LoneStarMusic | 1

LoneStarMusic | 1
2 | LoneStarMusic
LoneStarMusic | 3
inside this issue
Wade
bowen
Who I Am ... Now: Just a regular guy,
having the time of his life writing
seriously good songs at the top
of his game
by Rob Patterson
pg 28
FEATUREs
22 Q&A: Ryan Bingham — By Richard Skanse
42 The Rising: Stoney LaRue continues his creative ascent and mature upturn with Aviator — By Holly Gleason
Photo by Rodney Bursiel
4 | LoneStarMusic
LoneStarMusic | 5
after awhile
inside this issue
Publisher: Zach Jennings
Notes from the Editor | By Richard Skanse
Editor: Richard Skanse
Creative Director/Layout: Melissa Webb
Cover Photo: Rodney Bursiel
I’m not gonna mince words here: December was rough. The kind of rough
Advertising/Marketing: Kristen Townsend
Advertising: Tara Staglik, Erica that can really tip a year toward the bum end of the balance scale when
Brown
you measure the good against the bad. As I write this column a week before
Artist & Label Relations: Kristen Townsend
Christmas, we’re still reeling from that one-two punch that landed hard right
Richard Skanse
Lynne Margolis
Rob Patterson
Holly Gleason
Michael Corcoran
Kelly Dearmore
Mike Ethan Messick
Rob Patterson
Tara Staglik
Contributing
Photographers
Rodney Bursiel
John Carrico
Anna Axster
Lynne Margolis
Brian T. Atkinson
Gary Miller
Dave Pedley
Leigh Ann Photography
Sarah Barlow
Darren Carroll
Pete Lacker
Bea Simmons
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6 | LoneStarMusic
at the beginning of the month: first, the Dec. 2 death of Bobby Keys, the saxblasting “Rolling Stone from Texas” who tore his way through music history
like a Lubbock tornado, playing with Stones and Beatles and Flatlanders and
countless other luminaries lucky enough to recruit the best ringer in rock;
and then, not 24 hours later, the news that Ian McLagan was gone, too.
McLagan was a Brit who earned his spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as
the keyboard player for the Small Faces and Faces, but he spent the last 20
years of his life making a huge imprint on the heart of his beloved adopted
hometown of Austin.
While reading writer Lynne Margolis’ heartfelt tributes to these two
icons, I couldn’t help but think back on all the other greats we had to say
goodbye to in these pages in 2014. Not just songwriters and performers
like bona fide Texas music legends Steven Fromholz and Johnny Winter and
Hill Country favorites Jeff Strahan and Allan Goodman, but three men who
devoted so much of their lives to giving so many artists a platform to share
their songs with the world: Larry Monroe, beloved Austin radio host; Steve
Silbas, the co-owner (with his wife Barbara Wolfe, who died just five months
before him) of San Antonio’s much-missed Casbeers and Casbeers at the
Church; and of course Rod Kennedy, founder and long-time producer of the
renowned Kerrville Folk Festival. I will always feel fortunate to have had the
opportunity to interview Kennedy at length for my first LoneStarMusic cover
story back in the spring of 2010: Few people I’ve ever met loved the art of
songwriting as much as “the Rodfather” did, let alone shared that passion
with other fans on such a profoundly impactful level.
As sad as all those farewells were, 2014 had its share of positive music
moments, too — including the continued rise of a number of very gifted
newcomers whose presence bodes well for the future of Americana. We
devoted cover stories to Robert Ellis, John Fullbright, and Shovels and
Rope, while Parker Millsap and Sturgill Simpson took the Americana Music
Conference and Festival in Nashville by storm. Not to be outdone by the
young guns, many of the genre’s most seasoned veterans released exemplary
albums, too, from Dallas mavericks the Old 97’s to Rodney Crowell, Rosanne
Cash, Lucinda Williams, Eliza Gilkyson, Billy Joe Shaver, and Willie Nelson
(whose Band of Brothers featured not just a generous handful of his first new
originals in years, but a latter-day classic in “The Wall.”) And let’s not forget
Texas ladies Lee Ann Womack and Miranda Lambert, who each scored a
Grammy nomination for Best Country Album with arguably the best records of
their respective careers (both produced, coincentally, by Lambert’s husband,
fellow Texan Frank Liddell). Meanwhile, off the Grammy radar but very much
at the forefront of the still formidable Texas/Red Dirt music scene, regional
favorites Stoney LaRue and this issue’s cover artist, Wade Bowen, delivered
career high water marks of their own.
By the time you read this, it will be 2015 — a new year full of promise
and, by the looks of the upcoming release calendar as well as word about
several more notable albums in the works but not yet officially announced, an
even greater bounty of music to celebrate come year-end list-making time 12
months from now. But until then, join me in raising one last glass — be hit half
full or even half empty — in remembrance of 2014. May it rest in peace.
a
Notes From the Editor
4 After Awhile — By Richard Skanse
NEWS
6 In Memoriam: Bobby Keys — By Lynne Margolis
7 In Memoriam: Ian McLagan — By Lynne Margolis
8 Happy Hour: Shinyribs’ Kevin Russell and friends pay tribute to
street performer Ted Hawkins — By Richard Skanse
9 Willie’s World: Willie Nelson and Gary Clark Jr. hang
Inside Arylyn Studio — By Lynne Margolis
10 LSM Playlist: Our picks for the best Americana albums of 2014
12 News Blurbs: Black Fret grant winners named at Black Ball;
Grammy nominees
13 New & Recent Releases
14 Artist Profile: Aaron Watson — By Kelly Dearmore
16 Artist Profile: Adam Hood— By Kelly Dearmore
18 Artist Profile: Angaleena Presley — By Kelly Dearmore
COLUMNS
20 True Heroes of Texas Music: Barbara Lynn— By Michael Corcoran
REVIEWS
44 Album
Reviews
Robert Earl Keen, Ryan Bingham, Cody Canada & the Departed,
Hal Ketchum, Old 97’s and more
LSM Music Chart
51 LoneStarMusic Top 40 Albums
Staff Picks
VENUE SPOTLIGHT
56 Alamo Ice House BBQ & Brew, San Antonio, TX — By Tara Staglik
Photo courtesy Entertainment One Nasvhille
Contributing
Writers
LoneStarMusic | 7
In Memoriam
In Memoriam
Bobby Keys: From
nnacle
Lubbock to rock’s pi
by Lynne Margolis
If the essence of rock ‘n’ roll could be
defined with just two words, they would
be these: the riff. That singular solo,
sung or played, which stamps a song
so indelibly, other versions sound like
forgeries. So many of rock’s most iconic
riffs came from hired guns who toiled
in near anonymity; only a few became
nearly as famous as their employers.
Texas-born tenor sax player Bobby Keys
was one.
Keys, 70, who passed away Dec. 2 in
Franklin, Tenn., from liver disease, earned
rock-star status for the fluid, bluesy horn
solos he contributed to some of the
Rolling Stones’ most beloved songs. But
in a career spanning more than 50 years,
he cemented his fame through his work
with George Harrison, John Lennon, Eric
Clapton, Harry Nilsson, Yoko Ono, Carly
Simon, Delaney & Bonnie, B.B. King, Chuck
Berry, Billy Preston, Joe Cocker, the Faces,
Dr. John, Sheryl Crow and many others.
Keys’ solo on “Brown Sugar” is
most often mentioned as his crowning
achievement, but his riff on another
Sticky Fingers track, “Can’t You Hear Me
Knockin’,” was his true tour de force. I’ll
never forget opening night of the Stones’
2002 Licks tour, at Boston’s Fleet Center
(now TD Garden), when Mick Jagger
announced that the band, then 40 years
into its career, had never before done the
song live and was going to “have a bash
with it.” Keys’ epic solo on the tune, a
mesmerizing sonic flight that soared and
dipped on feathery notes he played by
feel — he couldn’t read music — remains
one of my most memorable Stones8 | LoneStarMusic
Photo by John Carrico
r
a
e
H
u
o
Y
t
’
n
a
C
Me Knockin’
Photo by Lynne Ma
rgolis
lsm news
A guy walks into eternity …
Remembering Ian McLagan
By Lynne Margolis
When Rock and Roll Hall of Famer
Ian “Mac” McLagan passed away Dec.
3 following a massive stroke, so many
people were gathered inside his hospital
room, anyone who didn’t know better
might have thought there was a party
going on. In a way, there was; through
their tears, the fellow musicians and
concert moments.
His super-stardom is made more
extraordinary by the fact that he
released only one album of his own,
and never held long-term, full-fledged
membership in any band until Bobby
Keys & the Suffering Bastards formed
in 2010. He recorded and toured with
many, however, including Ron Wood’s
New Barbarians and fellow Lubbock
ex-pat Joe Ely’s mid-80s band. That’s
Keys (misspelled name and all) sharing
the cover of Ely’s belatedly released
Live in Chicago 1987. The shot bears a
resemblance to familiar images of Bruce
Springsteen and Clarence Clemons; Ely
and his band have often been called
Texas’ version of Bruce and the E
Streeters, except it was Keys who clearly
inspired Clemons — and countless others
— through his groundbreaking use of
saxophone as a guitarlike instrument.
Keys’ route to fame started in Slaton,
just outside of Lubbock, where he chased
the siren sound of neighbor Buddy Holly’s
guitar. Picking up the sax to gain entrée
into his high-school marching band, Keys
was influenced by both Sonny Curtis and
King Curtis, though he was largely selftaught. At 16, he left Lubbock to tour with
Buddy Knox (“Party Doll”), then segued to
Bobby Vee’s band, which landed him on
Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars tour in 1964.
In San Antonio, they shared a bill with a
young British band of fellow Buddy Holly
fans (a connection that would draw many
other Brits, including Lennon, into Keys’
orbit, along with fellow Texans). That first
meeting with the Stones kicked off what
became an unparalleled musical history.
Their story has been recounted
often; Keys did so himself for
LoneStarMusic contributor Eric Hisaw’s
2011 feature. But we gathered some
lesser-known tales of Keys’ high-octane
existence from three people who
were particularly close to him: Ely, his
Lubbock-born wife, Sharon, and former
Austinite
Jessie Scott,
cont. on page 54
Dylan, Billy Bragg and Bruce Springsteen,
would have preferred a festive sendoff
to a mournful one. He was, after all, a
member of two bands renowned for their
love of a good time. The Faces famously
placed an actual bar onstage during their
shows, and the Faces retrospective box
set McLagan produced in 2004 was titled
Small Faces/Faces bassist Ronnie
Lane, stricken with multiple sclerosis,
had traveled there from Austin with
DiMenno, his live-in caretaker. McLagan,
then living in Los Angeles, brought his
wife, the former Kim Kerrigan Moon.
“We all clicked, and Mac said, ‘We’re
friends for life; we’re friends forever,’”
DiMenno recalls. He even
grabbed some paper,
scribbled down the lyrics
to Vera Lynn’s popular
World War II song, “We’ll
Meet Again” (“Some
sunny day, some sunny
day, we’ll meet again
some sunny day”), dated
it, and handed it to her.
HAD ME A REAL GOOD TIME: (left and center) Ian McLagan (and the Who’s Pete Townshend) at the 2007 Austin
The McLagans moved
Music Awards, paying tribute to Mac’s late Small Faces/Faces bandmate Ronnie Lane (Photos by John Carrico);
to Austin in 1994. When
(right) McLagan and Faces mate Ron Wood in 2006, when the Stones played Austin. (Photo by Lynne Margolis)
Mac released Spiritual
(Photos by John Carrico)
Boy, his 2006 tribute to
Lane, who died in 1997,
friends who comprised the renowned
Five Guys Walk into a Bar….
he hired DiMenno to do PR. She also
keyboardist’s Austin family gave him the
The tributes that flooded news
handled his subsequent albums, including
sweetest sendoff they could, surrounded
and social media after his death
Never Say Never, his 2008 tribute to Kim,
by love and the music of his heroes, from unanimously affirmed how beloved the
who died in a 2006 car accident.
Muddy Waters to Booker T. & the MGs.
diminutive rocker was — not just for
The loss devastated him, but his
They knew McLagan, 69, who helped
his extraordinary musical talents, but
dark eyes recently had regained some
craft the inimitable sounds of British
because he made everyone he met feel
sparkle, due in part to positive career
rock bands the Small Faces and Faces,
like they were his best friend.
developments and newfound freedom
served as a Rolling Stones sideman and
Jo Rae DiMenno, his publicist and
from the migraine headaches that had
shared his Wurlitzer and Hammond B3
one of his actual best friends, remembers plagued him for years. (They subsided after
talents with dozens of top artists, from
meeting him in London at the 1986 Faces he received a heart
Bonnie Raitt and Lucinda Williams to Bob
reunion concert at Wembley Stadium.
stent in 2013.)
cont. on page 52
LoneStarMusic | 9
Happy
Hour
Shinyribs’ Kevin Russell and
friends pay tribute to late street
performer Ted Hawkins
By Richard Skanse
“That felt good!”
Jon Dee Graham offers this verdict
from the studio floor of Austin’s Wire
Recording, where he, drummer Keith
Langford and bassist Andrew Duplantis
have just nailed what sounds like the
keeper take on a bluesy little lament called
“Strange Conversation.” On the other
side of the glass, engineer Stuart Sullivan
and Jenni Finlay and Brian T. Atkinson
— co-producers of Cold and Bitter Tears:
The Songs of Ted Hawkins — are all in
agreement, but they’re not quite done yet.
Graham still wants to add a lap steel part,
after which Duplantis is asked to splash on
a little background vocal color. Last but not
least, Kevin Russell — the album’s “artistic
director” producer, who arrives late to the
session after being held up by a flat tire —
hops into the booth to goose the mix with
some soulful harmonies of his own.
By final playback, “Strange
Conversation” feels more than just “good.”
Like the handful of other tracks (by the
likes of James McMurtry, Gurf Morlix,
Sunny Sweeney, Evan Felker of Turnpike
Troubadours and Russell’s own Shinyribs)
already recorded for this first-ever tribute
to Hawkins, it feels and sounds like a
genuine labor of love. And if the end
result helps shine a little more light on the
late singer-songwriter’s musical legacy,
everyone involved will be feeling great.
Hawkins, who died New Year’s Day
1995, released only three studio albums
WHO GOT MY NATURAL COMB?: (from top) Kevin
Russell w/ engineer Stuart Sullivan; (left to right)
bassist Jeff Brown, keyboard player Claude
Bernard, Lagunitas Brewing Co. rep Jim Jacobs,
drummer Keith Langford, Evan Felker, and Russell;
Sunny Sweeney with Ted Hawkins’ widow Elizabeth
and stepdaughter Tina Fowler; Jon Dee Graham
recording ”Strange Conversation” at Wire. (Photos
by Brian T. Atkinson)
during his lifetime — two for Rounder
Records in the early ’80s and one for
major-label Geffen the year before his
death — but each of them garnered
critical acclaim that far eclipsed his fame
in the U.S.. In fact, although he achieved
some degree of touring success in Europe
and Asia during the ’80s, the Biloxi,
Miss.-native — who first started singing
as a teenager in reform school — spent
much of his career playing in obscurity as
a Venice Beach street performer. That’s
where Graham got to see Hawkins in
action during his prime.
Graham, who was playing guitar in
ex-X frontman John Doe’s band at the
time, recalls Doe at one point considering
the Hawkins song “Sorry You’re Sick” for
his debut solo album, 1990’s Meet John
Doe. “That was the first I’d ever heard
about him,” Graham says, “and John was
like, ‘Dude, you need to go see him — he’s
down on the beach!’ So he took me down
there to Venice Beach to see him play, and
there were like 20-30 people who clearly
knew who he was, but there was also a
bunch of other people too, like German
tourists and people just hanging out at the
beach. It was a very weird scene. But he
was just dynamite, with this huge voice
and playing an acoustic guitar with steel
fingerpicks, which is loud as shit, you
know? Very rock ’n’ roll for an acoustic
street singer. And it was badass.”
Russell, who’s been a Hawkins
enthusiast since the early ’90s, when he
got his hands on Rounder’s CD reissues of
the first two albums, 1982’s Watch Your
Step and ’85’s Happy Hour, never did get
to see the singer he likens to “Otis Redding
and Sam Cooke combined” live; when
Hawkins played Austin’s Cactus Cafe in
1994, it happened to be the same night
that Russell’s previous band, the Gourds,
were booked to play one of their first
shows right up the street. “Everybody in
the Gourds loved him, but we were like, ‘Ah
man, we can’t cancel this gig — we need to
make a good impression so we get booked
again!’ So we figured we’d catch him the
next time, because his Geffen record [The
Next Hundred Years] had just come out and
he was about to be a big star. But then he
was dead not long after that, which was a
bummer. That show and the Alex Chilton
show at the Cactus maybe the next year are
the two shows I really regret not going to.”
Twenty years later, though, Russell
would play a big role in getting the Hawkins
tribute off the ground. “Jenni calls me the
Johnny Appleseed of Ted Hawkins, which
is true because I’ve been turning people
onto him everywhere I go,” he says with a
laugh. Russell
cont. on page 55
10 | LoneStarMusic
Photo by Gary Miller
Willie’s World
At 81, Willie Nelson is still releasing
albums at twice the rate most musicmaking mortals do, and still spending
more time on the road than at home.
And now he’s branching out to TV with
Inside Arlyn Studios, a new series featuring sessions taped in the homey
Austin recording studio operated by
his nephew, Freddy Fletcher, and Lisa
Rainey Fletcher. Nelson will serve as the
host; during two pilot episodes filmed in
November, he also performed, first with
Merle Haggard, then with Gary Clark Jr.
The show doesn’t yet have a distribution deal, but negotiations are under
way. With Nelson’s name and its highend production values — not to mention
the involvement of AXS TV’s Dan Rather,
who interviewed Nelson and Haggard
in the first episode — an AXS time-slot
announcement wouldn’t be a surprise.
(The Dallas-based music- and sports-focused channel, founded by Mark Cuban,
lists as partners Ryan Seacrest Media,
event presenter/venue operator AEG,
top artist management agency CAA —
which handles Nelson — and CBS).
Clark’s mid-November taping was a
warm-up of sorts for recording sessions
he’d slated there for his next studio
album, due — along with his first child
— in 2015. His proud parents sat in the
living-room-like studio alongside Willie’s sister, Bobbie, and Susan Antone,
Willie Nelson, Gary Clark Jr. hang Inside
Arlyn Studios | By Lynne Margolis
sister of Clark’s early mentor, the late
club owner Clifford Antone. Other guests
perched on couches or floor cushions
or sat at pub tables arranged throughout the warm, wood-paneled space.
Thick oriental rugs covered the floor;
globe-shaped bulbs glowing above the
performers and candles clustered in
control-room windows further enhanced
the intimate ambiance. The vibe, more
Live from Daryl’s House than Austin City
Limits, was like being at a private concert
with 100 cocktail-sipping friends.
Before introducing his uncle and rising star Clark, Freddy Fletcher delivered a
brief history of the studio from the same
spot where his mother once serenaded
restaurant diners. Opened in 1984, Arlyn
was an extension of sorts to the adjacent
Austin Opera House, the music venue
Willie co-owed. Freddy named it after
his father, and welcomed artists from
Stevie Ray Vaughan to Marty Stuart and
the Butthole Surfers before leasing it to a
recording school for 10 years. With Austin restaurateur/club owner Will Bridges
and T. Murphey as partners, the Fletchers
began restoring it in 2012, combining the
Neve mixing board from Nelson’s Pedernales Studio and Arlyn’s API board into a
super-console.
