A Songwriter’s Calling

Linda Lowe remembers the sound of the soft kerplunk as records dropped on her turntable. The hiss when the needle hit vinyl. 

Sandie Shaw, Petula Clark, The Shangri-Las. Elvis Presley. He crooned to her nightly in the 1960s, as she faded into sleep, his silky voice running through her like a cool, summer breeze.

“Just think about the treasure trove of music that was playing back then,” exudes poet and singer-songwriter Linda, 74, who babysat for some DJs’ children during her junior high years in San Antonio. The gig was good. She was paid in 45 rpms. 

“You want to know what likely got me hooked into music? Most likely, that. Having a record player and having 45s of all the current music,” she muses.

Today, the Arkansas native, who’s released a bevy of her original tunes under her Rollin’ Records label, celebrates a record of a different kind: 35 years of West University’s Writers in the Round (WITR), a community-sponsored, nonprofit concert series she founded in 1990 to bring together some of the nation’s top songwriters in a cozy, smoke-free, casual setting, free of alcohol. A vice “that’s been the takedown of too many musicians,” Linda opines. 

Michelle’s entire life has been music. She and mom Linda wrote the song Maybe My Baby together when Michelle was 3.

The concert series performs at Rice Village’s Main Street Theater, its stage as comfy as a living room.  

Musicians play and swap stories. Share gut-busting yarns. They belt out poignant slice-of-life ballads and toe-tap to fun, catchy tunes, concertgoers often singing along. A buoyant bond between artist and audience. Layers of human experience oozing from the stage. 

Linda doesn’t just sit back and watch. She has performed with WITR plenty, her repertoire a mix of folk, pop, jazz, and blues. “I write about things that touch my life, things that have meaning for me and hopefully the audience,” says the songbird whose early career in the 1980s had her opening for the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Jesse Colin Young, Donovan, and Loudon Wainwright III. 

These days, she especially loves jamming with WITR’s offshoot, Women in the Round, a gang of gal pals – some of whom are WITR board members – who join her on the road, singing and picking their hearts out. 

“We’re soulmates. All my friends in Women in The Round help me run Writers in the Round,” explains Linda. “We try to do one or two concerts a year if we can and love bringing the new young performers up on stage to showcase them. We’re like The Ya-Ya Sisterhood for all the up-and-coming female songwriters.”

Writers in the Round instructors and students play together at their former location on Edloe. Standing, from left: Linda Lowe and student Nick Distefano; seated, from left: teachers Michelle Caillouet, Fernando Cervantes, and Judi Messina, and student parent Sandra McConaty. (Photo: hartphoto.com)

The “up-and-coming” of which she speaks represents an even broader WITR initiative: mentoring a new generation of musicians. The organization has been an incubator for children and adults for nearly 30 years, teaching them to play instruments, sing, and write songs. Linda put friends to work, subsidizing their musical careers as instructors for the program, teaching guitar, bass, ukulele, drums, voice, violin, fiddle, composition, and music theory. 

Their longtime teaching hub on Edloe has been home to a troupe of modern-day troubadours, spun into the world.

This month, the organization’s teaching initiative moves to the West University Place Recreation Center, with Linda’s daughter Michelle Caillouet, 39, taking over as WITR’s artistic director. “It’s time for the next generation of Writers in the Round,” says Linda, who isn’t exactly retiring. She plans to stay busy with Women in the Round, write an autobiography, and work on new albums. 

Rice professor Al Danto and Mia Vellano enjoy a sing-along with others. (Photo: hartphoto.com)

Michelle, with a multi-dimensional background in jazz, ballet, tap, modern dance, musical theater, drama, and stage, is more than ready for the role. She will be coordinating a new generation of concerts.

