating the final retailer could be good for Hondo. “Shatzie known as me and stated, ‘I’ll put up the down fee, in the event you’ll make the month-to-month installments and can take Hondo as a associate.’ I agreed to do it as a result of Hondo was a hero of mine.”
According to Guich, Hondo wasn’t even initially into the thought—he wasn’t a lot for having a associate. But all of them knew Benno; Guich’s household reunions have been held in Engel’s Hall. Benno was asking $30,000. “It included the egg route, the feed retailer, the final retailer, a blacksmith store, the dance corridor, the cotton gin, and a pickup truck,” Guich stated. “We thought that was excessive, so we talked him all the way down to $29,000. Shatzie put $10,000 down. And the egg route was going to make the remainder of the month-to-month fee.”
However the preliminary sale went down, LTI is adamant that had Hondo not confirmed up and rescued the city, as Patterson advised me, “hardly anyone would even give a flip or care about Luckenbach.” During the injunction listening to, LTI’s lawyer had quoted Jerry Jeff Walker’s song “Viva Luckenbach” to counsel that Luckenbach would have pale into obscurity if not for Hondo: “In the fifties individuals moved to cities / Leaving all of it behind / Luckenbach closed down for good / It simply fell on a tougher time / One day Hondo, driving by / Wished he had a beer / So he purchased the place and he opened it up / That’s the rationale we’re all right here.”
But Jerry Jeff was no historian. Luckenbach, whereas by no means a thriving metropolis, was removed from “closed down.” During the sixties, the Hill Country entered the nationwide consciousness as “LBJ Country,” and information reporters flocked to the area’s tiny hamlets, together with Luckenbach. At least one movie crew stopped by to seize the city’s straightforward tempo and pastoral vibes. And although they’re principally forgotten right now, two B movies were filmed there: The Naked Witch in 1959 and Strawberries Need Rain in 1970. Perhaps most telling are the a number of articles written earlier than the Hondo period, together with a pair of columns by Frank X. Tolbert, a preferred Texas author of that period, about how fond he was of “loafing” in Luckenbach. After the sale was introduced, Tolbert wrote one other about how he wished he may purchase the place himself. For essentially the most half, enterprise merely continued a lot because it had earlier than. The identical bands that performed when Benno was proprietor continued enjoying for years after the venue modified fingers.
Luckenbach did see one huge change shortly after the sale. In February 1971, Benno stepped down as postmaster, and some months later the U.S. Postal Service closed the put up workplace and retired the zip code. Suddenly, 37 households now needed to acquire their mail in Fredericksburg. That put a dent within the common retailer’s gross sales. The well-liked narrative means that Benno had stored his deliberate resignation a secret from the patrons and that the decline in clients pressured the brand new homeowners to get artistic to remain afloat. But the deed wasn’t signed till January of 1972, lengthy after the put up workplace had been decommissioned.
The early days of Hondo’s reign as “the clown prince of Luckenbach” have been breathlessly reported upon—in the pages of Sports Illustrated and the Washington Post, and on nationwide information broadcasts—normally centering Hondo because the hayseed mastermind, particularly of the zany occasions that attracted massive crowds. But Guich stated that’s not correct both. He stated he got here up with the World’s Fair, and {that a} skilled PR guru, Jack Harmon, got here up with most of the different occasions. “Hondo didn’t like having the festivals,” Guich stated. “For the primary truthful, I had a two-hundred-dollar price range. And all of it got here out of my very own pocket as a result of Hondo didn’t wish to pay for it. He at all times thought the festivals wouldn’t work. A few days earlier than the primary World Fair, Hondo known as the San Antonio papers and advised them we had known as the truthful off. I needed to inform the reporters that, sure, it was nonetheless on. We made virtually 300 thousand {dollars} in three years with the festivals.”
