Alain Kap is a Luxembourger, but he lives in Germany with his wife and son.
“At work I wear my normal shoes, but in my leisure time I wear always cowboy boots,” Kap says.
In the early 1980s, he came to love country music.
“One of my favorite singer-songwriters at the time was Buffalo C. Wayne,” Kap says. “He was our favorite country performer in Germany and through Europe, and Lyle Lovett – probably some of your listeners will know him – they are good friends and they recorded together in the United States. And this brought him the byname, ‘The European Texan.’”
But Kap couldn’t get ahold of a pair of good boots right away.
“And I absolutely wanted a pair of boots, but it’s very difficult to get original boots over here in Europe, so I had to buy them from a mail-order store in Germany,” he says. “But they only had one or two different styles of boots, so I had to wait until I got finally to the United States to have more choice.”
He first came to the United States in 1987, on his honeymoon.
“Our honeymoon took us from Florida to San Antonio, Texas,” Kap says, “and Texas was the synonym of cowboys and country music, and so I bought my first pair of cowboy boots in Texas. This had to be in Texas.”
Kap’s favorite pair are his Justin boots, which he bought in 2003.
“That was the last time I went there to, with my wife, my second wife, she was pregnant with our son,” Kap says. “And that’s also the reason he was named Alain Justin. I wanted to combine something with my first name, and AJ was always a short that I liked, so the J was well for Justin.”
But that won’t be the last time Kap travels to Texas, he says.
“I’m looking forward to come to Texas again. And maybe I visit you in Austin.”
Written by Rachel Taube.