Check out this feature from the Spring 2005 Texas Music Magazine:

Cheatham Street Warehouse --by Richard Skanse

For 30-plus years, Kent Finlay's humble "art gallery for Texas music" in San Marcos has served as a home and hang-out for song lovers both onstage and off -- and as a launching pad for some of the state's biggest stars.

Prohibition and its draconian federal enforcers were no match for the unstoppable force of Homer Cheatham's vision. But the Baptists? Well, that was another matter entirely.

Homer, you see, was hell-bent on opening his own Texas honky-tonk, and he knew good and well that the people's love of music and beer would outlive the tee-totaling folly that was Prohibition. And sure enough, as soon as his beloved beer and music joint, Cheatham Street Warehouse, and ready for its grand unveiling, Prohibition was repealed. But alas, there would be no imbibing -- in beer or song -- at Cheatham Street, because even while the rest of country went gleefully "wet," the strait-laced, predominantly Baptist town of San Marcos stayed bone dry...all the way up until Homer's death in 1972.

"He never lived to see his dream come true," says Kent Finlay, sitting in Cheatham Street Warehouse today, talking over the sweet sound of acoustic string band the Sidehill Gougers (featuring harmonies on Townes Van Zandt's "If I Needed You" during a sound check. But Finlay can't make it through the sad tale of Homer Cheatham without a sly grin on his face, because not a lick of it is true.

"That's all made up!" he finishes with a flourish. "People just kept adding to the story over the years. We've always had a lot of fun with it."

Nothing holds a storied old building like Cheatham Street Warehouse together quite like a tall tale or two , but this charmingly ramshackle tim and wood "joint" -- which in fact seems held together just as much by the plentiful cobwebs in the corners, all likely spun during the Ford Administration -- has spawned more than enough real legends to make poor Homer seem superfluous. When Finlay opened the downtown San Marcos music hall in 1974, it didn't take long before the biggest names on the burgeoning Austin music scene -- from Willie Nelson to Jerry Jeff Walker to Asleep at the Wheel to Doug Sahm to Marcia Ball -- were all frequenting the stage of the converted warehouse, oblivious to the occasional rumbling thunder of trains passing by just a yard or two away outside. That same stage is where a local country band called Ace in the Hole debuted a new lead singer by the name of George Strait one night in 1975, and where they played for years until Strait became a superstar. It's where another rising star, Stevie Ray Vaughan, struggled to build up a crowd with weekly shows while recording his debut album, Texas Flood. "We couldn't get anyone to come!" marvels Finlay, though he notes that Vaughan's frequent opening act at Cheatham, pre-teen prodigies Charlie and Will Sexton, seemed to go over well with the college girls. And in 1987, two other "kids" -- Todd Snider and Terri Hendrix, around 21 and 19, respectively -- joined the weekly songwriter circle around a wood-burning stove in the middle of the room and effectively began their music careers right before Finlay's eyes...just as Rand Rogers would 13 years later, and doubtless many more still to come.

"For all that Kent's put into the music business for 30 years and for all the great writers that have gone through Cheatham, that place should be heralded as bigger and better than even Gruene Hall," says Rogers, currently in talks with major labels in Nashville only a few short years after Finlay encouraged him to form his own band -- which recorded Live at Cheatham Street Warehouse a mere three months later. "I really cut my teeth there, man."

"From day one, our statement of purpose has always been the preservation and perpetuation of Texas music, and especially the development of new artists," Finlay says proudly. "I think songwriting is one of our most important arts, and I listen to everybody at every songwriter night. I think that's the least I can do, and I want to do that. I always tell people that our songwriter night is not an audition to get to play other nights here; to me, songwriter night is the most important night of the week."

And Finlay, a veteran songwriter himself, isn't kidding around. "Kent treats everyone the same, whether you're a beginner or not, which really levels the playing field," says Hendrix, who, like many other aspiring artists before and since, parlayed Finlay's early support, constructive criticism and advice ("Get hungry!") into a thriving career. "He always makes sure that the focus is on the songs and the songwriters -- and not selling alcohol or having a party. I mean, if you talk during songwriter night while someone's playing, Kent's going to kick you out! And it doesn't matter who you are or how deep your pockets are, either."

