JOHN GILLIAM – President
John Gilliam is “Missoula Slim,” a songwriter-singer from San Marcos, Texas. John got his moniker from Kent Finlay, “the Godfather of Texas songwriters,” at Cheatham Street Warehouse in 2004. Missoula has been writing and performing for the last 20+ years, mostly in and around Montana, Washington and Texas.
Missoula Slim writes in a variety of styles, ranging from folk and country to jazz and alternative rock. Many of his songs contain bits of his offbeat wit and wisdom. He is currently performing in and around San Marcos and Austin, and serves as past president of the Austin Songwriters Group, and as an officer and board member for the Cheatham Street Music Foundation.
John is also an attorney in San Marcos. He has a general solo practice, focusing on Wills, Trusts, Estate Planning and Probate. He also provides advice and counsel in the areas of Entertainment Law and ERISA benefits denial case.
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JASON WOOLERY – Secretary
Jason Woolery was born in Canyon, TX and raised (mostly) in Amarillo. He attended college in Dallas and graduate school in San Marcos, where he has (mostly) lived ever since. He’s an ordained minister whose career is in the field of public education. He began as a middle school teacher and coach, and has been a lecturer in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at Texas State University since 2011.
In addition to his academic pursuits, Jason has moonlighted as an actor—his resume includes stage, film, and voiceover credits—and a singer-songwriter since he was in high school. He’s never considered himself good enough at either art form to attempt to pursue them as a vocation, but he’s been lucky enough to make a lot of friends in both industries who are, and who do.
Since 2012, Jason has been Director of Young Songwriters’ Workshop. YSW is an annual summer day-camp that gives young singer-songwriters ages 10-18 the opportunity to spend 4 days workshopping original material with a variety of working Texas musicians, then to perform their material live and in concert at the end of the week. Jason has been a CSMF Board Member since 2016, and has been CSMF Secretary since 2019.
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GARY HICKINBOTHAM – Director/Sound Engineer
During his stint as chief engineer the Fire Station Gary recorded many artists of national stature and worked with many producers and engineers from major labels. One of the recordings he made, the Texas Tornados, won a Grammy. Two other albums, one by Doug Sahm and one by Tish Hinojosa (which Gary co-produced), each won Indies and much critical acclaim. Gary has worked with Townes Van Zandt, Jerry Lee Lewis, John Hiatt, J.D. Souther, Gary P. Nunn, Jerry Jeff Walker and many others.
When Texas State University acquired the Fire Station for its Sound Recording Technology program, Gary’s friend Bobby Arnold from Willie Nelson’s Perdenales Recording Studio became the chief engineer. Gary left the Fire Station to work as a free-lance engineer in Austin with his colleagues Chet Himes, Bill Johnson and mastering engineer Jerry Tubb. During this time he worked on several project studios in Austin and also helped with recording and mixing live radio broadcasts for KGSR. He also made multi-track recordings for the Austin City Limits tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughn. In addition, outside the musical arena, he was a co-designer and manufacturer of an electro-pnuematic voice-controlled physical therapy apparatus for paraplegic and stroke rehabilitation. This prototype machine is still used for spinal cord regeneration research at Southwestern Medical College in Dallas. Other commercial versions of the machine are in hospitals, therapy clinics and professional sports facilities throughout the United States and several other countries around the world. While working on this project he also worked on some of the first live streaming multimedia webcasts with Broadcast.com, at the time Mark Cuban’s ground-breaking web enterprise.
Now a world-class engineer, coming full circle, he finds himself at the Fire Station, where he began his professional recording career, once again.
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STERLING FINLAY – Director/Performer
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DALLAS BURROW – Director/Performer/Venue Owner
A Texas-born Americana artist rooted in the tradition of his home state’s songwriting heroes, Dallas Burrow built a career on both sides of the Atlantic with his 2019 debut, Southern Wind. Recorded in Nashville, the album reached Number 25 on the UK Americana Chart and Number 4 on the US Alt-Country chart, paving the way for a string of cross-country shows alongside fellow road warriors like Charley Crockett.
For Burrow — a lifelong explorer who’d spent his 20s on the move, chasing his muse across most of America and Europe while rubbing shoulders with luminaries like Bob Dylan and Dr. John — being so far away from home felt natural. Even so, he began missing the stability of his new life back in Texas, where he’d built a family and gotten sober. His second album, 2021’s Dallas Burrow, marks both a symbolic and literal homecoming for the songwriter, who recorded the new material with modern-day legend Bruce Robison in the rural Texas countryside. It’s a record about embracing maturity and the responsibilities of family life, sung by Burrow in a voice that bears both the road-worn weariness of a lifelong highwayman and the fierce fire of a man reborn.
Dallas, in addition to being a husband, father of a five year old son, and a singer/songwriter, also owns and operates The Redbird Listening Room, with the help of his family, a music venue in New Braunfels, TX where the focus is on singer/songwriters performing their original material in an intimate setting.
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DOUG MONTGOMERY – Director/Legal
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MICHAEL HOWARD – Treasurer
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JAMES WEBER – Director/Sound Engineer/Radio Show Producer
James has been involved in music since age 7 taking his first guitar lessons from a nun while attending middle school in Milwaukee, WI. After attending college at Milwaukee Area Technical College & Marquette University, James spent 18 years working in the corporate sector as a Senior Engineer. Exiting the corporate sector, James turned his attention to solo performing and recording in and around Milwaukee and Austin TX. James relocated to Lockhart, TX in 2007 opening a private recording studio and providing live sound reinforcement for a number of Texas based performers and bands. His live sound endeavors allowed James to tour doing both dedicated band sound as well as freelance festival and event sound.
In 2020 James was hired by the Cheatham Street Music Foundation to run live sound for the weekly Kent Finlay’s Songwriters Circle. Shortly after, James was elected to the Board of Directors to provide live sound, social media development and consultation.
Today, James continues to run sound for the Kent Finlay’s Songwriters Circle at the Cheatham Street Warehouse in San Marcos, TX as well as running sound as a staff Sound Engineer & Artist Relations at The Redbird Listening Room in New Braunfels, TX.
James engineers & produces a radio show featuring recordings from the Kent Finlay’s Songwriters Circle. The radio show titled “Live From Cheatham Street – Kent Finlay’s Songwriters Circle” airs twice a week on KZSM 104.1 and KZSM.org. Select episodes are also available on iHeart Radio as podcasts.
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ROBERT CLINE Jr -Director/Performer
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SAM DOWNING – Youth Director/Performer
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