Marcia Ball John X Reed Bobby Earl Smith Steve McDaniels David Cook

At first, the fire is hidden in the smoke. Twelve bell-bottom bluesy country songs on a new CD, produced for vinyl in 1972 by Atlantic Records legend Jerry Wexler, performed by progressive country pioneers Freda & the Firedogs for a debut that never came out. So what's all the hoo-hah about?

It's a question worth asking.

Austin's fabled music scene is built on a foundation of outlaw country twisted around psychedelic roots. Musical styles and recording techniques have changed vastly over the last 30 years, and Freda and the Firedogs bears the distinct stamp of the past. It's an almost breezy, country-tinged affair, hardly a harbinger of the rowdy times to come.

Then again, it's worth remembering what a hippie haven Austin was back when Marcia Ball, Bobby Earl Smith, John X Reed, Steve McDaniels, and David Cook packed the Split Rail on Sundays as Freda & the Firedogs. The One Knite was open, but not Soap Creek Saloon ... the Armadillo World Headquarters, but not the Opera House. Tequila was 35 cents a shot, the beer of choice was Lone Star or Shiner (not Bock), and punk was still a prison term. A favored bumper sticker of the times: "Long Hair and Longnecks -- Nowhere but Texas."

Marcia Ball is blunt about why it took three decades for the album's release.

"The contract stunk!" laughs Ball. "It was one of those old-fashioned, multi record deals. If we could have found someone to advise us, we'd have been in better shape."

Smith attributes the band's balking to the times, when anti-establishment interests were suspect. Without legal advice, the band had no feedback other than Wexler's word and good reputation. Ball sent the contract to a Memphis lawyer who didn't even read it.

"He said, 'Oh, it's Jerry Wexler,'" remembers Ball. "' Sign it.'"

Wexler's rep was good, especially in Austin: He signed both Doug Sahm and Willie Nelson. Hell, he signed Aretha Franklin and Led Zeppelin! Why shouldn't Freda & the Firedogs take a chance? Smith says a deciding factor was the too-much-too-soon syndrome.

"The band began in March 1972, and by August, we were recording," explains Smith. "Doug Sahm had said, 'Hey man, I know Jerry Wexler, and I can set you up with this deal, man.' And it happened so quickly. It seemed too easy, and we made it hard."

Two years ago, Wexler recalled the Firedogs fiasco to the Chronicle.

"There was paranoia running throughout the country, 'Be real careful, because those sharpies from New York are going to fuck you; they're going to suck your life's blood.' [The band] got to where they never would sign the contract. Never signed the contract ..."

Freda & the Firedogs did sign and eventually return the contract, but by then, the bloom was off the rose. "We'd exhausted his considerable Jewish forbearance and patience," Smith notes ruefully. The tapes were shelved in the Atlantic vaults.

What value might a record unreleased 30 years ago have today? Plenty. Aside from being a mini time capsule opened for cosmic delight, Freda & the Firedogs reveal themselves to be among the godparents of Austin's prodigious roots-music obsession.

"People focus on progressive country," admits Smith. "We'd play country, but we'd play blues, rock & roll, a song by Angela Strehli. It wasn't really country, it was roots music."

Carlyne Majer is past president of the National Association of Recording Arts & Sciences Texas Chapter. Back then, she and husband George Majewski ran Soap Creek Saloon. Majer also managed Ball's post-Freda career and signed her to Capitol Records in the late Seventies. She's amazed that "that form of music from an Austin group would be perceived by Jerry Wexler to have tremendous value. But they set a precedent for hip country music."

"In listening to the radio around here, you can hear what was in the air then," posits Ball several W.C. Handy Awards and Grammy nominations later. "You read about Austin music in the Seventies. The band was a big part of that, but there was nothing to hear. Once I suggested finding something to release, Bobby Earl ran with it."

"What a gentleman Wexler is!" Smith effuses. "I called him and introduced myself, saying I was with Freda & the Firedogs. 'Bobby Earl, I know who you are,' he said. He told me the master tapes burned up in a fire in the Atlantic vault years ago. I could hear tape boxes shuffling. He said he couldn't find his own personal copy, but could he call me back. Five minutes later, the phone rang and he said, 'I've got 'em. You want 'em? Let me make a call to Atlantic.' That was the extent of my negotiation."

Jerry Wexler did, however, let Bobby Earl Smith know -- amicably -- just what kind of faith he had in the band. "'You really fucked up by not signing the contract.'"

