Texas Music News
Jordan Mackay contributed to this regular Ranch feature from October, 1997 to August, 1998.
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Viva La Mafia, Blues club opens its Gates, The Horse Whisperer.
Soused by Southwest: Approximately 800 bands in some two dozen clubs over about four nights makes for hazy memories. Luckily, I took notes as I did my turns at Austin’s 1998 South by Southwest Music Festival and Conference in mid-March.
First, I feel the need to address the criticisms of SXSW. Cynicism was fashionable this year as ubiquitous claims rang through the cool spring air that the festival was nothing more than Mardi Gras for the music industry, a kind of spring break for record company employees and music press. A&R people from every record company, major and minor, had shots leveled at them: complaints that they weren’t going to sign any bands (as most bands were already signed) and they were only here to get drunk. Members of the music press corps received similar treatment, chided for being here in greater numbers than the bands they were supposed to cover, and for being fat, lazy alcoholics who spend more time bragging about the size of their record collections (which they build for free) than reporting on the music industry. All such complaints may be well founded and reasonable, but as far as I can tell, that’s just the state of the art and there’s no better place to watch it roil than at SXSW.
Of course there was obnoxiousness. It starts simply with the people who find it necessary to wear their conference badges all the time, day and night, even when dining in restaurants away from the venues and the convention center. I saw the lobby of the Four Seasons hotel at two thirty in the morning, packed with chattering, self-important twenty-somethings rubbing their wings together in a noxious din of babble. The schmoozing is insufferable in itself, collecting like ribbons of cheez-whiz over the floors of bars: be careful or you’ll get it on your shoes. And there was so much smoke. Part of that was because every day at the trade show, Winston had a booth giving away free cigarettes. Winston had a cigarette girl walking around at a party sponsored by Interview magazine. Winstons, Winstons everywhere. Insidious.
So enough with the down side, the up side is simple and large: The music. Each time I was annoyed at the circus surrounding the event, all I had to do was look up to the stage in front of me to be revitalized by the music being created there. Here’s a rundown of the highlights:
Wednesday night: After Austin’s Spoon played a taut set at Liberty Lunch, I hung around for the Liquor Giants from L.A. Their Beatle/Stones influence was readily apparent, but lyrical, buzzing hooks made for good pop. I’d heard a lot about Tommy Keene, but the old popster’s set bored me to tears so I went home.
Thursday night: I spent the whole evening at the Electric Lounge for New York’s Flydaddy Records Showcase. It began with Boston’s Syrup USA, a pop band whose lyrical guitar and synthesizer grooves recall a slightly simplified Stereolab. But save for the bouncing of the bass player, it was a low energy performance that managed to produce high energy music and I got into it. Next was Chicago’s Number One Cup followed by Olivia Tremor Control, an experimental Zappa-like pop band that creates listenable, even catchy music.
On Friday night I was excited to see the Handsome Family, a duet based out of Chicago, starring Odessa-raised singer/guitarist Brett Sparks. Their last CD, Through the Trees has been frequenting my stereo for the past month, but the band presented a rather uneventful live show that was too accurate a reproduction of the album. I was happy to catch the last half hour of Sally Timms, the lead singer of the old British group, The Mekons. She put on a mellow, smiling pop show and it felt like a privilege to be in the presence of her low, lithe voice.
There were other bands and other shows, but by Saturday night the cumulative exhaustion was overpowering and I had to put myself to bed early. By Sunday I was ready to have it all go away. The music is exhilarating if you focus on that and suppress your annoyance at the overindulgence of the whole affair. Yes, at the week’s end I was ready for it all to go away, but I’m already looking forward to next year.
—Jordan Mackay (4/1/98)
A Scot’s take on western swing; Austin’s Fastball tops the charts; new CDs from George Strait and the Gourds.
