Do you know the lyr-ics to our state song? Okay, I'll start with something a little easier: Do you even know the name of our state song? Some of you wiseacres might be thinking, "Why, of course I do, you dang Yankee. Get back to New York." Truth is, I'm from Andrews, where pump jacks outnumber people and the air "smells like money." I also know as well as any when to "get a rope." And while I'm sure I learned the state song at some point growing up, I never gave it much thought--if any--until 2008. That's the year I took a history class with Kent Finlay.

Now, I've enough horse sense not to try to sell anyone on my Texas bona tides; instead, I'll tell you a bit about Kent's. A native of Fife ("Just a rifle shot away from the geographical center of Texas"), Kent was a musician and historian. He got his first guitar during a Future Farmers of America trip to San Angelo in 1953, and from then on, hardly a day passed that he didn't strum a set of six strings or scribble some verse. He moved to San Marcos in 1959, and he would often frequent the famous guitar pulls in nearby Luckenbach. In 1974 he opened his own venue, Cheatham Street Warehouse, a weathered, ramshackle honkytonk that shook every time a train passed. Marcia Ball played on opening night, and soon after, Cheatham became a haven for songwriters. Kent nurtured the creative impulses of artists ranging from a young Stevie Vaughan (as he was billed then), Bruce Robison, James McMurtry, Randy Rogers, and Todd Snider to the most venerated of Cheatham Street's alums, George Strait and the Ace in the Hole Band, who cut their teeth on Cheatham's beer-stained stage every Tuesday ("Ladies free, nickel beer").

While Kent took a humble pride in the remarkable success of the King of Country, the cornerstone of Kent's legacy was the weekly Songwriters Circle he hosted on Wednesdays at Cheatham. Whether it was a road-hardened troubadour or a jittery nobody performing for the first time, Kent showered support on everyone who performed at his "songwriter's church." What set this circle apart from other barroom open mikes was that Kent didn't give a damn about guitar chops or vocal virtuosity--he cared about the song.

Kent's dedication to the craft earned him an important place in Texas music history. At some point, people started calling Kent the Godfather of Texas Songwriters. Despite his modest dismissal of the title, the epithet stuck.

I was a sophomore at Texas State University when I saw Kent's "History of Country Music" in the course catalog. Intrigued, I enrolled. The curriculum was a casserole of historical lectures, well-spun stories, and old vinyl records played on a turntable for a small crowd of twenty or so students. My favorite part of class was when Kent (he was never Professor Finlay to us) would start talking about a piece of music and impulsively break...