DALLAS — The great Paul Simon once wrote a song titled “Old Friends,” which contains the line: “How terribly strange to be 70.” Well, today is Simon’s birthday, and he is now 81. (That’s one year older than Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, whose birthday is also today.)
Simon and Jones have more than a birthday in common. Turns out they both live in Texas. Simon, who grew up in Queens, New York, and his Dallas-born wife, singer Edie Brickell — who grew up in Oak Cliff and graduated from Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts — now have a home in Wimberley, near Austin in the Texas Hill Country.
“I wanted to have a closer proximity to the band,” Brickell, who’s mainly lived in the Northeast since marrying Simon in 1992, told the Austin American-Statesman. “So we got a place down in Wimberley that has a big jam barn. It’s a dream that we’ve had since we were kids, and it’s finally come to pass. We’re having so much fun playing there.”
Simon even made an appearance on a Wimberley radio station, KWVH-FM, in June and got written up with a glowing article in the local newspaper, The Wimberley View.
As reporter Colton McWilliams wrote in The View: The 16-time “Grammy Award winning musician, two-time inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Wimberley Valley resident Paul Simon made a surprise guest appearance in what amounted to the interview of a lifetime. Locals gathered around the ‘fishbowl’ studio at the radio station just off the Wimberley Square just to get a glimpse of the famous musician in person.”
During the three-hour interview, Simon told the hosts of “Toddy and the Pooch Unleashed”: “Edie and I listen to you all the time. We drive by and we wave.”
Simon riffed on music from the 1950s, in particular two of his favorites — Little Richard and Bo Diddley — and how they influenced some of his earliest music with Art Garfunkel.
Two hours in, Simon picked up what a station executive described as “a beat-up old acoustic guitar in the main studio” and began singing one of his classics, “Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard,” as Brickell whistled the melody.
The guys doing the interview were Todd Crusham and co-host Benjamin Hotchkiss. Crusham’s brother Kyle is an associate of Brickell’s, having produced her 2021 album, "Hunter and the Dog Star."
“We’re Wimberley people,” Simon told them, “so we’ll come back and do it again.”
More than anything, the Simon marathon underscores Wimberley’s new distinction as a hideout for great musical talents. Yet another Grammy Award-winning icon and fellow inductee in the Songwriters Hall of Fame lives nearby — Willie Nelson, who turned 89 in April. We can only imagine those Wimberley jam sessions.
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