Did you know that one of Main Street's most storied rooms started out with a different name over its door? The Motherlode Saloon, at 406 East Main Street in Red River, was built in the mid-1930s as a saloon, dance hall and gambling establishment, back when this old mining town was learning how to entertain visitors instead of miners. The building has been a place to gather, dance and hear a song ever since, and its stage has a story that reaches well beyond this one-mile-long downtown.
Click to see more photos of the Motherlode Saloon — the stage, the pool tables, and the room today
In its earlier life the room was called the D-Bar-D, and it already had a place in song before it ever took the Motherlode name. New Mexico Magazine recounts how Ray Wylie Hubbard walked across Main Street one night to buy beer at the D-Bar-D and was hassled there. He got the last word, the magazine says, by penning the classic anthem "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother." Today, as the magazine happily notes, the cowboys and the musicians in Red River buy each other drinks.
The Motherlode chapter began with a skier. Steve Heglund first came up from Albuquerque to ski, arriving in 1973 at age 26 as a music fan who found a town full of pickers but not the rock he loved. In 1975 he bought the D-Bar-D, renamed it the Motherlode Saloon, and started booking a steady succession of Texas acts. It was the start of a Main Street run that would grow to include Texas Red's Steakhouse, the Lodge at Red River and the Lost Love Saloon next door.
Then came the night that still defines the place. One night in 1978, Rusty Wier canceled at the last minute. Bill Hearne suggested Michael Martin Murphey as a replacement, a man Heglund had never met, though Murphey's song "Wildfire" had made him a national star. Murphey had just moved to Taos, and Heglund reached him at an Albuquerque music store at seven o'clock. At ten, Murphey carried his guitar onto the Motherlode stage in front of 400 people. Heglund and Murphey have been friends ever since.
Murphey was no stranger to this valley. He had been coming to Red River since 1950, brought up by his parents to fish and camp from the time he was five years old, and he later kept a home in Taos and built a cabin above Red River. Of Heglund, Murphey has said simply, "None of us would be here if it wasn't for Steve." Walk into the Motherlode on a music night today, with a band working under that same name over the stage at 406 East Main, and you are standing in a room that a canceled show, a seven o'clock phone call and a three-hour drive turned into a piece of American music history.