Jeff McCord on the month’s new releases
 

Flatlanders

Hills and Valleys

New West

Supergroups are best viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism. Nearly all, from Blind Faith to Little Village to the New York Yankees, are cynically conceived: They’re groups in name only; they reek of artifice. Yet the Flatlanders get a pass on such judgment. They were an actual band back in the early seventies, when their members—Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock—couldn’t get arrested (at least figuratively). They took thirty years to record the follow-up to their 1972 debut, Jimmie Dale and the Flatlanders, but now they’re releasing their fourth studio album, Hills and Valleys (New West). And give ’em credit—they could easily have gone into the studio, recycled their substantial songbooks, cashed their checks, and skedaddled back into solo-career semi-retirement. Instead they’re collaborating on big, socially conscious statements like “Homeland Refugee” and “After the Storm.” There’s next to nothing surprising here, but really, why should there be? The band’s wit remains sharp and its chemistry intact. This album sounds exactly like what it is—three lifelong friends, back to doing what they do best.

Danny Schmidt

Instead the Forest Rose to Sing

Red House

While many folksingers drape their work in mysticism, Austin’s Danny Schmidt is first and foremost a storyteller. He employs allegory, but more often than not his tales are just what they appear to be. The ten new songs on Instead the Forest Rose to Sing (Red House) nestle right in among an already impressive body of work. For good writers, the urge to dazzle with cleverness can be overwhelming. Schmidt is not impervious to that temptation; like his previous work, the new album develops several overarching themes a bit too ambitiously. Yet he’s also the rare artist who has the confidence to dial things back. His talent has led to lofty comparisons, some of which stick. The line “Grampa buried dignity when he got old” would seem at home on a Townes Van Zandt album, and Schmidt’s unvarnished honesty occasionally recalls Leonard Cohen. But Schmidt is neither of those men. In rockers and plaintive ballads, he sings about life celebrations and challenges, and often about himself. His plainspoken conversational style, inflected with emotion, commands attention.

Buddy Holly

Down the Line: Rarities and Memorial Collection

Geffen/Decca

Like many “best of” compilations, the Buddy Holly double-disc Down the Line: Rarities and the Holly triple-disc Memorial Collection (both Geffen/Decca) possess an air of unreality. Listen to a select body of an artist’s mature work—no album filler, no learning curve detectable in the songs—and you get the feeling that it all sprang spontaneously into existence. This sense is especially pronounced in the case of someone as prolific and gifted as Lubbock’s Holly, who released five classics in 1957 alone. In the two years he had left, Holly went on to record an array of tracks brimming with innovation, freshness, and exuberance. But these collections strive to humanize him: They capture the halting student as well as the effortless composer. Both sets begin in Holly’s country days, and you can almost pinpoint the moment when Elvis rolled into town. Rarities’ “garage tapes” include several covers, in which Holly tries on his rock and roll shoes. On numerous demos and outtakes, it’s fascinating to hear him find his footing. The hits and misses on these first-rate collections provide genuine insight into a monster talent.

Hector Saldaña

Krayolas
Photograph by Al Rendon

In the early seventies, Hector Saldaña founded San Antonio’s Krayolas, whose British Invasion/Tex-Mex rock and roll made them a regional phenom through the early eighties. A 2007 singles compilation, Best Riffs Only, led the band to re-form; their comeback album, La Conquistadora, garnered national acclaim in 2008. They’ve just released their follow-up, Long Leaf Pine (No Smack Gum)(Box).

How did the band get started? The Krayolas came out of Lee High School. My brother and I were a two-man rock and roll band; friends from school rounded out our earliest incarnation. We played the Beatles, the Kinks, the Rolling Stones, the Who—and a couple of mine. One day this tall, long-haired kid named Van Baines rolled in a big Marshall amp, turned the whole rig backward toward the wall, plugged in, and wailed. I’d never seen that. When Van left, my mom said we sounded “professional.” The next thing I knew, my dad came home one day and said we were going to make a record. He took us to the West Side to ZAZ studios. They had a deal: two sides, four hours, three hundred 45’s for $300. In those days, ZAZ was the kind of place where you’d see Flaco Jimenez hanging out, sitting on an ice chest and drinking a beer.

The K in Krayolas was in tribute to your favorite band, the Kinks. Was the band an anomaly in the seventies? There’s disco all around us, and here we are with matching Rickenbacker twelve-string guitars. Audiences didn’t know what to make of us. But the Krayolas rose through the ranks very fast because we were very young and very cute. Musically, we were often a calamity.

Was there a rivalry between you and your brother, like the rivalry between Ray and Dave Davies? We had guys quit the band because of how much David and I fought. We love each other, but that’s just the way we talk to each other. I broke my hand on his face in a fight we had coming back after our first tour in New York. I remember my brother chasing me around the inside of the house with a baseball bat. I told him, “If you swing that thing, you’d better kill me.” He swung it. We’re physical guys.

How did the 2007 compilation lead to [the] band re-forming? And were you all surprised at the success of La Conquistadora? I never liked the sound of our [old] records, and it took me years to realize we could only sound like us—and suddenly that was all right. The records that I had run away from now held a charm and freshness. There really wasn’t any thought about playing [again], but [producer] Ron Morales told me how much he liked the songs. I was stunned by the response to La Conquistadora. When music writers you admire, like Dave Marsh and Ben Fong-Torres, are telling you they love it, it’s not real.

The new album is a high-energy delight. What have you been doing to support the release? And what is it like to be doing this in your fifties? A French promoter wants us to go over to France this summer. We’re going back to New York soon. It’s weird that the Krayolas are in the present tense. It’s as fun and crazy as it ever was.

Being from San Antonio adds a unique quality to the band. San Antonio has soul and a sound; it has a legacy for Chicanos that links them to the start of rock and roll. Being from San Antonio made our music tougher and quirkier. It’s the home of some of the greatest music ever. Why do you think everyone’s always trying to steal and adopt Doug Sahm’s music? They want a piece of that. But we got longer memories down here.