"I don't think we would have become the Byrds or Asleep at the Wheel," muses Ball. "Don't think we'd still be playing that music. The band ran its course. The album would have been a finished product to represent the band, and I regret we didn't have that then."

Smith feels the same way.

"I'm not one for looking backward. My life has been great. I've been married 37 years and have two wonderful boys and wouldn't trade that for anything. If we'd hit that pot of gold, I'd have been on the road, and it would have been a different story.

"But what a wonderful time that was."

Freda and the Firedogs band older, grayer but back

So who should we send to the U.N. to promote world peace?

How about Freda and the Firedogs, the Austin band who will play a couple of reunion concerts next weekend: a Saturday night tribute to Doug Sahm at the Paramount Theatre and a Sunday night show at the Broken Spoke.

In the early 1970s, Freda and the Firedogs managed to bring Austin’s hippies and good ol’ boys together with their music — no small feat.

Back in the day, these two groups weren’t exactly a match made in heaven. One bunch honored the Marlboro Man, while the other paid homage to the Zig-Zag man. One group favored long hair, while the other loved long hair — on girls. One enjoyed country music, the other side preferred Country Joe and the Fish.

Back then, if your band showed up on a black light poster, you didn’t play at the Spoke, the ancient honky-tonk on South Lamar Boulevard. Ernest Tubb? Sure. The 13th Floor Elevators? Take a hike.

Freda and the Firedogs brought harmony to the two disparate factions. The music brought together the flower children and the boot scooters and created, you got it, Willie Nelson.

“I always tell people that we integrated the Broken Spoke for longhairs,” said Bobby Earl Smith, who plays bass for the band.

It took Bobby Earl lots of work and time to get Freda and the Firedogs a gig at the Spoke. He says he pestered James White, the Spoke’s owner, and Joe Baland, who helped James build the place in the 1960s, for a year. “They were always very welcoming and very courteous, and they wouldn’t tell me no. But they wouldn’t tell me yes,” Bobby Earl recalled.

Then Bobby Earl got lucky. U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, who in 1973 was running for state Senate, was putting together a campaign rally at the Broken Spoke. He needed a band. Bobby Earl got the call. So Freda and the Firedogs played Doggett’s party.

It was a Monday night, when the Spoke was usually closed. Still, the joint was packed.

James White was impressed. “He said, ‘If a long-haired band can pull in 500 hippies on a Monday night, I’ll give ‘em a gig,’” Bobby Earl recalled.

White gave them more than a gig, actually. He started booking the band regularly.

The good old boys who frequented the Spoke ate it up, for a couple of reasons. “We weren’t a hippie band playing hippie music. We were a hippie band playing traditional country,” Marcia Ball, the band’s vocalist and keyboard player, explained. “And we played dance music. That was the key. As long as they could dance to it, it was OK.”

And James White got a kick out of observing his new customers. Instead of dancing backwards, country style, the hippies did a dance James labeled “the hippie hop.”

“They would always dance real fast, and it was kinda like a hoedown,” James recalled. “The hippies thought they had to jump up and down, and then they’d go around as fast as they could and then they went barefoot.”

There was one tense moment for Bobby Earl, however.

“The first time we played at the Spoke, we took a break outside, and we were relaxing a little bit,” said Bobby Earl, “relaxing” being code for smoking a fatty. “And here comes James White, and I thought I worked a year to get this job and now I’m going to lose it. But he never said a word.”

Next weekend will be the first time the entire band has played together in 36 years. But it shouldn’t be a problem. Everybody’s been practicing, to make sure they remember the songs. And some of the band members are still performing.

John X Reed, a respected Austin blues picker, plays “geezer hour at the Saxon (Pub),” Bobby Earl said. “I love geezer hour, you know. That’s doable.”

Steve McDaniels, the drummer, has a day job for an insurance company. David Cook, the pedal steel guitar player, teaches music in Florida. Bobby Earl, on bass, is a defense attorney trying to retire. “So if you’re going to commit a crime you better hurry up and do it, because I’m on my way out,” he said.

And Marcia Ball is still Marcia Ball, pounding the piano.

So what’s the average age of the group? “About 93,” Bobby Earl joked. “I told somebody, ‘Be careful when you come in. Don’t trip over the walkers and canes.’”

And don’t worry about some ol’ cowpoke in the audience belting a guy sporting a grey ponytail with his walker. Freda and the Firedogs brought detente to that misunderstanding decades ago.