Bill Hearne

Bill along with his late-wife Bonnie are legends of the early Austin music scene collaborating, recording, and performing with many well-known artists such Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, Emmylou Harris, Nanci Griffith, Robert Earl Keen, Jerry Jeff Walker, Butch Hancock, Eliza Gilkyson, and Michael Martin Murphy. Bill has won numerous music-industry awards including a Lifetime Achievement Award from New Mexico Music Commission and is an inductee to the Kerrville Folk Festival Hall of Fame. The film biography, “New Mexico Rain: The Story of Bill and Bonnie Hearne” captures their extraordinary life and career.

Bill Hearne calls it ‘The Road:’ that metaphorical ribbon of honky-tonks, roadhouses, empty whiskey glasses, prison cells and unrequited love lined with signposts and mile markers tattooed with names like Haggard, as in Merle, Williams, as in Hank, Owens, as in Buck and Lovett, as in Lyle. Being legally blind, Bill has never actually driven The Road himself, but he sings with such authority of the tales he’s  heard while riding shotgun that you’d never know it.

Bill has a whole list of CDs available from the early releases with his wife, Bonnie such as “Most Requested: Best of Bill & Bonnie”, “Diamonds in the Rough”, & “Live at the La Fonda”. After Bonnie quit touring in 2003 due to health issues, Bill formed a trio & quartet and recorded “From Santa Fe to Las Cruces”, “A Good Ride”, “Bill Hearne Trio” & his most recent release, “All That’s Real”. Like the  velveteen rabbit in the children’s story, the title “All That’s Real” describes Bill Hearne…he is “real” and he’s earned it from traveling many miles down the honky tonk road.

He has a little less hair and his head is shinier these days just like the rabbit. “All That’s Real” is co-produced by Bill Hearne and Don Richmond, a master of many stringed instruments who owns Howling Dog Studios in Alamosa, CO, but has many musical ties with northern NM. Numerous area pickers and singers perform on the CD including Bill’s nephew, Michael Hearne, as well as some notable Texans, including piano man Earl Poole Ball (best known as Johnny Cash’s piano player, though he also played on the Byrds’ landmark country-rock album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo), and Jerry Jeff Walker, who sings his own “Dust on My Boots” with Hearne.