About

Please note that this page is still a work-in-progress!

RCMontgomery.net is the personal weblog of writer and folklore collector R. Connor Montgomery.  Herein may be found ramblings and ruminations regarding music, history, music history, most anything related to Texas and her culture and ways-of-life, and surely a great many more things that have yet to be cogitated.

About the Author…

Yours truly.

As you might infer based upon the title of this website (if not the preceding paragraph), I am the eponymous R.C. Montgomery.  The initials stand for Robert Connor, but in informal settings I usually go by my middle name to avoid confusion with the movie star.  Among the handful of positive epithets that I feel I can rightly claim, the one that seems most apt is “writer,” an occupation in which I do not claim any particular merit, but on which I focus most of my ambitions nevertheless (for I lack much marketable skill in most others).  Some others that I might apply to myself would include—in no particular order—song collector and autodidactic folklorist, amateur historian, music lover and middling guitar picker, dyed-in-the-wool Texan regionalist traditionalist, hopeless nostalgic, aspiring drugstore cowboy, and self-described “maverick” (often against my own best interest).  Now, I hope all that gratuitous self-aggrandization doesn’t put me across as having a big head, because I sincerely don’t believe that to be the case (it’s really only a 7 3/8).

If you’ve come here to read my life’s story, well, what follows is all I’m telling.  I was born some years ago just a little ways outside of Fort Worth, Texas, and I’ve lived my life since then in Tarrant County.  As we Texans tend to do, I grew up with a prideful nature with regards to my heritage and homeland, and most of my life has been spent with my head stuck in a past well before my own time.  My earliest roots in the great state of Texas can be traced back through some seven generations.  All the way in 1835, my second cousin, the noted Texas Ranger Ben McCulloch, accompanied David Crockett to fight in the revolution.  About a decade later, after the war was won, my direct ancestors arrived in the Republic of Texas as founding settlers of the Free State of Van Zandt County. From there, they ventured further westward, whence they sired such great Texans as my first cousin, thrice removed, Ernest Tubb (whom I name-drop only out of pride and admiration).  Looking back on all that history behind me has instilled deep in my own heart a love as big as the Lone Star State for my home place and all that makes her great.  In this age of globalization in which we live, as popular culture becomes ever more homogenous, so many regional traditions and ways-of-life seem to be increasingly endangered.  A brush with childhood sickliness taught me the importance of pursuing my own ambitions in my short time on the mortal coil rather than some way of life foist upon me by one who thinks he knows better (even if he very well may).  I have made it my goal in life to conserve the “old ways” of the Texans who preceded me in any small way that I can, and to “be” one of them myself, no matter how wrong, anachronistic, or impossible that may be.

About the Website…

RCMontgomery.net first went live in the wee hours of September 26, 2019.  Its creator, R. Connor Montgomery, has previously (and presently) served as the webmaster of Old Time Blues—the internet’s finest repository of 78 RPM records (if I do say so myself)—since 2015.

This website uses WordPress with the Twenty Eleven theme; the background image comes from circa 1920s postcard of Fredericksburg, Texas, in author’s collection.  Logo typeface is “Morphine” font by Billy Argel, licensed free for personal use (for which this site, as a personal blog involving no monetary gain or exchange whatsoever, should qualify).  Site logo and favicon was created with Monogram Frames free online monogram maker, licensed free for personal use with attribution.