Charlie Robison was a legendary Texas singer-songwriter, a major-label Nashville recording artist, a television personality, and a defensive end on the 1982 Southwest Texas State Bobcat football team that won the Division II National Championship—all achievements that would have been wild-eyed pipedreams when he was growing up in Bandera, if they crossed his mind at all. Back then, he was a dirt-poor kid who liked to play drums and play ball, with grades that bore next to no relation to his smarts and charm. But he was a born storyteller, a talent he honed on close listens to true lions like Guy Clark, John Prine, and Townes Van Zandt. Oblivious to the long odds, he took a guitar into the wider world, playing tiny dives in Texas and beyond, where he saw that the songs he sang about who he was and where he was from were the ones that connected with people. When he finally found success, putting classics like “Loving County,” “Sunset Boulevard,” “El Cerrito Place,” and his masterpiece, “My Hometown,” into the Texas Music canon, he committed to giving a hand up to other small-town kids with similarly seeming narrow horizons. Fulfilling that legacy is the mission of this foundation.

(For a shorter, much more enjoyable version of this bio, just hit play on “My Hometown.” Charlie put his whole self into the lyrics to that song.)

~John Spong, Texas Monthly