June `09 - Texas Music Magazine

EXTRA
June ‘09
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Brandon Jenkins, and dozens more yet to be
announced. Another wave of country and
Americana performers will be pouring in for
the Rowdy Float Trip on July 15-18, hosted by
RadioFreeTexas.org and headlined by yet
another admirable mix of newcomers
(Rodney Parker & 50 Peso Reward, Rich
O’Toole, Slow Rollin’ Lows) and old hands
(Walt Wilkins, Phil Pritchett, John Evans) at
New Braunfels’ Mountain Breeze
Campground.
seeing the performer onstage in a virtual
environment populated by avatars of the site
subscribers (it does sort of have to be seen to
be believed). On May 22, the site promoted
their “VideoRanch” festival, a multi-artist
lineup featuring Austin-based stars Slaid
Cleaves and Carolyn Wonderland, as well as
Texas-born musical eccentric (and former
Monkee) Michael Nesmith, who sells his music
and merchandise exclusively through the site.
Trio raises money for education
MusicRanch brings Texas to world
Willie next for State Musician
Step aside, Shelley
King, and make way
for the new official
Texas State
Musician: none other
than Willie Nelson.
Nelson’s appointment by the Texas
Commission of the Arts as the 2009 Texas
State Musician was announced on May 20. “I
consider it a great honor,” remarked Nelson,
“and I want to thank everyone who helped
make it happen.” Nelson’s successor was also
named: singer-songwriter Sara Hickman. The
position, open to artists who are either native
Texans or who have lived in Texas for at least
five years, honors artists distinguished “for
the exceptional quality of their work and for
their outstanding commitment to the arts in
Texas.” Previous appointees, in addition to
King, include Ray Benson, Billy Joe Shaver,
Dale Watson, Johnny Gimble and James Dick.
Texans score AMA noms
It’s not really news that Texas talents figure
prominently on the list of Americana Music
Awards nominees, but we figured we’d give
you the specifics. The Sept. 17 event will recognize the year’s top achievers in the singersongwriter-dominated genre, with the Lone
Star State represented in every category.
Alejandro Escovedo and Justin Townes Earle
both scored coveted nominations for Album
and Artist of the Year; New & Emerging Artist
nods went to Earle, the Belleville Outfit, and
the Band of Heathens. Group & Duo recognition went to the Flatlanders and Reckless
Kelly, and Gurf Morlix for Instrumentalist of
the Year. Song of the Year nominees were as
Tex-centric as you could hope, with Rodney
Crowell, the Gourds and the Flatlanders on
the short list. The full rundown is available at
www.americanamusic.org. Last year’s awards
proved to be a Grammy preview, with the
Robert Plant/Alison Kraus collaboration
Raising Sand taking top album honors.
MusicRanch.com has earned thousands of
viewers by streaming an eclectic array of live
concerts over the World Wide Web. More than
a few Texas-bred talents have found their way
onto the site’s bandwidth, with Web viewers
EXTRA
PUBLISHER/
S T E WA R T R A M S E R
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
EDITORS
C I N D Y R O YA L
RICHARD SKANSE
CONTRIBUTORS
ETHAN MESSICK
A M A N D A PA L M
JOSH SHEPHERD
Festival time in the Hill Country
Hopefully the rivers of New Braunfels and San
Marcos will stay within their banks this summer; several anticipated festivals are already
promising to flood the towns with talent. June
12 & 13, the Sake of the Song Festival comes to
the Whitewater Amphitheatre, with headliners
the Randy Rogers Band hosting veterans like
Hal Ketchum and Kevin Welch alongside
upstarts like Jason Eady and Texas Renegade.
