Texas Music News — August 7, 2026
Tommy Detamore, the steel guitar player and producer behind Cherry Ridge Studio, has died. He passed away Wednesday, August 5, according to his wife Sandra. For 35 years, Tommy Detamore ran his studio out of Floresville, Texas. That small South Texas town became a destination for country musicians. Ray Price and Johnny Bush recorded there. So did Sunny Sweeney, Robert Earl Keen, and dozens of others who trusted his ear over any big-city engineer.
Detamore’s own playing reads like a highlight reel of Texas country music. He moved from Virginia to Texas in 1981 to back singer Darrell McCall. A year later, he became Moe Bandy’s steel guitarist. That gig lasted seven years and carried him across the Grand Ole Opry and Hee-Haw stages. Along the way, he also backed Johnny Bush, Ronnie Milsap, and Clay Baker before turning toward studio work full time.
The Sound Tommy Detamore Built to Last
In 1991, Detamore opened Cherry Ridge Studio, and South Texas musicians started showing up with songs to finish. His touch worked like glue on those records, holding together sounds that might have fallen apart in less steady hands. He produced Sunny Sweeney’s debut album, and she later called him “Tommy Jesus” because he could “fix anything musically.” She said his fingerprints run through every record she has made since. He also engineered Ty Myers’ breakout 2025 album, The Select.
That mix of old-school gospel and honky-tonk polish placed Detamore in a familiar South Texas dance hall lineage. John T. Floore’s Country Store, in Helotes, Texas, sits in that same lineage. Generations of musicians there learned what a room full of listening ears sounds like. Detamore built his own version of that room in Floresville, then filled it for over three decades.
Detamore earned a Grammy nomination alongside Bill Kirchen for the engineering on “Poultry in Motion.” The Steel Guitar Hall of Fame later inducted him, an honor few Texans hold. Friends remember him just as much for his Sunday work. He played steel at San Antonio’s Trinity Baptist Church. He also served as pastor of music at Floresville’s Oak Hills Baptist Church. His wife Sandra said his gift “allowed him to lift others up.”
Cherry Ridge Studio’s tape machines will keep running without Tommy Detamore. But every record cut inside those walls now carries a little more weight.
Details at Saving Country Music
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