I met Hal Ketchum at a KNBT Roots & Branches show at Tavern in the Gruene in 2013. He told me he enjoyed my set and we traded phone numbers. He asked me to do a house concert show with him at Sacred Passages in San Marcos in June. It was a show that we did together along with Ponty Bone and Kenny Grimes that was magical and inspiring.
I returned the favor and asked him to play at the Frio River Song Festival in 2013, and he said yes. We had a ball, and he admired Jamie Lin Wilson’s writing style. I proposed we all write together soon after that festival.
Os on August 19, 2013, I drove from Austin to Wimberley, picked up Hal, and we rode down to D’Hanis, Texas, to write in a lovely old house that Jamie’s family owns. The three of us wrote a song called “He Looks a Lot Like You.” Hal and Jamie sang it on the demo, and I sent it to Jamie before we left. Then Hal and I drove back to Wimberley.
Nine days later, Hal and Jamie recorded it as a duet for an album Hal was calling Blackjack. The album was never released.
On November 19, 2013, Hal and his daughter, Ruby Joy Ketchum, sang it on the Grand Ole Opry, on the Tuesday Night Opry broadcast on WSM.
Standing where he left me as the evening shadows fall
Sometimes there’s a moment when you know you’ve lost it all
But there’s no time for memories, supper’s overdue
There’s a baby tugging at my dress and he looks a lot like youCupid hovers overhead, bow and arrow drawn
Sometimes he hits the target, sometimes he just moves on
Hal was an expert rock skipper in rivers, a bottle balancer on his head, a carpenter (his first gig at Gruene Hall was as a carpenter), a singer, a songwriter, a father, and a friend.
He passed in 2020, I sure miss him. I’m thankful for all the songs he recorded so we can still hear from our hero and the dear human Hal Ketchum.
That same Frio weekend, after midnight on a cabin porch, Hal and Walt Wilkins sang Stephen Bruton’s “Too Many Memories.” That video, and two more songs Hal and I wrote, are here.
