SAN ANTONIO – Lacy Brinson’s music is a rich fusion of Southern heritage and diverse influences from Southern rock, soul, bluegrass and Western swing.
She has been a part of the local music scene for over a decade. Brinson also performs originals inspired by her life and covers that people enjoy singing along to.
Brinson’s performance was my first time hearing her music, and I couldn’t stop humming the songs for the rest of the day. Her latest album, Gratitude, was released in 2019, but she has been working on new songs over the last few years. We were fortunate enough to record some of these songs for the first time during our SA Vibes session.
After she performed on Sept. 18 at Alibi’s Sports & Spirits with Rae, you can catch Brinson at The Camp House in Nixon, Texas, with Kristen Foreman and Alex Coba, supporting Two Tons of Steel, on Oct. 12. The Oct. 12 show will begin at 6 p.m.
Brinson will also play a solo acoustic set from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Oct. 27 at Sternewirth at Pearl Brewery.
For this SA Vibes set, Lacy Brinson performs “Travelin’ Alone,” “No Tear in My Beer,” “You Left Me For Mud,” and “The Cowboy Kind.”
We asked a few questions about her inspiration and more.
Tell us your story!
I’ve been singing since I was a little girl. My granddaddy was a circuit-riding Southern Baptist preacher in North Florida, South Georgia. And so, he would go church to church and he would take me, and I would sing and he would preach. That’s how I started and I was, like, 2 (years old). So, then I just kept singing, kept singing in a church, and then actually went to law school. So, did that instead of music, and then quickly realized I needed an outlet. And so, I started singing again professionally, probably, like, in 2010. And then a few years after that, my now-husband moved out here to take a job in the oil field, and I can’t do long distance. So I followed him, and that’s how I got to San Antonio. We loved it here, so we stayed.
When I moved out here, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m going to do this,’ because I knew this was perfect for live music. And so, I started, you know, stalking everyone online about who I needed to be following. I actually got a gig within, like, a week of moving here. It was not paid. It was a Wednesday night and they’re like, ‘OK, we’re going to book you through the end of the year.’ And I was like, ‘Great! Hopefully, you’re paying me.’ So, they did. That one was Fralo’s off of I-10, and I played there for years. It was fun. That’s actually how I got to meet some other musicians and got to meet a lot of people within the community and started doing private shows and weddings and corporate stuff. They gave me my first gig in San Antonio.
What’s the inspiration behind the sound?
I think I try to draw my inspirations from my own experiences. There’s a part of my repertoire that my husband calls, ‘man-hatin’ songs,’ because it’s just, you know, as a woman, I write about the things I’ve been through. As my life evolves, that’s kind of where I’m getting my inspiration. So, you know, bad breakups or young love, right? Now, I write about marriage and kids and whatever else I can think of.
What’s your songwriting process like?
Songwriting is not easy for me. I struggle with that quite a bit. I have to really sit down and concentrate and it’s hard to find the time to do that. So, I haven’t written a lot since I had kids because it’s hard to find time to do anything. But now that they’re getting a little older, I can set aside some time and just sit and write. I prefer to co-write because, that way, it’s not all on me. And so, then, I can brainstorm with other musicians, but it’s a process. I just finished one today — this morning — that I started writing, like, two years ago. So, it just takes a long time. I’ll have an idea, but then I won’t have any idea how to execute it. And, so, it just develops sort of organically over time.
How do you feel about how the local music scene has changed over the years?
I think that it’s different now than it was before COVID. I don’t know if it’s because we have a new generation that is now out and about performing, or, just, COVID just changed all of us. But I find it to be so much more collaborative now and supportive and less competitive. And I know it’s not like that in every circle, but before COVID, I felt like San Antonio had a lot of pockets of musicians and you needed to be in one of them, at least, if you were going to do anything.
But now, I feel like a bunch of people really kind of blend. It’s not really as cliquish, and there are more women, I feel like, that are singing now and performing. When I first moved to San Antonio, I could count, like, three women that I would see singing out and about. And so, now, I have like an actual circle of friends, male and female musicians. And we collaborate. We write together. We hang out together, and it’s great. And I think that it’s not just San Antonio. I think it starts here, and it goes up through the Hill Country, sometimes even up to Austin. And so, it’s just really nice to have that networking connection. And I think also, with social media, everybody is sharing each other’s music, sharing their video, sharing their releases, doing videos and then sharing those. It’s just really fun. It’s fun to go out and watch your friends and support them and then cheer them on. And so, yeah, I love it.
