Texas Music News
Jordan Mackay contributed to this regular Ranch feature from October, 1997 to August, 1998.
(Page 3 of 8)
Texas music year in review.
We can all loosen our belts one more notch and let our swollen bellies out now that 1997 has drawn to a close. As every year finds more people in Texas, so too does each year bring more music to our clubs and stereos. In this column I’ll briefly look back at the notable events of 1997 and muse on the possibilities that 1998 may hold.
1997 was the year of Texas women in music. If you look at the top 200 at www.billboard.com, it is easy to pick out the biggest stories in Texas music from last year. LeAnn Rimes currently occupies spots 4 and 42, with her albums You Light Up my Life—Inspirational Songs—and Blue respectively, the latter having been on the chart for 77 weeks and the former having reached number one. Billboard writes, “LeAnn Rimes’ first three albums helped the teenager become the No. 1 album artist of the year,” beating out the Spice Girls and Celine Dion. It’s been a banner year for the 15-year-old Garland resident, indeed, a year that will be tough to match. Finding so much success at such a young age makes us wonder if Rimes can keep this pace up, and what she will do next. What was amazing in 1997 was that in the increasingly competitive world of country music, the combined success of Rimes and Oklahoma’s Garth Brooks means a tremendous amount of albums sold by two singers who grew up not too far away from each other in a relatively small parcel of arid, flat land.
The next Texas artist you encounter as you scroll down the list is Erykah Badu. At 24 (at the time of this writing), Dallas’ Badu is the next biggest story in Texas music. Her innovative melange of jazz, soul, and hip-hop has invigorated the R&B world and brought head-wraps and Afrocentric lyrics to MTV.
Lisa Loeb is also currently on the Billboard charts with her album Firecracker.
Aside from these top-selling acts, there were some other notable albums last year. Specifically I’m thinking of Steve Earle’s El Corazon, Robert Earl Keen’s Picnic, Abra Moore’s Strangest Places (of course, another Texas woman and one whom was being significantly promoted in New York when I was there a couple of weeks ago), Roy Hargrove’s Habana, and Ornette Coleman’s Colors. Feel free to write in with some of your favorites and we’ll see what kind of sampling we get.
Badu’s new R&B bodes well for new music in 1998. So many artists from the Dallas area made the news last year—Rimes, Loeb, and Badu—that I think things might shift to Houston here in ‘98. This may not mean the chart-busting success of the North Texans, but there’s some interesting stuff brewing down South. Particularly I plan to keep track of the Latino Rock scene and some of the smaller label hip-hop acts from Houston. Until then, Happy New Year.
—Jordan Mackay (1/1/98)
And the grammy nominees are . . .
The ‘you really like me’ department: Grammy nominations were announced last week and, all in all, 24 Texans were among the honorees. Dallas’ Erykah Badu got a nod in the Female R&B Vocal Performance category, but will vie with Paula Cole, Fiona Apple, Hanson, and Puff Daddy in the New Artist category. In the Female Pop Vocal category, Austin’s Shawn Colvin will be going up against the likes of industry heavyweights Mariah Carey and Sarah McLachlan. Colvin was also nominated for Song of the Year and Record of the Year for Sunny Came Home.
Houston’s La Mafia compete once again for the Mexican-American/Tejano award with their album, En Tus Manos; they won the Grammy in that category last year.
Joe Sample received a Contemporary Jazz nomination for his solo album Sample This and Dallas-born trumpeter Roy Hargrove received a nod in the Latin Jazz category with his Cuban group, Crisol.
Dallas’ Pantera was included in the Metal Performance category.
Austin’s music scene was represented with the nominations of Abra Moore in the Female Rock Vocal category for her song “Four Leaf Clover” and Eric Johnson’s “S.R.V.” for Rock Instrumental.
Dallas’ youth gospel choir God’s Property was nominated for R&B Song and Group Performance for “Stomp,” their crossover hit produced by and featuring Fort Worth’s Kirk Franklin. They are also up for Best Gospel Album by a Choir. Franklin, who won a Grammy last year for Contemporary Soul Gospel Album, was also nominated for Producer of the Year for his work with God’s Property.
