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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.
(1/1/98) |
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On the Record: Los Skarnales, Vatos Rudos, (Pinche Flojo Records). Since first hearing about this band several months ago, I've been trying to get a copy of their new album released back in June. Finally, after many calls, it arrived. It was worth the wait. This Houston ska band, one of the vanguards of the Rock en Español movement, goes at their tunes like there's no mañana. Rendering their songs alternately in Spanish and English, they bring extreme gusto and energy to their music. Yet their exuberance is well matched with tight playing and carefree, liberating songs that reflect the band's rock, ska, rockabilly, and Latin influences.