A Scot’s search for swing: Duncan McLean is this Scottish guy who happens upon a Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys record in an Edinburgh record store a few years ago, and buys it because of the amusing picture of Wills on the cover and the silly-sounding (to a Scot) name of the group. But after a listen, he falls in love with the music, so much so that he is compelled to come to Texas, log over 10,000 miles of highway, and write a book about the experience. Lone Star Swing (W.W. Norton, $14) is the result of McLean’s pilgrimage to find the spirit and remnants of western swing, the music of which Wills is considered the patron saint. McLean describes his mission the best:
I am not from these parts. I’ve come a long way in search of real live western swing. I won’t find real live Bob Wills, that’s for sure: he’s been dead 25 years. But his spirit lives on; I know it, I feel it . . .And now I am after something. I don’t know exactly what it is, and I don’t know exactly where I’m going to find it. But somewhere out there, further south and further west—out amongst the country dancehalls, the ranch to market roads, the old musicians hunched over tin-tack pianos and tenor banjos—somewhere in the wide, sun-struck wilds of Texas, that’s where I’m going to track down the spirit of Bob Wills.
McLean won the Somerset Maugham writing award a couple years ago for his short story collection, Bucket of Tongues, and financed his Texas trip with the prize money. Now that the book is out, McLean and some of the surviving members of the Texas Playboys—Herb Remington, 72, John “Dusty” Carrol, 64, and Jim “Way Out West” Gough, 66—met at Houston’s Brazos Bookstore for a reading and a short concert. On a similar note, the rumors that Texas writer and musician Kinky Friedman is going to Scotland to pursue the roots of Scottish bagpipe music are false . . ..
Fast climb: The Austin band Fastball continues its improbable rise to world domination. Their single “The Way” is the number one song on Billboard’s Modern Rock charts and the number 58 album in the country on the top 200. That’s only one spot behind Hanson and thirteen spots ahead of Radiohead. Not bad for a group whose first album, 1996’s Make Your Mama Proud sold fewer than 3000 copies.
On the record: George Strait, One Step at a Time (MCA Nashville) . This is perhaps the most perfect album of all time. But perfection can be so boring, and that’s a perfect lesson to be reminded of. The album prances like a proud palomino through all of country music’s over-traveled territories and comes away without the slightest wear on its saddle. There’s the cry-in-your-drink title cut, the mellifluous and classic-sounding “I just want to dance with you,” and the Spanish guitar-inflected “Maria,” all rendered with brilliant banality and perfect pallor.
The Gourds, Stadium Blitzer (Watermelon) . This much awaited album begins with the chirp of crickets, a familiar sound laden with character that inspires many an association. In contrast to George Strait, the Gourds, a bluegrass-folksy-pop outfit, have plenty of idiosyncratic charm to go around. A harmonica jump-starts and powers the upbeat “Magnolia,” and the banjo and accordion decorate “Boil My Strings.” At their best, The Gourds are reminiscent of The Band, in leaving the mark of their acoustic souls all over this new album. It’s also refreshing that the Gourds—who frequently cover Snoop Doggy Dogg’s “Gin and Juice” at their live performances—don’t take their music too seriously either. The lyrics of another new song called “I Ate the Haggis,” invoke Scotland and whiskey to a Tex-Mex beat. Welcome to Texas, Duncan McLean?
—Jordan Mackay (5/1/98)
The new Bass Performance Hall opens in Fort Worth, local musicians return from the Lone Star Music Fest in Florida, and Don Walser’s new CD is a welcome blast from the past.
Formidable foyer: How big is the biggest news in Texas music of the last couple of weeks? It occupies a 200 x 200 square foot block of downtown Fort Worth, has 2,056 seats, and cost $67 million. It’s the new Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Performance Hall, which had its grand opening Friday, May 8. The question that’s been posed in our nation’s newspapers is: Why, on the threshold of the 21st century, would anyone build a 19th century-style opera house? Allen Meyerson of the New York Times reports of the opening, “If the Bauhaus and the modernist architecture that ensued had never happened, Edward P. Bass said as he gestured out from the mezzanine over an entrance foyer graced with pilasters, fluted columns and a frescoed dome: ÎThis is what you would get.’” If you’re looking to perform there sometime this century, forget about it. Supposedly, the house is booked up until, well, either the fat lady sings or Gabriel blows his horn.
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