May `10 - Texas Music Magazine

Before their lips are sealed
Austinite Kathy Valentine will take a break
from the locally grown Bluebonnets for a
final victory lap with her old band, the Go-
EXTRA
May ‘10
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Reckless Kelly at bat for a cause
Reckless Kelly
hosted
their
second annual
Celebrity
Softball Jam
under sunny
skies on April
25 at the Dell
Diamond
in
Round Rock.
Cross Canadian
Ragweed, Dale
Watson,
the
Trishas, Charlie
Canada tips his hat to fellow Jam comRobison, Randy Cody
petitors. (Photo: Michael Bauer)
Rogers
and
Micky & the Motorcars all took turns at bat
and behind microphones for the day-long
event, which raised money for local area nonprofits including the Balcones and Montopolis
Little Leagues and the Miracle League.
Kerrville Festival ticket giveaway
It’s that time of year again for two and a half
weeks of folk festivities — the Kerrville Folk
Festival runs from May 27 through June 13,
and Texas Music has a pair of three-day wristbands (good for any consecutive three days)
to give away. This year, the Indigo Girls headline Sunday evening the opening weekend,
and the impressive list of performers includes
festival staples like the Austin Lounge
Lizards, Guy Forsyth, Jimmy LaFave and the
Band of Heathens. Hosted at the Quiet Valley
Ranch just 9 miles south of Kerrville, the festival also features the New Folk concert (performances by 16 up-and-coming songwriters
picked from 800 submissions), bike rides,
canoe trips and concerts for kids. To be
entered in our drawing, send an e-mail to
[email protected] by May 10 with the
answer to this question: Who founded the
Kerrville Folk Festival? We’ll draw a name and
notify the winner on May 12. Good luck! For
more info, visit www.kerrville-music.com.
Augie gets his kidney
Kathy Valentine (second from left) celebrates 30 years on the Go-Go’s
farewell tour. (Photo courtesy the Go-Go’s)
EXTRA
PUBLISHER/
The Albert Dance Hall in Albert, Texas, is once
again opening its doors for lovers of good
times and Hill Country tradition. On May 1, Bill
Rice headlines a branding party at which
attendees can literally leave their mark on the
bar — patrons will bring their own branding
irons and burn their brands into the structure.
May 7 heralds the grand opening of the hall,
featuring Aaron Watson. The Hall was renovated by the Easley family, who purchased
the entire 13-acre town of Albert. The family
also renovated the Albert Ice House, which
features live music and boasts the “biggest
picnic tables in Texas.”
S T E WA R T R A M S E R
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
EDITOR
CONTRIBUTORS
C I N D Y R O YA L
T O R Q U I L S C O T T- D E WA R
www.txmusic.com
WEB SITE DESIGNER
MAILING ADDRESS
After a long time on dialysis and anxious
waiting, Texas Tornado Augie Meyers finally
got a kidney. The Tornados had to cancel a
gig at Fiesta San Antonio while Meyers
receieved his transplant, and Meyers’ website reports that he was released from the
hospital April 27 and “doing great.” Texas
Tornado performances in early May are
being re-scheduled. You can keep up with
Meyers’ progress at www.augiemeyers.com.
CAITLIN WITTLIF
LY N N E M A R G O L I S
ETHAN MESSICK
ART DIRECTOR
Brand the bar in Albert
Go’s, on a goodbye tour starting July 7 at
the San Diego Lilith Fair and winding up
July 27 in Austin at the Paramount
Theater. “Happily Ever After – The Farewell
Tour” will no doubt revisit highlights of the
pop icon’s three-decade career, most
notably such ‘80s hits as “Our Lips Are
Sealed,” “Vacation” and “We Got the
Beat.” The band’s debut album, Beauty
and the Beat, was the first to go No. 1 on
the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart by an
all-woman band writing and performing
their own songs.
W I L LT H I N G
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AUSTIN, TX 78763
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E-MAIL: [email protected]
COPYRIGHT © 2010 BY TEXAS MUSIC, L.L.C.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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 .