Music has been Michelle’s soundtrack to life. She remembers sitting down at her Fisher Price table at age 3, tiny guitar in hand, writing the song Maybe My Baby with her mom. Linda sings the song on her Little by Little album. Its refrain:

Maybe my baby

will come back to me

And maybe my baby

will go crazy

over me again

“I’m so proud of my mom for all she’s accomplished with Writers in the Round,” she says, recalling a revolving door of musicians at her childhood home. Makes sense. Her dad Karl Caillouet, now retired, was a noted sound engineer and producer. It’s how he met his betrothed. Linda went to him to record a demo. He had a recording studio behind their home in The Heights, before moving it to Montrose, adjacent to the iconic folk and acoustic venue, Anderson Fair. 

Michelle was lulled to sleep by Trout Fishing in America, long before the duo’s days as Grammy-nominated artists. Violinist Malcolm Smith and renaissance harpist Martha Gay of the band Cantiga serenaded her, crib side.

“Knowing people like Townes Van Zandt, Trout Fishing in America, Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith, Lucinda Williams… I could go on and on,” says Michelle. “To me, as a little kid, I didn’t know anything about them at all, other than they were just my parents’ friends.”

Houston singer-songwriter Shake Russell has been along for WITR’s entire ride, performing in more Linda-inspired concerts than he can count. “A favorite place to play,” says the artist, known for his unique style of folk-rock. “Her concert series and musical events throughout the years have been a fantastic way for musicians to find and connect with new audiences. The way she educates the next generation of young people is such a great thing. They are taught gently, by fine teachers.”

Singer-songwriters Mary Shannon McConaty (standing) and Mia Vellano credit WITR with teaching them songwriting skills. (Photo: hartphoto.com)

Bellaire resident Mary Shannon McConaty, 22, is one of those, taught gently.

“Linda is really supportive and lets you learn the way that feels the most comfortable to you,” Mary Shannon says. The budding singer-songwriter, a psychology student at the University of Houston who aspires to become a paramedic, plays guitar and piano. She has toured with Women in the Round. Linda has put on several showcases for her band, Indigo Road, that she performs in with fellow WITR students, Jordan Maat, Kayla Pendleton and Riley Child. 

She’s accumulated over five million streams across music platforms. Her song Train Tracks has amassed more than three million streams alone. “I appreciate that Linda has created an environment where people like me can perform and not be surrounded by alcohol and people who are drunk,” stresses the songwriter. 

Mary Shannon now teaches guitar and piano with WITR and leads its Jam Band concerts where students – current and former – come together certain Saturdays to, well, jam.

WITR teacher Fernando Cervantes, center, joins fellow instructor Judi Messina and others in a jam session. (Photo: hartphoto.com)

Linda takes students to unique places to get their creative juices flowing, like the Southside Place Municipal Court building, says Mia Vellano, 17, a junior at Xavier Academy. 

“I did a summer program at Writers in the Round at 5 years old,” says the songwriter who plays guitar and piano. “We went to the courthouse, and she passed out our notebooks and we wrote songs there. She loves to unlock kids’ imaginations and creativity that way.” 

Mia teaches at WITR in her spare time. She does solo gigs and performs with various groups, like Women in the Round, Jam Band and The Trio, composed of fellow WITR students, Gabriella Rose and Lee Monistere. The prolific songwriter estimates she’s crafted 1,000 songs. “My notebooks of songs won’t fit under my bed anymore.”

Linda was born a poet. She’s been putting thoughts to paper since a young child in Hot Springs, Arkansas. For her, songwriting is poetry, set to music. Family stories supported a fertile imagination. Stories about her grandfather as sheriff of Garland County. How he busted up moonshine stills and chased Bonnie and Clyde down back roads. 

In the early 1970s, she became a national time buyer for Jimmy Dean, who co-owned an advertising company in Little Rock, Arkansas, following his prime as a country singer. (Yes, he of Jimmy Dean’s Premium Pork Sausage.) He knew of her poetic prowess. He’d read her musings. One day, a conversation ensued about just what exactly was going on in her head:

Jimmy, I’m starting to hear melodies in my head, to go with my words.

Well now, you’ve got the curse. You’re not just a poet, you’re a songwriter.

He instructed Linda to learn guitar.

