Ronny Spears was a regular at North Texas country bars. He died Monday, according to SavingCountryMusic.com. (Facebook)
Texas country musician Ronny Spears died Monday, according to SavingCountryMusic.com, He played Hank’s Texas Grill in McKinney on Saturday night under the name White & Spears, the moniker for Spears’ band with fellow honky tonk singer Robby White.
The former Frisco High School student was a staple in the North Texas country scene, with regular gigs at the White Elephant Saloon in Fort Worth, Love & War in Texas in Plano and Hank’s in McKinney.
Outlaw Magazine called Spears “a hidden treasure lurking in the wings of Texas music” in an August 2012 story. “His music is familiar, yet fresh. His observations on life, on love, on loss and the time we get on this earth are startlingly brilliant in their simplicity. It’s a Jersey Shore world out there in the mainstream, but where the real people live and love and win and lose, it’s a Ronny Spears world and always will be.”
Spears’ musical epiphany came in the late ’80s when Ray Wylie Hubbard told him to “quit playing copy songs,” according to a story in Buddy Magazine.
He later released album Modern Day Outlaw, ”a collection of Willie-and-Waylon inspired, unadulterated honky-tonk music with a ’70s Jerry Jeff Walker/Ray Wylie Hubbard country-rock bent,” reads a Dallas Morning News story from the mid-’90s.
Spears has shared stages with Willie Nelson, Robert Earl Keen, the Dixie Chicks, Charlie Robison and many others. See Spears’ Facebook page for kind notes from his fans.
We do not yet have information on Spears’ cause of death.
The memorial service is at noon Thursday, Oct. 23 at Longhorn Hill Party Barn, 8685 FM 1827 in Anna. The family will meet with friends and fans at Hank’s in McKinney afterward. In lieu of flowers, the Ronny Spears Memorial Fund has been set up, c/o Cheryl Borden, 109 Greeting Gate Lane, Allen, Texas, 75002.