Arlyn has hosted many high-profile
events since it reopened, but this one
felt special.
The understated Clark hung in the
background while Nelson finger-picked his
loyal Trigger and sang “Rainy Day Blues”
and “Nightlife,” backed by bassist Johnny
Bradley, drummer Jay Moeller and Family
Band harp player Mickey Raphael. When
Nelson handed over the reins with the
words, “Play it, Gary,” Clark’s long fingers
began the first of several flurries along the
neck of his Epiphone Casino. “I’m a little
nervous,” he said. “It’s kind of a big deal.”
As farfetched as that might sound
coming from guy who’s spent the last
few years sharing stages with bona-fide
guitar gods and playing for the president, Clark does have a bashful streak
— and besides, he wouldn’t lie in front
of his parents. But his nervousness was
impossible to detect from his fluid playing on a half-dozen tunes, mainly blues
classics contained on his fine new release, Gary Clark Jr. Live.
With a baby on the way, a wedding
to plan and his commitment to help reopen Antone’s in a new location, Clark’s
got a lot of reasons to stick around Austin for a while. And if Inside Arlyn Studios
gets picked up, it looks like Willie might,
too. Maybe they’ll lay down some shared
tracks while they’re at it. Whether it’s on
TV or not, in this town, blues cats and
cosmic cowboys belong together.
a
LoneStarMusic | 11
From Lone Star legends to breakout
newcomers, these were our favorite
Americana albums of 2014
Richard Skanse, Editor
1. Robert Ellis, The Lights from the Chemical Plant
2. Old 97’s, Most Messed Up
3. Eliza Gilkyson, The Nocturne Diaries
4. Rod Picott, Hang Your Hopes on a Crooked Nail
5.John Fullbright, Songs
6.Robyn Ludwick, Little Rain
7.Willie Nelson, Band of Brothers
8. Lucinda Williams, Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone
9. Rodney Crowell, Tarpaper Sky
10. Nikki Lane, All or Nothin’
Andrew Dansby, Contributing Writer
1. Sun Kil Moon, Benji
2. Sturgill Simpson, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music
3. Robert Ellis, The Lights from the Chemical Plant
4. Doug Paisley, Strong Feelings
5.Trampled by Turtles, Wild Animals
6. Israel Nash, Rain Plans
7.Christopher Denny, If the Roses Don’t Kill Us
8. Hiss Golden Messenger, Lateness of Dancers
9. Angaleena Presley, American Middle Class
10. Shovels and Rope, Swimmin’ Time
Kristen Townsend, Advertising/Office Manager
1.Sturgill Simpson, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music
2.Parker Millsap, Parker Millsap
3. John Fullbright, Songs
4. Dirty River Boys, Dirty River Boys
5. Wade Bowen, Wade Bowen
6.Nikki Lane, All or Nothin’
7. Kelley Mickwee, You Used to Live Here
8.Jason Eady, Daylight & Dark
9. Cody Johnson, Cowboy Like Me
10. Midnight River Choir, Fresh Air
Holly Gleason, Contributing Writer
1.Robert Ellis, The Lights from the Chemical Plant
2.Leonard Cohen, Popular Problems
3. Nikki Lane, All or Nothin’
4. Various Artists, While No One Was Looking: 20 Years of
Bloodshot
5.Rodney Crowell, Tarpaper Sky
6. Lucinda Williams, Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone
7. Sturgill Simpson, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music
8.Benmont Tench, You Should Be So Lucky
9.John Hiatt, Terms of My Surrender
10. Lee Ann Womack, The Way I’m Livin’
Lynne Margolis, Contributing Writer
1.John Fullbright, Songs
2. Beck, Morning Phase
3.Shovels and Rope, Swimmin’ Time
4.Lee Ann Womack, The Way I’m Livin’
5. Ryan Adams, Ryan Adams
6. Rosanne Cash, The River & the Thread
7. John Hiatt, Terms of My Surrender
8. Shakey Graves, And the War Came
9. Old 97’s, Most Messed Up
10. TIE: Lucinda Williams, Down Where the Spirit Meets
the Bone; Various Artists, The New Basement Tapes
12 | LoneStarMusic
D.C. Bloom, Contributing Writer
1. Hard Working Americans, Hard Working Americans
2. Kelly Willis and Bruce Robison, Our Year
3. John Fullbright, Songs
4.Paul Thorn, Too Blessed to Be Stressed
5. Parker Millsap, Parker Millsap
6. Louise Mosrie, Lay It Down
7. Sarah Jarosz, Build Me Up from Bones
8. Justin Townes Earle, Single Mothers
9. Willie Nelson, Band of Brothers
10. Amy McCarley, Jet Engines
Americana 2014
LSM Playlists
Kelly Dearmore, Contributing Writer
1. Sturgill Simpson, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music
2. Shovels and Rope, Swimmin’ Time
3. Old 97’s, Most Messed Up
4. Nikki Lane, All or Nothin’
5. Wade Bowen, Wade Bowen
6. Shakey Graves, And the War Came
7. Dirty River Boys, Dirty River Boys
8. Matt Hillyer, If These Old Bones Could Talk
9. Drive-By Truckers, English Oceans
10. Ryan Adams, Ryan Adams
Mike Ethan Messick, Contributing Writer
1. John Fullbright, Songs
2.Shovels and Rope, Swimmin’ Time
3.Daniel Thomas Phipps, An Offering
4. John Baumann, High Plains Alchemy
5. Stoney LaRue, Aviator
6. Rodney Crowell, Tarpaper Sky
7. Micky & the Motorcars, Hearts from Above
8.Adam Carroll, Let It Choose You
9. Sturgill Simpson, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music
10. Sunny Sweeney, Provoked
Cody Oxley, Contributing Writer
1. Lew Card, Low Country Hi-Fi
2. Matt Harlan, Raven Hotel
3. Zac Wilkerson, Zac Wilkerson
4. Matt Powell, Easy Love
5. Jason Eady, Daylight & Dark
6. Robert Ellis, The Lights from the Chemical Plant
7. Hard Working Americans, Hard Working Americans
8. Billy Joe Shaver, Long in the Tooth
9. Jamestown Revival, Utah
10. Gary Floater, Who Cares: The Songs of Gary Floater
Adam Dawson, Contributing Writer
1. Matt Woods, With Love from Brushy Mountain
2. Parker Millsap, Parker Millsap
3. Will Kimbrough, Sideshow Love
4. Adam Carroll, Let It Choose You
5. Rod Picott, Hang Your Hopes on a Crooked Nail
6. Cory Branan, The No-Hit Wonder
7. Hard Working Americans, Hard Working Americans
8. St. Paul & the Broken Bones, Half the City
9. Sturgill Simpson, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music
10. Otis Gibbs, Souvenirs of a Misspent Youth
Kallie Townsend, LoneStarMusic.com
1. Dirty River Boys, Dirty River Boys
2. Midnight River Choir, Fresh Air
3. Wade Bowen, Wade Bowen
4. Parker Millsap, Parker Millsap
5. Sean McConnell, B Side Sessions
6. Whiskey Myers, Early Morning Shakes
7. Adam Hood, Welcome to the Big World
8. Brian Keane, Coming Home
9. Aaron Stephens, Hard Times, Straight Lines
10. Jason Eady, Daylight & Dark
LoneStarMusic | 13
NEW & RECENT RELEASES
on the LoneStarMusic radar
News Bits
first black fret music grant winners annouced at austin gala
BIG BALL IN AUSTIN TOWN: The Black Fret family of nominees,
mentors and founders onstage at the Paramount Theater. (Photo by
Dave Pedley)
Ten Austin music acts were awarded $10,000 grants
each on Nov. 8, when the non-profit Black Fret organization hosted its inaugural Black Ball gala at the Paramount
Theater. The winners — Gina Chavez, Amy Cook, Lincoln
Durahm, Erin Ivey, Elizabeth McQueen, Mother Falcon,
Quiet Company, the Rocketboys, Wild Child, and Graham
Wilkinson — were picked out of a pool of 20 nominees,
all of whom got to perform for Black Fret’s members
(patrons of local music who each ponied up a $1,500
donation) at private showcase parties throughout 2014.
The Black Fret nominees also had the opportunity to
consult with industry mentors and professional advisers,
ranging from entertianment lawyers and managers to
publicists and studio owners. All of the winners (except
for Wild Child) performed at the Black Ball, too, along
with fellow nominees Emily Bell, East Cameron Folkcore,
Jonny Gray, Elias Haslanger, Jitterbug Vipers, Little Radar,
and Danny Malone.
a
Simpson, lambert, womack, and Adams in grammy hunt
Welcome to the pros, kid: Sturgill Simpson, recently named “Emerging Artist of the Year” at the Americana Music
Honors and Awards ceremony in September, is up against some pretty seasoned heavy weights in his first-ever Grammy
competition. Simpson’s acclaimed sophomore release, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, is one of the five nominees
for Best Americana Album, along with Rosanne Cash’s The River & the Thread, John Hiatt’s Terms of My Surrender, Keb’
Mo’s Bluesamericana, and Nickel Creek’s A Dotted Line. Cash’s “A Feather’s Not a Bird” is also up for Best American Roots
Song and Best American Roots Performance. Other “roots” artists nominated include Best Blues Album contenders Ruthie
Foster, Dave & Phil Alvin, and the late Johnny Winter, and for Best Folk Album, Eliza Gilkyson, Old Crow Medicine Show,
and the late Jesse Winchester. Meanwhile, over on the more mainstream side of the Grammy pool (i.e., the categories
that might actually get TV airtime), Texans Miranda Lambert and Lee Ann Womack are both nominated for Best Country
Album (for Platinum and The Way I’m Livin’, respectively), a category that also features Brady Clark, Dierks Bentley, and
Eric Church. Lambert is also up for Best Country Song (“Automatic”), Best Country Solo Performance (“Something in the
Water”), and Best Country Duo/Group Performance (for her Carrie Underwood collaboration, “Somethin’ Bad.”) And last
but not least, former alt-country poster boy Ryan Adams faces off against some of the biggest names in rock, with his song
“Gimme Something Good” nominated for Best Rock Performance and Best Rock Song and his Ryan Adams album competing against U2, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, the Black Keys, and Beck for Best Rock Album. The 57th Grammy Awards
will be held Feb. 8 and broadcast on CBS.
a
Dec. 2
Willie Nelson and Sister Bobbie, December Day (Willie’s Stash Vol. 1)
Whitey Morgan and the 78’s, Born, Raised & Live from Flint
Dec. 9
Kris Kristofferson, An Evening With: Live in London
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Tina & Walt Wilkins, Be Mine
Jan. 6
Various Artists, Texas Music Scene Live: Vol. 1
Jan. 13
Cody Canada and the Departed, HippieLovePunk
Justin Townes Earle, Absent Fathers
Johnny Winter, Remembrance Volume 1
Jan. 20
Ryan Bingham, Fear and Saturday Night
Haley Cole, Illusions
Feb. 3
Gurf Morlix, Eatin’ at Me
American Aquarium, Wolves
Bob Dylan, Shadows in the Night
Feb. 10
Robert Earl Keen, Happy Prisoner: The Bluegrass Sessions
Feb. 17
Steve Earle & the Dukes, Terraplane
Aaron Watson, The Underdog
Feb. 24
James McMurtry, Complicated Game
Elana James, Black Beauty
Parker McCollum, The Limestone Kid
March 3
Asleep at the Wheel, Still the King: Celebrating the Music of Bob
Wills and HIs Texas Playboys
Brandi Carlile, The Firewatcher’s Daughter
March 10
Joe Pug, Windfall
March 17
Jamie Lin Wilson, Holidays & Wedding Rings
Allison Moorer, Down to Believing
April 11
Ray Wylie Hubbard, The Ruffian’s Misfortune
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LoneStarMusic | 15
is equal parts philosophical and Webster-style
logical.
“I’m saddened by how the country music on
country radio isn’t country anymore,” he says.
“Think about it: if you take the mandolin, banjo
and acoustic guitar away from bluegrass music, is
it bluegrass anymore? If a rapper doesn’t rap in a
song, is it still rap? The formula for country music
now is to take away the fiddle, take away the steel
guitar, and put a bunch of rock ‘n’ roll guitars in
with guys wearing skinny jeans and t-shirts that
are four sizes too small for them. And I know that
if everyone sounded and looked the same as I do,
the world would be a boring place, but we have to
open our eyes and admit that what’s popular now
isn’t country music.”
While Watson’s catalog features its own fair
share of rowdy guitars, it only takes a cursory listen
to any of his albums to hear the authentic twang and
A a ro n W a tso n
“The Underdog” takes
a stand for for God and
country (music)
By Kelly Dearmore
Don’t let the big smile and
good ol’ boy accent fool you:
Aaron Watson can be a really
serious fellow. He’s serious about
his commitment to his family, his
songwriting, and the legion of loyal
fans he’s won over the course of
his 15-year career as a proudly
independent Texas honky-tonker,
and really serious when it comes
to discussing matters related to his
Christian faith and the current state
of country music.
“The world needs more Jesus,
and that’s a fact,” says the native
West Texan, who opens his latest
album, The Underdog (out Feb. 17 on
Big Label/Thirty Tigers), with a song
called “The Prayer” about Johnny
Cash’s come-to-Jesus moment, when
the Man in Black found redemption
at the end of his rope via the “Man
in White.” It’s telling that Watson
opted for putting that song first on
the record over his original pick, a
“Waylon Jennings on speed” tune
called “Freight Train,” about his own
life on the road. Because as hard as
he’s worked over the years to build
and maintain his career, Watson still
credits the Big Guy first and foremost
for all he’s achieved. And he’s got no
reservations saying so.
16 | LoneStarMusic
“If God is for me, than who can
be against me?” he asks. “I never
worry about criticism as a Christian,
because I know that Jesus died on
the cross, and I know that getting to
make music is a blessing from him for
me to have a positive impact on my
fans three or four nights a week.”
Of course, it’s not as though
Watson’s faith is a surprise to anyone
who has paid attention. In 2007, he
released Barbed Wire Halo, an album
full of country gospel tunes. Fellow
Texan Lyle Lovett was a fan of the
record and made a point of telling
him so, though Watson admits that
his mettle has been tested more
than once as he and his band have
traversed a honky-tonk circuit that
typically favors songs about sugarshakers above miracle-makers.
“I won’t name the bar,” the
married father of three relates from
his home in Abilene, “but we were
setting up at a huge, huge, huge venue
one time, and the manager came
to my road manager and asked if I
wouldn’t talk so much about my faith
in God because he didn’t think that’s
what people were coming to the show
for. I told my road manager to go tell
the venue manager to worry about his
employees and drink specials, and let
me worry about my show. So, I may
have added a bit of icing on the cake
that that manager didn’t want me to
add, but I was respectful about it. For
me, it’s important that every night,
the fans go home knowing that Jesus
loves them.”
And judging from the size of his
crowds — not to mention his success
on the radio both across Texas and
nationally, with his latest single, The
Underdog’s “That Look,” debuting in
the Top 50 on the Hot Country Songs
chart — most of his fans don’t seem
to mind. Especially not when Watson
serves up his brand of testifying
with such an irresistible helping of
dancing- (and yes, drinking)-friendly
classic honky-tonk the likes of
which is getting harder and harder
to come by in the mainstream.
For Watson, it’s just a matter of
honoring tradition, given that it
was his Christian raising (he says his
parents took him to church as a child
“whether I liked it or not!”) that in
large part led him to country music in
the first place.
“There’s always been cheating
and drinking songs in country music,”
Watson says, “but for every cheating
song, there are 10 songs about faith
and family. There’s always been a set
of morals in country music that’s not
there in pop or rock.”
Watson knows, of course, that
that ratio has tilted a bit over the
years in favor of drinking and party
songs, and the once close affiliation
of gospel and country isn’t near
as tight these days. And needless
to say, he’s seriously irked by the
hollow glitz that has taken over
the genre. But instead of simply
labeling all of the current Top 40
as “bro-country” and leaving it at
that, Watson employs a theory that
Photo courtesy of Shore Fire Media
Artist Profiles
“I know that if everyone sounded and
looked the same as I do, the world
would be a boring place, but we have
to open our eyes and admit that what’s
popular now [on country radio] isn’t
country music.”
plain-spoken sincerity in his country music. And that’s
as true on The Underdog as it was on his 1999 debut,
even though his latest finds him collaborating with
one of the hottest producers in Nashville today. But
that producer, Keith Stegall, has a strong track record
of working with artists like Watson who know from
real country. In addition to producing records Alan
Jackson, the Zac Brown Band, and the late George
Jones, Stegall has also had considerable success as
a songwriter, co-writing a number of hits including
George Strait’s chart-topping “I Hate Everything.”
Not surprisingly, Watson credits Stegall for
“opening my eyes to a bigger, better work ethic,”
resulting in not just his most confident and
strongest album to date, but a heightened sense of
purpose in terms of his career.
“I’m in my mid 30s, putting out my 12th album,
and I feel like I’m just hitting my stride,” Watson
enthuses. “I just now feel like I’m getting started,
and that’s really exciting.”
♦
LoneStarMusic | 17
Adam Hood
Red Dirt music’s favorite
Alabama son takes
charge with Welcome to
the Big World
By Kelly Dearmore
Adam Hood isn’t old, but he isn’t
a young gun anymore, either. Long
before the early November release
of his latest album, Welcome to the
Big World, the native of Opelika, Ala.,
was already a seasoned road-warrior
and respected recording artist and
songwriter, having spent years building
a following throughout the South and
finding a particularly solid toehold on
the Texas/Red Dirt music scene, which
has embraced him as one of its own
for the better part of the last decade.
His knack for twisting words into
impeccable songs with hooks galore
has served him well in Nashville, too,
landing him tracks on such notable
releases as Little Big Town’s Tornado
(“Front Porch Thang”) and Lee Ann
Womack’s recent Grammy-nominated
comeback, The Way I’m Livin’ (“Same
Kind of Different.”)
But six albums into his own
recording career, Hood’s still evolving
as an artist — and learning new ways
to get the most out of his trademark
soulful voice: specifically, by using it
to speak out more in the studio.
“One thing I did on this record is
give my input — I can admit it now,”
he says. One would think that would
be old hat for an independent artist
who’s been making records since
2002, but the fact of the matter is,
this was a first for him.
“With the other records, I just
18 | LoneStarMusic
showed up with my songs and my
guitar and let everybody do their
job,” he explains. “And it worked and
I’m proud of every record. But with
this album, if I didn’t like the way
something sounded, I said so. If I liked
it, I said so.”
And that’s not a knock on the
album’s producer, Texan Rachel Loy,
either. “One big reason I did that was
because Rachel asked me,” Hood
continues. “I realize now that the
question, ‘What do you think?’ is very
important in the recording process.
“I have now built-up the selfconfidence to decide what I want my
music to sound like,” he adds, “and
then do what it takes to make that
happen.”
