FILE UNDER HIPPIE SPIRITUAL
DRIVE west out of Austin on US-290 W and the highway delivers you to Dripping Springs, “Gateway To The Texas Hill Country”, population 3,000. Not exactly a fading dot on a map of nowhere, a ghost town with creaking doors, Morricone harmonicas on a hard wind. But already deep enough into the Hill Country to feel removed from the world’s dumb hustle. A place of birdsong and harmony. Hawks aswirl in a vast blue sky. Coyotes howling in canyons at night. Good enough vibes for a man to want to call it home. Let’s go there now.
It’s a fine, bright morning, a couple of days before Christmas. Israel Nash is standing on the large wooden deck that fronts Plum Creek Sound, the studio he built on a hill overlooking Dripping Springs and the 15 acres of ranch land he bought after moving to Texas from New York in 2011.
“From up here, I can see sagebrush, trees. Hills for just about forever,” he says. “Down below, there’s the house where I live with my wife and daughter and the place my parents built. My wife’s parents live further down the hill. It’s a real family compound.”
We met at a Rough Trade in-store appearance in 2018, just before , his game-changing sixth album, came out. So it’s easy to imagine what he looks like, out there on his deck this morning in Texas sunlight. He’d loomed into view then, a big man, filling a small room, aviator shades, wild hair, a prophet’s beard. The usual rock’n’roll bling: bracelets, rings, tattoos, layers of beads around his neck in the style of a hippie dowager. An outlaw country look, a lot of Waylon Jennings in it; the rest the bandit rocker drag that Johnny Depp thinks makes him look like a badass. Israel was as rhapsodic about Texas that night in Notting Hill as he is now,