On June 26-28, San Marcos’ Cheatham Street
Warehouse will be home to this year’s BigFest,
hosted by veteran singer-guitarist Big John
Mills and featuring talents like Walt Wilkins,
Though he grew up in Arkansas, Texas-born
Tracy Lawrence gathered fellow Texans Clay
Walker and Tracy Byrd, along with Neal
McCoy, Three Doors Down and others, to participate in his final homecoming concert in
Foreman, Ark., on June 6. The homecoming
is a fundraiser event for the Tracy Lawrence
Foundation, which raises money to improve
educational opportunities for children in
western Arkansas. The foundation has raised
more than $1 million since its establishment in
1993. And coming soon after the homecoming event is Lawrence’s new album, The Rock.
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R E P R O D U C T I O N I N W H O L E O R PA R T I S P R O H I B I T E D .
George Strait honored
Filmed in April after the Academy of Country
Music Awards, the ACM Artist of the Decade
special honoring George Strait aired in late
May. The special featured numerous Texas
artists paying their respects to King George,
including Brooks & Dunn, Miranda Lambert,
John Rich, Lee Ann Womack, Jack Ingram,
LeAnn Rimes, as well as Taylor Swift, Keith
Urban, Dierks Bentley, Alan Jackson, and
more. Actor Jamie Foxx, a Terrell native, took
a break from the silver screen to put an R&B
twist on “You Look So Good In Love.” Even
the “retired” Garth Brooks, the ACM artist of
the decade for the 1990s, made a special
appearance to pass the torch to Strait. In
accepting the honor, Strait said, “This is like a
farewell deal, but I ain’t ready to go yet.” He
hit the stage to perform “Ocean Front
Property” and then invited all the participants
to join him to sing his 57th No. 1 hit,
“Troubadour.”
Ingram: USO tour & Army Wives
After recently performing for U.S. troops at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba as part of a USO tour,
Jack Ingram continued on the military path
and traveled to Charleston, S.C. to film an
episode of Lifetime network’s Army Wives.
The series, which focuses on the lives of military families, will feature Ingram in an episode
currently scheduled to air in August.
Former Geto Boys rapper arrested
William James Dennis, or Willie D, as fans
know him from his time with 1990s Houston
rap group Geto Boys, has been arrested and
charged in a wire fraud scheme involving
Apple iPhones. If convicted, Dennis could face
up to 20 years in federal prison and a
$250,000 fine. In 1991, the Geto Boys topped
the charts with “Mind Playing Tricks on Me”
off their We Can’t Be Stopped album.
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advertising campaign for Cotton Incorporated.
She’ll appear in one of three commercials in
which she puts a country twist to the familiar
jingle. “My style in three words is comfortable,
funk, my own,” Lambert said. “Cotton is a big
part of that style, so I was very excited to be
part of this.” Other musicians in the campaign
include actress-singer Zooey Deschanel and
R&B artist Jazmine Sullivan.
Simpson heading back
to reality TV
After recently being under
media scrutiny for her yoyoing weight, Jessica Simpson
is pitching a new reality series
called The Price of Beauty. The
reality show would send
Jessica and a friend off on a
worldwide road trip in search
of what people find beautiful and why, and
how society affects opinions of women’s bodies. The show is yet to be picked up by a
network.
An evening with the Old 97’s
Wall featured on E!
E! Entertainment recently featured Paul Wall
and his wife Crystal on a special Rapper Wives
installment of the network staple True
Hollywood Story. The episode, which aired
May 13, takes an in-depth look at Wall’s rise to
fame, and how it’s affected the couple’s relationship and their family. As Crystal said, “You
see the family man side of him — just everything aside from the grills, the gold teeth, and
the diamonds and all that.” Check
www.eonline.com for scheduled re-runs.
Lambert’s hawkin’ cotton
As if she wasn’t already busy enough, Miranda
Lambert has joined “The Fabric of My Life”
Texas artists rock kidney benefit
Proving yet again that solo careers and a
heavily touring band aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive priorities, the Old 97’s are about
to barnstorm America throughout the summer with a unique but ingenious approach.
Each date (including nights in Hoboken,
Philadelphia, Los Angeles and St. Louis) will
feature separate solo sets by frontman Rhett
Miller and guitarist Murry Hammond, followed
by a full-band electric set. Both Miller and
Hammond have completed solo albums since
the last 97’s release (2008’s Blame It On
Gravity). Hammond’s I Don’t Know Where I’m
Going But I’m On My Way has been in stores
since late last year, and Miller’s self-titled third
solo album comes out on June 9.
