Photo Credit: BarbaraFG
September 23, 2026–Even casual and un-wizened fans will recognize Ray Wylie Hubbard as the guy who wrote “Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother.” Every bar band from Nebraska to Namibia has covered that ode to hippie cowboy southern culture.
Ray Wylie Hubbard, the Texas singer, songwriter, and music legend is returning to the Rockbox Theater in Fredericksburg TX for one live show on September 26.
No matter how many music legends I interview, I am always a tiny bit intimidated. After all, anyone can look up Ray Wylie Hubbard’s history on Wikipedia. What can I ask that hasn’t been asked? I wanted to talk about was his latest of 20 albums. Why? Because it gets back to a truism in this world of infinitely polished art: Our blemishes are what make us interesting.
The name of this record is Reel 2 Reel 4 Real–as in recording on reel-to-reel tape decks, with real tape. Back to the days of clicks and pops. The days before auto-tune.
I remember vividly listening to those first Beatles records that made their way over from England. They were pressed into thick vinyl, encased in covers that looked like they had been photocopied then hand colored. But after repeated listening, you recognized when an occasional chord was played wrong or even dropped, but the tape machine kept churning. For some reason, that made being in a band an attainable dream for teenagers. If John and George occasionally goofed, we could, too.
“The records I really liked were the first Beatles, the first Stones, the first Buffalo Springfield,” Hubbard said. “You could hear string noises. You could hear a 60-cycle hum. They were real guys really playing, and that’s the vibe that I wanted on this record. I wanted to hear the air around the drums. I wanted to hear pedal squeaks. I wanted to go, oh, look, those guys are really playing it.”
Hubbard and his bandmates recorded four songs on this album that they “just punched record, played it, and that was it.”
If you believe in metaphors (one of my favorite lines of Hubbard’s is “we hit it off like a metaphor”), raw recording harks back to the days of raw-dogging across country, as every road warrior recalls.
“The road atlas would get us to the town, and we’d have to find a payphone and call ahead and say, ‘Okay, exactly where is this club? They tell you to go out of town, turn left at the water tower.’ You know, that was what we had to do: tour with a road atlas and a roll of quarters, and we didn’t ever miss a gig.”
As one who played on the road in the 1970s, I can confirm.
“Yeah, it was a very different time,” Hubbard said. “But that’s what you did. You made the gigs. But I didn’t want this album to be a nostalgia album; I wanted it to have a young kind of rock vibe.”
Be assured, at his Rockbox show, Hubbard will be playing all the old favorites, including such classics as Redneck Mother, Snake Farm, and Dust of the Chase. This will be an intimate stage setting, with Hubbard on acoustic accompanied by his son Lucas on electric guitar.
And you can be sure there will be plenty of stories in between, which Hubbard won’t know until he is in front of the audience, where he still loves to be.
“You know, it’s kind of still a joy. I’m an old kid, but it’s still a joy to walk out on stage to see people smile and to say something goofy and they’ll laugh and get involved in the music. The rock box is just a great, great venue. So yeah, it should be fun.”
You know it will be real.
DETAILS
Ray Wylie Hubbard will perform an acoustic concert with his son at the Rockbox Theater, 109 Llano St, Fredericksburg, TX, on Saturday, Sep 26, 2026, at 8:00 p.m. Tickets can be reserved by visiting https://www.rockboxtheater.com/ or by calling (830) 997-7625. Rockbox Theater is located at 109 Llano St, Fredericksburg, TX. Doors open at 7pm.