Actor Barry Corbin Coming to Camp Street Cafe in Crockett
By Greg Ritchie
Messenger Reporter
CROCKETT – Texas actor Barry Corbin will be coming to Camp Street Cafe in Crockett Saturday, Oct. 14 to perform with Pipe Gillette for an evening of song, old stories and Texas memories.
Born in 1940 in Lamesa, Corbin has starred in many iconic roles on both television and in films, including Urban Cowboy, Stir Crazy and on the small screen in such programs as Northern Exposure and Yellowstone.
Corbin spoke with The Messenger about his recent work and the show in Crockett. Like most in the television and film industry, Corbin hasn’t been able to do much since the writer’s strike in Los Angeles.
“I was able to finish an independent film, since it has nothing to do with the big studios,” Corbin said. “Since then, I’ve just been doing a little stage show I put together. I’ve been thinking about it for several years and I finally got old enough so I’m older than most of the audience, so now I give people advice.”
Corbin’s show is certainly unique, with an opening few would suspect.
“I usually start with a little piece of Shakespeare because people say you have to do Shakespeare with an East Texas accent. “As a matter of fact, as far as I can tell, the Shakespearean speech is closer to Appalachian than it is to British English, now.”
Many words used in Britain at the time of Shakespeare have gone out of use in England, but are still used today in some parts of the U.S., preserved by those first settlers to come to the new continent – words like “reckon,” for example.
“I was lucky enough to get a job in an outdoor drama in the late 60’s in North Carolina and that area was isolated from the rest of the country from the Revolutionary War basically up until the WPA came in and built the Blue Ridge Parkway,” Corbin said. “When I was there, there was one local radio station and no television. And that’s all the outside influence they had except for the newspaper which came out once a week. They were pretty isolated.”
Corbin is ready to bring his show to Houston County and hopes to meet as many locals as he can.
“This is sort of like the show we used to do but a little more organized,” Corbin laughed. “I have been friends with Pipp for many years and been there many times, sometimes, just as an audience member. I am looking forward to greet and meet all of you. And I’ll tell you what. We’ll sit around and we’ll talk and sign autographs, take pictures, as long as anybody wants to stick around.”
Greg Ritchie can be reached at [email protected]