Hood’s decision to take a more
active role in the decision-making
this time around was particularly
important when it came to recording
the album’s most emotionally hefty
tune, “He Did.” It’s an ode to his
father, Larry, who died of cancer in
2010. Part of the reason it took Hood
so long to not only write the song but
commit it to record was because he
wanted to make sure he got it down
exactly the right way.
“I try to stay away from the sappy
stuff in everything I write,” Hood says.
“But that intention almost kept me
from writing it at all. It took years to
write that song, and I tried several
times. Nobody said I had to write a
song about my dad, but it’s one of
those experiences in life that changes
you and writing about it is part of the
therapy. So I didn’t push it. Luckily,
Jason Mizelle, the co-writer on that
song, had the initial idea. Jason threw
the title out and the song wrote itself!
“There are pieces of both our
dads in there,” he continues. “His dad
was more the fix-it guy, and my dad
smoked a pipe, not cigarettes. But my
dad was an outdoorsman the likes of
Hemingway, and he was particular
about who manufactured the truck he
drove, and he never went home the
same way he came.”
The father’s wandering spirit
clearly lives on in the son. Although
Hood still makes his home in the
Yellowhammer State (living in
Northport, Ala., with his family), he’s
no stranger to the road — returning
time and again to his favorite clubs
and bars throughout Louisiana,
Oklahoma and especially Texas both
to stay in front of his most loyal fans
and to collaborate and play with the
many musician friends he’s made over
the years. Hood’s done some touring
of late with Jason Eady (the duo
billing themselves as the “Southern
Brothers”), and Sunny Sweeney
lends her Texas-sized twang to one
of Welcome to the Big World’s most
rocking tunes, “The Countriest.”
He’s also sat in on a lot of song
swaps, trading tunes and stories with
everyone from up-and-comers to such
established favorites as Walt Wilkins,
Ryan Bingham, and Wade Bowen.
“I think those song swaps are
essential,” Hood says. “Iron sharpens
iron, and I can say whole-heartedly
that Wade Bowen has an intensity
toward his songs that I wish I had. I
know that because I sat next to him
on multiple occasions and watched
it happen. I’ve learned something
every time I’ve played a song swap,
and usually made a friend by the
time it’s over, too.”
Photo by Leigh Ann Photography
Artist Profiles
♦
LoneStarMusic | 19
mom worked full time and took care
of three kids. The fact of having to
struggle so hard and barely make it
doesn’t seem right to me. We may
have been ‘middle class’ on paper,
but it felt like it was so close to
crashing down all the time.”
As grim as that may sound,
rest assured that Presley balances
that sting with just the right
amount of sunny resignation. In
the aforementioned “Knocked
Up,” the former single mother
details the predicament with both
believable authority and a spark of
self-deprecating humor (singing about
her “belly full of baby”) that feels far
more authentic than just clever for
clever’s sake. The album as a whole
reflects the way Presley, much like
so many other middle classers with
Artist Profiles
similar life experiences (membership
in a chart-topping country supergroup
aside), has learned to roll through
quit looking for a positive.
“I take things very seriously,” she
continues, “but at the end of the day,
“I’ve been through a lot of hardships and do feel like
the record maybe reflects more of those than the
positive, but the beauty of where I come from is that
we never quit looking for a positive.”
life’s funky ups and downs with gritty
perseverance and more than a little
stubborn optimism.
“It’s autobiographical, and I’ve
been through a lot of hardships and
do feel like the record maybe reflects
more of those than the positive,”
Presley admits. “But the beauty of
where I come from is that we never
there’s a ‘well, I tried!’ mentality. If
you can’t laugh at yourself every now
and then, it’s just not healthy.”
♦
“Holler Annie” gets her
due with American
Middle Class
By Kelly Dearmore
When country music’s Pistol Annies
made their television debut in the
spring of 2011, a few months before
the release of their first album, Hell
on Heels, and its title-track lead single,
“Texas Annie” Miranda Lambert was
by far the best-known member of the
feisty trio. “Tennessee Annie” Ashley
Monroe would be next, at least by the
time she chased the Annie’s second
album, 2013’s Annie Up, with her own
critically acclaimed sophomore album,
Like a Rose. That left “Holler Annie”
Angaleena Presley as the sleeper in
the bunch: although the Kentuckynative had more than a decade of
songwriting experience in Nashville
behind her and proved herself to be a
powerful, sultry singer and often-times
MVP contributor to both Pistol Annies
20 | LoneStarMusic
records, outside of the group she
remained largely unknown.
But not anymore. Ever since the
October release of Presley’s solo
debut, American Middle Class, the
honey-voiced 38-year-old has finally
been getting her own long-overdue
turn in the spotlight, including some
well-deserved spots on more than a
few critic best-of-2014 lists. Obviously,
Presley’s Pistol Annies affiliation
certainly hasn’t hurt her profile
and the album’s momentum. But
it’s worth noting that such rippedfrom-real-life tales as “Knocked
Up” (an off-kilter ode to life as an
unexpectant expectant mother) and
“Pain Pills” (a raw and menacing yet
somehow plucky take on the evils of
pharmaceutical assistance) weren’t
written to capitalize on the trio’s
signature sound and devil-may-care
attitude: These are the songs that got
her that Annies gig in the first place.
“Most of the songs from my solo
record were written before any of the
Annies stuff,” Presley explains. “There
were a couple of new tunes on my
record, but most were pre-Annies and
are what made Miranda and Ashley
reach out to me.”
Consequently, the songs on
American Middle Class, which Presley
co-produced with her husband, Jordan
Powell, by and large are drawn from
her life and experiences from before
fame started to catch up with her. The
real-life coal miner’s daughter looked
to her parents’ lives for inspiration, too
— along with the stories of so many
other Americans who, as she sings
in the title track, posses a “hammer
and nail between your heart and
your hometown, so you can carry the
country on your back.”
“I think the ‘class’ in America
is really screwed up,” Presley says.
“And that’s the real meaning of the
song. Is it right that my dad worked
50 hours a week for 30 years in a coal
mine risking death every day, only
to barely be able to pay for the roof
over our heads and the non-name
brand shoes on our feet? And my
Photo by Sarah Barlow
Angaleena Presley
LoneStarMusic | 21
lsm Columns
True Heroes of Texas Music
By Michael Corcoran
Barbara Lynn:
Not just “A Good Thing,” but the
Empress of Gulf Coast Soul
“Crazy Cajun” Huey P. Meaux was still
working as a barber in Winnie and a DJ on
KPAC-AM in Port Arthur when he started
making his name as a record producer
and talent scout in the Houston/Golden
Triangle area. His first Top 10 hit was
“Let’s Talk About Livin’” by East Texas
rockabilly singer Bob Luman in 1960 …
and Huey was hungry for Meaux.
Louisiana swamp-pop singer Joe
Barry, who’d had a big hit on Jin Records
in 1961 with “I’m a Fool to Care,” told
Meaux about this left-handed Creole girl
who played electric guitar and sang like
Guitar Slim’s sister. The next night, the
regional music wildcatter was there at the
Palomino Club in Vinton, La., just across
the Texas border, watching Barbara Lynn
Ozen fronting the band Bobbie Lynn and
Her Idols. Meaux’s jaw dropped when he
watched the guitarist pick out leads with
her thumb while strumming with her
index finger. Just seeing a female playing
an electric guitar was impressive enough,
but this southpaw had her own style.
Then, when the 20-year-old sang with
such soul and clarity, Meaux knew he’d
found his next strike.
The big bonus was that Barbara Lynn,
as became her billing, also wrote her own
songs. While attending Hebert High in
Beaumont, Lynn penned such tunes as
“Until Then I Suffer,” “Teen Age Blues,”
and “You’re Losing Me,” based on her
own experiences. She’d come up with the
title first, then sit in her room for hours
writing lyrics and melodies. One day she
told her boyfriend Sylvester, whom she’d
caught with a roving eye, that if he didn’t
watch it, he was going to lose a good
22 | LoneStarMusic
thing — and a great song just
came rolling out.
“You’ll Lose a Good Thing”
was Barbara Lynn’s only Top 40
hit, but it was a huge number in
1962, knocking Ray Charles out
of No. 1 on the R&B charts and
hitting No. 8 on the pop charts.
Simple and bluesy, the tune
was a ladies’ choice slow dance
favorite with an unmistakable
New Orleans feel, because
that’s where it was recorded, at
Cosimo’s studio in the French
Quarter. Lloyd Toups set the song’s mood
with mournful tenor sax, while piano
player Mac “Dr. John” Rebennack pounds
a Gulf Coast rhythm.
The follow-up single, “Second Fiddle
Girl,” which hit No. 63, was the closest
Lynn would ever get to the Billboard Pop
Top 40 again, though her 1963 single
“You’re Gonna Need Me” did reach No.
13 on the R&B chart. Still, calling Lynn,
who turned 73 in January 2015, a “onehit wonder” cheapens her influence.
One-hit wonders don’t have streets
named after them in their hometown,
an honor Lynn received three years
ago. Every female who ever picked up
an electric guitar and fronted a rock or
soul band owes a debt to the trailblazer
who still lives in the house in Beaumont
she had built with her first royalty check
($85,000!). “You’ll Lose a Good Thing”
(which lists Meaux as a co-writer) was
covered by Aretha Franklin in 1964 and
12 years later taken to No. 1 on the
country charts by Freddy Fender.
“There weren’t really any women
playing electric guitar that I knew of
coming up,” says Lynn, who says she
didn’t play guitar on her early records
because she wanted to concentrate on
singing. “But after I saw Elvis Presley on
the TV when I was just a kid, I just wanted
c Records
ht in the Atti
Photo courtesy Lig
to play the guitar so bad!”
She started off with a $10 righthanded ukulele, which she played upside
down, but her factory-worker parents
eventually saved up enough money
to buy her an electric guitar down at
Swicegood Music in Beaumont. “They
had to special order a left-handed guitar,
so I had to wait,” Lynn says. “Longest
three months of my life.”
Playing mostly covers of Elvis, Chuck
Berry, and Brenda Lee, Lynn was the
queen of the teen talent shows in the
Golden Triangle, often performing with
some of the other musically gifted kids
in the area, including Johnny and Edgar
Winter, Jerry LaCroix, and Clarence
“Gatemouth” Brown. The big man
in Beaumont back then was guitarist
Clarence “Bon Ton” Garlow, who had a
couple of Cajun-flavored, minor R&B hits
and played guitar for Clifton Chenier. As
Lynn would do 20 years later, Garlow
moved to Los Angeles after regional
success in the Golden Triangle, but came
back to Beaumont. The returning local
hero got a part-time job as a DJ on East
Texas R&B powerhouse KJET-AM and had
an eye of discovering talent.
“Clarence Garlow had a little studio
there at the corner of Houston and
Washington Boulevard,” Lynn recalls,
“and he wanted to cut a record on me,
but that’s around the time I met Huey
Meaux.” After she signed with Meaux’s
Starfire label, Garlow and the Crazy
Cajun had a falling out, Lynn says.
After Lynn’s first single “Dina and
Patrina” failed, “You’ll Lose a Good
Thing” didn’t and was quickly picked up
by Philadelphia-based Jamie Records.
As the bluesy number shot up the
charts and led to two appearances on
American Bandstand, Lynn’s simple
life became wonderfully complicated
almost overnight. “Oh, boy, that was something!”
Lynn remembers of the time Beaumont
topped Billboard. “I went out on
tour with all the big acts — Smokey
Robinson and the Miracles, Jackie
Wilson, Sam Cooke, Gladys Knight,
Marvin Gaye. I met Michael Jackson
when he was 9 years old.”
Those package shows could get
a little crazy out on the road, with
gambling, drugs, and sex at every stop,
so Lynn’s mother Mildred Richard quit
her job at the box factory to look after
her daughter, still a choir member of
Our Mother of Mercy Catholic Church.
Other musicians learned that you
didn’t have to watch out for just the
authorities, but Mildred, or “Mag,”
who once interrupted a drug deal and
told those boys to “get on away from
here” — and they did. “My stepdad
thought I was too young to go on tour
by myself, and he was right,” says Lynn.
Lynn wrote 10 of the 12 songs on
her debut LP, You’ll Lose a Good Thing,
unheard of for a female singer of that
era, and also penned most of the 1964
follow-up, Sister of Soul, including “Oh!
Baby (We Got a Good Thing Goin’),
which the Rolling Stones covered on
their 1965 LP, Now!
After recording four singles for
Meaux’s Tribe label, circa 1966, which
yielded the minor hit “You Left the
Water Running” (later covered by
Otis Redding), Lynn signed to Atlantic
Records. This was the deal she’d been
waiting for. But after 1968’s Here Is
Barbara Lynn didn’t take off, she was
dropped from the label.
There were some big things
happening in her life away from music
at the time — like marrying an Army
man from back home while he was on
leave from Vietnam — and Lynn didn’t
make another album for 20 years. Instead, she and her husband
moved to Houston, where he got a job
as a conductor for the Southern Pacific
Railroad and they raised a family.
Occasionally, Lynn performed in clubs
and released singles for Meaux’s R&B
label Jetstream that went nowhere — a
Jetstream trademark.
In 1975, Lynn and a girl friend went
to Las Vegas on vacation and when
Barbara hit two jackpots on the slots
in two hours, she decided to go on to
Los Angeles, while her friend went back
to Beaumont. “I wasn’t divorced from
my husband, but I needed a fresh start
in L.A.,” she says. Her three kids came
out to live with her. “When word got
around that I’d moved to L.A., I started
getting booked at all the chitlin circuit
clubs on the West Coast. I’ve never
worked an 8-to-5 job in my life.”
Her estranged husband died of
emphysema, and Lynn remarried in
L.A. But the singer moved back to
Beaumont in ’85 after her second
husband died of a heart attack. “I came
home to take care of my mother,” says
Lynn. But once she was back in Texas,
she was tracked down by Port Arthur
native Clifford Antone, who gave her an
open invitation to play his blues club in
Austin whenever she wanted. Lynn told
Antone she didn’t have a band and he
said to just show up with a guitar and
he’d take care of the rest. So a 42-yearold Barbara Lynn took a Greyhound bus
from Beaumont to Austin and ended
up playing one of the most memorable
gigs of her life.
“They knew all my songs,” she
says of both the house band and the
singing-along crowd. “That shocked
me, but then I found out that Lou Ann
(Barton) and Sarah Brown and Marcia
Ball and Angela (Strehli) had been
doing my songs for years.”
Lynn also discovered she had a big
following in Japan and was signed to
record her first album in 20 years for
the Ichiban label in 1988. You Don’t
Have To Go stayed in the Gulf Coast,
with Lynn’s cover of Lazy Lester’s
“Sugar-Coated Love” a standout. She
also made it to the soundtrack of John
Waters’ 1988 film Hairspray, giving legs
to “You’ll Lose a Good Thing.” In the
‘90s, she released So Good on Bullseye
and took to the road to promote it. Club owners loved Lynn, whose sweet
and accommodating personality was
the opposite of diva.
Some nice royalty checks came in
2002 when Moby used “I‘m a Good
Woman,“ which Lynn released on
Tribe in 1966, as the foundation of
“Another Woman” on his platinum 18
album. The latest career uptick was in
2014, when Light in the Attic Records
reissued This Is Barbara Lynn as a vinylonly release, introducing her to the
turntable-crazed hip crowd. When Lynn
played a one-off show at the North
Door venue in Austin in December, the
average age of the audience looked to
be about 30-35, and that included all
the pot-bellied grayhairs who used to
see her at Antone’s in the ‘80s.
She started off the set with a cover
of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together,”
with the guitar in her lap like a Fender
Pomeranian, and it seemed like it
might be one of those walk-through
performances by an aging legend. But
then Lynn and the pick-up band went
into “I’d Rather Go Blind,” the Etta
James song she recorded in 1996 for
oldies soul label ITP, and she picked
out a lead on the guitar that excited
and stung like a goodbye kiss. At age
73, Barbara Lynn has still not lost that
good thing.
“Everybody knows her hits like
‘You’ll Lose a Good Thing’ and ‘Oh,
Baby, We’ve Got a Good Thing Going,’
but until you see her live, you don’t
realize what an incredible guitar player
she is,” says Ira Padros, who booked
Lynn to play his Ponderosa Stomp in
New Orleans for 10 straight years. He
recalled a rehearsal at the November
2008 tribute to Les Paul at the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland,
where Lynn was playing with Billy
Gibbons of ZZ Top. The side of the
stage was full of guitar greats, including
James Burton, Slash, Duane Eddy, and
Lonnie Mack, and after Lynn ripped out
the notes from her soul on one lead,
percussion was provided by slaps on
the forehead.
She may be the sweet grandmother of seven, but when she’s got
a guitar in her hands, Barbara Lynn
will always be “The Empress of Gulf
Coast Soul.”
♠
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acoustic arragnements, many of the songs — most notably the opening
“Nobody Knows My Trouble” and the lead single, “Broken Heart Tattoos”
— chart bold new lyrical territory for the 33-year-old troubadour. After
more than a decade of chronicling his life’s often rough and tumble,
torturous journey through songs rife with moody introspection and
harrowing intensity, the now happily married (to film and video director
Anna Axter) Binham sounds like he’s really starting to get the hang of
embracing a genuine sense of domestic bliss. In “Broken Heart Tattoos,”
he even muses on the lessons he might one day get to pass on to his
hypothetical children.
Of course, fans of Bingham’s more brooding side can rest assured
that he hasn’t turned full-on Mr. Happy Go Lucky on them: there’s still
just enough fear and loathing on Fear and Saturday Night to revel in for
those looking for a shot of Southern Discomfort. But as evidenced by his
charming good humor and blinding white smile on display throughout
the opening night of his month-long solo acoustic tour in November at
a downtown Austin hipster bar called Holy Mountain, Bingham’s high
spirits these days are as sincere and authentic as any song he’s ever
written. The week after Thanksgiving, we caught up again with Bingham
at the tail-end of that tour to get to the heart of Saturday Night and talk
about the balance he’s found between singing about the ghosts of his
past and his optimistic outlook on his present and future.
&
Ryan Bingham
The wayward roadhouse son finds his way from
the Southside of Heaven back to the light.
By Richard Skanse
24 | LoneStarMusic
I’m in San Francisco right now. I’ve got one more show here
tomorrow night, and then a show in Los Angeles, and that’ll be it for
this round.
How’s this run been for you overall? It’s been a while since you went
out solo like this, hasn’t it?
Yeah, it has. And it took me a couple of shows to kind of get
back into it, but it’s really been a good tour. The shows have been
great and the crowds have been great. So it’s been a lot of fun. I look
forward to probably doing some more stuff like this in the future. It’s
been a good time.
Have any of the shows really stood out for you?
There’s a couple. Like, Washington, D.C. was a really, really good one,
and the show in San Francisco last night was really good as well. There’s
been some good ones, man. And there hasn’t really been any bad ones,
but those are some of the ones that really stood out for me. But they’ve all
been pretty cool. It’s been fun to play a lot of these songs, kind of getting
back to the way I wrote them, because I pretty much wrote all of these
songs just like that, with just an acoustic guitar. And a lot of times when
you get in the studio with a band and all that, a lot of stuff really changes.
So it’s been cool to get a chance to kind of get back to the roots and also
play some songs that I don’t get a chance to play very much.
