Jeff McCord on the month’s new releases
 

Cedar Walton

Seasoned Wood

HighNote

In jazz, those lacking a distinctive style can often go unnoticed. Dallas-born Cedar Walton is neither a barrelhouse-blues roller nor an edgy avant-gardist, but the pianist-composer, who turns 75 this month, possesses workmanlike skills and an innate musicality that has never dimmed. If that sounds, well, boring, his evolution proves otherwise. Walton was first noticed for his work with Kenny Dorham and as the pianist on John Coltrane’s Giant Steps, but it was during his sixties tenure with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers that his playing really came to the fore, his tentative nature supplanted by a McCoy Tyner–esque forcefulness. Walton has dabbled over the years with Latin rhythms, funk, and Eastern tonalities, yet Seasoned Wood (HighNote) sounds like a fifties Blue Note hard bop session. While the album’s few ballads feel forced, Walton’s quintet relaxes and locks down driving arrangements (“Longravity,” “The Man I Love”). “Hindsight” showcases the pianist free-associating chordal runs, but it’s his composition “Plexus,” with its roving, punctuated accents and furious swing, that truly elevates this set.

Gourds

Haymaker!

Yep Roc

Their country roots music is as welcoming as a pair of old slippers, but on closer inspection, you find the slippers are full of boiled squash. If that imagery is strange, it’s at least in keeping with the Gourds, who have spent the past fifteen years mining such weird juxtapositions. Not ones for the rodeo circuit, they don’t dwell on cheating hearts and seem to abhor jingoism and fake sentiment, yet their oblique tales still manage to be crowd-pleasers. Haymaker! (Yep Roc) is another in a long line of solid efforts from the Austin band, proving that the group’s established groove has yet to become a rut. Writers Kevin Russell and Jimmy Smith each follow their own muse: Russell’s songs are plotted and hook-laden; Smith’s melodies and obtuse lyrics take unexpected detours. For a while, the five-man band was sounding dangerously schizophrenic, but not these days. Smith’s rocking “Luddite Juice” and slinky “New Dues” or Russell’s Dave Dudley tribute, “Tex-Mex Mile,” and his anthemic “All the Way to Jericho” find the group’s members playing to one another’s strengths like never before.

Theater Fire

Matter and Light

self-released

Everywhere in indie rock, from the hushed voice of Dripping Springs’ Sam Beam (Iron & Wine) to the arranged pop of Denton’s Robert Gomez, or even beyond our borders to Midwest wunderkind Sufjan Stevens, it has become cool to turn it down. There have always been practitioners of what was once disdained as “soft rock,” but rarely have so many hipsters jumped on the bandwagon. Add Fort Worth’s Theater Fire to the pile. Though not that distinctive—they proudly display influences like Calexico’s Southwestern foreboding and Lambchop’s austere nakedness—these seven musicians undoubtedly have a flair for what they do. Matter and Light (self-released), their third recording, is compelling, melodic pop. Because no one in this group of multi-instrumentalists is a particular virtuoso (the horns are appealingly off-key), the layered textures of violin, banjo, pedal steel, keys, and brass make them sound both orchestral and simple. Turning on the naiveté and charm (“Coyote”; “It’s All the Same”; “Swashbuckler Blues”; a theremin-led instrumental of an Elliott Smith tune), the band skirts pretension with unerring instincts.

Erika Wennerstrom

Erika Wennerstrom
Photograph by Cambria Harkey

The 31-year-old leader of the Ohio-based band the Heartless Bastards—which earned critical praise for the albums Stairs and Elevators< and All This Time and toured with Wilco and Lucinda Williams—disbanded her three-member group and relocated to Austin in 2007. The vocalist and guitarist has now assembled a new lineup (bassist Jesse Ebaugh and drummer Dave Colvin) and in February will be releasing a third album, The Mountain (Fat Possum).

Let’s begin with the obvious question. The Heartless Bastards were getting plenty of buzz in Ohio, yet here you are, starting over in Austin. What happened?

Well, I was in a ten-year relationship with [former bassist] Mike Lamping, but then we split up, and it was really hard to make it work. So I decided to move. I have family in Austin, and [Austin-based] C3 Presents is my management company. I also have a lot of friends here, and I like the city.

You started the Heartless Bastards in 2002. A lot has been written about your shyness; was going onstage difficult at first?

Oh, definitely. I’m more used to it now, but I’m always going to be nervous before a show. I think that’s healthy, though. I don’t want to be so relaxed that I don’t have that energy. But I am shy; it’s easier for me to sing than to do any talking with the audience.

Yet you have this enormous voice.

I’ve always wanted to sing, and once I really started, this range just came out. I have a friend who was a big inspiration. He’d say, “Come on, belt it out,” when I didn’t even know I could.

Do your songs come easily? Does making music still mean the same thing to you as when you started?

I try to tell myself to never write a song just because others will like it. I care what people think, but you have to write something that you believe in, that is up to your standards. Writing music is always a challenge; that hasn’t changed for me. When I write songs, I try to focus on one at a time, because I don’t ever get anything done otherwise. A song is something I still really have to work out, whether it’s the words or the rhythm or the melody. If I didn’t, it wouldn’t take me one to two years to come out with a new album.

You worked on The Mountain with producer Mike McCarthy. Did you record in Austin?

Yeah, he has his own studio in North Austin. It’s an old film studio where the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre sound effects were made.

Did the session take place with your new or your old band members?

Actually, neither. I hadn’t put together the band yet, and Mike knew some people who he thought would be perfect for this: Doni Schroader, who played with [Austin band] And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead for a bit, and Billy White, who I’m told used to play with Dokken. He’s an Austinite but lives in Mexico now. We all got along great.

After working with a close-knit band for so many years, it must have been strange to go into the studio with people you didn’t really know.

It was kind of liberating. I felt comfortable right away. I wouldn’t have continued to work with them if I hadn’t, because I didn’t want a sterile session, where you’re just churning out stuff like an assembly line and none of it is organic.

How have the changes in your personal life influenced your music?

There are themes on the album about being in a new place, but half of it was written before I moved or my relationship ended. “The Mountain” itself was one of the last songs I wrote, and that is a totally different theme. I don’t really tell people what the songs are about. They’re all over the place.