The Civic Lubbock, Inc. Board this week announced the upcoming inductions into the West Texas Walk of Fame for 2025.
The honorees are: Flatland Cavalry, Hector Galán, James W. Johnson and Jerry Jordan. The induction ceremony will take place at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025, in the Lubbock Memorial Civic Center Theatre, 1501 Mac Davis Lane.
Flatland Cavalry, Country/Americana band
Country and Americana band Flatland Cavalry formed in Lubbock in 2012 when Cleto Cordero and Jason Albers took their high school jamming sessions to the next level while studying at Texas Tech University. Over the next few years, the band’s numbers grew with the addition of Jonathan Saenz, Reid Dillon, Wesley Hall, and Adam Gallegos.
By 2015 the band was regularly playing gigs throughout Lubbock’s music scene, becoming particular favorites at the Blue Light. Their local popularity was cemented when the group crowdfunded their debut EP, “Come May”, raising enough funds to cover its production in just eight days.
The band’s popularity continued to rise as they began to play across Texas, culminating in their first official tour in 2019. A further seven tours later, four albums, six #1 singles on the Texas Country Music Charts, and over 500 million streams, Flatland Cavalry continue to impress, sharing the stage with the likes of Willie Nelson, Luke Combs, Lainey Wilson and more.
In 2024 they received their first ACM award nomination for Group of the Year, achieved their first RIAA Gold certification for their breakout single “A Life Where We Work Out”, and made their mark in film and television with contributions to the “Twisters” and “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” soundtracks, as well as featured placements on “Yellowstone” and “Landman”.
Despite more than 10 years in the business, there are no signs that the band intends to slow down. Cordero describes their music as “easy on the ears and heavy on the heart,” and as long as they can continue to bring people together, they will be proud to keep it going.
Hector Galán, Documentary Filmmaker
Hector Galán, an independent documentary filmmaker from San Angelo, is one of the most prolific and passionate working in his field today. Beginning his career at 18 straight out of high school, Hector worked as a camera operator for his local TV Station in San Angelo. From there Hector attended community college studying media production in Killeen, where he met Dr. Dennis Harp who encouraged him to join him in Lubbock where he was starting a new Mass Communications program at Texas Tech University.
Hector worked tirelessly for KCBD News Channel 11, where he directed both the 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. news. Upon his graduation he was hired by KTXT as a producer and began producing original programming. Hector was becoming a hot commodity; he was recruited to Austin to produce a national PBS series which would become his springboard into his documentary television career that resulted in him producing episodes of the provocative television series “Frontline”. In 1984 he returned to Texas and established his own production company, Galán, Inc where he continued to work, producing over 40 hours of national PBS programming, including the landmark four-part series “Chicano! History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement”.
Hector has been recognized nationally and internationally for his work, including being named in the top 100 Most Influential Hispanics in America by Hispanic Business Magazine in 1997, the 2005 Distinguished Filmmaker Award at the Cine Cuauhtemoc Pan American Film Festival and his induction into the Texas Film Hall of Fame in 2017. Despite decades of tireless work, Hector continues to produce important documentaries and films, charting the Latino experience in America, and in his own words explains: “I’m hoping to keep creating new films for the younger people that didn’t have any idea of what we went through, so they can learn from that and be proud of it.”
James W. Johnson, Visual Artist
Visual artist James W. Johnson was born in suburban upstate New York in 1954. He initially began his studies in chemistry, but in 1974 upon taking an art class for fun, found his life’s true passion in art and hasn’t looked back.
James, partly inspired by Texas Tech’s Lynwood Kreneck whom he met at a printmaking workshop, moved to Lubbock in 1978 where he attended Texas Tech University and received his Master of Fine Arts in 1981.
Since moving to Lubbock, James has committed more than 80,000 hours to creating his art. Primarily a painter, he has worked with many forms of art, covering mediums such as video, sculpture, etchings and even furniture making.
To say James’ work in these fields is unique and varied would be an understatement. Few artists will master a single subject, yet his devotion to embracing a variety of themes and styles has resulted in an extraordinary catalogue of celebrated work, from surrealism to landscapes, from tapestries to metal work, and portraits to the abstract.
While James has remained committed to developing his craft in Lubbock, his works have spread throughout the country, being featured at exhibitions in Dallas, Indianapolis, Spokane, Boise, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, among many more. James Johnson’s work is not for the meek; it unapologetically jumps out and grabs the viewer with its vibrant forms and colors, and one thing is for certain, whether you love it or hate it, you will certainly never forget it.
Jerry Jordan, Visual Artist
Visual artist Jerry Jordan was born in Lubbock in May of 1944 and was raised on a farm between Meadow and Ropesville. Jerry’s artistic journey began at the age of 13 when a gift from his parents of paint by numbers canvas sparked a lifelong passion. A year later while at a family reunion in Paris, Texas, Jerry chanced upon the studio of renowned artist W.R Thrasher, becoming instantly captivated by the work on display.
