PICAYUNE PEOPLE: Kingsland troubadour Steve London spreads good news through humor and songs

Christian humorist Steve London of Kingsland is not a comedian.

“Comics are funny,” London said. “I’m not.”

Instead of cracking jokes, he recites and sings hundreds of memorized tales from the Old West to entertain audiences across the Highland Lakes. 

“These old songs are ballads,” London said. “They tell a story. It’s really cowboy poetry.”

His storytelling career started small, mostly at family and church gatherings about “40-some-odd years ago,” he said.

“I’ve got a cousin (in Carlsbad, New Mexico), and she’d invite me to Sunday school Christmas parties to entertain,” London continued. 

Three decades later, London shares his gifts with the congregation at Packsaddle Church in Kingsland as a member of the prayer team. He also performs at charity events, including a fundraiser held last August for Open Door Recovery House in Marble Falls.

“I’ve performed for money, but I don’t do it for money,” London said. “I do it because I enjoy it. I think it’s somewhat of a higher calling. I’m not looking to make it a gig of any kind. It’s just what I am and what I like to do.”

London and wife Merlene moseyed over to the Texas Hill Country in 2020 after living on a 2-acre cotton patch in Lubbock for about 25 years.

“I had a cotton patch bike then,” said London, who lists biking as one of his biggest passions. “Now, I’ve got a mountain bike.”

The couple met in the late 1980s on the dance floor of a bar in their hometown of Carlsbad. 

“We danced around one another for a couple of years there before we got serious,” London chuckled.

Over 30 years later, the two still enjoy sharing Steve’s gift of storytelling with their new community.

“The biggest show of appreciation as a storyteller is when I look out and I see eyes and they’re hooked and engaged,” he said. “When I see that look on their faces, it’s the greatest satisfaction.”

London plays a variety of instruments to entrance audiences.

“I sing and play the piano, the washtub, and the harmonica,” he said. “I can play the spoons, too, just not real well.”

He credits his unique form of entertainment to his father, T.L. London.

“He would never drive a truck with a radio in it because he knew all of the old cowboy ballad songs,” London said. “As we would ride the roads, we’d sing these old songs together. That’s what started my storytelling career.”

London has built his repertoire of ballads from the stories written by cowboy poets such as Ray Stevens, Waddie Mitchell, and Jon Langford.

“I haven’t found a story yet that I couldn’t edit ever so slightly, when necessary, to meet the occasion,” he said.

With every story he tells, London works hard to ensure someone gains something meaningful from it.

“In my dad’s generation, nearly every story told had a moral behind it,” he said. “He’d tell a story, and you knew at the end of it that there was something there to learn. It makes the storytelling that much more significant.”

VIDEO: Watch staff writer Nathan Bush try his hand at the washtub.

The hundreds of stories London has memorized are hard to account for.

“These are just stories in the back of my head somewhere,” he said. “It’s kind of like their own string. Once you start pulling it, you pull it all the way out.”

London’s spontaneous personality dictates which tales he shares with audiences.

“Most of the time, I don’t know what story is coming up next until I hear a topic, and then I can pull them out of my hat and tell the story without a whole lot of prompting,” he said. “It’s seldom that I do a lot of preparation.”

The New Mexico native’s strong faith is also central in all that he does.

“I was born in a Southern Baptist family,” he said. “Mama, and me, and my whole family were in church every time the doors were open.”

As a Christian humorist, storytelling is an opportunity to minister to people.

“The good news—I want to spread some of that,” London said.

He also strives to keep his stories fresh and stay away from “beating folks over the head” with religious overtones.

“There’s no real deep theology,” London said. “You catch more people speaking the good news in everyday language.”

That language includes story and song.

“Everywhere I go, I hope that my stories are a nudge,” he said.

nathan@thepicayune.com