This period produced most of what turned LTI’s logos, together with the identify, the motto (“Everybody’s Somebody in Luckenbach”), and the emblem, which incorporates a lengthy oval with a star within the center. Written on the star is “Est. 1849.” Jacob Luckenbach didn’t settle this space till the early 1850s, and I used to be unable to search out any related occasions tied to that 12 months, one thing Guich later confirmed. “We had numerous dates we simply made up,” he stated. “1849 was a date that I made up as a result of I favored it.”
Several pages on LTI’s website, which the corporate submitted as proof in courtroom to bolster its model of the Luckenbach story, declare that Minna Engel opened an “Indian buying and selling put up” on the present-day spot of the final retailer in 1849. But Minna wasn’t born till 1861. When I requested Patterson about this discrepancy, he stated that a lot of that early historical past has been handed down from numerous events and hadn’t been independently verified. He famous that even the state historic marker in entrance of the final retailer is off by a 12 months in its final sentence: “John Russell ‘Hondo’ Crouch and others purchased the city heart in 1970 and promoted its rustic environment.”
To Guich, the marker is one other reminder that he’s largely been scrubbed from the Luckenbach story. The property wasn’t purchased by “Hondo Crouch and others,” he stated. “No, it was Guich and Hondo.” Still, some would possibly argue it’s comparatively innocent for LTI to advertise the mythic narrative. But Engel believes that the company is distorting historical past to protect its trademark, which in flip harms long-standing members of the group. Behrends, for instance, not too long ago signed a licensing settlement with LTI in an effort to use the identify Luckenbach, although the enterprise lengthy predates the existence of LTI. Engel has refused to make such concessions. His trial with LTI is scheduled for late October. He says he’s prepared.
“You can’t actually perceive Luckenbach, and what makes it particular, with out delving into the historical past, tradition, and the individuals who made the area what it’s. Not the entire story is fairly, however it’s indispensable,” writes Becky Crouch Patterson in her guide on Luckenbach. A visible artist and memoir author, Becky has additionally authored a 1979 biography of her father and one other guide in regards to the Stieler ranch, her mom’s household homestead in Kerr County, the place she lives right now.
Her household’s roots, like these of so most of the German Hill Country residents, run deep—again to the primary ships that traveled from Germany to Galveston or Matagorda Bay within the late 1840s, and to the wagons that carried them west and north. Their bloodlines have been intertwined with the identify Luckenbach since at the least 1862, when one among her great-great-uncles was murdered by Confederate zealots. His identify, Heinrich Stieler, is carved on one aspect of the Treue der Union Monument, the limestone obelisk that stands in Comfort to mark the graves of 36 Union loyalists who have been killed by Confederate forces whereas making an attempt to flee to Mexico. Heinrich’s identify seems under that of August Luckenbach, the brother of Jacob and uncle of Carl Albert Luckenbach, whose land would move via the Engels and down via Hondo and Shatzie to their youngsters and grandchildren.
Reading Becky’s work, one will get the sense that Luckenbach has been each a blessing and a curse. “Yes, each blissful and unhappy,” she stated once I reached out to her. In Hondo, My Father, Becky writes overtly about her dad’s unhappiness and loneliness, regardless of his public persona. While she denied Guich’s declare that Hondo was ingesting an excessive amount of, Becky defined that by the early seventies, the mohair enterprise had taken a dive, and Hondo not spent his days working on the wool warehouse in Comfort. Shatzie’s try to “give Hondo one thing to do” labored in a single sense, however it drove the 2 of them additional aside, they usually divorced in 1973. “Although Luckenbach turned a disillusionment to our household, it was a supply of consolation and safety to Hondo throughout his lonely final days,” Becky writes. Hondo’s coronary heart assault in September 1976 got here on the heels of a marathon hard-partying session prompted by Jerry Jeff’s recording one other album on the dance corridor. After Hondo’s loss of life, Becky writes, “Luckenbach was like a closed guide.”