Shake Russell has been a part of Writers in the Round since the get-go, performing with a long list of musicians at all sorts of outings, including concerts at Rice Village’s Main Street Theater. Pictured, from left: musicians William vonReichbauer, Michael Hearne, Shake Russell, Linda Lowe, and student and WITR guitar teacher Gabriella Rose pose at Main Street Theater.

She took out a loan, bought a guitar, and taught herself to play. Soon, she quit Jimmy Dean’s employ and was playing professionally. She and Arkansas friend Mary Gwin started a duo, packing them in at Little Rock clubs. “We looked like little baby Camelots,” she said of their long flowerchild dresses.

Eventually, she made it to Houston, falling into the scene at Anderson Fair, a bastion for artists, poets, and songwriters who honed their skills on stage before audiences of fellow performers. 

“She was becoming acquainted with the Anderson Fair crowd the same time as I was,” says Houston musician and audio engineer Rock Romano, aka Dr. Rockit. “I was friends with Lyle Lovett and people before him, like Eric Taylor and Lucinda Williams. Linda was just one of the gang. 

“She has a very musical soul, if you will, and she can spot talent,” he continues. “I’ve had hundreds of people in my studio, more like thousands, and a lot of sessions have been with her students over the years.” Rock and Linda co-produced the albums, West U Dreams and Southside Rocks, with songs co-written by Linda and students. Bellaire Bops will be released next year. 

“Linda herself is an amazing talent,” says WITR board president Aura Lee Emsweller who performs with Women in the Round. She toured with her high-energy, vocal and comedy band Wildwood in the ’70s.

WITR creator Linda Lowe has been writing poems since a young child, a talent that led to songwriting and many albums. Here, she graces the cover of her album Little by Little.

“She’s totally incapable of any kind of pretense or artifice. It’s ‘what you see is what you get’ and that’s so refreshing,” Emsweller says. “Her lyrics, her guitar playing, her delivery is powerful. World-class performers and writers took note. They understood the quality of what she was doing and respected her and wanted to hang around her, on stage and off. And they trusted her to put these concerts together. That’s how Writers in the Round came to be. From Linda’s magic and hard work!”

David Amram, 94 – the “Einstein of Music,” Linda says – has composed over 100 orchestral and chamber works, written operas and scores for theater and film, and has collaborated with such notables as Dizzy Gillespie, Leonard Bernstein, and Jack Kerouac. The list of musicians he admires is long. On it is Linda Lowe.

He stumbled upon Linda and her violinist Malcolm Smith at the Kerrville Folk Festival in the early 1980s. “I came up on the campgrounds and I heard this wonderful singer. I found out later that she’d been called ‘The Lyric Lady’ and one of her friends, Robert Palmer, who wound up being a music critic for the New York Times, told me she was the most magical, enchanting, musical person that he’d ever encountered. I see why he said that.”

“He took us on the ‘Amram train,’” quips Linda. “He gathered us up after finding us at that Kerrville campground, and we played with him on stage.” Linda went on to win the festival’s New Folk Songwriting Contest in 1984.

Legendary musician Townes Van Zandt was like a brother to Linda. He performed in a “magical” 1994 WITR concert with singer-songwriter and classical guitarist, David Broza, a connection that continued posthumously with Broza putting several of Van Zandt’s poems to song in his album Night Dawn: The Unpublished Poetry of Townes Van Zandt.

“She’s not only a terrific singer, songwriter, and composer, but skipped the traditional musician path for this wonderful idea of creating a music school that is open to anybody and everybody to learn how to be a better musician, and a better thinking person,” Amram continues. “And the concerts she’s done, well, what can I say? They’re joyful!”

Linda’s ability to connect musicians to each other is her superpower, say those who know her best.

Amram recalls a WITR concert in 1994, where he joined iconic singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt (the “Bob Dylan of Texas,” says Linda) and Israeli songwriter and classical guitarist David Broza. Broza and Van Zandt were meeting for the first time, thanks to a determined Linda. 

