Butch Hancock
Butch Hancock
Butch Hancock (born July 12, 1945) is an American country singer and songwriter from Lubbock, Texas. He is best known as a member of The Flatlanders, a trio with Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, though most of his career has been as a solo artist.
Hancock studied architecture but left school in 1968 and spent about a year driving a tractor on his father’s farm. That simple life and reading broadened his outlook on life. In 1970, he formed The Flatlanders with his old high school friends. They released music but disbanded after a year. Hancock then started his own label, Rainlight Records, in 1978 and released his first solo album, West Texas Waltzes and Dust-Blown Tractor Tunes. He released more albums with folk and country flavors, starting with guitar and harmonica and later using more instruments and arrangements.
From the late 1990s he rejoined The Flatlanders, putting out several albums in 2004. Hancock lived in Austin for many years, then moved to Terlingua, Texas in the 1990s seeking a quieter, rural life. He is widely regarded as one of Texas’s finest singer-songwriters, known for clever, metaphorical, and ironic lyrics and for finding wonder in everyday life. Some compare his style to Bob Dylan, and Emmylou Harris has performed his songs.
Besides his own recordings, Hancock worked with a range of artists and often released music independently rather than chasing the market. He is also a photographer, with a gallery called “Lubbock or Leave It” in the 1980s–90s, and has shown his work in Texas galleries. The 2005 documentary Lubbock Lights features Hancock and other Lubbock musicians. His album titles Own & Own and Own The Way Over Here play with the Texan pronunciation of “on.” On February 28, 2012, he appeared as a guest musician on Larry Monroe’s Texas Radio Live.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 14:11 (CET).