Bill Hearne has a brand new album out now!  "A Good Ride" is jam packed with 19 tracks featuring Bill Hearne's flat picking and vocal charm. Recorded in Alamosa Colorado by Don Richmond at Howlin' Dog Recording during the summer of 2009, it features a slew of covers by such renowned artists as Lyle Lovett, Gordon Lightfoot, Guy Clark, Delbert McClinton, Joe Ely, and our own Joe West!

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about Bill Hearne: 

Honkytonks, roadhouses, empty whiskey glasses, unrequited love are the brick and mortar of country music and there isn't a better mason than Bill Hearne...  

Dallas born Hearne finds his way into a song's interior with a baritone as mellow as bourbon and smoky as a Texas pool hall and a picking style that satisfies both your feet and heart.  At its best, country music is elegiac, a meat and potatoes campfire poem about heartbreak and redemption.  It's about truth, the kind that hurts and the kind that heals.  In lesser hands, it's also a clichée.  A broken man in faded-jeans on a barstool. A Dear John letter fluttering in the hot Texas wind.  A train song and an empty bed.  Bill never lets this potent iconography off the hook. Whether burning through a roadhouse number or staggering through the valley of heartaches, Bill never lies.  He feels it, and so do we.

Legally blind since birth, Bill took up the guitar when he was seven.  Largely musically self-taught, Bill developed a picking style he calls cross-picking.  "Since I didn't have people to play with, I developed a style that incorporated a percussion rhythm while playing lead riffs. Basically, I tried to be a one man band," he says.  Like fellow cross-pickers Tony Rice and Doc Watson, Bill is improvisational.  "I hardly ever play the same thing twice."  It's not something he thinks about, it simply happens, he adds. And what always happens when Bill lets it happen is just plain fun.

Bill moved to Austin to attend the University of Texas in 1968.  It was in Austin that he earned his first paycheck as a musician and met his future wife, Bonnie Cross.  Bonnie's mellifluous east Texas alto fit Bill's picking like a glove.  They started touring as "Bill and Bonnie" in Texas, New Mexico and Colorado before moving to Red River, New Mexico in 1979.  They became the house act at Chubbie's Tavern. Fellow Texans Tish Hinojosa and Michael Martin Murphy moved to northern New Mexico and Bill and Bonnie found themselves the center of a thriving - albeit small - Americana music community.

Fast forward a decade. Northern New Mexico's Americana scene fades like high-country grasses in autumn and Bill and Bonnie move to Santa Fe.  They promptly sign on as the house band for La Fonda, a venerable downtown hotel.  For 15 years, Bill and Bonnie delighted Santa Feans and countless touristas with their infectious blend of bluegrass, country and swing music.

In 1997, they signed with Warner Bros. and recorded "Diamonds in the Rough."  Produced by country veteran Jim Rooney, it climbed to fifth on the Americana chart that year and led to tours with Lyle Lovett and spots in some of the country's most prestigious country festivals, including MerleFest, Strawberry Music Festival and the Kerrville Folk Festival.  Also playing in venues like the Greek Theater in Los Angeles, the winds seemed to be at their backs but, in 2003, Bonnie's health deteriorated and she could no longer perform.

On his own musically for the first time since meeting Bonnie, Bill put together two groups: the "Bill Hearne Trio" and "Bill Hearne's Roadhouse Revue." In the trio, Bill is backed by bassist and vocalist Cathy Faber and Bob Goldstein on lead guitar, mandolin and banjo. Add Auge Hays on steel guitar and you have the Roadhouse Revue.  The Roadhouse Revue's current CD, "Heartaches and Honky-Tonks," is an homage to the music Bill grew up with. It's familiar terrain for country fans, although the songs themselves may be unfamiliar.  We're thankfully spared yet another rendition of "Your Cheating Heart."  What the Roadhouse Revue has given us is a fresh compilation of excellent and danceable numbers from some very talented songwriters.  "Heartaches and Honky-Tonks" is imminently listenable and absolutely danceable, which pretty much sums up the Roadhouse Revue itself. It takes a mighty (and pointless) act of willpower to keep your feet planted at a Roadhouse Revue Show. Their enthusiasm and joy are infectious.

For more than 15 years, the same blue jeans and boots have turned up at La Fonda, where Bill and Bonnie Hearne have won the hearts of Santa Feans with their down-to-earth, impeccable musicianship. They're members of the family.  Lyle Lovett and Nanci Griffith cite Bill and Bonnie as influences in their own careers.  Bonnie may be sidelined, but Bill is determined as ever.  He plays like he means it.  His musicianship, stylings, love and knowledge of country music pour from every note.  When Bill carves out a song as only he can, you just gotta believe that tomorrow's going to be a little better than today.