The night was magical, he says. Broza and Van Zandt had instant connection. 

Townes Van Zandt was something of a cult figure, known best for his song Pancho and Lefty, which was recorded as a duet with Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard. Emmylou Harris sang a version as well. But the master lyricist had a troubled soul, his dark folk ballads at times mirroring his own life, explains Linda, who thought of him as a brother. The lifelong alcoholic died in 1997, three years after that WITR performance. 

Upon his death, Van Zandt bequeathed unreleased poems to Broza. The result was Broza’s album Night Dawn: The Unpublished Poetry of Townes Van Zandt, with 11 songs penned by Van Zandt. Linda was the conduit that made that post-humous collaboration possible, say friends. 

“Townes is a perfect example of why I do what I do,” says Linda. “I asked him once, ‘Do you think if you could have just played places like theaters and more civilized venues that you would have skipped that whole alcohol thing?’ I know what those dives are like. Club owners would sometimes be so drunk they couldn’t count the money and settle up at the end of the night.”

Linda and Broza connect on a deep level as songwriters, a friendship that began decades ago.

West University resident Al Danto has great respect for Linda and her calling. “I believe in her cause so much that I donate to it,” says the Rice University professor, 63. A few years back, he was on the brink of death, due to “a crazy culmination” of serious health issues that left him on a heart-lung machine for several days. 

Semi-comatose, his eyes fluttered when the music therapist came around, singing and strumming Hotel California by the Eagles, his wife later informed him. Music brought him back to the world. 

Once out of the woods, he vowed: I’m going to learn to play the guitar and sing.

“That was a little more than two years ago, and I’ve taken a weekly lesson ever since,” says Al, who plays with WITR group, Fernando & The Whensdays, with instructor Fernando Cervantes leading. They have performed at Evelyn’s Park, among other places. “I’m filling a bucket list kind of thing.”

He jokes that his wife, perhaps, wouldn’t have been keen on him learning to play Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door. But he can strum a pretty solid Hotel California, his let’s-get-out-of-this-hospital ballad.

“I didn’t think I had any kind of natural musical ability. But through Linda and her instructors, I found it’s not about that,” explains Al. “It certainly helps, but it’s like any other skill set. In time, you learn how to do it, and it becomes more and more natural.”

Linda loves hearing that.

Singer-songwriter Mary Shannon McConaty hones her craft at Writers in the Round, a safe, creative incubator that's been spinning out musical talent in the community for 35 years. (Photo: hartphoto.com)

“It’s all about anybody and everybody celebrating the joy of music,” says the songwriter. “You can’t get that soulful joy anywhere else. A song brings back more than a memory. A song brings you back to the space that you’re in when you’re in that memory. It’s the magic stuff in our lives.”

Linda's Legacy

Linda Lowe’s Writers in the Round concert series is an important part of the history of the vibrant folk scene that put its stamp on Houston, says archivist and special collections librarian Norie Guthrie of Rice University’s Woodson Research Center.

Guthrie is archiving all manner of materials – photographs, flyers, business records, a whole host of memorabilia – from WITR’s 35-year presence on the music scene. It’s being archived in a collection called “Linda Lowe and the Writers in the Round Concert Series,” part of an overall “Houston Folk Music” archive at Fondren Library. 

“Linda’s story is interesting because she was creating something new and what she did was really notable,” says Guthrie. “Organizing musician friends of hers, coming together in a different kind of venue, providing work for her musician friends…this was something different.” 

Houston was home to a dynamic folk scene, including Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Don Sanders, Shake Russell, Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen, and many others, she says.

“It was really such a vibrant scene that started in earnest in the 1960s and went on through the 1980s with Linda booking a lot of the people that she worked with during the 1970s. It’s the story of how folk music didn’t die, and these people didn’t just disappear. They kept thriving and going. Linda is a big part of that.”

For more information about Writers in the Round and its 2025 concert series, and WITR’s release party for Shake Russell’s new album, Gold to Me, visit www.witr.org.