Except it wasn’t. She and her sister Cris every inherited 25 p.c stakes within the enterprise, whereas Kathy Morgan, who had partnered with Hondo shortly after the acquisition, managed the opposite 50 p.c. (Guich had bought his pursuits in 1974 and moved to Hollywood to pursue an appearing profession.) In 1979 the trio put the 9 acres up on the market, and it was nonetheless available on the market in 1990, when Morgan advised Texas Monthly, “Actually it has at all times been on the market. It simply must be the appropriate purchaser, somebody who doesn’t wish to flip it into one thing totally different.”
Apparently, the appropriate purchaser by no means got here, and LTI trudged together with the identical construction till the late nineties, when Becky’s son Kit joined the household enterprise. Just a couple of years later, in 2004, the household was ruptured by a lawsuit: Cris accused Kit of making an attempt to stage a coup and push her out of the enterprise. A settlement was reached during which Kit and Cris would break up LTI down the center, and from then on, each events would log off on any main choices. These proceedings have been painful for the household. “You shouldn’t be fifty-fifty with anyone in a household enterprise,” Becky stated. “It’s simply tough.”
Like Kit, she stated she has an aversion to lawsuits. When I requested her about LTI’s litigation towards Engel, she sounded genuinely stunned. “Oh my gosh, I didn’t know all that.” While she stood firmly towards Skloss’s co-opting Luckenbach for his whiskey, she had a distinct tackle members of the group utilizing the identify. “Those individuals are all invited to Luckenbach when we now have our neighborhood friendship gathering.” They ought to be “grandfathered in,” she stated. “They have been there earlier than something.”
Despite the tough patches, the household inheritance has include standing and financial rewards. For years, Lady Bird Johnson requested Becky and her musician husband, Dow Patterson, to serenade her dinner company, together with Henry Kissinger and Nelson Rockefeller. Cris married a rich San Antonian within the seventies (they later divorced, and Cris married John Graham in 1982), and her daughter Alice Welder has appeared in society publications. Meanwhile, the enterprise of LTI is doing simply tremendous.
Luckenbach receives north of 250,000 guests yearly. In latest months LTI transformed a warehouse on the property to cut back the damage and tear on the final retailer—and to accommodate the rising vary of Luckenbach-branded housewares, meals merchandise, clothes, and bric-a-brac it hawks. And 4 years in the past, in a bid to “leverage its way of life model,” LTI expanded by opening Luckenbach on Main, in Fredericksburg. There you possibly can store for all of the Luckenbach merch possible: koozies, candied jalapeños, reducing boards, Christmas ornaments, key chains, shot glasses, and coasters. There’s even somewhat shiplapped room the place you possibly can pose for a selfie with a cowboy hat and a guitar. You don’t even must go to Luckenbach anymore; you possibly can simply faux.
When I first heard about Skloss’s distillery, I imagined an grownup Disneyland being constructed proper on the dance corridor’s doorstep. I used to be stunned, once I visited, to see how distant it’s—5 miles or so. But I used to be much more stunned by how a lot the realm proper round it had been developed in recent times.
The distillery sits on Highway 290, within the coronary heart of Texas’s “little Napa Valley,” dwelling to a pretend German fort, seemingly countless vineyards, and locations with names like “Yee Haw Ranch.” Little peach stands like Engel’s are sandwiched amid the sprawl. “There’s over 100 and fifty wineries on this hall,” Skloss advised me once I visited his improvement. “And there are increasingly more day by day. I don’t know in the event you’ve seen them, however I noticed three new indicators promoting one hundred-plus acres on the market.” I had seen them. They stood tall within the few remaining undeveloped pastures alongside the freeway.
Soon the whole space shall be remodeled. Just southeast of Luckenbach, I used to be shocked to return throughout dozens of acres of denuded hills, a stretch that was nonetheless wooded once I’d seen it just some months prior. An indication out entrance learn, “Firefly Luxury RV and Tiny Home Resort.” There, some 221 tons will host turnkey trip leases “strolling distance to the world-famous mecca Luckenbach.” Kit Patterson hadn’t talked about this after we first spoke.