Photo by Anna Axster
Ryan Bingham has a pretty good track record when
it comes to making strong first impressions. Take, for
example, the time about a decade ago when legendary
Texas songwriter (and world-renowned visual artist) Terry
Allen happened upon Bingham playing for tips at a bar in
Marfa, and invited the young, unknown songwriter back
to the anniversary party Allen and his wife were hosting
at a hotel down the street. Before the night was over,
Bingham was swapping songs with Allen, Joe Ely, Butch
Hancock, Guy Clark, Robert Earl Keen, and David Byrne —
and according to both Allen and Ely, blowing every one of
’em away.
Already vetted and enthusiastically endorsed by the
best of the best, Bingham’s rise was just beginning. His
major-label debut, 2007’s Mescalito, made for a powerful
first impression, too, more than justifying the heady buzz
on the New Mexico-born and Texas-reared drifter with
a low rumble of a whiskey-on-the-rocks rasp as cracked
and weather-beaten as his lived-in songs about hard
traveling, harder times and haunted memories. Three
years later, Bingham won his first Grammy — along with
matching Academy and Golden Globe Awards — for “The
Weary Kind,” his devastatingly poignant theme song for
the movie Crazy Heart.
But even now, five years on from winning that
Triple Crown and firmly established as one of the most
compelling voices of his generation on the Americana
landscape, Bingham can still blindside you with the
shock of the new. After three highly acclaimed albums
for Lost Highway Records, he went indie — and full-bore
electric — for 2012’s amp-singing Tomorrowland. And
though the follow-up, Fear and Saturday Night (out
Jan. 20, once again on Bingham’s own label), scales the
sonic attack back to more familiar stripped-down, mostly
Where are you calling from? Are you back home in Los Angeles yet or
still on the road?
I caught the first night of the tour at Holy Mountain in Austin. That was
such a small, intimate room — the place was packed, but it really felt
like a private, fan-club-only kind of show. I overheard one couple in line
telling the doorman, “When we have our drunken accident baby, we’re
naming him Bingham!”
[Laughs] Oh no! Don’t do that to the poor kid!
LoneStarMusic | 25
&
And all through the show, some guy behind
me — obviously drunk and having the time
of his life — kept shouting out requests for
Tomorrowland’s “Guess Who’s Knocking.”
And next to me was like this Simpsons
“Comic Book Guy” sort of a Ryan Bingham
fan, who would hear that and roll his eyes
and mutter all sarcastically, “Yeah, like
that’s the song we really want to hear …”
Ha!
I was rooting for the drunk guy to get his
wish! Tomorrowland was kind of pitched as
your get-your-ya-ya’s-out rock ’n’ roll album,
and it certainly sounded like you had a blast
making it. But did you end up hearing a lot
of grumbling from fans like that about songs
like “Guess Who’s Knocking”?
No, not really, man — everybody’s
been pretty cool. Austin was one of the
more rowdy shows, though, for sure. That
venue was a good place, but it was really
more of a bar kind of scene, with all the
noise outside and the bass from the clubs
next door and the cars going by — it was
definitely a different kind of environment
than a lot of the venues we played. But for
the most part everybody’s been pretty cool,
and I’ve been free to kind of play whatever
songs I felt like playing. And when people
want to hear particular tunes, I definitely try
my best to do them — but sometimes I just
can’t remember the words to all of them!
It’s weird. Sometimes I can recall a song and
play it through singing it word for word, and
10 minutes later I can’t remember the first
word to any of them.
That Austin show was actually the first time
I’ve ever seen you perform, or at least from
that up close rather than from the back of
26 | LoneStarMusic
[Laughs] Yeah, I guess some of the songs
… you know, when you write them, it’s like
you’re … I’m kind of by myself, kind of going
to darker places, you know? But I try to
remain optimistic. Because you know you’re
going to get out there on the road every
night and play them in all these places, so
you’ve got to learn to have some fun with it.
That sense of optimism seems to kind
of define Fear and Saturday Night as a
whole. I mean it’s a far cry from being all
“Zippity Do Dah” — it still sounds like a
Ryan Bingham record — but it seems like
a record made from a really good place in
your life.
you start writing a new record?
That acoustic, stripped-down approach
is the polar opposite of the direction
you went in with Tomorrowland.
It just depends; I don’t really keep
track of it. I don’t give myself a deadline
or anything, I just try to write when I’m
feeling it. I’ve never been very good at
sitting down with a pen and paper and
trying to churn something out; it just
kind of has to come when it comes,
and you can’t force that. Sometimes I’ll
try to start writing and I’ll get maybe
halfway through a song and I’m just
not really feeling it, so I just have to
put the guitar down and walk away
from it and come back to it at another
time. Sometimes it’s happening, and
sometimes it’s not.
Yeah I do. I really have to be by
myself, try to get somewhere where I
can reflect on where I’ve been, what
I’ve been through. I’ve got to get
somewhere where I feel like I’m on the
outside looking in.
Once you’ve found that seclusion, do
the songs come pretty quickly to you?
How long did it take you to write this
album in particular?
“At the end of the day ... you just try to
write about things that you’ve experienced
and that you can be honest about. ... You
can’t expect people to believe what you’re
saying if you don’t believe it yourself.”
Yeah, definitely it is. I went through
quite a bit of heavy stuff, even from
Mescalito on through up till now. But I’ve
just kind of come along a long way, and
I’ve been really happy in my life … All the
stuff that’s been going on, having fun
playing music, making changes in my life,
trying to make things better … I’ve been in
a pretty good spot so far, and having fun
with everything, so it’s definitely about
being in a lot better place now.
written with an electric guitar and really
wanting to just experiment with sounds
and try some different stuff out. And
I was in a lot different headspace and
going through a lot of different shit
when I was writing that stuff. You just
kind of go through things in life … these
songs tend to be real personal and
about where you are in your life at that
moment. Sometimes albums feel like
chapters in a book, a journal of where
you’ve been living your life. Everyone
goes through different phases in their
life, and each album kind of reflects that.
But was that a overall theme that you were
consciously aiming for when you were
writing these songs?
I don’t know. There’s definitely a better
sense of optimism, for sure. I just really
wanted to have fun with these songs, and be
able to play them acoustically and stripped
down, just really let these songs kind of
speak for themselves. I wanted something
I could look forward to going out on the
road and playing every night, because at the
end of the day that’s how I make my living.
I’ve never been dependent on selling
records to make a living; I make my
money going out and playing my songs
for people. These songs … I don’t know,
I write them all from the same place; at
the end of the day, you try to go to that
place where you find these tunes, and
you just try to write about things that
you’ve experienced and that you can be
honest about — and things that you can
sing every night of the week. You can’t
expect people to believe what you’re
saying if you don’t believe it yourself.
Yeah. It’s just kind of how I felt when
I started it. It was a different approach
when I was writing those songs; you
know, I kind of went and camped out in
the mountains with an acoustic guitar,
writing all these songs for Fear and
Saturday Night. And when I was writing
stuff for Tomorrowland, I wrote all those
songs with an electric guitar, kind of
experimenting with different amps and
things like that. So those songs were
Photo by Anna Axster
QA
a festival crowd somewhere. One of the
things that really made an impression on
me was how clear it was that you were
really enjoying the moment. Having only
really listened to you on record before that,
I went into that show thinking you’d be
more of an all-brooding, all-the-time, shoegazer type — the kind of performer who
talks to the crowd as little as possible apart
from maybe mumbling “thanks” every
few songs. But you were grinning from
ear to ear and joking with the crowd and
encouraging participation pretty much the
whole show. You even ordered a case of
Lone Star to be passed around. It wasn’t at
all what I was expecting: You were fun.
Regardless of whether the recording
turns out to be more acoustic or
electric sonically, do you always go off
and isolate yourself somewhere when
You mentioned earlier about getting
back to your roots as a performer, both
on this record and on your solo tour.
At that Austin show, you played a song
in Spanish that you said you learned
from an old Mariachi neighbor you had
when your family was living in Laredo
when you were 17. Did he teach you
much on guitar?
No, he just taught me that one
song — “La Malagueña.” That was the
first song I learned. I’d had a guitar that
my mom got me about a year before
that, but I didn’t know how to play it.
But I’d hear him play that song, and
he would show me one little part to
the song and tell me to go home and
learn it, and then I’d go back a couple
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&
days later and he’d show me the next
part. We did that for a few weeks until
I learned all the parts, and then I could
play that whole song. That was the only
song I learned, though, because I moved
away up to Stephevnville and Fort Worth
shortly after that. So that one song was
all that I really knew how to play for
about a year, until I got so sick of playing
it that I went and bought a book of guitar
chords and started trying to teach myself
some other chords, just so I could play
something else.
How important was music to you
growing up? I know you moved around
a lot as a kid, then you left home pretty
early and joined the rodeo circuit, so it
just doesn’t seem like you ever would
have had much time or the luxury to
collect and lug around a big record
collection in those days.
No. It really wasn’t that important
to me. I didn’t play music; I didn’t know
anyone who played music. It didn’t
become important to me until I learned
how to play guitar and started writing
songs. But once I did start writing songs,
it became this form of therapy for me.
I had all of this bottled-up, you know,
crazy things going on, stuff that had been
happening to me growing up, and all of
a sudden I found this release and this
way to get this stuff off my chest. And it
was just like the greatest thing that I had
ever stumbled upon. It was very personal
and I was very protective of it. But before
that, no, I didn’t have a huge record
collection. I was always intrigued and
inspired by music, but I was pretty much
just at the mercy of whatever the radio
stations were playing out in those little
West Texas towns, or you know, whatever
28 | LoneStarMusic
else was going on. I wasn’t into any scene
or any particular thing.
Which leads me to my next question.
Two of your earliest and most outspoken
supporters were Terry Allen and Joe
Ely. In fact I’m pretty sure the first time
I ever heard your name was from Terry.
You’ve got a very big PR firm (Shore Fire
Media) working your records these days,
but when it comes to publicists, it’s hard
to beat having guys like Terry and Joe
in your corner before you’re even on
anyone else’s radar …
[Laughs]
But what I’ve always wondered is —
that night you first met Terry and Joe in
Marfa, and ended up swapping songs
with them and Butch and Robert Earl
and Guy — did you have any idea at
the time who any of those guys were?
I mean yeah, they’re all pretty famous
to those who really follow this kind of
music, but they’re not household names
when you’re at the mercy of what’s on
the radio — even in West Texas. Were
you familiar with them at all?
Yeah. You know, I probably knew Guy
Clark and Joe Ely more than I did Terry
at the time; Terry was newer to me, but
I had kind of just gotten turned on to
him recently right before I met him. But I
knew Joe and Guy Clark and Robert Earl,
the whole thing. That was a huge, huge
turning point for me, when I met Terry,
in just how I went about everything: not
only in music and writing songs, but just
in life as well. He definitely changed the
game for me.
Do you remember how or where you
were first exposed to Ely and Guy Clark,
though?
My uncle actually turned me onto
those guys. I went to live with my uncle
when I was about 12 years old for a
couple of years, and he had a bunch of
old vinyl records. He had a Joe Ely record
and Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt …
he had everything from Bob Marley to
Bob Dylan. So that was really kind of my
introduction to the kind of stuff other
than what was played on the radio, that
big stack of records that he had. And
that was just kind of from me being a
kid, being curious … it wasn’t like he
went, “You need to listen to this.” I kind
of found it on my own. I saw this stack
of records in the corner one day, and I
just started putting them on myself and
checking them out. And that’s really
where I started discovering stuff.
When you started writing your own
songs, did you have any sort of template
you were working off of? I mean in terms
of, “I think I can write a song like that
guy, or at least I’m going to try ...”?
“That was a huge, huge turning point
for me, when I met Terry [Allen], in
just how I went about everything:
not only in music and writing songs,
but just in life as well.”
because I’d heard their music; they were
huge influences on me. And then when
I first heard one of Terry’s records, I was
like, “Holy fuck, who’s this guy?” I was
just over the moon about what he was
doing. Terry was just so much further
out there than anybody else; he just
broke down all the barriers and all the
rules of anything that I thought. He just
really opened my eyes and my ears and
changed my whole fucking outlook on
No, I don’t know if I was really trying
to write like anybody else. It was almost
like I wasn’t even trying to write songs,
you know? It was just about saying things
out loud for me. I wasn’t very good at
playing guitar — I knew like one or two
chords. And the songs that I was writing
were very minimal and just … it was more
about just getting stuff off my chest,
and the music kind of brought those
emotions and the words out. I mean, I
could definitely relate to Townes Van
Zandt and Guy Clark and Terry and Joe
and those other guys more than I could
some other things I heard, just because
they were kind of from where I was from
and it seemed like they were writing
about where I was living. And so I guess I
sort of gravitated toward that style, where
it was more about the lyrics than it was
about the music sometimes; it was just
kind of stripped-down and raw, and that
was something that I could kind of do as
well. But I wasn’t good enough to where I
could listen to their songs and learn them;
I didn’t know what they were doing, what
chord they were playing on the guitar or
piano. So the stuff I was writing was very
basic and just kind of minimal stuff.
Fear and Saturday Night is being called
your fifth album, but that’s only going
back to Mescalito. You actually had two
or three CDs that you put out before you
got signed to Lost Highway. Do you still
feel any kind of attachment to those?
Or, now that you’re releasing your
records on your own label again, do you
ever see yourself reissuing those first
independent releases?
Like the demo stuff before Mescalito,
is that what you’re asking? Some of
those I don’t even have anymore! A lot
of that stuff just really felt a lot more
like practice to me —like scratch stuff.
And it was from a period in my life that I
wrote about then that I’m just over now,
you know? A lot of songs are just about
different times in my life, and they’re
really personal, and some of them are
really hard to keep singing. They’re
about stuff that I’d rather forget than be
reminded of every day! So I don’t know,
we’ll see; I don’t really have any plans of
putting any of that back out now, but you
can find it pretty much anywhere these
days on the Internet if anybody wants it.
Both in interviews and songs, you’ve
alluded to or talked directly about
some of those things you went through
early on in life that were really hard —
including the addictions your parents
battled and your family having to move
around so much. As tough as that
was, do you have any genuinely happy
childhood or teenage memories that
resonate just as strongly? And if so,
where out of all the places you lived —
New Mexico, California, South Texas,
West Texas — did most of those happier
memories happen?
months, and then I came back, but then
I went back over there again. So I went
back and forth for about a year.
When I was young, where I was born,
in Hobbs, N.M. … those younger years
were the best. My parents, you know,
they were good people — it wasn’t like
I was getting abused or anything like
that. They were just bad alcoholics and
got hooked on drugs, and when I started
hitting my teen years it started catching
up with them and they really fell apart.
But I can remember my mom was just a
really witty and funny person, so much
fun to be around. And my dad, I looked
up to him so much. Really, kind of all
I ever wanted to be was like them. So
those younger years when I was a kid,
those were some pretty good times for
sure. And then when I started getting
in my teens things started really falling
apart. But there were some good times
that we had back then.
Speaking of life experiences most
people will probably never have — can
you walk me through what it feels like
and what goes through your head when
a bull kicks your teeth out?
Looking at your schedule for 2015, I
see you’re spending the first part of
the New Year in Europe. Very early on
in your travels, you went to Paris for a
job in a Wild West show at Euro Disney
— only to get there and find out that
the position wasn’t open anymore. You
eventually found your way, obviously,
but that first night you barely had a
penny to your name and no idea what
was going to happen. When you think
back on that time, do you shudder, or
do you think, “Damn, that was living!”
[Laughs] Oh shit, I don’t know … I
really loved riding bulls. I had a blast
doing it when I did. I mean, I loved the
rodeos and going on the road with my
friends, the whole deal. That’s really
all I’d ever wanted to do back then. But
Robert Earl Keen said it best: He said it’s
like riding down the highway at 80 miles
an hour and throwing the steering wheel
out of the window.
Do you ever get the itch to do it again?
Yeah, sometimes I do. But then I see
these guys getting beat up so bad, and I
don’t think my body could take it like it
used to. I’d just rather watch.
♠
No man, that was one of the best
things that I ever did! Just getting the
fuck out of town ... it just opened my
eyes up to the rest of the world. Paris is
such a diverse place culturally, it’s an eye
opener. It was very humbling and it was
very overwhelming, but it just seemed
really good for me at that age to get out
and see how other people live in the
world. It gives you a better perspective
on life, on how not everybody has to
live the exact same way, because pretty
much all I’d seen before that was like
Texas and a little bit of Mexico. So, it was
definitely something I’d do over again if I
had a chance.
How long were you over there?
I guess I was over there for a few
LoneStarMusic | 29
wade
bowen
Who I am … now:
Just a regular guy, having the time of
his life writing seriously good songs
at the top of his game
By Rob Patterson
Photos by Rodney Bursiel
30 | LoneStarMusic
LoneStarMusic | 31
“I don’t know if I’ll ever beat this record,” he says. “I really don’t. I hope I do.
But I think for this moment in time it has captured my life and career. I felt it from
the moment I finished it: This is going to be a very special one for me.”
wade
T
here are, every now and then, occasions in an artist’s career when the things that
really matter come together in near-magical congruency: the stars align, they hit
their stride with all pistons firing — however one might wish to describe it — and
they have their moment. And it’s their time to shine.
Right now, Wade Bowen is having that special moment. And in the Texas/Red
Dirt movement as well as beyond, it is his time.
You can hear it loud and clear on his latest album, his fifth studio recording but the first to
simply be called Wade Bowen — an apt title for such a seamless and cohesive collection of his
strongest songs to date. You can feel it in his energetic and joyful live performances, plus witness
the effects of an artist hitting his musical sweet spot in the audience he draws. You can also detect
it in what Bowen has to say.
He’s almost dumbstruck yet still proud that the record that bears his name as its own is far
and away his best ever. “We were sure trying for that,” he admits. “I’ve always tried for that, but
over the years I’ve just gotten older and — I don’t know about much wiser, but I have figured out
a little more how to do it …”
“I felt like it was hitting a big reset button for me,” Bowen continues. “All of it.”
Part of that stems from the fact that Wade Bowen is his first release after parting ways with Sony
Nashville, their short marriage proving to be an all-too-familiar example of an artist grabbing the
brass ring of a major-label record deal only to see things now quite work out as planned. But it’s not
every artist who comes away from such an experience not only unbroken, but better than ever and
with self-confidence to match — not to mention a Top 10 record on the Billboard Country chart and
a first-ever gig on national television (Bowen is scheduled to appear on Conan this January). 32 | LoneStarMusic
I
t’s early November, a week and a half after the official release of his
album, and Bowen is running a little late to our interview meeting and
meal together at Herbert’s Taco Hut in San Marcos, a mutual favorite
about halfway between his home in New Braunfels and mine in Austin. He
apologizes via text, then again shortly thereafter — and rather profusely
— the moment he arrives at the restaurant and finds our table. Nevermind
that it’s a rare day off from the road for him and that his brief holdup was merely
on account of something or other to do with spending time his two young sons,
Bruce and Brock: Bowen is nothing if not polite. You get the feeling from his
wb
Photos by Rodney Bursiel
down-to-earth demeanor that his mama
raised him right, and — as Wade’s
brother-in-law and longtime friend Cody
Canada offers straightaway — that he’s
just an all-around “good dude.”