Country categories were chock full of Texans, including Houston-raised Clint Black (Male Country Vocal, Country Collaboration with Vocals), San Antonio’s George Strait (Male Country Vocal, Country Album), Dallas’ LeAnn Rimes (Female Country Vocal); Willie Nelson (Male Country Vocal); and Austin’s Asleep at the Wheel (Country Instrumental).
Do the Grammys mean anything? Of course not. Even if someone you like is lucky enough to get nominated, they probably won’t win. The major categories seem to mostly follow Billboard sales charts, and it sometimes seems the nominators have trouble even finding enough nominees to fill up the smaller categories. But congratulations to all those Texans who did get nominated, it’s always nice to be recognized.
The ‘you really don’t like me’ department: On a more entertaining front, Wiley Alexander reported in the January 11 San Antonio Express-News that the irrepressible Kinky Friedman was stirring up trouble again, as he’s likely to do anytime he’s allowed to get close to a microphone. Seems he was a guest on a taping of the country music show “Crook & Chase” to promote his mystery novel Road Kill when he offended host Lorianne Crook with a couple of bawdy golf jokes (“The only good balls I ever hit were when I stepped on a rake”). He also mentioned that he was asking k.d. lang to cover his song “Put Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed” for a forthcoming Kinky tribute album. The jokes and the k.d. lang comment were eventually cut from the taped show and never aired, but producer Tom Spychalski, a seven-year veteran, was fired for not preparing the hosts for Kinky’s style.
—Jordan Mackay (1/1/98)
SXSW, Tejano Music Awards, Eric Johnson, Los Skarnales
Marching Orders: Now that it’s the end of January and our new year is already 1/12 over, we can begin to look at the the big events on the horizon of Texas music. People are naturally gearing up for SXSW, starting March 18 in Austin. There is buzzing about the big acts slated to show up, but these things change up to the last minute and it’s best not to be too hopeful. Last year, I went to a club called the Cactus Cafe to hear a program advertising acoustic guitar legends John Fahey and Jorma Kaukonen; instead of being treated to an embryonic journey, I waited in line for an hour, only to discover that neither of them were even in town. Even SXSW’s list of “early confirmations” which include some compelling acts—Amy Rigby, John Hammond, and a band from Japan intriguingly called Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her—is followed by the emphatic parenthetical, “Everything always subject to change.” So, as with government and religion, believe at your own risk.
On the seventh of March, the 18th annual Tejano Music Awards will take place at the Alamodome. The announcement ceremony was held January 24 in Arlington. Tejano music is surprisingly popular in the Dallas Metroplex. Rudy Trevino, executive director of San Antonio’s Texas Talent Musician’s Association, the organization that produces the yearly awards, told The Dallas Morning News that the traveling Tejano Music Awards Nominees Dance came to Arlington’s Desperado Nightclub for the first time because “36 percent of the TMA ticket sales outside of San Antonio are purchased from the Dallas-Fort Worth area.”
A good friend reports that a three-day music festival is being planned for March 26-28 in College Station. He says that it will be called “North By Northgate” after SXSW and a popular area of town known as Northgate. Among groups that have been approached are Tripping Daisy, Kacy Crowley, Letters to Cleo, Pat Green, Vallejo and an assortment of local bands. Again, who knows what the line up will actually be.
Full Johnson: The Austin Chronicle reports good news for fans of elfin guitarocrat Eric Johnson. It sounds like Rhino records is definitely going to reissue the long out-of-print album from Johnson’s group, The Electromagnets. The record, from the seventies, is in the process of being remixed and will bring all those wide-eyed guitar fanatics a chance to hear a young Johnson in the early stages of his career playing rock/fusion. The Chronicle also says that Johnson is starting to record a new album this week for a late summer/early fall release. That’s about as believable as President Clinton hiring the Spice Girls as White House interns. Normally for Eric Johnson albums, the formula for finding the actual release date is to take length of time quoted and add three years. The word on the street is that Johnson is trying his hands at a more bluesy, improvised style, something which could conceivably be accomplished faster. Again, don’t count on it. What keeps Johnson in the studio for all those years is less the speed and quality of his playing, which we know to be impeccably fast and consistent, but his obsessive connoisseurship of tone; he might rerecord a whole song if he found out he had the wrong kind of battery powering his distortion pedal. As for Johnson doing a blues album—I’ve seen Johnson playing the blues at Antone’s in Austin and that had about as much allure as hearing Jean Pierre-Rampal take the stage with Pantera.
My Library