Several Texas musicians joined in the fun
and offered a helping hand for the season
finale of the NBC comedy series 30 Rock.
The plot had Alan Alda in the role of recently
revealed biological father of NBC exec Jack
Donaghy (Alec Baldwin’s character on the
show). Alda’s character turns out to be in
need of a kidney transplant, but Donaghy
turned out not to be a match; thus the big
idea to hold a benefit, ala “We are the
World,” complete with star-studded musical
number. Texas artists Steve Earle, Norah
Jones and Rhett Miller joined Sheryl Crow,
Elvis Costello, Adam Levine (Maroon 5), Clay
Aiken, Moby and Wyclef Jean among others
onstage for the big finish. The song “He
Needs a Kidney,” written by the show’s
music supervisor (and Tina Fey’s husband)
Jeff Richmond, can be purchased on iTunes.
Proceeds from downloads go to the National
Kidney Foundation. For more information,
visit www.kidney.org.
Steve Earle brings tour to Texas
Steve Earle swings through Texas promoting
his newest disc, Townes, a tribute to his mentor and friend, Townes Van Zandt, who died in
1997. The 15-song set is comprised on songs
that are favorites of Earle written by Van
Zandt. After several shows on the East Coast,
Earle kicks off the Texas leg of the tour at the
Crighton Theater in Conroe on June 18 as
part of the Sounds of Texas Music Series, followed by stops in Austin (6/19), New
Braunfels (6/20) and Dallas (6/21). The tour
continues with dates in the Midwest and
Canada, with dates in Germany scheduled for
November.
In memoriam:
Randle “Poodie” Locke
1948-2009
Willie Nelson lost more than a longtime stage
manager with the passing of Randle “Poodie”
Locke; he lost one of the most beloved members of his extended family, as did the rest of
the Texas music world. Locke, who in addition
to working with Nelson on the road for 34
years also owned his own beer joint —
Poodie’s Hilltop Bar & Grill in Spicewood —
died of a heart attack on May 6, just four
days after his last Willie show at Carl’s Corner.
He was 60. Locke — whose nickname
“Poodie” came from his sister being unable to
pronounce the word “pretty” when he was a
baby — was buried May 11 in his native Waco
at a service that drew an estimated 1,000
mourners. No doubt even more will turn out
to celebrate his memory at a memorial concert scheduled for June 28 at the Backyard in
Austin.
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In memoriam:
Turner Stephen Bruton
1948-2009
On Saturday, May 9, while the Texas music
community was still reeling from the death of
Poodie Locke, a second devastating blow
landed: Fort Worth-raised, Austin-based
singer-songwriter, guitarist and producer
Stephen Bruton had succumbed to his long
battle with throat cancer in Los Angeles. He
was 60. Bruton died at the home of fellow
Fort Worth legend T Bone Burnett, who had
called Bruton out to L.A. to work with him on
music for the film Crazy Heart. Burnett told
the Los Angeles Times that the project had
been finished two weeks earlier, and that
right up until the last few days of his life,
Bruton seemed like he was going to be able
to pull through. “I think everybody thought he
would kick it quickly because he was Stephen
Bruton,” Burnett said. “We all thought he was
invincible.” Before working on Crazy Heart,
Bruton was in the studio with longtime friend
(and employer) Kris Kristofferson, recording
tracks for Kristofferson’s Starlight and Stone
album due out later this year. Bruton, who
was born in Delaware but moved to Texas
with his family at age 2, was friends with
Burnett since their teens, when they both
hung out at the Fort Worth record store
owned by Bruton’s father. Bruton later hit the
road with Kristofferson and was off on a
career that also found him playing guitar for,
among many other notables, Bonnie Raitt. He
also released five solo albums (the last being
2005’s From the Five), produced records by
artists like Jimmie Dale Gilmore and
Alejandro Escovedo and performed and
recorded with the Austin band the
Resentments.