He’s also about as Texan as it gets,
even though he’s presently wearing a
Boston Red Sox ball cap. “I’m more of
a Rangers fan,” Bowen clarifies for the
record, “but I have some buddies who
play for the Red Sox, so as long as they
aren’t playing the Rangers, I root for
them. I actually played this benefit last
night down in Boerne in Tapatio Springs
for Josh Beckett [a native of Spring who
pitched for the BoSox]; he’s got this big
fundraiser deal, so me and a couple of
guys went down there and played for his
party. It was a lot of fun. Now that he’s
retired he’s pretty much hanging down
around here a lot. Great guy.”
Bowen knows from sports: For
more than a decade, he and his wife
Shelby have hosted an annual celebrity
golf tournament and concert — the
Bowen Classic — in Waco, and prior to
picking up the guitar in his late teens,
competitive sports was at the core of his
life. “I went to a pretty small school, so I
played everything — football, basketball,
golf, track,” he says, albeit noting that,
being shorter than the usual hoops
players and smaller than many out on
the gridiron, “I got knocked around a lot.”
But even during his days as a high
school jock, he nurtured a serious
jones for music, too. “I still was
obsessed with music,” he recalls. “I’d
tell all my friends — even though I was
still a little shy to sing around them —
that that’s what I wanted to do. But I
had no clue about how to do that, and
I wasn’t really interested in figuring it
out when I was a teenager. Then I got
the bug when I was 17.”
Then, during his freshman year at
Texas Tech, Bowen saw Robert Earl Keen,
“and it changed my life.” Soon after that,
Bowen started his first band, West 84.
“I was always under the assumption
that I’d have to move to Nashville, wait
tables, wait in in line for my turn for a
record deal, as 98 percent of the artists
in country do — go up there and wait
your turn,” he notes. “Play the ballgame,
right? When I saw Robert Earl, I just
went, ‘Hold on, you don’t have to do
that.’ So I immediately went and started
a band. The rest is history. All because of
him showing me that you don’t have to
move; you can stay here.”
It wasn’t just Keen’s maverick
approach to building a successful music
career that made a lasting impression
on young Bowen, though; he also
keyed in on the Texas legend’s craft and
commitment to great songwriting. “I
think I was — and still am — trying to
learn so much, and why they write the
songs they do,” he says of Keen and the
other Texas songwriting greats that came
before him. “I think with the Robert Earl
stuff, like his first album, he’s telling all
these stories. I was just really intrigued
by that, beause I really hadn’t heard a
whole lot of that before. And Guy Clark
painted pictures I’d never heard before.
You hear all this mainstream commercial
stuff, and then you start digging into Guy
Clark … I was mesmerized.”
Not that Bowen quite had the knack
for writing to that level himself when
he first started out. An early show of his
with West 84 that this writer caught in
LoneStarMusic | 33
the late ’90s at Austin’s Stubb’s (on the smaller indoor stage) left little impression. The
college kid from Lubbock was earnest in his music making even then, but headliner
Bruce Robison’s cannily emotive songs overshadowed Bowen’s opening set by many
miles. Bowen’s dogged determination did win him some loyal fans on the then
still burgeoning Texas/Red Dirt music scene, but he’s the first to admit that his first
compositions and recorded efforts weren’t all that special. “There was one before Try
Not to Listen that I made when I was like 20 years old,” he recalls a little sheepishly.
“We sold it for a while and finally I said, ‘Hey, we’re not making any more those.’ It
was pretty bad. I was still trying out how to write songs.”
Some of those early efforts had legs, though. At a performance Bowen played
at Austin’s Belmont in late September, he introduced a song called “Who I Am” as
the third one he ever wrote. It held up surprisingly well even next to some of his
best songs of more recent vintage, and the overwhelmingly enthusiastic reception
it received by the crowd made clear its history as a fan favorite. But as energetically
as he performed it that night, Bowen expresses ambivalence about the composition
when I ask him about it. “It’s one of those songs that I think every artist or writer has
where you’re like, ‘Oh God … I’m so sick of that one,’” he admits. “But you have to
sing it. Be careful what you write; you might have to sing it for the rest of your life. My
brother-in-law has ‘Carney Man,’ and he hates singing it. But I say, ‘Hey, you just have
to play it. It’s your own fault for writing it!’ But I just feel like I’ve written so many
other songs, I don’t understand why people won’t let that one go. It’s as simple a
song as I’ve ever written.”
On the other hand, he’s also written songs where he knows that he’s nailed it.
“On this new record, my favorite song that I just keep coming back to is ‘West Texas
Rain.’ The more I think about it, the more I play it, I really feel that’s one that ... I’d let
them play it at my funeral,” Bowen says proudly. “I knew when I wrote it that it was a
special song. I felt like when we got it down in the studio that it’s a special song. And
then getting Vince Gill to come in and sing on it — that’s icing on the cake to me.”
Ultimately, whether he’s nitpicking at his earliest efforts or discussing how far
he’s come in terms of craftsmanship and maturity with his latest album, it’s clear
that Bowen takes his songwriting — and with it his drive to keep raising his own bar
— very seriously. “Yeah, I do,” he says. “I always have. I’m so scared about not being
taken seriously, so scared of being seen as cheesy, not being good enough …”
“I think that’s why I like this record.”
“I don’t know if I’ll ever beat this record. I really don’t. I hope I
do. But I think for this moment in time, it has captured my life and
career. I felt it from the moment I finsished it: This is going to be a
very special one for me.”
T
ruth be told, it wasn’t just the newer songs or even the tried and true “Who
I Am” that made Bowen’s September concert at the Belmont so much
more impressive to this witness than that easily forgotten show at Stubb’s
back in the day. The entire set was very nicely balanced between country
and rock with the occasional pop hook or flourish, in essence not too far
removed from a lot of mainstream country but refreshingly free of the heavy and
syrupy cheese too often slathered onto Music Row creations. It was also similar in
stylistic mix to what’s become the core sound of the Texas/Red Dirt music scene, but
with a depth and resonance that’s not always so readily apparent in a genre that all
too often seems content to just rest on Lone Star laurels, as if anything that’s not from
Nashville is somehow “good enough.” The band played with richness and dynamism,
Bowen sang with commitment and utterly true sincerity, and together they formed
a communal bond with the audience that was as palpable and strong during the
more meditative moments as it was at its most upbeat and fun. And the fact that a
substantial portion of that audience happened to be rather attractive women was
also hard not to notice.
Bowen laughs when I commend him on that last point, and smiles as he points
out an old showbiz maxim: “I hope so! That’s how you get the guys there!”
Joking aside, though, I ask him about the root of this appeal his music clearly has
with the ladies. Bowen’s a good-looking fellow, but his boyish attractiveness (not to
34 | LoneStarMusic
Photo by Rodney Bursiel
LoneStarMusic | 35
AVAILABLE
JANUARY 20
36 | LoneStarMusic
mention his clear commitment to his wife and family) doesn’t really scream chick
magnet. Could it have something to do, perhaps, with him having grown up the only
boy among three sisters?
“I don’t know,” he shrugs, stumped. He ponders the question for a further beat
or two, though, and concedes that all the women in his family had to have been a
factor. “It’s gotta be a big influence in my songs because of my sisters and my mom,
the four people in my life that are very … well, the foundation of what I write about
and think about. There’s probably a ‘sweet’ factor in my music that the girls feel.
It’s not angry, it’s not pissed-off, so maybe that’s the reason. I really don’t know,
though. I never really try to think about it or try to figure it out.”
One thing’s for certain, though: Music was a constant presence in the Bowen
household throughout his entire childhood in Waco. “Music was such a staple of
growing up, it was just embedded in my family,” he explains. “My sisters never
pursued music as a profession, but they’re just as passionate about it as I am. Same
with my mom. Music was always there. She was always singing. We were always
dancing. It was just a very rare time when music was not playing at home.”
And the music playing in the Bowen home, he notes, was almost always “well,
country. Country and country and country!
“My Mom was really into Patsy Cline,” he continues. “And my older sisters
[Tammy and Tracy] were really into mainstream kind of music: Alabama. They
used to drive me around to Alabama shows. Alabama was my first concert when
I was 5 years old.” Naturally, Bowen fit right in on 2013’s multi-artist salute, High
Cotton: A Tribute to Alabama, cutting “Love in the First Degree” with Brandy Clark.
“I think my sisters were more excited about that than I was,” he laughs. “And I was
pretty excited.”
When Bowen got a little older, his sisters became similarly obsessed with Garth
Brooks and George Strait. He also picked up a love of the Eagles from his mother,
and — from his dad — Willie Nelson.
“I always associate Willie Nelson with my dad,” Bowen says. “Growing up my
whole life, I thought my dad didn’t appreciate or didn’t like music as much as the
rest of us did. But then, when I got older, especially when I started writing songs,
I realized that he was the real smart one in that he was listening to Guy Clark and
Willie, Waylon and more obscure stuff that I didn’t know much about. And I just
was amazed at that stuff once I discovered it, and we started having conversations
about it.”
All of those songwriters that his dad loved so much would have a big impact
on Bowen’s approach to the craft. But it wasn’t until a few years after he started
playing that he belatedly discovered — via a cousin — the artist who today is his
biggest musical hero: Springsteen. “He’s my favorite,” Bowen says definitively. “I
named my son Bruce! And I don’t know why the fuck I didn’t discover him sooner
because he has become, of all the influences in my life, far and away No. 1 — the
biggest influence of my entire career.”
The influence of the Boss is easy enough to spot on Bowen’s latest. In the same
way that cars, thoroughfares and people in motion are consistent themes over
Springsteen’s catalog, travel is a major thread through Wade Bowen.
“I also like the fact that he’s 64, and he’s as relevant or more relevant than he’s
ever been,” Bowen marvels. “It’s so cool to see that. You go see Springsteen and he
still runs around like he did when he was 25. I also like seeing artists like Guy Clark,
who’s 71 now and still writing great songs. They’re still relevant to me.”
The curious thing about that, though, is that even as he looks up to heroes like
Springsteen, Keen, Clark, and Nelson who continue to make music that inspires
him well into their 60s, 70s, and even (in Willie’s case) 80s, Bowen has been a
fixture of the Texas/Red Dirt movement for long enough now — 16 years — that for
many college fans and aspiring young artists coming up on the scene today, he has
become something of an elder statesman himself. At the ripe old age of 37. “It is funny,” he says, shaking his head. “I don’t feel that at all, but I’ve been
getting that a lot with this record. So I guess I am the ‘older guy.’ [Kevin] Fowler
and I were talking about it last night: ‘I guess we’re the old guys and we’ll just
try to help the younger ones as much as we can ... We’ll get out our canes and
Shweiki Ad
LoneStarMusic | 37
wheelchairs and go hang out on a porch
somewhere and play!’”
He laughs, of course, but it’s
apparent that he’s also duly humbled
by the notion and conscious of the
responsibility it entails.
“If people wanna look up to me,
I always am happy to give them time
and advice,” he says. “I believe I’m very
kind to the younger guys because I
appreciated the times people were kind
to me. I’m always reminding myself of
when people were assholes and the
people who were nice, and try to learn
from everything.
“But … I still look at Robert Earl
and Lyle Lovett and those guys as the
veterans,” he continues, then laughs
again. “Even Pat Green and Jack Ingram
… let them be the ‘old guys.’ I still wanna
be the young guy!”
Although Green himself is only
five years older than Bowen, he was
already one of the biggest names in
Texas country when he took the younger
fellow Tech alum under his wing. “Pat
saw me, and he was one of the guys
who helped me when he didn’t have to,”
Bowen recalls. “He was as big as he ever
was in his career and he called me, and
said, ‘I think it’s time. You and me need
to write a song together.’ I was like, ‘Why
do you want to write with me? You could
write with anyone in the world.’ And he
was like, ‘I like you. I think you’re good.’
“So he and I wrote ‘Don’t Break
My Heart Again,’ and it came out, and
that started the decline of Pat Green,”
Bowen continues with a laugh. “I’m
kidding! But ever since he’s been telling
everybody how much he likes my voice
and my songwriting.”
Cody Canada and Cross Canadian
Ragweed also provided crucial early
support for Bowen. “I met him in
Lubbock,” recalls Canada, who now
fronts the Departed. “We were gigging
out there and he came out to the show.
I didn’t even know he was a musician,
but to be honest we hit it off that very
first time. Then I found out later he was
a musician and we started adding him to
our shows. He’s one of the first people
we met when we stated coming down
to Texas. He always treated us real nice,
he had really good taste in music … and I
was fortunate enough to have him marry
into my family.”
38 | LoneStarMusic
B
uoyed by the support of
friends like Green and
Canada early on — not to
mention the continued
refinement of his craft and
tireless work ethic — it wasn’t long
before Bowen was an established topdrawing Texas music act in his own
right. A pair of well-received records
for the short-lived, Texas-based Sustain
label — 2006’s Lost Hotel and 2008’s If
We Ever Make It Home — along with
a popular Live at Billy Bob’s release in
2010, eventually landed him not only
on Nashville radar, but on the roster of
BNA Records as part of the Sony Music
family. By 2012, he was next in line —
like Green, Ragweed, and several other
popular Texas/Red Dirt acts before him
— for the proverbial Big Dance on the
national stage.
It turned out to be a rather short
dance, and an awkward one at that.
Within a year the whole deal had gone
sideways, and Bowen was back to square
one and hitting that aforementioned
“reset” button — albeit for better for
more than worse.
“It was just bad timing all the way
around from the moment I got there,”
he notes of his tenure with the major
label. “They’re great people and I love
’em, but there was a lot of hiring and
firing: a new president came in, and
there were people coming in and going
out the door every week. And, you
know, I probably could have been more
patient on my end. But we had so much
going on and I felt it was a critical time. I
like to move a lot faster I guess.” So after
only one album with BNA, 2012’s The
Given, “we kind of agreed to disagree.”
“It was a weird release,” Bowen
continues. “We messed it all up — we
meaning Sony and us, too. We came
up with this idea to release it regionally
because we needed new music out
for the fans, and then we were going
to re-release a fuller extended version
with more songs and stuff a few months
later. So they didn’t put anything into
that [first] release, and all of a sudden
it debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard
charts and they started going, ‘Whoa!
This should probably be worked more!’
But they never got to the next portion
of the record release. Instead, they told
me they wanted me to go back into the
studio, but I’d already cut 14 songs for
them for [the longer version of] The
Given. So none of it was making sense to
anybody. The single ‘Saturday Night’ got
to No. 39 on the Billboard charts, and
then they hired and fired people and it
just fell apart on its way up. And then
they never jumped on another single. To
this day that’s the one thing more than
any of it that I will never understand, is
why they never went ahead and jumped
on another single. They just sat on it for
a year, and finally I just said, ‘I guess you
have no plans to do anything for me, so
I’ll just go do my own thing.’”
His frustration at the way things
went is clearly evident, though he insists
that he harbors no hard feelings for the
people he worked with during that time.
“Gary Overton, who’s the president
of Sony, I still talk to him all the time,”
Bowen says. “He’s a tremendous human
being, I love him to death, he’s been so
good to me. And years from now we’ll
have that conversation of, ‘Man, it would
have been fun.’ We get along so great,
and I really do miss working with him
and a lot of those people at the label. I
think we could have done a lot of cool
stuff. But it was both of us: they messed
it up, we messed it up; we could have
been more patient.”
All things considered though, he
seems to have come out on top.
“I think a lot of that really went into
this record,” Bowen observes. “Because
of all of that I made the best record of
my career. Because of all that I really ...
I stopped ... I don’t want this to sound
bad, but I stopped caring so much. I
stopped looking towards what I didn’t
have yet in my career and started to
embrace what I did. I did that in my
personal life, too. It’s such a more
pleasurable way to look at things.”
What’s more, Bowen’s short time
with Sony did help him continue to
expand his touring radius. “We’re going
to the West Coast twice a year now, the
East Coast once a year, and the Midwest
two or three times,” he reports. “That’s
a lot of out of state, out of our region,
out of our norm work.”
And he got to know producer/
“If people wanna look up to me, I always am happy to
give them time and advice. But ... I still look at Robert Earl
and Lyle Lovett and those guys as the veterans. Even Pat
Green and Jack Ingram ... let them be the ‘old guys.’ I still
wanna be the young guy!” I
Photo by Rodney Bursiel
LoneStarMusic | 39
engineer/mixer Justin Niebank, who
prior to Wade Bowen also worked on The
Given and has a long list of production
credits that includes country acts both
older (Vince Gill, Marty Stuart, LeAnn
Rimes, and Patty Loveless) and new (Eli
Young Band and Ashley Monroe) as well
as such diverse artists as Sheryl Crow,
Blues Traveler and the Iguanas.
“I think Justin is such an incredible
producer,” Bowen raves. “I love to see
what he does, and usually it’s a drastic
change from the original. We went to
this studio outside of Nashville called the
Castle. There is so much vibe in there.
Here we are in the middle of nowhere,
holed up, and in a few days we made the
record from start to finish. That was the
first time I’ve done a record like that; the
other records I’ve done in pieces, doing
three or four or five songs at a time just
to kinda hear what we have.”
At the very beginning of the
sessions, Bowen says, Niebank sat him
down with the musicians and told him,
“Tell them what you told me — tell them
why we’re here.”
“I said, ‘Well, we’re here to have
fun,’” Bowen recalls. “‘All the stuff you
were told in this town that you can’t do,
all the stuff that you’re afraid to do … this
is the record where you don’t have to
worry about freaking us out. Try to freak
us out. Have fun with it. We can always go
back and do it again. This is a record for us
to just have a blast making together. And I
want to hear that when I listen back.’”
Bowen smiles at the memory. “There
were a couple of guys at the end of the
deal who were thanking me, saying, ‘I
needed to kind of get this off my chest,
to have fun and play some really fun
music and not worry about it being radio
friendly or any of that. It was great for
us, we all needed that.’ And Justin said
the same thing: ‘We needed the monkey
lifted off our backs.’”
Bowen did, too.
“It’s funny how … I always have fun
making records — I remember the fun
of it; but at the same time I was always
so caught up in making everything right
instead of just enjoying the process,”
he says. “So it was a real blast to just
have that no-fences approach, where
you can’t make a ‘mistake’ and you can’t
record the ‘wrong song’ because there’s
no such thing. I told Justin, ‘I don’t care if
every song on this record is six minutes
40 | LoneStarMusic
long; if it feels right, I don’t care about
radio. I don’t care about success. I don’t
care about anything. I just want to get
this record out of myself and that’s all
this is for.”
The end result wasn’t just “another”
record for Bowen, but a definitive
statement of both purpose and identity;
one that, to borrow the title of that
“simple” little song he wrote way back
when, announces, “This is ‘who I am’
now.” As such, it could only be ever be
called one thing.
“People could ask me, ‘Why’d you
name it Wade Bowen?’ And I could go,
‘Because it means a lot to me. And it’s
honest.’”
S
ince its release on Oct. 28,
Wade Bowen has already
proven itself to be one
of the most successful —
commercially and critically
— records of its maker’s career. Like The
Given before it, it debuted at No. 9 on the
Billboard country chart, and the buzz it’s
generated — including that appearance
on Conan O’Brien’s late night TV show
– is unlike anything Bowen’s experienced
before in his 16-year run. But here’s the
topper: he’s already got his next record in
the can and ready for launch this spring
or early summer — and odds are it’ll be
even bigger.