Finlay's desire to imbue his honky-tonk with a listening-room ambience (songwriter Jackson Parton aptly likens Cheatham to "a strange, huge living room that happens to serve beer, where everyone is friendly and everyone knows each other") stemmed from the many nights he spent listening to music at Kenneth Threadgill's tiny (pre-restaurant) establishment in Austin. "Threadgill's was a really neat place, and it had a lot to do with my thinking, because it was all about music," he recalls. "It was such a tiny room -- maybe 12 feet by 20 feet -- but there'd be 50 or 60 of us in there, hippies and rednecks mixed together, listening to Kenneth Threadgill."

The Austin scene was still gathering steam when Finlay had the notion to open his own venue half an hour south in San Marcos, where the McCullough County native had attended college at Southwest Texas State University. "Since I'm a musician myself, I joked at the time, but it was true -- 'I got a gig here that I can't get fired from!" He says. Along with Threadgill's, Finlay also cites Luckenbach -- and Luckenbach "founder" Hondo Crouch -- as key inspirations. "I saw the same beauty in this building as I saw in Luckenbach, and Luckenbach's the classiest town I know," he says. "Hondo's all over Cheatham Street.""

"one of the things that I know always drove Kent," observes Snider,"was that as much as he liked Kris Kristofferson and Billy Joe Shaver, I think he looked up to Hondo even more. I think he just always say himself as this voice in the wilderness that was gonna build something that people came to, as opposed to build something and take it to where people were."

Finlay steered Cheatham Street all through the '70s and up until the end of the '80s, when he sold it in order to spend more time on his writing and with his three children, Jenni (now 26), Sterling (24) and HalleyAnna (18). While Cheatham continued on as a Tejano club, Kent, Jenni, and Sterling played the festival circuit as a family band. But when he heard that Cheatham had stopped booking live music in favor of a DJ, Finlay knew it was time to finally buy it again and get it back on track. The grand re-opening was the last night of 1999, with the marquee reading "Under Old Management."

The parking lot had been paved and the stove removed during his absence, and Finlay has since moved the songwriter night from Tuesdays to Wednesdays, but everything else at Cheatham Street Warehouse is the same as it ever was. Only cooler, notes Snider, who's been a close Finlay family friend and Cheatham regular since his songwriter night debut 18 years ago.

"The kids that are singing there now....when I go back, I get knocked out," says Snider. "When I was 20, I wanted there to be a bunch of 20-year-olds like that that wanted to sit around and sing, but there really wasn't. I don't think we were as hip or serious back then; it didn't feel like a scene -- it felt like 10 knuckleheads. Now I go back and it's like ,'Goddamn, you even have good-looking girls at this shit!"

But of course it's not the "scene" that brings veterans like Snider and Hendrix and so many more back to Cheatham again and again. It's the almost church-like reverence for songwriting shared by all who gather beneath the building's low, low ceiling, and the incomparably warm acoustics of the room, once described by Doug Sahm as akin to the sound of an old fiddle. And above all, it's the spirit and camaraderie of the place. "Every time I go back there, it still feels like home," says Hendrix. "I still feel that same welcoming embrace."

It's a feeling Finlay, now 66, can certainly relate to himself. When he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a bone marrow cancer, a couple of years ago, a legion of familiar faces rallied to his support, with benefit shows held not only at Cheatham Street but also at Threadgill's in Austin and as far away as Nashville (where Snider now lives). "A disease like that kind of really knocks you down, and everybody coming together like that...it sure does bring you back up," says Finlay, who's now in remission.

"That benefit was the coolest thing I've ever seen here," enthuses Finlay's youngest daughter, HalleyAnna -- who works behind the bar when she's not attending college classes or playing her own gigs at Cheatham. "It was awesome to see all those people -- Todd and Slaid Cleaves and Terri Hendrix and everybody else from old times -- hang out and play together again.

"This," she continues with a wide grin, "is probably the best upbringing that anybody interested in Texas music could ever have."