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JUNE
12–14
3
Solar Powered Concerts
Ruthie Foster plays Blues on the Green on
June 3.
Blues on the Green
Waterloo Park
Austin, Every Other Wednesday
through August 12
KGSR’s Blues on the Green
returns for its 19th season.
Austin’s free concert series
moves to Waterloo Park in
the heart of Austin just for
this year as Zilker Park
undergoes major improvements. Next to Waller Creek,
Waterloo Park’s shade trees,
picnic tables and easy accessibility will provide a comfortable and pleasant environment for this annual concert
series. Every other
Wednesday evening June
through August, Waterloo
Park will host favorites like
Ruthie Foster (June 3) and
Cyril Neville (June 17). And,
you can join the Blues on the
Green text alert club by texting “blues” to 68704 to be
eligible for VIP passes as well
as special offers from restaurants and sponsors throughout the series. All shows start
at 7:30 p.m. For more details
and full schedule, visit
www.kgsr.com.
Texas Folklife Festival
UTSA’s Institute of Texan Cultures
Ozomatli
San Antonio
Republic Square Park
www.texasfolklifefestival.org
Austin
www.kgsr.com/solarconcerts
13
Texas Blueberry Festival
County Line Music Series
Downtown
Bruce Robison
Nacogdoches
The County Line
www.texasblueberryfestival.com
San Antonio
www.countyline.com
14
Live at the Lake Series
4
The Mother Truckers
Summer in the Park
Lakeway Resort and Spa
The Derailers
Lakeway
San Marcos Plaza Park
www.kgsr.com
San Marcos
www.ci.san-marcos.tx.us
6
Accordion Kings & Queens
Sunny Sauceda, Santiago Jimenez Jr and more
Miller Outdoor Theatre
Houston
www.texasfolklife.org
Sounds of Texas Music Series
The Flatlanders
The Mother Truckers play LIve at the Lake on
June 14.
Crighton Theatre
Conroe
County Line Music Series
www.thesoundsoftexas.com
Ray Wylie Hubbard
11–14
San Antonio
CMA Music Festival
www.countyline.com
The County Line
Jack Ingram, Miranda Lambert and more
Downtown
22–31
Nashville, Tenn.
Girls Rock Camp Austin
www.fanfair.com
The Khabele School
Austin
Republic of Texas Biker Rally
www.girlsrockcampaustin.org
Various venues
Austin
www.rotrally.com
25–28
Luling Watermelon Thump
Kyle Park and more
12–13
Downtown
Overton Bluegrass Music Festival
Luling
City Park
www.watermelonthump.com
Overton
www.overtonbluegrass.com
Charlie Robison
Beautiful Day
(Dualtone)
Sure to be highly anticipated
by longtime fans (it’s been
five years since his last
album) and celebrity rubberneckers (his
divorce from Dixie Chick Emily is still fairly
fresh) alike, Bandera-born country artist
Charlie Robison delivers again with his fifth
studio album. That delivery is still dust-dry,
but he retains the unique knack he’s always
had to make hurt, lust and wisdom resonate
without too much unseemly emoting. As on
most of his past releases, Robison takes the
Jerry Jeff approach of borrowing great tunes
from his buddies (Keith Gattis, Bobby Bare
Jr.), while daring himself to write something
just as striking. Those looking for tidbits
about the fallout of a celebrity divorce won’t
have to look farther than the standout title
track, breezy and hopeful but bitter around
the edges. Nothing else on the album manages to top it, though the bluegrass-tinged
“Feelin’ Good” and the reeling “If The Rain
Don’t Stop” keep the mixed emotions flowing
convincingly. Even arguable missteps like
dabbling in psychedelia (“Yellow Blues”) or
covering Springsteen (how do you top
“Racing In The Streets”?) serve their purpose, giving voice to the sort of discomfort
and ambition that must result when one’s
personal ups-and-downs make the tabloids.