Packing the park — ACL threeday passes sell out
Three-day passes for the 9th annual Austin
City Limits Music Festival sold out in 14 hours,
a record since the festival’s inception in 2002.
Early Bird tickets were released in October
after last year’s festival, and sold out in minutes. A second pre-sale was held on April 20,
and was exclusive to ACL Festival e-list subscribers. The sale was developed to serve
loyal fans and divert would-be scalpers from
scooping up passes. A limited number of
three-day VIP passes and travel packages are
still available, and single day tickets will be
released along with the full lineup announcement on May 18. For more information and
the much anticipated lineup, visit
www.aclfestival.com.
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streets July 6. The disc, on Shout! Factory,
contains 13 cuts written or turned into hits by
iconic artists like Jimmy Reed (“Come
Love”), Little Richard (“Send Me Some
Lovin’”), Willie Nelson (“Funny How Time
Slips Away”) and Billy Eckstine [(“She’s Got
the) Blues for Sale”]. There’s also one original, “Comin’ and Goin’.” Former Austinite
and early collaborator Lou Ann Barton duets
on two tunes.
(From left) Chris Robinson, Lucas Hubbard and Ray Wylie Hubbard jam at
Hubbard Sr.’s Grit ‘n Groove Festival in Luckenbach. Other performers at
the April 3 showcase included Slaid Cleaves, James McMurtry, Hayes
Carll and Kevin Welch. (Photo: Robbyn Dodd)
A pick, a strap, guitar on his back
— Vaughan’s return
Austin axe-man Jimmie Vaughan’s first studio album in nine years, the self-produced
Blues, Ballads and Favorites, will hit the
Escovedo’s Street Songs of Love
Alejandro Escovedo’s got friends in high
places — including Bruce Springsteen and Ian
Hunter, who guest on his new album, Street
Songs of Love. Produced by Tony Visconti,
who helmed 2008’s knockout, Real Animal,
Escovedo’s latest comes out June 29 on
Fantasy Records/Concord Music Group. He
also tapped San Francisco’s
Chuck Prophet again to help
with songwriting, and called on
Austin singers Nakia Reynoso and
Karla Manzur for backing vocals.
The album was recorded in
Lexington, Ky., at Saint Claire
Recording Co. with Escovedo’s
band, the Sensitive Boys: guitarist/keyboardist
David
Pulkingham, bassist Bobby Daniel
and drummer Hector Munoz.
R.I.P.: Johnnie High
Johnnie High, the namesake and
founder of “Johnnie High’s
Country Music Review,” passed
away March 17 at the age of 80
after battling heart disease.
High’s Review, a live variety show
that was also broadcast on the
America One network, was created in 1974, and was responsible
for introducing some of today’s
most recognizable names in country to the
nation. LeAnn Rimes, Steve Holy, Lee Ann
Womack, Gary Morris, Linda Davis, Box Car
Willie, John Anderson and Shoji Tabuchi are
just some of the folks who have performed on
the Country Music Review. The program has
been hosted at the Arlington Music Hall since
1994, where High’s funeral services were held
during his program’s time on March 20. The
show will continue under the direction of High’s
family and the show’s cast members.
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Holly’s star would come just in time for his
75th birthday. Holly’s music publishers have
already raised the $25,000 required to purchase a star. Magowan has started a Facebook
group called “Get Buddy Holly a Star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame” to garner support,
and he’ll include the group in the submission
package to the Hollywood Chamber of
Commerce. At press time, the group had over
5,000 members. The deadline for the nomination form is May 31, and selection occurs in
June.
Buddy Holly-wood
Lubbock-reared rock icon Buddy Holly has
been conspicuously absent from the
Hollywood Walk of Fame — but Kevin Magowan
wants to change that. Magowan, who lives in
L.A. and works in the music industry, is nominating Holly for a Hollywood Star. If selected,
Spin loves Waterloo
Austin, Texas’ Waterloo Records was crowned
the second best indie record store in the country by Spin magazine. Waterloo ranked higher
than New York City’s Other Music,
Minneapolis’ Electric Fetus and Chicago’s
Reckless Records, and came in
second only to Amoeba Records
in California.