It won’t just be his name on it,
though, because that next record is a
50/50 collaboration with his friend and
frequent co-writer, Randy Rogers. After
years of playing wildly popular acoustic
duo gigs together under the banner “Hold
My Beer and Watch This,” they’ve finally
gone and made a record together — and
one with the help of none other than
Lloyd Maines at the production helm.
The two artists have shared a
special connection since they first met,
back when both were just getting their
respective acts together. “He came out
to a show in San Marcos I was playing,”
Bowen recalls. “I was still in school in
Lubbock but I had a gig down here on the
Square. Randy was just getting started,
too, and he came up to me after the
show and said, ‘Man, I enjoyed it. You
wanna come back to my house, bring
the boys, come party and stay the night?
We’ve got this place over here called the
White House. And we jam late at night.’
“He had just finished up his first
record, Like It Used to Be. He’d literally
gotten back the mix that day. At that
time he didn’t have a stereo; he had
a computer on his desk. But he said,
‘Mind if I play you some of these?’ I was
like, ‘sure.’ And I sat there and listened
to the entire record almost from start
to finish almost. I thought it was really
good. And he was blown away that
I actually gave more of a shit about
listening to that than trying to go get
laid that night. Later that night we were
passing the guitar around and he was
kicking people out because they were
talking, and I was like, ‘I think I’m going
to like this guy.’ Later on we decided to
play some shows together, and we’ve
been friends ever since.”
Eventually, Bowen says, “I was like,
‘We’ve been doing this for years, we
need to brand this [duo] thing. Let’s give
it a name and make it a tour.’ So we did
that and it’s really turned into something
great. Over the years we’ve done various
things, and I’ve always pushed for us
to go beyond just getting up and doing
shows. So we recorded the shows, and
we hear the recordings, and he’s like,
‘Man, there’s something here!’ Then Bowen unveiled the next part
of his plan. “I said, ‘We’re not going to
be able to promote it as much unless we
have some studio stuff, so let’s go in and
do some studio tracks, too.’ So we called
Lloyd Maines, who’s someone neither
of us has ever worked with before. We
went into the studio with a mixture of
our bands, kinda combined the two into
one. We did three songs and had such a
blast that, on our last day in the studio,
Randy pulls me aside and says, ‘This is
the most fun I’ve had in a long time —
let’s do a whole record!’”
They ended up booking another
session with Maines and recording
another seven songs. Bowen says they
have yet to determine what all they’ll
pick out of the new studio songs (three
covers and seven originals that Bowen
and Rogers “never put on record because
they were too country”) and the live
recordings they already had stashed, but
rest assured something’s coming soon.
Bowen describes it as a “real ’70s, true
country kind of thing,” reminiscent of
LoneStarMusic | 41
both Moe Bandy and Joe Stampley and Willie and Waylon. And according to
Maines, a bona fide Texas music legend in his own right who has worked with
a veritable who’s who of Lone Star icons including Terry Allen, Joe Ely, Keen,
and the Dixie Chicks, it’s a keeper.
“Frankly, until that point I hadn’t even met Wade and I barely knew
Randy,” the producer admits. “I was aware of both of them, though I wasn’t
that aware of their music. But man, it was a great experience. They asked
me if I had any songs they might want to cover, so I gave them about eight
songs. And one of them was this really old Joe Ely song, ‘I Had My Hopes
Up High.’ And I’ll tell you, man … Wade and Randy swapped out verses,
and when Wade came in on the second verse, he just burst into it and he
sounds exactly like Ely — that cutting edge thing. They did a hellacious
version. I can’t wait to play it for Joe.”
Bowen’s uncanny Ely impersonation wasn’t the only quality that
Maines took note of, either. “I’m totally impressed with Wade,” Maines
continues. “He just sings his ass off. But on top of that he is one of the
nicest, most considerate and polite guys. And he takes care of business.
So many artists get so wrapped up in the art side of it that they don’t pay
attention to the business end of things. But he is right on the spot and
totally on top of it.”
On the surface, that complement might seem at odds with the Bowen
that made Wade Bowen, the stop-worrying-about-everything-and-justhave-fun guy. But taking care of business — and taking seriously all the
other things that matter most, like songwriting, family, and collaborating
with friends to make music he’s truly proud of — is exactly what makes
Bowen the artist and man he is today. And you won’t find him pretending,
let alone aiming, to be anything else.
“Pretty much with me, what you see is what you get,” he says. “I’m a
pretty simple and straightforward guy, which I pride myself on, because I
don’t think there’s enough regular guys in this business.”
He says he’s been asked a lot lately about where he’d like to see himself
and his music going in the future. The answer, not surprisingly, is an honest
“I don’t really know … nor do I really care.”
“It’s kind of cool,” he says. “I feel proud and confidant of the decisions
I’ve made in my career. And it’s really the first time I feel like I can really
say that. No more looking back anymore. Only looking forward. I just want
to keep making records the way I made this one. I just want to enjoy the
process, enjoy playing for people, and just worry about what I can control.
And stop worrying about what can come out of it or what decisions I am
making that are keeping me from being a huge superstar, or whether it’s
more money or less money … I already make a pretty good living doing
what I do. So whatever happens, happens.
“I spent so much time in my career trying to force shit,” he continues.
“Now I’m the complete opposite. It almost sounds lazy, but it’s not a lazy
thing. I’m just confident. And I’m really open to whatever happens from
here on out — just letting go and quit worrying about it. My whole deal is
smile more. Smile, Wade, just smile.”
42 | LoneStarMusic
LoneStarMusic | 43
stoney
The Rising
Stoney LaRue continues his
creative ascent and mature
upturn with Aviator
acknowledges. “A lot of changes. A lot of
stuff that’s just, well, that’s the living of it
... and the learning. Trying to understand,
to be a better man, to get stronger and
clearer. And you don’t always realize even
in the middle of it, but you keep trying to
get better. Hopefully, you do.”
The quest and the seeking. It led a
guy who could’ve spent years sowing
industrial-strength good times and
making a fine living doing it to Nashville
— the home of “the enemy” — to
consider the differences between what he
was doing and what he might.
He found Frank Liddell, who produced
raw-life songwriter Chris Knight’s first two
records, as well as Miranda Lambert’s
Country Music Association Album of the
Year winners and the Pistol Annies’ No. 1
Billboard Country Album debuts. Liddell,
a Houston-born, University of Texas at
Austin-educated music man, ain’t typical.
He looks beneath the surface to see what
might exist beneath the public face.
“That party, Red Dirt stuff — the ‘One
Chord Song’ deal … I get it, and I get why it
works, but it doesn’t interest me,” Liddell
admits. “But he’d come up here, and I’d
see him. We’d talk. Finally I took him into
S.I.R. with (drummer) Chad Cromwell
and (bassist) Glenn Worf, just had them
jam and rehearse — and I saw the truth:
there’s a much deeper artist here.
“In a world where someone slaps
you in the face every two seconds,
there’s a subtlety,” Liddell continues.
“That interested me. I saw elements of
Willie Nelson, Van Morrison, even Merle
Haggard. That’s why the two drummers:
what was going on in the music when I
really listened called for that.”
With Randy Scruggs on acoustic guitar
and Glen Duncan on fiddle, mandolin and
acoustic setting the bar for musicianship,
Aviator maintains the warm intimacy of
Velvet. But if Velvet felt like a shift, Aviator
seems lived-in, more comfortable.
“I know all these guys now,” LaRue
acknowledges. “And I think they know
me, too; maybe have a better sense of
what I’m trying to get to.”
Not that LaRue is reticent, but unlike
so many Type A fame-mongers, he’s
not prone to going on and on about his
process, his meaning, the reasons he
does the things he does. He may sit on
a bar stool and be the most hale-fellowwell-met when he’s out, but he keeps the
brooding inside his soul for his songs.
Beyond an exhaled take on Haggard’s
“Natural High,” LaRue embraces themes
of trying to maintain dignity in the ennui
and the rough patches. “Golden Shackles”
is classic “Big City” Hag, while “Still
Runnin’” mirrors Haggard’s stoic face to
the sun, making due in a bottomless vat
of heartbreak.
Ruminative, but romantic, just
enough bad boy to keep the edge that
brought him, it’s quite a line to walk.
Rodney Crowell, no stranger to Texas
outsiders, has compared LaRue to Waylon
Jennings, a badass with a tender heart.
“I didn’t see it when I heard that,”
Liddell says. “But then I thought about
it — and Rodney’s right. Like Waylon,
Stoney and Mando write these songs in
his own way, looking at stuff beyond the
surface — and they don’t apologize for
any of it. He’s not kicking up dust to kick
it up, and there’s a whole lot of thinking
beneath the surface.
“You may not realize it talking to
him, but all you have to do is listen to
the songs,” he continues. “I work on
these songs over and over. And as we
do, long after Stoney’s gone, they reveal
themselves in different ways. It’s funny,
but when I finish his records, I realize I am
more mystified by these songs than I am
any other records I work on — and that
mystery intrigues me.”
c
By Holly Gleason
Photo courtesy Entertainment One Nashville
a
lot has happened to Stoney
LaRue since the August 2011
release of Velvet, the startlingly
mature statement that proved —
six long years and two live albums
after his last studio record — that
the Texas-born, Oklahoma-reared reveler
wasn’t content to spend the rest of his
career beating his “One Chord Song” and
the fistful of other originals off of 2005’s
The Red Dirt Album into the ground.
Velvet, most of which LaRue co-wrote
with fellow troubadour Mando Saenz,
signaled a promising reboot for LaRue. But
it also marked the beginning of a number
of other life changes. His marriage fell
apart. He moved to a loft in Oklahoma
City. He learned to be apart from his
children. He also changed band members
and spent a lot of time reconsidering what
he wanted to do onstage.
Mostly though, he kept writing
— striking while the creative iron was hot
even as other aspects of his life were in
44 | LoneStarMusic
flux. The results prove that the growth so
evident throughout Velvet was no fluke.
Where Velvet hinted at life and thought
beneath the surface, the new Aviator
(once again co-written with Saenz) digs
even deeper into the human condition
— and works at not telling people how
to live, but rather proving that in the
mistakes made, the incremental victories,
vulnerable connections and next-right
things, there’s an even richer experience
to be had.
“It’s not necessarily how you
planned it,” LaRue explains, as much
about life as music, songs, and making
records. “But you have to keep growing,
have to know that it’s up to you … You’re
gonna have to decide what you’re gonna
do, or else it’s just gonna happen and
it’ll keep happening.”
Talking in ellipses isn’t a means to
inscrutability. Though acclaimed as a
hardcore good-timer, LaRue thinks more
than you’d imagine — and embraces
the notion that if life doesn’t always
bend to your will, you can still have a
hand in how your life turns out. It’s not
quite Buddhist, but there’s the notion
of presence and awareness underneath
much of what he writes: Aviator’s “First
One to Know” considers the wreckage of
the flaws of a common man trapped in
his mortality, knowing he is better and
suggesting that his partner does, too:
“I guess we’re all just getting older
Looking back at time over our shoulder
Right or wrong, there’s too sides to
every song
If I’m not acting like myself lately, doing
things that I don’t
I’m not sure why you want to hate me,
it’s just a spell I suppose
When I’m back to my old self again, my
love,
You’ll be the first one to know ...”
“It’s been a couple years,” LaRue
LoneStarMusic | 45
Photo by Darren Carroll Photography
Robert Earl Keen
Ryan Bingham
Hal Ketchum
Cody Canada & the Departed
the new basemenT tapes
Aaron Watson
Chris Carroll
kimberly Dunn
Old 97s
Joe Teichman
ROBERT EARL KEEN
Happy Prisoner:
The Bluegrass Sessions
Dualtone
46 | LoneStarMusic
reviews
Forty-odd years and thousands of miles down that road going on forever, Robert Earl Keen’s
career has carried him a long, long way from joyriding with his buddy Duckworth in a rust-red
1970 Ford Maverick, getting buzzed on Texas Pride while playing the hell out of Bill Monroe
on 8-track cassette. His old College Station band, the Front Porch Boys, are a long time gone,
and the songwriting bar he sets for himself these days is a fair bit higher than trying on a lark
to stitch together “quite possibly the worst bluegrass song ever written.” And yet, for as long
as he’s been making music — building on his rep year after year as one of the most respected
(and popular) Texas songwriters and band leaders in the wide world of Americana — Keen
has remained, at heart, an unabashed bluegrass fanatic. Because you never forget your first
love … or, it seems, the rush of your first youthful pass at “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” and
introduction to the narrative spell of a good Appalachian murder ballad.
Happy Prisoner: The Bluegrass Sessions is not an album that was conceived in a record
label conference room, let alone one that the average or even biggest Keen fan likely ever
would have thought to ask for. Because let’s face it: even putting aside any (irrational) fear
of banjos, who in their right mind would’ve ever wagered that a Robert Earl Keen record full
of nothing but dusty old bluegrass covers could be anything other than an exercise in artistic
folly? Who, indeed, could have fathomed the end result being the best-sounding record he’s
ever made? But hearing is believing, and Happy Prisoner is damn near audiophile heaven.
Production wise, this is acoustic wizard Lloyd Maines’ masterpiece: working arguably his
best behind-the-boards magic this side of the Dixie Chicks’ exquisitely built Home 13 years
ago, he captures not just the warmth, intimacy, and thrilling rush of the band playing right
there in the room with the listener, but the wood-and-wire integrity of every note in still-life
detail — even when they’re flying fast and furious at the speed of a bluegrass hot-rodded “52
Vincent Black Lightning.” And the fact that Maines is playing but a smattering of those notes
himself (by his own recollection, just a little overdubbed slide guitar on Jimmie Rodgers’ “T
for Texas”) speaks volumes about the level of talent that’s in that room. In addition to Keen
on rhythm guitar and his entire road and studio band of more than a decade (Rich Brotherton
on lead guitar, Bill Whitbeck on standup bass, Marty Muse on dobro, and Tom Van Schaik on
percussion), Happy Prisoner prominently features the virtuoso chops of bluegrass pros Danny
Barnes on banjo, Kym Warner of the Greencards on mandolin, and Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek
on fiddle. Noteworthy vocal cameos are also made by genre legend Peter Rowan, singing on
“99 Years for One Dark Day” and introducing the cover of his own “Walls of Time,” as well as
Lyle Lovett and Natalie Maines, duetting on the aforementioned “T for Texas” and “Wayfaring
Stranger,” respectively.
Make no mistake, though: as formidable as that whole A-Team crew is from Maines to
Maines, the Happy Prisoner-in-charge and MVP here is most definitely Keen himself. As a
singer-songwriter, Keen’s strength has always been heavily weighted to the right side of that
rubric (a lop-sided balance that, to be fair, puts him in pretty outstanding company). But
given the challenge/freedom to make these songs his own by voice alone, he rises to the
occasion with the strongest and most self-assured vocal performances of his career. What’s
more, he sounds so comfortable and familiar with the material (most of which he’s probably
played to death on every recorded music format of the last half century) that every song
here pretty much feels like a Keen original. The album-opening romp through Flatt & Scruggs’
“Hot Corn, Cold Corn” alone is the most riotous fun on a Keen record since the batshit crazy
title track of 2003’s Farm Fresh Onions, and he handles the requisite murder ballads and
narratives of lonesome woe like “Poor Ellen Smith” and “East Virginia Blues” with the natural
ease, empathy and nuance of a born storyteller. And as for the oft-covered “52 Vincent Black
Lightning,” well … sure, that old Richard Thompson vehicle may have been ridden into the
ground long before the Del McCoury Band even got around to adding it to the bluegrass
cannon, but Keen does a hell of a job sprucing it up and giving it his own spin. Which, come
to think of it, is hardly a surprise, because who are Red Molly and James if not the prototypes
for Keen’s own Sherry and Sonny? — RICHARD SKANSE
LoneStarMusic | 47
reviews
reviews
RYAN BINGHAM
Fear and Saturday
Night
Axster Bingham Records/Thirty Tigers
HAL KETCHUM
I’m the Troubadour
Music Road Records
The quality that his earliest champions like Joe Ely and Terry Allen praised most about
Ryan Bingham from the git-go was his authenticity: you believed every word he sang not just
because of the gritty, wearied weight of his voice, but because by and large the things he sang
about were things he’d lived through and experienced first hand. And the fact that all of that
was coming from a guy still well shy of 30 when his national debut was released back in 2007
only made the gravitas of Mescalito that much more impressive. Eight years, a handful of
albums and heaps of accolades later, Bingham’s voice and songs still ring true on his new Fear
and Saturday Night; the difference is, these days the experiences he sings about are those of a
happily married man in his 30s who’s learned to stop brooding and love the good fortune that
he’s found almost in spite of himself. Doubtless some Bingham fans will say he’s gone soft, what
with all the songs here about being high on love (“Top Shelf Drug”) and espousing a you-andme-babe-against-the-world optimism (“Island in the Sky,” “Adventures of You and Me,” “Snow
Falls in June”); but as he puts it clearly right from the opening “Nobody Knows My Trouble,”
Bingham couldn’t give a damn. “Don’t tell me about my trouble,” he warns after a deeply
personal but stunningly succinct summary of harder times past, “’cause nobody knows about
my trouble … except for my baby and me.” These days, he continues unapologetically, “I’m living
every day like it’s a paradise.” One could still quibble that, apart from the punch-drunk squall
of “Top Shelf Drug” and the jaunty Tex-Mex vibe of “Adventures of You and Me,” nothing on
Fear and Saturday Night packs quite the vigor and sonic punch of earlier anthems like “Bread
and Water” and “Dylan’s Hard Rain.” But if you doubt that the open-hearted sincerity of a song
like “Broken Heart Tattoos” comes from a place every bit as authentic as the experiences that
shaped “Southside of Heaven” or “The Weary Kind,” well, that’s on you. — RICHARD SKANSE
Having gotten through a bout of mainstream stardom back in the early ’90s — and a
long run surviving on a major label even through leaner years — with his dignity intact,
Hal Ketchum now carries the torch for his particular brand of earthy, folk-tinged country
music on a more independent level. The recording budgets might be smaller nowadays, but
whatever else the years may have wrought, they haven’t been unkind to Ketchum’s voice in
the slightest: equal parts buoyant and old-soul husky, his indie work still sounds like a million
bucks. A New York native who cut his songwriting teeth in the Texas Hill Country, his latest
release, I’m the Troubadour, still reflects influences like Delbert McClinton (the swaggering
title track and “Sweet Loreen”), Doug Sahm (the catchy pulse of “Baby I’m Blue”), and
Guy Clark (the wistful narrative of “Devil Moon”). But mostly — and at least partly due to
unnecessary-but-formidable retakes on his own older hits “Stay Forever” and “I Know Where
Love Lives” — Ketchum just sounds like himself. “I’m a poet, but I’m trying to be a sage/Hold
this pen and watch it slide across the page,” he intones on the purposeful songwriting ode
“Midnight Works for Me.” Some of his words hit harder than others, but Ketchum hasn’t hit a
bad note in his life. — MIKE ETHAN MESSICK
CODY CANADA AND
THE DEPARTED
HippieLovePunk
Underground Sound
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Lost on the River: The
New Basement Tapes
Harvest Records
Photo by Pete Lacker
AARON WATSON
The Underdog
Big Label/Thirty Tigers
48 | LoneStarMusic
Let’s address the elephant in the room — or rather, the one not in the room — straight
away: There’s been a Seth James-shaped hole in the heart of the Departed since his
departing last year, and HippieLovePunk, the band’s third album and first without James
sharing the wheel as co-frontman with Cody Canada, is a very different beast than the two
that came before it. The potent combo of Canada’s distinctive flinty, nasal snarl and James’
soulful rumble — not to mention their equally distinctive guitar styles — gave the Departed
a jagged yet walloping dynamic unlike any other band on the Texas/Red Dirt scene. But
Canada is nothing if not a scrappy survivor, and all those years he spent at the helm of Cross
Canadian Ragweed proved he was always more than capable of commanding a spotlight on
his own. Of course it helps that he’s still got a solid rhythm section backing him up (fellow
Ragweed vet Jeremy Plato on bass and Chris Doege on drums), and an abundance of piledriving rockers like “Comin’ to Me,” “Inbetweener,” “Revolution” and “Boss of Me” that
swagger with a convincing sense of no-looking-back confidence. But with James gone, now
more than ever it’s the lively piano and organ playing of Steve Littleton that really proves the
X-factor in keeping the Departed sounding like an entity unto itself instead of just Ragweed
2.0. Without him, HippieLovePunk would be all rock and no roll, and a band continuing to
evolve and find itself like this one is has gotta have wheels. — RICHARD SKANSE
When Billy Bragg and Wilco set Woody Guthrie’s lyrics to music for Mermaid Avenue, they
didn’t have to worry about what he would think. But when producer T Bone Burnett was given
several of Bob Dylan’s unused Basement Tape-era lyrics for similar treatment, the artists he
called had to be aware that Dylan might hear the results. As conveyed in Sam Jones’ terrific
“making of” documentary, however, it would appear that Marcus Mumford (Mumford & Sons),
Rhiannon Giddens (Carolina Chocolate Drops), Jim James (My Morning Jacket) and Taylor
Goldsmith (Dawes) were equally worried about being worthy of one another, much less Burnett
and fellow collaborator Elvis Costello. But Burnett knew what he was doing when he corralled
these artists. Freely swapping ideas and instruments, they wound up recording 40 tracks in two
weeks (15 are here; a deluxe version has 20). They’re all wonderful; Mumford’s “Kansas City,”
with the Haim sisters singing harmony and Johnny Depp cameoing on guitar, has a keening
urgency. Giddens, who can sing or play almost anything and is well-versed in the folk tradition,
went Celtic for “Spanish Mary,” and her soulful vocal on “Lost on the River #20” casts the song
as both mournful lament and hopeful hymn. Applying his mellifluous, vibrato-filled voice to
some of the same lyrics, Costello turns “Lost on the River #12” into a lovely centerpiece. He
could have handled “Hidee Hidee Ho #11,” too, but Jim James draws a straight line to Cab
Calloway with a playful jazz-blues vibe. Goldsmith’s “Card Shark” is even more delightful, like
a spirited children’s song. Dylan made many geographical references in his lyrics, but these
talented artists never settled for the obvious route. Working as musical explorers, they arrived
at destinations Bob himself might have gone. And did him proud. — LYNNE MARGOLIS
Aaron Watson’s 12th album, The Underdog, deals in the topics he loves the most; his
God, his family, and the life of a cowboy. As Watson’s last release, Real Good Time, did, this
collection straddles a fine line that separates the sincere from the schlock — though thankfully,
this go-around (produced by Keith Stegall) finds him more on the earnest side. “The Prayer,” a
banjo and fiddle-powered gospel tale Watson wrote after reading Johnny Cash’s Man in White,
isn’t a sleepy hymnal, but rather a mood-altering Western-gothic tune that’s as inventive a
song as Watson has offered in years. “Bluebonnets (Julia’s Song)” is a fittingly heart-ripping
remembrance of the infant daughter Watson and his wife lost to Edwards Syndrome in 2011.
