Luckenbach, Texas ? They like to say around here that you can’t find a place more laid-back without being unconscious.

Drive down a single-lane road, turn a corner, and there it is: downtown Luckenbach, in all its glory of three buildings — a ramshackle tavern/general store, a blacksmith shop and an old-time dance hall.

Clustered under giant oaks, this aging Western trading post-turned-country music mecca is the stuff of myth. Step into the general store and floorboards creak.

“Welcome to Luckenbach!” hollers the clerk.

You’re already feeling pretty darn laid back.

It’s an eccentric town in the prickly pear-studded hills of the Texas Hill Country, some 75 miles west of Austin. And every inch of it drips with history.

“People have driven from Illinois down here to play their country song in Luckenbach,” said Tim Steele, a singer-songwriter and Luckenbach regular.

The town’s reputation among music fans started growing on a summer night in 1973, when Jerry Jeff Walker and the Lost Gonzo Band recorded an album live in Luckenbach, called “Viva Terlingua,” that became a classic of the country/rock “outlaw” scene — the antithesis of a Nashville production.

Later, in 1977, country outlaw idol Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson chiseled Luckenbach into music history with the song “Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love).”

A couple kick up their heels on a Saturday afternoon in the Luckenbach store in Luckenbach, Texas. The general store was opened in 1849 by Minna Engel, who named it after her fiance, Carl Albert Luckenbach.

The twangy, slow-paced anthem to the simple life found in Luckenbach topped the national charts. The lyrics spoke of trading in diamond rings and ties for boots and jeans. The chorus, “Let’s go to Luckenbach, Texas, with Waylon and Willie and the boys …” was everywhere.

Same as it’s always been

Throughout the year, visitors — from European curiosity-seekers to country music die-hards — make pilgrimages here, and often leave a bit of themselves in the bar.

“People leave their IDs, their business cards; a nice couple from South Dakota brought me this the other day,” said Mike Haley, the bar keep and town judge, holding up a South Dakota license plate tag reading “57 Chevy.”

But for the most part Luckenbach is the same as it’s always been: a tiny, quiet place by the creek.

Like a lot of places in the Hill Country, Luckenbach was built by German pioneers. A general store — the same one standing today — was opened in 1849 by Minna Engel, the daughter of an itinerant preacher. She named the place Luckenbach after her fiance, Carl Albert Luckenbach.

A year later, in 1850, a community hall went up. Rebuilt in the 1930s, it’s still around — now serving as dance hall and stage. The old blacksmith shop still stands.

By the 1960s, Luckenbach was virtually a ghost town — the old German families had dispersed. And its 10 acres went up for sale in the newspapers: “town — pop. 3 — for sale.”

‘Free state of mind’

It was in for a ride.

A man named Hondo Crouch bought it with a few associates for $30,000 in 1970.

A celebrated Texas humorist and folklorist, Crouch turned Luckenbach into “a free state of mind” — poking fun at the nearby “Texas White House,” President Lyndon B. Johnson’s ranch on the Pedernales River.

“Hondo Crouch — the one right up there — he’s the one that got all this started,” Haley said.

Yet Luckenbach didn’t grow. Crouch wanted it to stay like it had always been — an itty-bitty place you pull into off the main road and get a hearty welcome.

“People would show up and ask where Luckenbach is. He’d be there whittling. He’d say, take a left and another left. They’d take off, take a left, another left, and there he’d be. He’d say: ‘Welcome to Luckenbach,'” Haley said.

When Crouch died in 1976, his ashes were strewn over Luckenbach.