When we talked once more this September, eight months after our first lunch, Patterson sounded weary. He too was sickened by what Firefly had achieved to the land. “This is the Hill Country now,” he sighed. “It’s being cherished to loss of life.”
I requested about Engel and the stop and desist letters that LTI has despatched to different companies within the Luckenbach space. Patterson defined he was in a lose-lose scenario. On one hand, he hated to sue small companies in the neighborhood, however he stated that if the corporate didn’t defend its logos, it could permit others to return in and slap “Luckenbach” on cans of chili or bottles of whiskey or the rest they wished. “If we don’t battle to protect what Hondo created, then it’s gone.”
But that effort has come at a price. “When consideration is drawn to this, it exposes the soiled laundry,” Patterson acknowledged. “When I have a look at Hondo’s life, there was numerous heartbreak and ache. For myself, I’ve at all times tried to do the appropriate issues, however I’ve made some errors.”
LTI was dealt a blow this summer season when its request for a preliminary injunction towards Skloss was denied. Next fall, LTI and Skloss are scheduled to sq. off in courtroom, this time with a jury figuring out the result. If the choice swings in Skloss’s favor, LTI may finally lose its registered trademark. In that state of affairs, LTI would have little recourse towards future companies utilizing the identify Luckenbach.
But for a lot of who have been interested in Luckenbach’s appeal many years in the past, this Texas treasure has already undergone profound modifications. Beneath the laid-back, “again to the fundamentals” veneer, Luckenbach has advanced right into a profitable way of life model. On one hand, the dance corridor and common retailer and oak bushes are all nonetheless intact, a lot as they’ve been for greater than a century, however on the opposite, there’s no denying that the place feels more and more sanitized. And one has to marvel what Hondo—who was outspoken towards the commercialization of Luckenbach—would take into consideration his visage getting used to promote baggage of espresso and scented candles.
This rigidity isn’t distinctive to Luckenbach. All over our quickly altering state, we’re being pressured to contemplate who we’re and what we’re going to be. We worth the simplicity of those historic locations, and but the qualities that make them well-liked additionally imperil their future. For now, you possibly can nonetheless glimpse the mythic qualities that make Luckenbach value preventing for.
It’s Friday night time in Luckenbach. A rustic group known as the Wagon Aces kicks off a free live performance within the dance corridor. Soon, two-stepping {couples} rival the bikers for who’s sweatiest. A Stetsoned old-timer seems on the bar, barely out of breath. “Hey, Butch,” the bartender greets him. “Hey, Greg,” Butch solutions, dabbing his brow with a bandanna. “Damn ghost drank my beer. He’s thirsty tonight.” Greg cracks him open one other, and Butch totters again towards the music and one other spherical on the maple dance ground.
Greg is aware of numerous the individuals right here by identify. One couple drives up from Boerne most weekends, and a man from Willow City stops by day by day after he’s achieved operating his sheep. But there are additionally loads of vacationers. Through the open doorway, Greg factors out a household of German vacationers (dad in a ball cap, little woman in pigtails) failing miserably of their makes an attempt to throw a loop over a roping dummy arrange exterior.
The band performs classics akin to “Fraulein” and “Amarillo by Morning.” The dance corridor shutters are propped open to catch the breeze. A pair waltzes, him in boots and her barefoot. They look as blissful as anybody I’ve ever seen. I take into consideration my buddy Kent Finlay and the great occasions we had right here. He at all times closed each songwriters’ circle with the identical tune. The refrain goes like this:
They name it the Hill Country, I name it lovely
I’d name it progress, if it could possibly be saved
They name it the Hill Country, I name it dwelling
But what’s going to we name it
When it’s leveled and paved?
This article initially appeared within the November 2022 problem of Texas Monthly with the headline “Sold Out!” Subscribe today.
This article has been up to date to make clear the character of a proposed whiskey collaboration between Stewart Skloss and LTI.