Over the course of the next year Jerry sent five letters and a 12”x16” painting trying to convince the famous artist become his tutor. This determination was finally rewarded with an invite to spend three weeks with W.R. Thrasher, and a letter stating, “I have never met a young man with so much audacity and determination to become a painter.”
As Jerry honed his skills, this audacity and determination became a feature of his career. At 18, Jerry built his first studio on his father’s 40-acre farm and, in the first 12 months, sold $4,000 worth of his own paintings. In today’s money, this would equate to over $40,000.
In 1964 Jerry married his wife, Marilyn. The pair found themselves in Taos, back in Texas again, and then on to Tennessee where Jerry with his wife, his brother, Harweda and his wife, Colleen, formed The Jordans, a soft-contemporary gospel group. In 1976, Jerry received Billboard’s Country Music Award for Comic of the Year for the album “Phone Call from God” which sold over 500,000 copies.
From the late 1970s, Jerry’s focus returned to his love of painting, when in 1986 he and his wife moved from Texas to settle in Taos with their daughters, Nicole and J’Brenta. Jerry’s prolific work and dedication to his art has seen his work become a part of permanent collections in New Mexico and Texas, and has been displayed in countless galleries and publications throughout the country. Jerry’s signature artistic resolve can be summed up in his simple statement that “talent accounts for about two percent of a painter’s success. The rest is just ‘I’m-a-gonna-do-it’ determination.”
About the West Texas Walk of Fame
In the late ’70s, Larry Corbin, Jerry Coleman, and Waylon Jennings initiated the idea of an award for famous artists and musicians from the West Texas region. The first inductees were Buddy Holly in 1979 and Waylon Jennings in 1980. In 1983, Civic Lubbock, Inc., began its tenure as administrators of the Walk of Fame with the induction of Mac Davis. The West Texas Walk of Fame honors those individuals with a strong connection to Lubbock and the West Texas area who have devoted a significant part of their lives to the development and production of the performing and visual arts and whose body of work has been influential nationally in one or more of these areas.
Past Walk of Fame inductees:
1979 – Buddy Holly
1980 – Waylon Jennings
1983 – Mac Davis
1984 – Jimmy Dean, Ralna English, Bobby Keys
1985 – G.W. Bailey, Barry Corbin
1986 – Jerry Allison, Sonny Curtis, Joe B. Mauldin, Niki Sullivan
1989 – Joe Ely, Roy Orbison
1990 – Gaitlin Brothers, Bob Wills
1991 – “Snuff” Garrett
1993 – The Maines Brothers Band
1994 – Virgil Johnson of the Velvets, Buddy Knox
1995 – Glen D Hardin, Gary P. Nunn
1996 – Cecil Caldwell, Woody Chambliss, The Hometown Boys, Paul Milosevich, Bob Montgomery, C.B. “Stubbs” Stubblefield
1997 – Terry Allen, George Ashburn, Dan Blocker, Glenna Goodacre, Los Premiers, Dirk West
1998 – Don Caldwell, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Butch Hancock
1999 – Jane Prince Jones, Ed Wilkes
2000 – Eddie Dixon
2001 – The Fireballs, Delbert McClinton
2002 – Suzanne Akers, Brad Maule, Pete Morales, Helen Wagner
2003 – Alvin G. Davis, Billy Walker
2004 – Clif Magness, Richie McDonald
2005 – Angela Strehli, Agnes Torres
2006 – David Box, David Gaschen, Jennifer Smith
2008 – John Gillas, Mary Gillas
2010 – Bill Griggs
2012 – Charlene Condray Hancock, Tommy X Hancock, Lloyd Maines, Jesse “Guitar” Taylor
2014 – Jay Boy Adams, Lew Dee and Diana Dee, Andy Wilkinson, Jaston Williams
2015 – Jo Harvey Allen, Natalie Maines
2016 – Ponty Bone, Terry Cook, The Flatlanders, Sonny West
2017 – James T. Braxton, Thomas Braxton, Johnny Ray Watson
2018 – Josh Abbott, Donnie Allison, Bob Livingston, Garland A. Weeks, FNSS
2019 – Susan Graham, David Kneupper, Romeo Reyna, Larry Trider
2022 – Bess Hubbard, Hoyle Nix, Jody Nix, Amanda Shires
2023 – Dirk Fowler, Lynwood Kreneck, Junior Medlow, Kimmie Rhodes
2024 – Gerald Dolter, Tina Fuentes, Steve Meador, James Watkins
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Flatland Cavalry among 2025 West Texas Walk of Fame inductees
Reporting by Special to the Avalanche-Journal / Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
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