Dixie Hall once described a modest ambition: a small farm in the hills where she could spend her days writing songs. At Fox Hollow, that wish eventually became her working life, especially after Tom T. Hall left full-time touring in the mid-1990s. She had already built an unusual career before they met. Born Iris Violet May Lawrence in England, Dixie worked as a rodeo trick rider, contributed to British country music publications and helped arrange overseas record distribution for Tex Ritter. Country music eventually brought her across the Atlantic to Nashville. There, she promoted Starday Records, worked with Music City News and co-wrote Dave Dudley’s “Truck Drivin’ Son-of-a-Gun.” At the BMI banquet recognizing that song, she met Tom T. His “I Got Lost” appeared on the single’s other side. They married in 1968. As his career flourished, Dixie devoted more time to their farm, animal welfare and the home life that supported his work. Fox Hollow sometimes sheltered as many as fifty stray dogs. Through Animaland, homemade preserves, benefit dinners and determined fundraising, she helped bring in more than a million dollars for the Nashville Humane Association. When touring stopped dictating their calendar, songwriting moved back to the center of her days. Dixie drew Tom T. toward bluegrass, the music that had first inspired her journey to Nashville. Together, they wrote at Fox Hollow, developed publishing and recording businesses and produced younger artists. They also championed women whose contributions were too easily overlooked in a field dominated by men. Across her final eighteen years, Dixie contributed to an estimated three thousand bluegrass songs. For fourteen consecutive years, the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music in America named her and Tom T. songwriters of the year. By her death in January 2015, Fox Hollow preserved a substantial record of her own creativity alongside her husband’s celebrated career. The studio sessions, publishing files and songs reflected ambitions that had begun long before their marriage. The English writer who dreamed of a farm had found one—and, once their lives slowed enough, filled it with the work she had always wanted to do.
admin AFTER TOM T. HALL LEFT THE ROAD, MISS DIXIE TOOK OVER THE SONGS At ten years old, Iris Lawrence wrote a poem about the American West from her home in…