What do you hope for the future of the SA music scene?
I do think that we could benefit in San Antonio from some more listening room experiences. I think we have some venues that are perfect for that. It’s just really more about training the audience, educating the audience as to what a listening-room environment is. We have so many incredible local musicians and so many incredible songwriters. I think what I would like to do is sort of try to make that happen: get the musicians together, get the songwriters together, get a venue to host and provide a good space for that type of listening-room experience. Because I traveled back to Florida last year, and they had created one of those venues that I had never seen before in my town. And it was amazing. I went and I saw four songwriters there perform, and still now, I’m following them on socials and we’re trying to play gigs together. It’s, just, that is so cool because you get to know the musician and you get to know, like, their writing style and their stories behind their songs. So, I would love to see more of that. I think there are a few venues that would be perfect.
What’s the story behind one of your songs?
So ‘The Cowboy Kind’, I actually did not write that one. My uncle wrote it, and I remember him singing that about my little cousin back in — well, I’m not going to tell y’all how old I am — but I remember him singing that a long time ago. And then, when he passed away in 2016, his wife, my aunt, sent me all of his songwriting materials, and it was in a big Tupperware. When I finally had the bandwidth to go through it, I looked and I found all of his handwritten lyrics, and I found the lyrics to this song. I remembered the melody perfectly as if, like, I had just heard it and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I forgot about this song. It’s so good.’
I have two boys, but at the time they were 3 (years old) which is about the same time as I remember my uncle writing that song about my cousin, when my cousin was 3 (years old). My cousin had just come to San Antonio to live with us, too. So, that was really cool because I got to take those lyrics out and frame them and give them to my cousin. That meant a lot to him, because of course, he has that kind of formed in his memory. Then I got to, you know, play it and sing it. It just took on a whole new meaning for me being a mom than it did when it was written about my cousin, you know? And, so, I am really excited to be able to put that out. My uncle, he recorded some stuff in the studio, but he never put it out, like, for the masses. My friend Wally heard it, and he’s playing lead guitar on it and mandolin. He just helped me arrange the song, and we changed the lyrics a little bit on some parts to make it a little bit more commercial, but I’m really excited.
It was so cool being in the studio with Wally because he’s so respectful. I did not expect this at all, but we were about to get ready to record and he had everyone be quiet. And then he said, ‘We’re going to dedicate this to Lacy’s uncle.’ And he said his name: ‘Jack Cross, Junior.’ And, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh!’ And then my mom got to come and sit there and listen. And so I was, like, ‘This is really special.’ So, I was really grateful to Wally for giving it that level of respect, and I think it’s going to be a good one.
What’s coming up for you?
We just recorded one of the songs. We recorded ‘The Cowboy Kind’ at Enabler Studios, and it was with Nick Lawrence [who] was the sound engineer and my friend Wally Robles, who’s another musician. He produced the song. So we’re not quite done with it, but we are going to be releasing that later this year. And it’s sort of a stripped-down version, but it is full-band. So we got steel guitar on it and we have drums and mandolin, and so, it’s beautiful. And so, I’m really excited to finish that up. I think we have to go do a few more vocal sessions to clean that up, but that’ll be coming out. We would love to push that to Texas Radio. I don’t know if that’s going to happen, but that’s what we’re going to try to do. And then I still have a lot of songs I recorded back in 2019, and I haven’t released them. They’re covers and I was just kind of hoarding them. I was releasing them every six weeks, and then I got a little busy, and so, I stopped. But I would like to release the rest of those so that they’re out on Spotify.
You can find more information and music from Lacy Brinson on their website or Facebook.
You can learn more about this SA Vibes venue, The Guitar Dojo music school, on their Instagram. Special thanks to Derek Badillo for mixing the music for us!
About SA Vibes
San Antonio is well-known for its culture, but the local music scene has always seemed a bit hidden.
Unless someone takes you to a local show — at venues like The Lonesome Rose, Hi-Tones, The Mix, Paper Tiger and 502 Bar — chances are you’ll never even know our music scene even exists. That’s what made me decide to launch this passion project that we’re calling “SA Vibes.”
My name is Valerie, and I’m a video editor at KSAT. I’ve been attending local shows for over a decade, and I want to put a spotlight on the great talent that San Antonio has to offer.
Each month, we’ll be releasing a new “SA Vibes” video across all KSAT digital platforms and our YouTube channel showcasing a local musician performing live versions of their songs from the KSAT garden.
If you’re a San Antonio musician and would like to be a part of this project, please send information about your next show to our SA Vibes email.