Texas, USA – 2022

I choose to be long of parody, as to exaggerate helps to communicate. My default position is to be bold in any narrative. In this photograph I wanted to fully em- brace the vibe of a honky-tonk bar in Texas, peopled by hard working, hard living cowboys whom David Allen Coe made pivotal to his song writing. These men love a beer, a smoke and a honky-tonk girl, who brings out the masculinity that defines them.

John Steinbeck – the American literary giant – wrote “I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion.”

I get it, and cowboy culture is core to that religion. To try to immerse oneself in Texan culture and not spend time with true cowboys is akin to holidaying in Italy and eating at Burger King rather than the local trattoria. The cowboys in this image all play pool, all drink beer, all smoke, all love girls and all have manners. What you see, is what you get.

But I needed a strong lead and Roxanna Redfoot does this so well. She is comfortable with playing bad ass, and she can do it with no real effort, which is why we so often cast her. She is not in character – she is just herself.

Sometimes one person can kill an image, but that evening in Bandera, in the Hill Country of Texas, everyone nailed it. The saloon is the Arkey Blue’s Silver Dollar, where so many legendary country music singers have passed by and sang. By the bar downstairs, there is an open door and that gave me the chance to play with a little ambient light.