"Heartaches & Honky-tonks... Bill Hearne's years as a country and folk musician have served him well. He is above all a storyteller... a hearty slice of Southwestern soul."
- Gabe gomez SFReporter

From the Bill & Bonnie website:

"Bill and Bonnie Hearne are Southwestern club legends who have influenced artists ranging from Lyle Lovett to Jerry Jeff Walker, Nanci Griffith and Tish Hinojosa."
-- Billboard, March 15, 1997 (Chet Flippo)

"This husband and wife team play such happy music that it instantly endears them to their audiences. Still, more memorable than watching Bonnie pound that honky-tonk piano and Bill and strum the guitar is hearing the two sing. Oh the sweet harmony...."
-- The Dallas Morning News

"...Rollicking thumping country soul."
-- The Taos News

"Bill and Bonnie just naturally generate excitement."
-- Denton Record Chronicle

Nanci Griffith:Writes in her liner notes to the 1993 Grammy-winning album Other Voices, Other Rooms: "This album is also dedicated to Bill and Bonnie Hearne, who play the best darn folk music I ever heard."
"As a young girl in Central Texas, Bill and Bonnie Hearne were the truest form of musical heroes -- Bill as one of the greatest flatpickers ever and Bonnie as a style of vocal and an interpreter of songs of great integrity.
"To think that I would grow up and have the honor of playing music and singing harmony with them as well as having my songs in their repertoire, is one of the greatest joys in this life in music."

Lyle Lovett:"I first heard about Bill & Bonnie Hearne when I was at school at Texas A&M University. I worked with the student committee that brought in acoustic music, and I used to book the basement coffeehouse where the concerts were held.
"I got a tape from the people who represented Bill & Bonnie Hearne, and I listened to it, and was just knocked out by their music. After hearing that tape, I looked for them wherever I could find them.
When I would go home to Houston, I'd look in the papers and if they were playing, I'd always go to see them. They used to play a place called Corkys in the Montrose area of Houston, and the stage was positioned in the room so you could sit right up next to the stage and I used to sit right in front of Bill and try to figure out all of his guitar licks.
"Just listening to Bill & Bonnie that close was a wonderful experience. The whole story of how Bill & Bonnie met at the institute of the blind is such a romantic story.
"The first time I actually met Bill and Bonnie was several years after I'd first heard their music. It was at the Kerrville Folk Festival. I was standing in the concession stand line and was going to get something to eat and I noticed that Bill and Bonnie had gotten in line behind me. It sort of made me nervous. I thought 'Oh My God, there's Bill & Bonnie Hearne.' After a couple of minutes of standing there I wanted to say something; I wanted to introduce myself to them but I didn't quite have the nerve to - I felt a tap on my shoulder and I turned around and Bill said 'Pardon me, young fella, you mind readin' the menu for us?'
"So I was really proud."
"Thanks Bill & Bonnie...."

Tish Hinojosa: "My husband, Craig Barker (now an entertainment lawyer) and I, are both graduates of "Bill and Bonnie Hearne's School of Performance and Endurance." Craig was their bass player and I a wide-eyed novice watching their every move in 1979.
"We can all claim to have some tough times. Bill and Bonnie have always given hard roads and honkytonks a face of dignity and grace. "I applaud Warner Western for giving them, and the public, a well-deserved breath of fresh air. Thank you."

Jerry Jeff Walker:"Bill and Bonnie are a great credit to all hardworking musicians. Their love of a good song, and the straight-ahead way they play it makes me, as a songwriter, feel really good. If I want to hear a song done the right way, I look to a Bill and Bonnie arrangement. I'm proud to have called them my friends for over 20 years.""Bill and Bonnie have always been two of my favorite artists because they use such great material. In fact, on my 55th birthday down in Belize, I celebrated by having a big fish dinner, some Chilean white wine, a good Cuban cigar, and listening to Bill and Bonnie's Navajo Rug album. That was a perfect evening. Now I'm ready to hear some new Bill and Bonnie stuff. I know it'll be great."

Michael Martin Murphey:"Bill and Bonnie Hearne have been on the cutting edge of South Western music since I first met them in the late 60's. They are not only talented but keep their ears to the ground for what's around the corner for good material and musical trends. Above all, they are gracious people capable of entertaining almost any kind of audience. If you want to know what's happening in South Western music, go and see Bill and Bonnie Hearne."