SXSW Redux
South by Southwest 2010 may
have been hosted a month and a
half ago, but the festival bands
continue to make our ears
happy. Check the Texas Music
website at www.txmusic.com
soon for a gallery of Texas performers.
Austin-based indie rockers Brazos went wild at
SXSW 2010. Photo: Caitlin Wittlif
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calendar
M AY
7-9
Mystic Valley Music and Arts Festival
Vizcaino Park
Marfa
www.couchprofessor.com
CityArts Festival
Fair Park
Dallas
www.cityartsfestival.com
Up-and-coming Americana
8
stars the Trishas join an
impressive lineup in Gruene. Kevin Fowler Beach Party
(Photo courtesy the Trishas) Weirdo’s
KNBT 92.1 FM
Americana Music Jam
Austin
May 16, Gruene Hall,New Braunfels
Southbound Sound Music Festival
www.roadwayevents.com
Texas Rose Horse Park
When you think of Texas-bred Tyler
Americana music, Charlie www.southboundshows.com
Robison, Cody Canada, Wade
Bowen, the Braun brothers 14-16
Wildflower! Arts & Music Festival
from Reckless Kelly, Ray Wylie Galatyn Park Urban Center
Hubbard, and the Band of Richardson
Heathens probably come to www.wildflowerfestival.com
mind. KNBT 92.1 FM Radio New
Braunfels has rounded up these 15
Homer’s Backyard Ball
artists and more for their annu- I-40 East in the Pasture,
al Americana Music Jam. East of Splash Waterpark
Tickets for the day-long event Amarillo
are $50, and as they have for www.homersbackyardball.com
the past 13 years, the partnership between KNBT and Gruene
Hall will benefit a local charity.
This year, the jam will benefit
the New Life Children’s Center
of Canyon Lake. So party on for
a good cause, and revel in
Americana the Texas way.
May 16, all day, Gruene Hall,
New Braunfels. For more info,
visit www.gruenehall.com.
Austin songstress Eliza Gilkyson will perform
twice at Richardson’s Wildflower! Arts & Music
Festival. (Photo by Adam Piggott)
15
Texas Music Awards
Marshall Convention Center
Marshall
www.texasmusicawards.org
21-23
Taste Addison
Addison Circle Park
Addison
www.addisontexas.net
27-6/13
Kerrville Folk Festival
Quiet Valley Ranch
Kerrville
www.kerrville-music.com
28-30
National Polka Festival
Various venues
Ennis
www.nationalpolkafestival.com
29-31
160th Weekend Celebration
for the 2nd Dang Time
Downtown Luckenbach
www.luckenbachtexas.com
JUNE
5-6
Free Press Summerfest
Eleanor Tinsley Park
Houston
www.pegstar.net
10-12
Sake of the Song Festival
Whitewater Amphitheater
New Braunfels
www.dicksonproductions.com
10-13
CMA Music Festival
Various venues
Nashville
www.cmafest.com
Spring 2010 Issue
available on newsstands now
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Roky Erickson &
Okkervil River
True Love Cast Out All Evil
AntiA true comeback is always a
lot to ask of an aging rock & roller, and even
more so when their greatest cultural impact
came over 40 years ago. His legacy alternately
fueled and faded by his personal and musical
eccentricities, the post-13th Floor Elevators
Erickson has always had a home in the heart of
the weirder-than-thou Austin music scene; his
biggest fans, fortunately, included producer
Will Sheff and his cohorts in Okkervil River. The
ambitious princes of Texas indie rock have certainly brought out the best in their psychedelic
rock godfather; to hear Erickson’s earnest repetition of the title phrase (it’s a command, not
a past-tense statement, by the way) is to
believe. Erickson and co. make redemption
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seem tactile and defying expectations sound
easy: for starters, Erickson mostly keeps his
distinctively nerve-rattling scream under
wraps, finding a singing voice as warm, weathered and personable as the aging folkies that
he’s never been compared to. And the band,
while occasionally dipping into indie indulgence
(song fragments that sound like field hollers,
tracks made mostly of ambient forest noise),
shows remarkable versatility at both playing it
straight (the stripped R&B groove of “Think Of
As One” sounds more Muscle Shoals than Sixth
Street) and of layering on the instruments and
ideas like brush strokes on the complex canvas
of Erickson’s compositions. Most of these
songs have been recorded before, and many
have fallen out of print; sad, perhaps, but on
the upside it’s hard to imagine them sounding
any better than they do right here.