ETHAN MESSICK
Ryan Bingham
Roadhouse Sun
(Lost Highway)
Like his label-mate, Hayes
Carll, Ryan Bingham is one of
the few young guns to come
out of the Texas scene in
recent years to garner critical
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cred on par with his Lone Star draw. Winning
a following with the frat crowd is one thing;
but Bingham’s ragged-beyond-its-years voice
and equally world-weary words earned him
raves from elder statesmen of Texas cool Joe
Ely and Terry Allen long before his 2007
major-label debut, Mescalito. Fittingly,
Roadhouse Sun swaggers a lot more than its
predecessor; who wouldn’t swagger with
accolades like that? Sometimes, all that bluster trips Bingham up; “Endless Ways” is more
bark than bite, and “Day is Done” comes saddled with the kind of tired “I was born a bad
man’s son” schtick best left to Shooter
Jennings. But more often than not, Bingham
does his reputation proud. Song titles like
“Tell My Mother I Miss Her So,” “Country
Roads” and “Snake Eyes” may suggest a veritable minefield of lyric and musical clichés,
but Bingham, his band and producer Marc
Ford artfully dodge them all. The tour de
force is “Dylan’s Hard Rain,” which rides a
ringing guitar straight out of Byrdsville and
finds Bingham deftly wrapping his own razorsharp lines of social commentary around an
indelibly catchy melody. Nothing else on
Roadhouse Sun is quite that perfect, but few
next-big-things ever even get quite that close.
RICHARD SKANSE
BettySoo
Heat Sin Water Skin
If her first album since adding
“Kerrville New Folk Winner” to
her resume isn’t quite the revelation that Betty-Soo’s second album was, that’s only
because 2007’s Little Tiny Secrets didn’t leave
a whole lot of room for improvement. Heat Sin
Water Skin adds producer Gurf Morlix to the
mix — an inspired, left-field pick — but more
than anything, this outing’s more of a reinforcement of the Spring native’s considerable
new releases
June 2
June 2
June 2
June 9
June 9
June 9
June 9
Morakestra
Ryan Bingham
Tanya Tucker
Rhett Miller
Todd Snider
BettySoo
George Jones
June 16 The Jonas Brothers
June 16 Sarah Jarosz
June 23 Charlie Robison
June 23 Darren Kozelsky
June 23 The Mars Volta
July 21 The Steps
Sept 22 Soulhat
Witness to Connection
Roadhouse Sun
My Turn
Rhett Miller
The Excitement Plan
Heat Sin Water Skin
Blue And Lonesome
(remastered)
Lines, Vines And Trying Times
Song Up In Her Head
Beautiful Day
Arrivals & Departures
Octahedron
Take It All In (EP)
Live at the Black Cat (re-release)
strengths as a singer and songwriter than a radical change of pace. And that’s a compliment
both to BettySoo and Morlix. BettySoo’s more
Nanci Griffith than Lucinda or Ray Wylie, but she
holds her own just fine under Morlix’s trademark
gritty touch, and he respects the artist enough
to let the beauty of her songs and voice carry
the big stick. Sometimes their seemingly disparate styles collide in ways that show BettySoo
Stratking Records
Lost Highway
Saguaro Road
Shout! Factory
Yep Roc
www.bettysoo.com
Righteous
Hollywood
Sugar Hill
Dualtone
Major 7th Entertainment
Warner Bros.
Playing in Traffic
Dualtone
can snarl convincingly when cornered (“Get
Clean,” “Never Knew No Love”), but she still
roars the loudest when she takes the beauty
way: “What We’ve Got,” “Just Another Lover”
and “Whisper My Name” all prove that a gorgeous melody and voice to match can be as devastating as a deep and dirty groove. RICHARD SKANSE
Q&ARyan Bingham
The voice may not
match the face of
Ryan Bingham, but
there’s a tremendous amount of
wisdom in the
words of this 28year-old Texas
troubadour. Some
people may first
see it as an act,
Photo: Cindy Royal
but learn quickly
Bingham has lived hard and been through
this tough and tumble world more than
once. Bingham is a road dog, and it’s no surprise his newest album is titled Roadhouse
Sun. Once a rodeo bull rider, Bingham now
takes on bigger beasts with his introspective
and hauntingly descriptive songwriting. The
scratched voice of one too many cigarettes,
in one too many honky tonks, adds that
West-Texas soul to his songs of love, regret,
redemption and making it through this
world. Roadhouse Sun is scheduled for
release on Lost Highway Records on June 2.