The romping, appropriately titled life-on-the-road song “Freight Train” cranks up the tempo,
with Watson delivering one of his most galloping vocals ever over a frenzied banjo, but then
the pedal steel sweeps softly in and he effortlessly shifts gears from stage-burning outlaw to
heart-sick family man. And even when some of these songs, like the lead-single “That Look,”
a straight-forward love note to his wife, and the ranch-hand ode “That’s Why God Loves
Cowboys,” veer into hokum, the raw sincerity of Watson’s voice steers them true. Fifteen years
into his career, this seasoned cowboy does wholeheartedness as well as any true-blue country
music purist around. — KELLY DEARMORE
LoneStarMusic | 49
reviews
CHRIS CARROLL
Trouble & Time
Gypsy Shuffler Music
KIMBERLY DUNN
Forever on the Run
Kimberly Dunn
Enterprises
50 | LoneStarMusic
A Canadian ex-pat who recently brought her muse
to the Texas Hill Country, Chris Carroll is already in
good company on her debut album. With producer
David Beck (a multi-instrumentalist best known for his
work with Sons of Fathers), she fleshes out original
songs of love and youthful vulnerability with warm
layers of keyboard, mandolin, and harmonica. Not
one to adopt a phony Texas twang just to fit in,
Carroll’s trebly yet sturdy voice echoes Hope Sandoval
of Mazzy Star fame, a dreamy instrument given extra
gravity by her saddest and sweetest compositions
(“Just Like That,” “Nothing More”). She sounds
particularly focused when given a statement of larger
purpose, be it her own “Trouble & Time” or her
husband Adam Carroll’s timeless “Highway Prayer,”
holding her own as the band looms large behind
her. She’s less sure-footed, though, when the textures
drift towards R&B on “Cause or Cure” and “Mister”;
perhaps that sort of authority will come with age. But
when Carroll stays in her country-folk wheelhouse,
Trouble & Time is a gem. — MIKE ETHAN MESSICK
San Antonio-native Kimberly Dunn made her
first splash on the Texas country scene with a little
single called “Randy Rogers,” an imminently relatable
tune about a young woman trying to gear herself up
for some much-needed “honky-tonk time” with her
girlfriends in spite of knowing that every song she
hears by the likes of Rogers or the Eli Young Band
only triggers painful memories of a former flame. The
song was featured on one of the handful of EPs that
the former Aggie Marching Band sax player released
digitally and sold from the stage over the last couple
of years, all leading up to the release of this, her fulllength debut. Recorded at Ray Benson’s Bismeaux
studio in Austin, Forever on the Run is a fantastically
put-together record that features an almost unfair
amount of stellar studio and co-writing help, including
the likes and Drew Womack and Dave Grissom
— but this isn’t Dunn’s first rodeo and she brings
plenty to the table herself. Her delicate but assured
vocals are spot-on throughout, often reminiscent
of Miranda Lambert in her more subtle moments.
And as demonstrated on “Randy Rogers” and several
other tunes here, there’s a poignancy and depth to
her songwriting that proves she’s more than just the
name dropper some cynics pegged her as early on.
“The Road” features a tender fiddle which ribbons its
way through a folk-style encouragement to a friend
(or perhaps to Dunn herself) needing to move forward
in their/her life, while the title track is propelled by
a galloping rhythm and Dunn’s fiercest vocal as she
sings about “two rebel hearts on the run.” Dunn’s
own run may still be in its early stages, but she’s off to
a great start. — KELLY DEARMORE
OLD 97’s
Hitchhike to Rhome
(20th Anniversary
Edition)
Omnivore Recordings
JOE TEICHMAN
Backburner
Tremolo Joe Music
Although it was never as big in the mainstream as
“Outlaw” country in the ’70s — let alone as media-hyped
and commercially powerful as the grunge explosion
ushered in by Nirvana and Pearl Jam — there was a
period in the early ’90s when the burgeoning “alternative
country” scene was producing some of the most exciting
young bands and records of the era. By decade’s end
many of those bands would mellow with maturity into
“Americana,” but in their prime they wore their punk
roots as unabashedly as their folk and country influences,
carrying on the torch of bands like X, Jason & the Scorchers
and Rank & File that pioneered the insurgent country sound
before them in the ’80s. Uncle Tupelo and Ryan Adams’
Whiskeytown invariably get cited as the movement’s
biggest names, but no band exemplified the spirit of the
alt-country boom better than the Dallas-born Old 97’s. And
though they’d go on to make bigger and better records
(from 1997’s Too Far to Care to 2014’s Most Messed Up),
their gutsy and irreverent 1994 debut, Hitchhike to Rhome,
still sounds as vibrant, inspired and fun today as it did the
day it was released. In fact, it now sounds even better, with
the original master tapes given a subtle but loving brand
new mix for this deluxe 20th anniversary reissue, which
is supplemented by a 12-track bonus disc of band demos
and even a handful of songs recorded by frontman Rhett
Miller and bassist Murry Hammond before guitarist Ken
Bethea and drummer Philip Peeples completed the Old
97’s lineup that’s still intact today. For longtime fans, those
bonus tracks are the real jewels of this edition, especially
the sparse but still enthralling “demo cassette” versions of
“St. Ignatius” and “Stoned” (the latter possessing an almost
haunted vibe) and a wonderfully raw-boned, previously
unissued country-psychedelia take on “Dancing with Tears.”
As for the first disc, well, there’s a reason why gems like
“Doreen” and “4 Leaf Clover” and the Hammond-sung
cover of Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” remain such
enduring fan favorites and staples in the band’s setlist:
these Old 97’s were barreling along at full creative steam
from the very beginning, making Hitchhike to Rhome the
kind of time capsule that feels as though it was only buried
yesterday, not 20 years ago. — KELLY DEARMORE
reviews
It’s hard to spot a breakout artist in the crowded field
of modern young country-folk artists — it’s a genre that
lends itself to humility and tradition, not “look at me!”
audacity. But in his own subtle way, Austin’s Joe Teichman
stands out straight away on his debut release. At a mere
seven songs, Backburner could almost be called an EP;
but despite its brevity it still satisfies like a full serving
because of Teichman’s wordy but never tiresome knack
for plumbing his own emotions and reflecting them in the
details of his surroundings. It’s an old songwriting trick,
but one that this young man has already got a helluva
handle on with numbers like the earnest “Window”
and the more playful “Isabella.” His sturdy voice, plain
but pleasant, gives a rich internal life even beyond the
catchy lyrics of songs like “Hourglass,” where a toughguy putdown (“you’re gonna miss me …”) twists into
a lovelorn admission (“… but the truth is, I’m gonna
miss you more.”) It all feels familiar and relatable yet
discernibly original, marking Teichman as a welcome
tangent to the modern alt-country scene without
necessarily sounding like anyone else.
— MIKE ETHAN MESSICK
LoneStarMusic | 51
Lonestarmusic
Th is ch ar t is s
po n s o r ed b y
top 40
November/December, 2014
1. Tina & Walt Wilkins, Be Mine
2. Adam Hood, Welcome to the Big World
3. Wade Bowen, Wade Bowen
4. Stoney LaRue, Aviator
5. Ryan Bingham, Bingham Bootleg (Black Friday Record Store Day ltd. ed. vinyl)
6. Micky & the Motorcars, Hearts from Above
7. Dirty River Boys, Dirty River Boys
8. Chris Gougler, Chris Gougler EP
9. Canvas People, Sirens
10. Robert Earl Keen Presents: The XMas-Men, Santa is Real
11. Randy Rogers Band, Homemade Tamales: Live at Floores
12. Sturgill Simpson, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music
13. Josh Abbott Band, Tuesday Night EP
14. Turnpike Troubadours, Goodbye Normal Street
15. Jason Isbell, Live at Austin City Limits (DVD)
16. Sons of Bill, Love & Logic
17. Shovels and Rope, Swimmin’ Time
18. William Clark Green, Rose Queen
19. Drew Kennedy, Sad Songs Happily Played
20. Paul Thorn, Too Blessed to Be Stressed
21. American Aquarium, Burn Flicker Die (vinyl)
22. Sturgill Simpson, High Top Mountain
23. Sam Riggs & the Night People, Outrun the Sun
24. Whitey Morgan and the 78s, Born, Raised & Live from Flint
25. Cody Johnson Band, Cowboy Like Me
26. Hal Ketchum, I’m the Troubadour
27. Jason Boland & the Stragglers, Dark & Dirty Mile
28. Cody Canada, Some Old, Some New, Maybe a Cover or Two
29. American Aquarium, Dances for the Lonely (orange vinyl)
30. Willie Nelson and Sister Bobbie, December Day: Willie’s Stash Vol. 1
31. Radney Foster, Everything I Should Have Said
32. Turnpike Troubadours, Diamonds & Gasoline
33. Hard Working Americans, First Waltz (CD/DVD)
34. Kelley Mickwee, You Used to Live Here
35. Jason Isbell, Southeastern
36. Roger Creager, Road Show
37. Parker Millsap, Parker Millsap
38. St. Paul & the Broken Bones, Half the City
39. Randy Rogers Band, Trouble
40. Courtney Patton, Triggering a Flood
52 | LoneStarMusic
LoneStarMusic
Staff Picks
Zach Jennings: Ryan Bingham, Fear and
Saturday Night
Richard Skanse:
Robert Earl Keen, Happy Prisoner: The
Bluegrass Sessions
Melissa Webb:
Lee Ann Womack, The Way I’m Livin’
Kristen Townsend:
Zac Wilkerson, Zac Wilkerson EP
Kallie Townsend:
Dirty River Boys, Dirty River Boys
Promise Udo:
Robert Earl Keen Presents: The
XMas-Men, Santa is Real
Lance Garza:
Other Lovers, Hoot
LoneStarMusic | 53
Ian mclagan Cont.from page 7
The Small Faces/Faces’ 2012
induction into the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame and the 2013 release of the
Small Faces box, Here Come the Nice:
The Immediate Years 1967-1969,
renewed interest in his contributions
to two bands considered the bridge
between the first wave of the British
invasion and the pub- and punk-rock
that followed. With new manager Ken
Kushnick, McLagan secured a deal with
Yep Roc Records for the 2014 release
of his well-received Ian McLagan &
the Bump Band album, United States.
The day he died, he was to have
begun a holiday tour with Nick Lowe
and Los Straitjackets, to be followed
by planning meetings with Faces
mates Kenney Jones, Ron Wood and
Rod Stewart for a long-awaited 2015
reunion tour.
A clue to their continued allure lies
in this quote by rock critic Dave Marsh
in their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
biography: “The Faces were committed
to two things: one another and the idea
that if they stomped on their blues just
right, everyone within earshot of their
rollicking boogie would have an evening
of unmitigated, boisterous fun.”
McLagan had a hand in writing
favorites of both bands’ catalogs,
including “Cindy Incidentally,” “You’re
So Rude,” and “Three Button Hand
Me Down,” and his playing helped
turn “Itchycoo Park” and “Stay With
Me” into stateside hits. He also put
his stamp on Stewart’s “Maggie May,”
“You Wear It Well” and other classics.
And that subtle keyboard intro to
the Stones’ “Miss You,” the one that
clarified, “this is not a disco song, it’s
an R&B song” … that was Mac’s, too.
But friends and fans loved
McLagan as much for his delightful
personality as his considerable chops.
He loved trading tales, especially in
pubs that served Guinness on tap. He
loved to tell jokes, and actually had a
webpage devoted to them. His weekly
performances with his Bump Band at
Austin’s Lucky Lounge were as much a
platform for his comic story-telling as
his nimble-fingered playing.
McLagan’s impish wit, big grin,
and quick laughter made him fun to
be around. His big heart, deep soul,
openness, and humility made him
cherished. His Manor home was filled
with his paintings, many of them
capturing the auras he saw during
his migraines, but above a room
54 | LoneStarMusic
dubbed the Laughing Dog bar was a
depiction of three beloved canines,
collars of the departed draped over its
corners. He called his recording studio
Doghouse, and gave me what remains
one of my all-time favorite pieces of
advice: “Don’t trust people who don’t
like dogs.”
He didn’t think of himself as a
rock star. He thought of himself as a
guy who loved to make music and was
lucky enough to get to do it with a lot
of cool people. When fans admiringly
approached him, he was always
sweet and gracious — and genuinely
appreciative of their compliments.
Whenever I witnessed those
interactions, I never sensed even a hint
of false modesty or impatience.
In a celebrity-obsessed culture
prone to treating famous people as
if they’re better than mere mortals
— a situation many of them are all
too happy to exploit — Mac never
expected or demanded special
treatment, and was grateful, even
surprised, when it was given. He was
the embodiment of down-to-earth; he
knew fame was illusory at best, that
it didn’t pay the bills — and ironically,
that made him even more worthy of
the pedestal his fans proffered.
Four years ago, I did a story that
involved asking several renowned
Austinites about their “coolest
moment.” McLagan talked about
meeting Howlin’ Wolf when he was
19. McLagan’s band at the time, the
Muleskinners, had been hired to back
Wolf and Hubert Sumlin on three
U.K. dates. They pumped Wolf about
Chicago and any blues wisdom he
could offer.
“Anything he had to say, we
listened,” McLagan recalled. He got
to ride with the famed bluesman
between two of the gigs; a photo of
him sitting behind Wolf, he said, “just
shows me in absolute heaven.” The
image appears in his autobiography,
All the Rage: A Riotous Romp through
Rock ’n’ Roll History.
He also collected his heroes’
autographs — not just when he was 19,
but when he was already world-famous
himself. During another interview, he
confessed he was hesitant to release
instrumental songs because “I always
compare myself to Booker T. — and I
stop right there.”
“What if he’s out there comparing
himself to you?” I asked. “I don’t think
so,” he answered, as if the notion were
absurd. In 2013, during an interview
Tributes
“To say we’re reeling backstage is an understatement.
But the show must go on. No one knew it better than
Mac. … He believed absolutely in the power of music,
and its ability to make people feel better.”
— Nick Lowe
“I’ve met my share of famous musicians. Some
were pricks, and others were polite, if relatively
uninterested in small talk backstage. Some were even
perfectly friendly. None were as welcoming and downto-earth as Mac. Everybody was his equal. Everybody
was his friend. He wanted to laugh with all of us.”
— Eric “Skillet” Gilmore, Patty Hurst Shifter
“I have lost a dear friend and British rock has lost one
of its greatest players. RIP Ian McLagan.” — Billy Bragg
“There is no band that can lift my spirits and make
me feel more alive than the Small Faces and Faces.
Thank you Mac for your music and your readiness to
be the brightest smile in the room. Thank you for your
kindness when I was in the opening band in 1998 ...
patiently signing my Small Faces box set and telling me
stories about that shirt Steve [Wynn] gave you. Thank
you Scott McCaughey for having me drum on those
the Minus 5 tunes that you then had Mac and [Jeff]
Tweedy add to. I never achieved the lifelong goal of
playing live with a Face, but you made the recording
come true and I love you for that.” — Linda Pitmon,
of the Fauntleroys, the Minus 5, the Baseball Project,
etc., and wife of Steve Wynn
“It has been a roller coaster of emotions. First I
was delighted to announce the arrival of my first
grandson and then had to announce the death of my
dearest friend and bandmate Mac Ian McLagan. …
He shared some of the most wonderful years of my
life and I am still shocked. … He will always be with
us. He has gone to join Steve and Ronnie but way too
soon, on a journey to the other half of the moon. All
my love, Kenney” — Small Faces/Faces drummer
Kenney Jones
“Ian McLagan embodied the true spirit of the Faces. …
I’ll miss you mate.” — Rod Stewart
“How is this possible there is only one left? One out
of an incredible four who brought so much to the
industry and the world? My heart is heavy for Mac’s
family, but [I] find light that he is reunited with his
beloved Kim. In truth my sadness is mostly for Kenney!