ETHAN MESSICK
new releases
April 20 Pinata Protest
April 20 Roky Erickson & Okkervil
River
April 20 Willie Nelson
April 20 Royal Forest
April 27 Wade Bowen
April 27 Jonathan Tyler & the
Northern Lights
April30 ZEALE
May 2 Guy Forsyth
May 4 Rodney Hayden
May 4 Court Yard Hounds
May 11 Quiet Company
May 13 SuperLiteBike
May 18 Jimmy Needham
May 18 Javi Garcia & the
Cold Cold Ground
May 18 Sarah Jaffe
May 25 Hank III
June22 Terri Hendrix
June29 Alejandro Escovedo
Plethora
True Love Cast Out All Evil
Saustex
Anti-
Country Music
Royal Forest
Live at Billy Bob’s Texas
Pardon Me
Rounder
Smith Entertainment
F-Stop/Atlantic
Robot Radio
Live at Gruene Hall
Tavern of Poets
Court Yard Hounds
Songs for Staying In
Away We Go
Night Lights
A Southern Horror
myspace.com/zeale32
Small and Nimble
Palomino
Columbia
quietcompanymusic.com
superlitebike.com
Inpop
thecoldcoldground.com
Suburban Nature
Rebel Within
Cry Till You Laugh
Street Songs of Love
Kirtland
Curb
Wilory
Concord
Quiet Company
Songs for Staying In
quietcompanymusic.com
With Songs for Staying In
Austin's Quiet Company says
all the things a girl wants to
hear in this six-song, indie-pop tribute to love.
The peppy opener “How Do You Do It” sweetly
proclaims, “I just want to see your smile in the
morning/I just want to wake up next to you,
love,” and who could resist that? The changes
in tempo are unexpected and fun, demonstrating their great versatility, ending with a
Spacehog-esque wail ala “In the Meantime.” “If
You Want” gives a girl some choices, which is
always good. “And if you want, we can go out
tonight and be alone/And if you want, we can
stay in tonight, be at home.” The only downer
is “Jezebel, or 'A Song About My Friend and
That Whore He Dated.'” Still lovesick, but in a
republicoftheroyalforest.com
bad way, this one covers the downside of adoration - rejection and loneliness. But it's a good
balance, a reality check to the feel-good quality of the rest of the EP. The Ben Folds comparisons are obvious, particularly in the opening to
“The Biblical Sense of the Word.” There's a
piano, and lead singer Taylor Muse's voice
approaches the same sweet, adolescent boy
soprano/falsetto. But the arrangements here
are more about the collaborative, featuring
epic jams at times, while others show a quiet
delicacy, best exemplified in “Hold My Head
Above the Water” featuring Muse's wife Leah
in the call and response. This EP will spark your
curiosity just enough to make you want to hear
more. CINDY ROYAL
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Q&A Nathan Christ
Nathan Christ is a director from Austin, Texas
whose debut featurelength film focuses its lens
on Austin’s music scene.
The documentary, titled
Echotone, follows a number of local musicians
both at shows and at
their day jobs, and capPhoto: Christopher Rusch
tures the changing
nature of downtown Austin and the struggles
of what Christ dubs the “creative class.”
Echotone makes its national debut at the
Marfa Film Festival on May 7. For more information, go to www.echotonefilm.com.
Where are you from, and why did you pick
Austin as your subject for the film?
I’m from San Antonio originally, but Austin’s
[my] headquarters, so I travel a lot. I went to
the film school here and I’ve just grown so
accustomed to the rhythms of the city. I know
a lot about it, I know a lot about the clubs
downtown. Home is where your people are
and your music is and your art is and this is
where all those lie.