Everyone has some sort of opinion of you.
How do you view yourself as a musician
and as a person?
Compared to all the great musicians in
Austin, I’m just a needle in a haystack
around here. I’m just another guy with a guitar, writing songs on the road, you know? I
think traveling a lot opens you up to seeing
a lot of things firsthand, as far as the economy in different cities and towns across the
states and over in Europe as well. Seeing it
with your own eyes always gives you a lot of
inspiration to write songs about that kind of
stuff. That’s basically all I have been doing is
traveling a lot and writing songs about the
things I have been seeing down the road.
Is that the inspiration for Roadhouse Sun?
I feel like I should just tell it like I see it. For
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being my age or my generation, I just feel
it’s not necessarily my duty or my job, but I
would feel bad if I didn’t say anything about
these things with some songs. I don’t want
to look back on this record 10 or 20 years
from now and be like, I never said anything
about anything. It’s not really that I am stating my opinion on how I feel about it, but
just describing what is going on more than
anything.
Not many musicians are doing that…
I think a lot of people are just scared of saying something that somebody doesn’t like.
That’s the risk you take when you step on
somebody’s toes. If you say something
about the church or the government, you
are liable to have somebody come spit in
your face. It’s whether [or not] you are
ready to deal with that. For me, I am who I
am. I am a lot more comfortable in my skin
saying how I feel and I don’t have any
regrets about that. You can’t just sit back
and agree with everybody all the time.
You’ve got to let that stuff out and get it off
your chest with everybody. It builds healthy
relationships if everybody is honest about
how they really feel about things. Obviously,
there are a lot of things going on that aren’t
really that cool, and if everybody sits back
and has a Coke and a smile and watches it
all happen and doesn’t ever do anything
about it, what’s the point?
Marc Ford produced Mescalito (2007
Lost Highway) and you brought him back
for Roadhouse Sun. What led you back to
him?
We really got to know him a lot more over
the past year and a half. When we first did
the Mescalito stuff, we had just met him and
went right into the studio that we hadn’t
been in before. We had all those tunes
ready to go, and we just wanted to go
somewhere that we were comfortable. We
knew we could all talk about it before we
went in there and everybody had the same
idea and the direction and just make it hap-
pen. Instead of spending half the time trying
to figure how it’s going to come together, we
already knew that before we went into the
studio and all we had to do was to go in there
and play.
Where does the album title, Roadhouse
Sun, come from?
It’s more of an imaginary thing. It’s something I see in my mind. It’s something I
describe from going down the road. From my
background where I was raised in these old
roadhouses that my family used to have out
in New Mexico, I used to go in the bars all the
time with my dad and my uncle and shoot
pool, drink beer and listen to jukeboxes. It’s
an image that I wanted to use to set a tone
for the whole record. It describes the mood
of it more than anything.
So what does the rest of 2009 look like for
you?
Burning up van tires. That’s our main job,
burning up van tires [laughs].
What goals do you have for the rest of the
year?
The main goal is for me to be happy and
make a living playing music. We’ve gotten to
a point where we can do that now. Now it’s
just about keeping it going. If it gets bigger,
then that’s cool, too. But if it doesn’t, I think
we are all pretty happy just where we are.
Just playing the songs we like to sing, doing
our own thing, and we don’t have anybody
telling us what to do all the time, what to
wear or how to sound. As long as we can
have fun and play music, and make a little
cash on the side, man, we don’t need anything more than that. JOSH SHEPHERD
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