Seen on his Facebook page just now.

He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's a few years back and had stopped performing.

He played a fundraiser here in San Antonio about 7-8 years ago, and we missed our chance.

RIP

Small Town
Saturday Night

Sad to hear that.

About 15 years ago I hired a new real estate broker in San Antonio to help me with site selection. We spent a couple of days driving around looking at sites and getting to know each other. He had mentioned some about his life growing up in SA and maybe with a dad that wasn't around all the time. Then somehow we got onto music and he mentioned that his dad and some of his buddies had rented out Gruene Hall (I think) for a singer songwriter bash.

All of a sudden it dawned in me, "Holy ****, is your dad Hal Ketchum?" I spent a couple days in the car with his son Graham before I made the connection. I never met Hal but he raised a good son.

My wife is a big fan. Poor guy had a host of medical issues. He had MS for a long time, and you could really tell it seeing him in person. For a while he got pretty heavy (predinsone or other steroids do that, same thing happened to Teri Garr). Then the next time we saw him at Gruene Hall (I want to say it was 2010ish? but my ability to associate memories with dates is pretty poor) he looked really thin and haggard. He walked out and my wife turned around with a "oh my God" look on her face. We were standing right in front of the stage, I always have hoped he didn't see that. The last time we saw him was around the holidays and he apologized upfront that he was having throat issues. The crowd sang along to a lot of his songs, as encouraged. He definitely did his best, and it seemed the fans knew his situation and everyone understood.

He always seemed like a good guy. Had a great voice and some really cool songs. RIP

2020 sucks