DRIPPING SPRINGS — When it comes to community, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone more embedded in the culture and recent history of Dripping Springs than Alex Dormont. As someone once mentioned, “When anyone in this town learned to play music, Alex was no doubt one of their first teachers.”

Indeed, when I met Alex at Thyme and Dough for lunch, within a minute he’d already recognized a woman and her daughter as former students, though he couldn’t be sure.

“It’s been a while,” he said. But the ladies confirmed his hunch a minute later by yelping his name and giving him a big hug. When we broke away and sat with our coffees, he was grinning widely. “I’ve known them for thirty years. Well, the mother, anyway. I remember when the daughter was only up to here.”

I asked him how many Dripping Springs students he’d taught to play music. He thought for a moment before guessing. “Oh, six hundred. Maybe eight hundred.”

Alex has been in Dripping Springs since the early ‘80s, when he and his wife, Grace, were looking for a comfortable place to start a family.

“Back then, Dripping Springs was mostly ranchers with a few of Austin’s hippies mixed in.” According to Alex, the small town had an allure for many of Austin’s musicians as a place of quiet anonymity. But despite escaping, those musicians still felt drawn together.

“This became the place for people who loved the Austin music scene but didn’t want to live in the city. We made a lot of lifelong friendships, first through music and then through our kids. Our kids were the focus of our lives, and we built a community around that.”

Contributed Photo
Pictured, from left, Beyrl Armstrong and Alex Dormont pose for a quick photo after one of their many collaborations.

After growing up in New York and Connecticut, Alex went to college in the Midwest. “I got out of the Northeast when I was younger because it was too crowded. I prefer wide-open spaces. I didn’t know what I wanted to major in, but on my first day, I found that all the other guys in the dorm were musicians.”

And so, Alex picked up a fiddle, majored in music theory, and took off from there. He moved to Austin in 1977 with $25 in his pocket to be part of a growing music scene that he’d only heard about.

“Within a week of being here I got to meet all my heroes, and that’s how long it took for me to know I was in the right place. I was a Yankee when I got here,” Alex said with a grin, “but I settled into the slowed-down Texas way pretty quickly.”

As any Texan will tell you, “Slowed down” doesn’t exactly mean “lazy,” and Alex kept busy with touring and recording. He played with George Strait “before he was famous,” and even got to work with his hero, legendary fiddler and member of both the Country Music and Rock and Roll Hall-of-Fames, Johnny Gimble, who, as it happened, also moved to Dripping Springs to be near his children.

“Johnny was my hero as soon as I picked up a fiddle,” says Alex, “and he told me there were two keys to success: play every chance you can get… and get lucky.”

Along with Gimble, Alex was a regular at Dripping Springs events, from the first Founders Day celebration to benefits for the historic Pound Farmstead. They played in local nursing homes for free, and whenever a restaurant or music venue happened to be going out of business, Alex was there to help close it down as loudly as possible. When filmmakers were in the area shooting the 1989 Lonesome Dove miniseries, Alex even got to cameo as a fiddle player.

But through it all, Alex always taught, first in schools, then in private lessons through his church, and finally at Hudson’s on Mercer.

“I learned from a lot of experience to teach the way I wish I’d been taught and to always position the students for success.”

If anyone knows the meaning of success, it’s Alex Dormont – from helping establish a thriving music community in Dripping Springs to leading his “Hot Texas Swing Band” to the International Western Music Association’s Western Swing album of the year in 2021.

While he misses the small-town feel of a Dripping Springs that’s “grown up a lot,” Alex says that he appreciates the increased energy and diversity.

“As a musician, especially with a jazz background, the importance of diversity in music’s creation and evolution is beyond important to me. And I just love the energy young people bring, and how that drives progress.”

You can find Alex Dormont and his Hot Texas Swing Band in venues from Austin to Blanco, and his monthly stop at the Dripping Springs Farmers Market is one to be savored.