The Hotel Where Two Grammy Winners Learned Guitar

Kacey Musgraves and Miranda Lambert both took guitar lessons inside the Beckham Hotel. Long before it reopened as a boutique hotel, this building was a working music school — and its top-floor ballroom was a listening room where touring songwriters played sold-out shows. This isn’t a marketing story. It’s documented history, and you can stay in the room where it happened.

The Beckham’s Own Music Legacy

From 1989 to 2012, guitarist and songwriter John DeFoore owned the Beckham building and ran the DeFoore Music Institute out of it, teaching guitar and songwriting.

Among his students during those years were three artists who went on to national and international careers:

DeFoore’s teaching space, the “Piney Woods Pickin’ Parlor,” hosted musical events at the hotel for 17 years. DeFoore passed away in 2021 in nearby Grand Saline. His legacy is marked today with a plaque in the Beckham’s lobby .

The Ballroom as a Listening Room

The Piney Woods Pickin’ Parlor began as a jam venue in a Mineola storefront across from the Select Theater, then moved into the Beckham’s top-floor ballroom — the same ballroom with the historic floating dance floor that stands today. For 17 years, it drew touring songwriters and performers from Europe, Canada, and across the U.S.

Two of Texas music’s most respected songwriters played sold-out shows there:

Miranda Lambert took weekly lessons in the ballroom and once wrote DeFoore a note calling it the highlight of her week:

The ballroom you can book today isn’t just an event space with a notable dance floor — it has a documented pedigree as a touring-artist listening room.

East Texas: A Deeper Music Well

The Beckham sits inside a small radius of East Texas towns with an outsized concentration of musical talent and history.

Elvis Presley in Gladewater (about 25 miles east)

In 1954–55, on the strength of his early Louisiana Hayride appearances, Elvis was booked into East Texas by Gladewater DJ Tom Perryman. He played schools, oil-company camps, and beer joints throughout the region and repeatedly stayed at Gladewater’s Res-Mor Motel, reportedly favoring Room 104 — one of the few air-conditioned lodgings in the area at the time. Gladewater is also where Johnny Cash is said to have written “I Walk the Line.” The Gladewater Museum maintains exhibits on this era (open Fri–Sat, 10am–4pm).

Musicians with Direct East Texas Roots

Come See It for Yourself

Stop by the lobby to see the DeFoore plaque or ask about the ballroom’s history when you visit — it’s the same room, the same floating dance floor, where two future Grammy winners once took weekly lessons.