Gary P. Nunn brings the London Homesick Blues to Liberty Hall

The songwriter behind the longtime Austin City Limits theme plays downtown Tyler's restored theater on Sunday, Nov 15.

There is a line that half of Texas can sing back without thinking about it, the one about wanting to go home with the armadillo. On Sunday night, the man who wrote it is playing a room on Erwin Street.

Gary P. Nunn plays Liberty Hall in downtown Tyler on Sunday, Nov 15, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are on sale through Outhouse Tickets. It is the first Tyler show for Nunn in our records, and it comes a few weeks ahead of his next listed date, in Dallas on Dec 5.

If the name does not ring a bell, the song will. Nunn wrote "London Homesick Blues" in 1973 while touring London with Michael Martin Murphey; the cold, and a hotel that would not turn up the heat, gave him the line about wishing they would turn the heat on, according to his Wikipedia biography. Jerry Jeff Walker recorded it that same year on the live album ¡Viva Terlingua!, where it broke out, and it went on to serve as the theme for Austin City Limits from 1977 to 2004. For a generation of viewers, that tune was the sound of Saturday night public television.

That is only the best-known chapter. Nunn is widely considered a father of the progressive country scene that took shape in Austin in the early 1970s, and Rolling Stone has written about how his songwriting fed into outlaw country and the Austin scene. He was born in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, and his family moved to Brownfield, out on the South Plains, when he was in the sixth grade. In 2007 he was named a Musical Ambassador for Texas. He still tours with his band, the Sons of the Bunkhouse, and his official biography is the place to go for the long version.

The room is a good match for a songwriter with that kind of history. Liberty Hall started life as the Liberty Theatre in the 1930s, went dark in the 1980s, and was bought by the City of Tyler in 2008 for $180,000, according to Wikipedia's entry on the theater). It was refurbished in an art deco style, with donations covering much of the roughly $1 million cost, and reopened in September 2011. The city still runs it, booking live music, comedy and classic films, and Visit Tyler puts its seating at about 300.

That size is the point. Nunn usually headlines rooms closer to 800, so a seat at Liberty Hall puts you nearer the stage than most of his audiences get. A Sunday-evening start at 7:30 also makes this an easy one for anyone driving in from Longview, Jacksonville or Lindale and working Monday morning.

Practical notes: it is a seated theater, so arriving early buys you choice of seats rather than a spot on the rail. Downtown parking around the square on a Sunday night is about as easy as it gets.

Go for the song everybody knows. Stay for the ones you don't.

Sources: Gary P. Nunn - Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org); Gary P. Nunn - Biography (official site) (garypnunn.com); How Songwriter Gary P. Nunn Influenced Outlaw Country and the Austin Music Scene (Rolling Stone) (rollingstone.com); Liberty Hall (Tyler, Texas) - Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org); Liberty Hall - Visit Tyler (visittyler.com); Liberty Hall - About Us (libertytyler.com); Outhouse Tickets - Gary P. Nunn at Liberty Hall (events.outhousetickets.com)