MORGANTOWN — Sandy Pinkard had to laugh when he got the news he was going into the West Virginia Country Music Hall of Fame this year.
Not because he didn’t take it seriously, no sir.
“Hey, let me tell you, it’s an honor to be recognized,” the Nashville songwriter and performer said last week from his home in Kingwood.
The Preston County mountain town has been his home for the past few years.
As it turns out, organizers of the hall, attached to the historic Sagebrush Round-Up music venue in neighboring Marion County, had a request accompanying his nomination, which is why he had to chuckle.
The ceremony is at 6 p.m. today, and as part of the proceedings, inductees take the stage to perform a mini-set of the songs that got them there — be they interpretations of jukebox tunes or the ones they penned themselves.
“ ‘No Pinkard & Bowden songs,’ they told me. I wasn’t gonna do any to begin with, so I said, ‘No, problem.’ ”
Boot-scooting with Jeffrey Dahmer
Don’t remember Pinkard & Bowden? Think about that, for a second.
If you were a country music performer in the 1980s and ‘90s, and this notoriously funny Nashville duo did a send-up of one of your songs, well, then you knew you were part of the consciousness in your community of listeners and fans.
The pair gleefully skewered the hits of the day from Music City — or, “Lake Piranha,” as Pinkard dubbed the place several years back.
Nothing was sacred, once it was pureed in the Pinkard & Bowden blender.
Thus, the George Jones classic of lost love, “She Thinks I Still Care,” became “She Thinks I Steal Cars,” an ode to the suburban joys of grand theft auto, with no apologies to ol’ Possum.
“Friends in Low Places,” the epic Garth Brooks singalong, morphed through a comedic glass darkly to “Friends in Crawl Spaces,” their “tribute” to Jeffrey Dahmer, the Milwaukee serial killer.
Richard Bowden was the big guy with the deep voice and acoustic guitar.
Bowden woodshedded his way up to lead guitar in Linda Ronstadt’s road band in the 1970s after years of bar gigs in his native Texas.
Pinkard, who hails from Louisiana, was the little guy with the big Stetson, the even bigger acoustic bass guitar and slight twang, pitched just a touch higher, for country-comedic effect.
Before that, he drove a taxi cab in Mendocino, Calif., and held down jobs as a rodeo clown in Fort Worth, Texas, and a commercial lobster fisherman in Maine.
Three chords and the truth
He could always pick and sing, and when he settled in northern California after his hitch in the U.S. Air Force in the late 1960s, he tuned up his trusty Gibson J-50 acoustic guitar — “It’s been in pawn shops from coast-to-coast,” he said — and filled one yellow pad after another with song lyrics.
Pinkard played guitar professionally with Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Woody Guthrie’s running buddy, and eventually fell into a band with revisionist honky-tonker John Anderson and T-Bone Burnett, the once-and-future “O, Brother, Where Art Thou?” producer.
He found his rhythm as a songwriter in the 1970s, spinning country AM radio gold.
“Coca-Cola Cowboy,” Mel Tillis. “Blessed are the Believers,” Anne Murray.
And, “You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma,” the Shelly West and David Frizzell duet that was named Song of the Year in 1981 by Nashville Songwriters Association International.
These days, country listeners are tuning into Josh Turner’s version of “I Can Tell by the Way You Dance,” a song with Pinkard’s lyrics that was an original hit for Vern Gosdin.
Pinkard paired with Bowden in Nashville. They thought they were going to do more of the same, but the parody tunes they generated for fun won out.
They ended up headlining comedy clubs by the time their run ended.
After that, he walked away from the business for a time and married a woman from West Virginia who wanted to come back home.
‘Turn off the TV news and start writing’
“Sandy’s a character but he’s also a craftsman,” his friend Chris Haddox said.
“He knows what makes a good song, whether it’s a Pinkard & Bowden song or a serious one.”
Haddox, a WVU professor and community activist, is a musician known for his old-time fiddle and guitar.
He also made a go of it in Nashville before coming back home.
These days, it’s Pinkard & Haddox, as the pair have taken to writing together and pitching songs to Nashville.
“We’ll see what happens,” said Haddox, who will back up Pinkard on guitar tonight, plugging in with the house band.
The other day, he personally delivered a box of ink pens and a pack of three legal pads to the Pinkard abode in Kingwood.
“I said, ‘Sandy — turn off the TV news and start writing.’ ”
Generations
Lisa Hawker Janoske said she’s just happy the hall has started up again with its work. COVID canceled last year’s induction ceremony.
She and her husband, Bill, are educators in Maryland who play in the house band at the Sagebrush Round-Up.
Her dad, Jack, was a legendary Morgantown guitar picker, and she grew up in the University City performing his music in his band, wrangling a bass guitar that was bigger than she was.
“I was on the Sagebrush Round-Up stage when I was 7,” she said.
Stealing home
She likes the mix of regional and national attention the state’s Country Music Hall of Fame brings.
Inductees in recent years have included the late Little Jimmy Dickens, the Grand Ole Opry entertainer from Raleigh County; and Darris Summers, the retired Monongalia County magistrate who grew up playing country music in his family’s band with his late brother Dennis, who was also inducted.
Along with Pinkard, this year’s inductees are: Chuck Comas, Thomas Dadisman, Matt Hanshaw, Ray McCartney, Jack Smith, Vic Snyder, and Chuck Westfall.
That the Sagebrush Round-Up has been a working venue since 1938 says something, the bass player will pronounce.
“It’s our music,” she said.
Pinkard, who is now 74, and maybe mellowing a bit, appreciates that it’s now his experience, too.
“West Virginia’s my home state, now, and Kingwood’s my home town. This is a special place and it’s an honor going into that hall.”
In the meantime, there just might be an amendment to that earlier request, Bill Janoske said.
“I think we’re gonna end up doing ‘She Thinks I Steal Cars.’ ”
TWEET @DominionPostWV
