Jeff McCord on the month’s new releases
 

Willie Nelson

Willie and the Wheel

Bismeaux

The latest installment in Willie Nelson’s once-a-month release schedule finds him fronting Ray Benson’s band, Asleep at the Wheel. The genesis of Willie and the Wheel (Bismeaux) dates back 36 years, when famed Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler signed Nelson and helped launch his outlaw-country career. Wexler wanted Nelson to do a western swing album, but Nelson didn’t stay at Atlantic long enough for it to happen. The project was forgotten until 2003, when Wexler entrusted his western swing albums to Benson, who noticed the initials “W.N.” written beside some of the songs. Soon Wexler and Benson were collaborating on the project, which was completed just prior to Wexler’s death, last year. To no one’s surprise, the result is a vintage delight. Nelson displayed real affinity for the music on his 2006 Cindy Walker tribute, and his recent work with Wynton Marsalis showed off his gift for jazz inflections and syncopated swing phrasing. Asleep at the Wheel are peerless western swing traditionalists, and Wexler was unerring in his song selection. The album is the Texas music equivalent of a slam dunk. The only real question is, What took so long?

Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears

Tell ’Em What Your Name Is!

Lost Highway

Put on “Gunpowder,” the lead track from Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears’ Tell ’Em What Your Name Is! (Lost Highway), and the easy, horn-driven groove of the seventies classic “Soul Finger” instantly comes to mind. Yet seconds later it sounds like you’re listening to Nuggets. So it goes with the band’s major-label debut, which fuses brassy, retro soul-funk with a loose, grinding garage-rock attitude. Producer Jim Eno wisely recorded most of the album live in the studio to preserve the band’s onstage intensity. Round Rock’s Lewis sings (actually, screams) the album’s first note as if it’s the last of the night. A riveting front man but not a particularly versatile vocalist, Lewis is both the band’s biggest attribute and its biggest limitation. Having found a range that cuts through the din, he doesn’t stray from it. He’s not about subtlety. Lacking the chops to kick slower material into the stratosphere, Lewis chooses to maintain a relentless pace. But as the songs unspool—the James Brown–like “Sugarfoot,” the bluesy “Master Sold My Baby,” the rocking “Big Booty Woman,” and the rave-up “Bobby Booshay”—you’re really not going to care.

In memoriam: David “Fathead” Newman

David “Fathead” Newman
Photograph by Gene Martin

With his free-flowing, honeyed sound, David “Fathead” Newman would doubtless have enjoyed a fine career even without the chance encounter that transformed his life. The Corsicana saxophonist split college to play with famed Texas alto Buster Smith. He went on to tour with, among others, Lowell Fulson and T-Bone Walker. During one marathon procession of overnighters, he met and befriended a blind pianist named Ray Charles. Newman became Charles’s most prominent accompanist, and their reign on Atlantic Records defined the careers of both men. As Charles’s fame grew, he pushed Newman to record his own album. Released in 1959, Fathead: Ray Charles Presents David Newman yielded Newman’s signature tune, “Hard Times.” He stayed with Charles for twelve years and remained in the R&B limelight for many more, recording with artists like Aretha Franklin, Dr. John, and Doug Sahm. But mainstream jazz was his true love, and that’s where he applied his rich, undiluted tone and exquisite sensibilities in his later years, producing a string of solid releases. He died in January, at age 75.

Doyle Bramhall II and Charlie Sexton 

Doyle Bramhall II and Charlie Sexton
Photograph by Mark Proct

In 1990 Double Trouble drummer Chris Layton proposed a casual session with Sexton, Bramhall, and Double Trouble’s other half, bassist Tommy Shannon. The venue was the Austin Rehearsal Complex, and the collaboration produced instant results: chemistry, friction, and record-company interest. The Arc Angels were born. Widespread and enthusiastic acclaim soon followed. Yet by 1993, after only one album, the group was in a shambles. As of this month’s South by Southwest music festival, the Arc Angels are back as a working band, with a European tour, a live DVD, and a new album in the works.

You first got together when Doyle was stuck on a song.

CS: I helped him finish the song [“Living in a Dream”], and he and I did a recording of it that basically laid out the sound and tone of the band.

DB: I had just signed a development deal with Geffen, and I ran into Charlie and I heard a few things he was working on in his studio and I thought they were great, so we decided to see if he could help me finish the song. He ended up giving me back a little masterpiece. Shortly after that we had the opportunity to play a show with Robert Cray.

That show led to rave reviews and a major-label bidding war. Though no one was really looking to start a band, were you basically made an offer you couldn’t refuse?

CS: I wouldn’t say that. We just got a good review, and that led to some companies calling, but it was a hard decision to make. There was definitely a chalk-and-cheese between Doyle and me, stylistically, and that was apparent immediately. Influence-wise, we really had very few records in common.

DB: I was sort of a purist and liked what I liked, and I wasn’t as open as I became later to different things. [Charlie] definitely took the role as the leader of the band because that’s how he is naturally anyway. I wouldn’t speak up, I would sabotage something, go some other route. And some of the magical thing that we had together, it was a two-sided thing. It was something that was really good, but obviously it wasn’t anything I could deal with at the time because I had my own personal things that I was going through. Instead of communicating, I would just do drugs because it made me feel better.

After the album was released, Doyle’s heroin addiction only added to the friction and eventually broke up the band.

DB: When we started to tour, my drug use got pretty wicked. The road thing didn’t last that long, and it was starting to blow up. I started to indulge my habit more. And the more I did that, the less I wanted to do music.

Yet Doyle found his way out of addiction, and now you are working together again.

DB: We started up a new relationship. It’s like we had unfinished business. Charlie and I have the sort of chemistry that we had back then, but we have this real strong brotherly bond now. We are really good friends.

Have you gotten over all your past disagreements?

CS: I don’t think so. We’re artists and we have these concepts we don’t see eye to eye on, but we get along more than we don’t. The great irony is that Doyle and I can’t get away from each other. Every time we get together, something happens musically, and it happens quick.

Why is that?

CS: It’s “why did you fall in love with that girl?” Faith and science don’t get along, and they don’t really need to. Read the full interview.