Talking last night we both said how the two of us will
work hard to keep the Small Faces alive. He made me
laugh at the end of our call with ‘I’m fucked now, they
are all up there back together and they’ve got Keith
Moon ... they don’t need me anymore.’”
— Mollie Marriott, daughter of Small Faces singer/
guitarist Steve Marriott
before members of the prestigious
Hudson Union Society, “where today’s
leaders come to discuss tomorrow’s
ideas,” he said of his idol, “I’d hate to be
stuck somewhere where he’d say, ‘You
wanna play something for me?’ I’d run
off. … I’m like a giggly girl around him.”
When McLagan learned he and the “Green
Onions” composer were trading off dates
on the same rented Hammond, he left a
note on it. He kept the setlist he received
in return in a safety deposit box.
McLagan never lost his humility or
forgot his roots, which further endeared
him to Bump Band members Jon
Notarthomas and Scrappy Jud Newcomb.
Bassist Notarthomas, who worked for a
few years as the band’s driver and “de
facto manager” before joining in 2009,
notes McLagan’s Small Faces/Faces
mates, including drummer Jones, who
joined the Who, and late Small Faces
singer/guitarist Steve Marriott, who
started Humble Pie, might have played
more stadiums. But they all started out in
the same place: As students of American
blues and roots music.
“These other guys might have made
millions and have a lot of gold records on
the wall — Mac’s got a couple, too — but
there’s no question that he’s playing for
the love of the music. … He really is, at
the heart of it, a blues journeyman. And
he’s doing the circuit, the same [as] those
guys they so admired in the early days of
all this music that influenced the British
invasion, and he’s making that connection
and keeping that flame alive. He was really
so close to the core of where all that music
came from. And he could play to a room of
40 people and was just glowing about it.”
McLagan became discouraged when
the expense of touring made it harder to
travel with his full band, but Notarthomas
convinced him the two of them could
do more intimate “evening with”
performances. In 2013, they wound up in
Philadelphia a night ahead of the Stones.
Notarthomas remembers how proud
McLagan was when Philadelphia City
Paper critic A.D. Amorosi noted that
Philly Mayor Michael Nutter’s declaration
of Rolling Stones Week in honor of
their performance should have noted
the presence of their old friend and
collaborator as well.
“I’m here to right that wrong by
placing McLagan’s performance at the
tiny Tin Angel alongside the Stones’
more epic undertaking at Wells Fargo
Center,” Amorosi wrote. “… While the
crinkly, bluesy likes of ‘I’m Hot, You’re
Cool’ and ‘Little Girl’ were particularly
dashing (to say nothing of his supple
balladry and the forlorn crevices of his
vocals), it is McLagan’s mere presence
that was the highlight of this show. He
could have just showed up and talked
(which he did mostly) and his audience
would’ve been rapturous.”
As a child, Notarthomas says, he
wanted so badly to grow up to be a
British rocker, his parents sent him to
speech therapy to lose the “affected
English accent” he’d adopted. But when
he wound up in Austin, he played more
country and folk than rock, and wasn’t
trying to change that.
“Not seeking the gig, to end up in Ian
McLagan’s band, with a bona-fide British
rock star, was pretty special to me,” he says.
“I love the guy and I’m gonna miss him. And
I love that from the first day I played with
him, not even really being a bass player,
that he accepted me as if I was Ronnie Lane
or Woody or Bill Wyman or any other great
player he played with. He was an incredibly
trusting and accepting guy.
“And once you’re in the club, you’re in
the club. And I hugely appreciated that he
made me feel that way.”
Guitarist Newcomb, who accompanied
McLagan for 20 years, shares that
sentiment.
“I’ll always appreciate and be so
thankful that he believed that I loved rock
’n’ roll the same way he did, and that was
good enough,” Newcomb says. “We hung
out one time and I was his guitar player.
I learned so much from him. … I think I
will miss playing with him for the rest of
my life, just because I don’t think there’s
anybody that I’ll run across with that
particular kind of musicianship. It’s a type
of playing, the type of music that I was
inspired by, growing up, to actually pick up
a guitar.”
He admits it took him several years to
shake off lingering disbelief that he was
playing alongside someone he regarded
so highly. It’s not that he was starstruck,
Newcomb explains. “But I had recently
gone from being this shy, introverted
teenager who had been lucky enough for
people to ask me to play in bands, and
then a couple of years after that, I was
playing with Mac. It’s that bizarre flip, like
the same coin, but the two sides, where
you’re like, on one hand, ‘Yeah, I’m the
perfect guy to work with, because I love
his music more than anything,’ and then
on the other side, you’re like, ‘This is so far
above me.’”
No matter what troubles the band
experienced, from touring tensions
to McLagan’s profound grief after
Kim’s death, Newcomb says, “I cannot
remember a single gig where we weren’t
having a great time. Even when we’d be on
the road and running late and everybody’d
be cranky or hung over or whatever, it was
just always magic.”
Their appearances at September’s
Americana Music Festival went particularly
well, Newcomb says. “He [said], ‘Scrap,
I just feel like the whole thing has just
moved up to a different level.’ Like we’re
being looked at in much higher regard.
And it really did feel like that. …
“The very last gig that the full Bump
Band played, the very last rock ’n’ roll
blowout that Mac had, it was a bar in
Rehoboth Beach, Del., and it was 150 or
200 people, and they were goin’ crazy,
and we were crammed on this tiny
little stage, but it was exactly what he
loved,” Newcomb says. “For all intents
and purposes, it could have been the
best gig that band ever played. It was as
good as anything I ever remember, and
he was blown away at the end of it. He
was like, ‘Man, that was magic; that was
incredible.’”
That was in October.
“He went out on the highest note that
maybe I’d ever seen him on, certainly since
Kim died,” Newcomb adds. “He’d just put
out a great live record [and] a great studio
record. In recent years, he was getting a
lot of really cool session stuff. He was in
a great place … he was happier than he’d
been in a long time. He was on a label that
was able to fly him places and promote
him. And he was looking forward to seeing
his granddaughter … and then getting
together with Kenney and Woody and
those guys.”
I wish the long-anticipated Faces
reunion had happened back when it was
originally planned, in 2008 or ’09. But it’s
not as if McLagan would have collected
his earnings and retired. In March, he
appeared on a South By Southwest panel
titled, “It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll: 50 Years of
the Rolling Stones.” When the question
of whether rock’s oldest bad boys should
continue touring came up, he scoffed at
the notion of packing it in. Saying he’d
never be able to give up playing, he
joked, “What they call a retired musician
is a corpse.”
With a photo of his beloved Kim by
his bedside and his song, “Date with an
Angel,” filling the room, Mac left this earth
encircled by love, a currency worth more
than any bank balance could reflect. But
those of us whose lives he touched know
we’re truly the rich ones.
Ian McLagan is survived by his brother,
Mike, son, Lee, and a granddaughter.
Donations in McLagan’s name may
be made to the Stephen Bruton Artist
Wellness Program or the SIMS Foundation.
a
LoneStarMusic | 55
Bobby keys Cont.from page 6
who maintains a Texas presence as
music director and day voice of the Hill
Country’s Sun Radio network.
“When you talk about Bobby, you have
to talk about his rambunctious spirit,”
recalls Ely, who met Keys in 1979 or ’80 via
fellow Lubbock native Davis McLarty. “He
was attracted to light and to loudness and
to being in the spotlight and playing that
horn like there was no tomorrow. His spirit
affected everybody.
“The whole spirit of rock ’n’ roll is
about the energy that surrounds it,” Ely
says reverently. “Whenever he was playin’
onstage, your eyes moved toward him. He
had that energy.” Like the eye of a storm,
“Bobby was always in a swirl of noise and
rhythm and music.”
And like a storm, he often cut a swath
of mischief and destruction, famously
in the cellar, drinking some wine. They
said, ‘Oh Joe, we wish you were over
here. We’re drinking wine that’s got dust
all over it, really old wine.’ Wine that was
worth billions of dollars,” she says with
a laugh. Her husband, they knew, is a
grape lover. “I thought that was so funny.
It was some castle that they were staying
in. I don’t even know if they knew whose
castle it was. They broke into the cellar;
they were having a great time.”
Scott remembers Keys as “a mercurial
character.”
“He lived this very blow-wherethe-wind-takes-him kind of existence,”
she says. Scott was Keys’ mid-80s “East
Coast” girlfriend. She had a West Coast
counterpart; the two often commiserated.
Back then, Scott programmed music
for New York’s Hard Rock Café and had
become friends with club co-founder Isaac
Tigrett’s future wife, Maureen Starkey.
One night, they introduced her to
“The whole spirit of rock ’n’ roll is about the energy that
surrounds it. Whenever he was playin’ onstage, your eyes
moved toward him. He had that energy. Bobby was always
in a swirl of noise and rhythm and music.” — Joe Ely
56 | LoneStarMusic
embodying the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle in all
its excess. Occasionally, he got himself into
jams that required outside intervention.
One night, Ely got a call. Keys told him, “‘I
got a bit of a problem here, Joe.’”
Turns out he’d gotten locked up in a
Tokyo jail while on tour with the Stones,
and didn’t want the press to find out. “He
had gone out to some really swanky bar
and had ordered some concoction of a
drink, and they brought him a bill for like
$750, for one drink,” Ely explains. “He
refused to pay it and they called the Tokyo
police and he landed in jail. And I just
thought, man, how could Bobby possibly,
everywhere he goes, just find some kind
of trouble to get into?”
Keys asked Ely to track down an
international lawyer his mother knew.
Within hours, he was free. “How do
you even get thrown into the Tokyo jail
in the first place — and then get out
miraculously and make the show the next
night?” Ely says, still equally incredulous
and impressed.
Sharon Ely recalls a happier 3 a.m.
call from Keys and his birthday twin —
and main partner in mayhem — Keith
Richards. “He and Keith were in a castle,
Keys. The two clicked instantly, and, many
hours later, got themselves kicked out of
an after-hours club. They stumbled into
the Pennsylvania Hotel — and didn’t leave
for a week. The couple wound up living
together for a year; that put her inside the
Stones’ inner sanctum.
“This was a highlight of my life,” she
says. “I had 20,000 albums in my house and
I would make them tapes. And Keith and
Woody and Bobby and I would sit around
and listen to music. It was a really rarified
moment that I cherish. And Bobby opened
up the door to all of that for me.”
When it came to charming women,
Keys apparently had few equals. Though
Scott was the one who broke it off, she
admits, “I loved being with him. He was
magic. The molecules vibrated differently
around him.”
They certainly did during one
particularly magical experience Ely related
at Keys’ Dec. 5 funeral.
“One time, we played in Edmonton,
Alberta, Canada, and our next gig was
around Winnipeg,” he recounted. “We left
Alberta about 1 in the morning and headed
out to get as far as we could. We were
driving down this long, empty stretch of
highway and it was frozen, and all the
sudden, we heard the van driver say,
‘Good God, what was that?’ We saw
this light inside of the car. We thought
we were gettin’ pulled over by the
police. We pull over, and there’s not a
car behind us, not a car in front of us,
as far as we could see — just about a
billion stars. And all the sudden, this
wave of light just comes all the way
across the horizon and it smashes into
another wave of light, and we all jump
out of the car.
“For a full 30 minutes, we sat in this
freezing cold, watching the lights,” Ely
continued. “And nobody said a word
… [we were] just speechless at the
majesty of the northern lights. That
was, to me, a very spiritual moment
that we all shared … . I’ll never forget
that moment of reverie among all
of us. That makes all the hard times
worthwhile, when you come across a
moment like that.”
Scott’s final spiritual moment with
Keys came about after she played a
role in the formation of what could be
considered Keys’ first actual band, Bobby
Keys & the Suffering Bastards. (His
bandmates were Mercy Lounge owner
Chark Kinsolving, Georgia Satellites
frontman Dan Baird, and well-known
sidemen Brad Pemberton, Michael
Webb, and Robert Kearns.) They got
together after playing an Exile on Main
St. tribute at the 2010 Americana Music
Association conference; the show
followed an afternoon panel, both
arranged by promoter Shilah Morrow to
mark the album’s anniversary re-release.
AMA co-founder Scott knew Keys lived
near Nashville and suggested Morrow
call him.
When Scott passed through
Nashville again a year later, she met
Keys for lunch, then listened to tracks
he’d recorded with the band. “That
night, he called me and apologized
for being such a disruptive force in my
life, which I just found very tender and
sweet,” she says.
Those tracks, she says, are
amazing — and could become
available relatively soon. Which,
thankfully, means the world hasn’t
heard the last honkin’ riff from Bobby
Keys’ soulful sax.
a
Ted Hawkins Cont.from page 8
turned Finlay, an Americana music
radio promoter who also manages both
McMurtry and Graham, onto Hawkins
at the Folk Alliance conference in Kansas
City last February, and by the time she
got back home to Texas she was already
making a mental list of artists she
thought would fit the project. Fellow
Hawkins fan Atkinson (the author of I’ll
Be Here in the Morning: The Songwriting
Legacy of Townes Van Zandt, who is also
currently co-writing a book with Finlay
about her father, Texas songwriter and
Cheatham Street Warehouse founder
Kent Finlay) was next on board, and
Russell, naturally, jumped at the chance
to play, too. “They asked me to be
involved, and I was like, ‘Hell yeah, I’d
love to do it!’”
With financial backing provided
by the Petulma, Calif.-based Lagunitas
Brewing Co. (one of the main sponsors
of Catfish Concerts, the Austin house
concert series co-hosted by Finlay
and Atkinson), recording began in
November. In addition to Shinyribs,
Graham, Morlix, Sweeney, and Felker,
other artists contributing tracks
include Mary Gauthier, Tim Easton,
Ramsay Midwood, Randy Weeks, Papa
Mali, Steve James, the Damnations,
and Danny Barnes and Bill Frisell. An
unreleased demo by Hawkins himself,
“Great New Year” is also planned
for inclusion, and Hawkins’ widow
Elizabeth and stepdaughter Tina Fowler
are even recording a version of “Baby,”
the first song Hawkins ever wrote.
According to Atkinson, Cold and
Bitter Tears: The Songs of Ted Hawkins
is currently scheduled for release
in the fall of 2015 (on Atkinson and
Finlay’s own label, Eight 30 Records).
That gives folks as yet unfamiliar with
Hawkins’ original recordings plenty of
time to catch up, or perhaps to catch
a Shinyribs show and hear one of the
handful of Hawkins tunes Russell has
been working into the band’s setlists
— including the one they recorded
for the tribute, the uproarious,
impossible-not-to-dance-to “Who Got
My Natural Comb?”
“I think it was just a decision by
everyone involved that no one could
do that one but Shinyribs,” Russell
says with pride. “And I think they were
right!”
g
LoneStarMusic | 57
Alamo Ice House BBQ & Brew | San Antonio, TX
By Tara Staglik
Co-owned by Texas country mainstay Charlie Robison, the Alamo Ice House brings the laid-back, good-times vibe of a Hill Country live music venue to the heart of
downtown San Antonio. (Photos by Bea Simmons Photography)
In case you’ve been living under a river
rock and missed the news, Texas songwriter
and roadhouse rabble-rouser Charlie Robison is the proud new co-owner of his very
own bar. But the Alamo Ice House BBQ &
Brew, which the Bandera-reared “Barlight”
and “My Hometown” singer and three
friends opened in September, is more than
just another watering hole: it’s the kind of
sprawling, family-friendly outdoor music
venue typically seen only in the Texas Hill
Country, conveniently located right in the
heart of San Antonio.
Robison’s business partners in prime
music and BBQ include award-winning
grill master (and Alamo City native) Jaime
Gonzales, seasoned restaurant operations
manager Jeff Fuchs, and veteran Major
League Baseball pitcher (and University of
Texas star) Brooks Kieschnik. With so much
experience (and success) in their respective fields, it’s no surprise that their joint
venture is such a home run. From the first
night they opened the doors, the joint’s
had the welcoming vibe of a much-loved
neighborhood hangout already steeped
in decades of good times — and that was
before they even got a chance break in the
outdoor stage, given that a heavy rainstorm
forced all of the grand-opening revelry
(including live music sets by Pauline Reese
and Robison) inside. Not that anybody
minded the tight quarters, though, what
with the all the ice-cold beer being handed
out by hosts Robison and Kieschnik them58 | LoneStarMusic
selves (well, that night at least!), freshfrom-the-pit BBQ and all the flat-screen TVs
(tuned to sports, naturally) that you’d expect in a bar not only located smack in the
middle of the home of the World Champion San Antonio Spurs, but co-owned by
a three-time All Americana and two-time
Dick Howser winner.
Still, when it’s not pouring rain, outside
is where it’s really at. Nestled in a luminous
spot in the rapidly redeveloping South
Broadway (aka “SoBro”) area on the northern edge of downtown, Alamo Ice House
boasts a spacious back patio with plenty
of umbrella-covered picnic tables, perfect
for enjoying evenings and afternoons with
friends and family over beverages (beer,
wine, soft drinks and tea) and tasty offerings from the uncomplicated menu selection. The brisket tacos are generous and
tender, with a savory but not-oversaturated
sauce, and pair nicely with the kitchen’s
particularly unique and delicious coleslaw,
bright with lime and crisp with freshness.
You can also order your tacos with pulled
pork, chicken, or sausage, or opt instead
for a sandwich served on a toasted bun and
topped with slaw. Other sides include fries,
beans, and potato salad, and “kiddos” can
order chicken fingers and fries for under $5
— that is if you can lure them away from
the washer-pitching pits. And then, of course, there’s the music.
The outdoor stage — which faces a large
lawn with ample room for dancing, kicking
back in one of the many Adirondack-style
chairs or even spreading out on your own
blanket — is just the right size for both
intimate solo acoustic performances and
full band shows, be they by Mr. Life of the
Party himself or other local and regional
favorites like Brandon Jenkins, Bri Bagwell,
the Pear Ratz, Buster Jiggs, and K. Phillips
and the Concho Pearls. And if you happen to think that stage and lawn looks like
the perfect venue spot to host a birthday
party, rehearsal dinner, family reunion or
other private celebration, Robison and his
partners are happy to work something out
with you for a small reservation fee and
enough notice to find an open date; they
even offer a variety of different party packages to choose from right on the Alamo Ice
House’s website.
So, if you’re into live Texas music, cold
Texas beer, hot Texas BBQ, championship
Texas sports, or even just the idea of chilling Luckenbach, Texas-style mere minutes
away the most famous historical landmark
in the whole Lone Star State … do yourself
a favor and remember Alamo Ice House.
And if you’re not into any of those things,
well … try Delaware.
Alamo Ice House BBQ & Brew, 802 N.
Alamo St., San Antonio, Texas 78215;
210-332-3344; www.alamoicehouse.com.
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