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Fromholz attributes his speedy recovery to 'an angel on my shoulder.'

"The generosity has been incredible," he said. "The love and well-wishers have been incredible. I don't have to go back to work right now. I'm able to take a little time off, which I need to have."

The support helps in a spiritual way as much as it does financially, he said. "It's hard to describe how good it makes you feel," he said. "The outpouring of love was incredible around the world. It was all so easy for so long. It came so naturally for me. And now I'm working back to a level of performance that satisfies me. I can't be impatient. The worst thing I can try to do is come back too soon. I've got time, thank God. I've got time."

Fromholz is eager to recover and is getting close, but he doubts he'll ever be the same. Part of him died that day, and he sometimes slips into third person when discussing his stroke. "It's kind of scary to see who comes back, to see the guy who comes back and starts playing," he said. "It ain't the same guy and that's a fact.

"It was a good life, and it still is, just a different life."

Texas has spawned tons of musicians, including some of the most brilliant in modern history -- Bob Wills, Buddy Holly, Freddie King, Willie Nelson, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Waylon Jennings, and so on. Nobody loves Texas more than Texans. The state has inspired more songs than probably any other in the union.

So it's no small feat to have penned what many people consider the best song ever written about the Lone Star State. "Texas Trilogy" is poetic, elegant, and dazzling in scope while remaining as simple as the Kopperl farmers who inspired Fromholz to write it in 1967. Kirk Dooley's Book of Texas Bests, published in 1988, named "Texas Trilogy" as the best song ever written about Texas, hardly breaking news to anyone who has heard the epic ballad.

The song starts with a haunting acoustic guitar in a minor key, quickly joined by Fromholz' baritone voice wrapping around words filled with alliterative insight: "Six o'clock silence of a new day beginning is heard in a small Texas town. ..."

Some fans are surprised to learn that Fromholz wrote the trilogy -- "Daybreak," "Trainride," and "Bosque County Romance" -- in one two-hour sitting. "I sang it that night at a club called The Drinking Gourd in 'Frisco on a Thursday night to a full house," he said. "When I finished singing, it was just total silence, and I thought, 'Oh my God, I blew it.' Then the room just erupted, and I thought, 'Oh, I got it right.' I'd never written anything like that. It was huge. It went on forever, and it still does. It's held up real well. It still means something."

Other songs have also come quickly to the troubadour -- some of them perhaps less cerebral. He penned "I Gave Her A Ring (She Gave Me The Finger)" onstage in Terlingua, making up the song on the spot in front of a live audience. After a little rewriting, in 2001 he recorded the tune, which received radio airplay and become another staple at his live shows.

Some songs take months or years to write. He's content to wait. Not once has he set out to knock off a commercial song or followed a format designed to meet anybody's demands other than his own. That tactic has spawned some intelligent, but not commercial, material. His biggest commercial success was "I'd Have To Be Crazy," recorded by Willie Nelson in 1976. The song reached the Number 2 spot on the country charts, and the album Sound In Your Mind went platinum. Nelson included the song on a subsequent greatest hits album, which also went platinum.

Fromholz' life, like his writing, evolved in a somewhat happenstance manner. He was born in Temple in 1945. His father traveled a lot and moved the family with him, but many of Fromholz' childhood memories revolved around his mother's hometown of Kopperl, in Bosque County, about an hour's drive south of Fort Worth. He attended Denton High School and the University of North Texas.

"You ever seen American Graffiti?" he asked. "That was Denton in 1962, and it was perfect. It was great to be there in those days."

At UNT he met fledgling songwriter Michael Murphey (who would go on to record a slew of brilliant songs such as "Geronimo's Cadillac" and "Wildfire"). "We were on the cold green bean circuit, the luncheons for all the Kiwanis Clubs and Lions Clubs and Rotary Clubs," Fromholz said.

A draft notice came in 1965; Fromholz signed up for the U.S. Navy and was stationed in San Francisco. There he was, a country-boy musician smack dab in the biggest hippie scene in the country. He spent his liberty time performing in clubs and coffeehouses -- buzz cut and all, he was drawn to the lifestyle. He left the Navy in 1968 with an honorable discharge after a Navy psychiatrist told him, "Fromholz, you could exist best on the fringe of society," he recalled.

He headed for the folk music scene in Denver and formed a duo with Dan McCrimmon. They called themselves Frummox, which was a nickname given to Fromholz -- a derivative of his name and a lummox, or a big oaf. Their first album, Here to There in 1969, contained some of Fromholz' best early works, including "Texas Trilogy" and "Man With the Big Hat." But the record label folded shortly after the album was produced, limiting its distribution.

The duo split in 1971, and Fromholz became an unlikely member of Stephen Stills' rock band Manassas, playing rhythm guitar and singing harmony. He lasted six months. In the past, Fromholz has blamed his short tenure on too much cocaine and rock-and-roll excess. "We did 25 cities in 50 days, we had private airplanes, big hotels, limousines, the whole experience, and it was all new to me," he said. NEXT »

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