How did you pick the musicians to focus on
in the film?
Well the first one was Belaire. I was introduced
to Daniel Perlaky, who runs Indierect Records
and City On Fire photography and design. I
don’t know why, but I didn’t really want to like
them. The way people described it, I guess,
turned me off. It was this very catchy pop.
Then I put the album on and it just blew my
mind. Every song is so solid, so thought out, so
well recorded, it’s never overdone. It’s rough
where it needs to be. It’s visual, visual music.
So we did a short five-minute film, not really
knowing what we were getting into. We borrowed cameras and the audio was kind of
rough. We didn’t know where the story was
going, we just knew there needed to be a
music documentary made in Austin, just
because there were so many sounds that were
happening that certainly broke out of the
Stevie Ray Vaughan mainstay culture, the
Texas Roadhouse Blues – which I’m fine with.
The other night I went to Townes Van Zandt’s
birthday tribute; it was so moving, and people
like Townes Van Zandt are part of the reason
I’m so proud to be from Texas, so I’m not dogging their culture but you know, especially the
Roadhouse Blues thing, I just never knew until
that time, till I saw Belaire and started getting
into them, how vibrant and expansive the
music culture was here.
I always knew about Bill Baird and
Sound Team, because Bill’s originally from San
Antonio. I knew this band was so special and
had heard they had gotten dropped from
Capitol Records, and I was like where are they
now? I heard Sunset, Bill’s newest project. It’s
trippy psychedelic folk like the Harry Nilssons
and the Lee Hazlewoods, you could just tell
Bill’s influences were prolific. They were all
over the place, yet grounded. I knew that there
was a story there.
And then I got the opportunity to film
Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears; was just
reading about them, too – they’re blowing up,
man! They have I guess already. I knew that by
night he was a soul singer and by day he was
a fish delivery guy, so I really saw that dichotomy there. Basically it was just asking them.
Being human and real with them and saying,
look, I know that a lot of people have probably
tried to make documentaries before, but we
actually have a bit of an infrastructure and
good cameras and talented people, and will
you let us in? And they all did. It took a while,
it took months. And it was harder to get started but I think we just grew a trust and now I
consider them all friends.
How did everything develop from there?
Part of it was testing it to the producers,
Reversal Films – these guys I went to school
with. So Daniel, and the four guys from
Reversal Films, Vic, Nick, Justin and Josh –
they were able to push me. They pushed
Robert Garza and me; he and I were production partners. They were like, there’s a feature
film here that you guys need to do.
My original thought was, all these
musicians are great but how are we going to
connect them all? How is it all connected?
Just look no further than to downtown Austin,
Texas, and how quickly it’s changing, and the
live music task force springing up, saying that
there’s a music crisis here in town. So in terms
of the artistic pursuit and how it pertains to
commerce and making it and selling out and
basically – what it really comes down to is getting your music out to as many people as possible, and how that’s achieved. That’s the question, and that’s the thread that ties them all,
including the bands that are on the periphery
of our film, like the Black Angels, Ume,
Machine, Dana Falconberry, all these amazing
people.
Most businesses would say that we’re
crazy because we just took a leap of faith, we
just bought the cameras, and it’s right when
we did that that I was like, wow, there’s defi-
nitely something happening here. Now it’s
already gone, the live music task force has disbanded, the condos are going up, and who
knows where the culture may go. We managed
to get it right in this critical, crucial year, when
the recession hit. It was cool. And terrifying.
Do you feel that the film has one big takehome message?
I think the film’s good because it opens up a lot
of questions. You can come back from every
side. We’re not giving you the answer. Well,
what are we gonna say? I could rant for hours
about it and I wouldn’t give any answers.
The film’s like a really big red flag that
flies up, and it says, listen developers, listen
journalists, listen musicians, listen politicians,
fans, baristas — this is how we see the city right
now, and it’s changing, and it’s changing fast.
What’s important to you? What’s important to
you in your current music or arts scene? And
ask yourself that and be real about it, and realize that there are changes that are potentially
beyond you, but you still have a voice in it,
whatever it might be. CAITLIN WITTLIF