From flat, empty plains to a hotbed of musical inspiration, the soil of Lubbock, Texas, has spawned more than its share of music innovators. Lubbock Lights wants to unearth the reasons behind this phenomenon. Asking the musical question “Why?,” the documentary films a number of the West Texas musicians talking about and performing what they do best: music. Local folklore cites such theories as alien spaceships or “something in the water,” and the musicians interviewed also credit the region’s topography, history, and community. There’s a lot of intriguing material here, although the film (which is, admittedly, still in the editing phase) has yet to decide on its focus. In the form it was presented at SXSW, the film is a sprawling look at the Lubbock scene, and its primary agenda seems to be the promotion of the Flatlanders’ recently reissued album. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as the Butch Hancock, Joe Ely, and Jimmie Dale Gilmore supergroup is more than deserving of its day in the sun. But the film’s footage of such Lubbock progenitors and fellow travelers as Tommy Hancock, the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, Terry Allen, David Byrne, and others, only overburden the film with repetitive and tangential commentary and hints of questions that were never asked. Lubbock Lights needs to decide how to fill in its picture with more ambient light or crank up the kliegs on its spotlight figures.
This article appears in March 5 • 2004.
