Margaret has given me two careers. She started my career as the first person to write about me. She was the only reason that [manager] Carlyne Majer ever heard about me. She’s the only reason the guys from Rank & File ever heard of me. Then, after I’d transitioned to just writing songs and making a great living doing it and having hits, she got me back onstage by putting the Wagoneers in the Austin Music Hall of Fame and begging us to perform.
When she asked us to play the induction, we hadn’t been in a room together in 10 years. Me and Brent [Wilson] were close, but all I remembered about the other two guys is we hated each other, and I couldn’t remember why we hated each other, but we did. It was a very “I will if he will” thing. We got together, and it took back off – all because of Margaret. I owe her everything.
The first time she wrote about me, I was 14. I was in Lubbock with Joe Ely, and he was fixin’ to do all these Buddy Holly duets with Linda Ronstadt. I was giving Joe vocal cues so he knew the order of the verses. Margaret was there, and the way she tells it, I got out of an elevator with a guitar, and she felt like a star had walked in the room. She talked to me and realized I was real serious about my music.
A young country act in 1982 was 40, so I think, in any other town, if you had a 14-year-old singing original country, it would be easy to have a novelty aspect to it. Margaret didn’t write about it like that. She wrote about me like an artist. She took me seriously, therefore Austin took me seriously.
The Wagoneers got signed to A&M nine months after our first gig. We recorded an episode of Austin City Limits before our record was even recorded. That was all because of Margaret. It’s so weird to be able to point to one person and say, “They started my career.” Everybody thinks they’re Margaret Moser’s one special thing. That’s how much of an angel she is.
Monte Warden
A version of this article appeared in print on Jun 30, 2017 with the headline: Monte Warden
This article appears in June 30 • 2017.