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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: ėThis 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.
 Texas does Tampa: A troupe of Texas musicians invaded Southwest Florida on Saturday, May 9 for the Lone Star Music Festival, a day of Texas tunes put on by Tampa radio station WMNF. The station had queried listeners as to which they wanted: a tribute to Louisiana music, or the natural sounds of Texas. Of course, the Lone Star State was the preference. So, a sizable contingent of Texas bands -- consisting of fledgling Tejano band, Grupo Vida; jazzers, Hot Club of Cowtown; Dallas bluesman Robert Ealey; and Kelly Willis, Don Walser, Robert Earl Keen, Alejandro Escovedo, Reckless Kelly, Jon Dee Graham, singer-songwriters Butch Hancock and Ana Egge, and Anson Funderburgh -- made the trek east and performed before a crowd of three to four thousand people. Says station program director Randy Wynne: "From all the reports, it was a fabulous festival. The music was great, everything ran smoothly. Most of the artists had never been here before and the two biggest buzz acts were Reckless Kelly and Alejandro Escovedo. Evidently Reckless Kelly sold 100 CDs in about 15 minutes." Reckless' tenacious publicist Jill McGuckin confirms this and praises WMNF for being big supporters of Texas music. "That station's been a banner station for supporting Texas music," she says, "and they have a very strong signal, reaching Tampa, Sarasota, and St. Petersburg."
(5/14/98) |
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On the record: Don Walser Down at the Sky-Vue Drive-In (Sire/Watermelon). Walser's new release, his first on a major label, may just be the one to introduce old "rosy-throated Don" to the rest of the country. Texans, particularly Austinites, have known about him for a long time. Regular gigs at Austin clubs, Jovita's and Babe's, have been ongoing for years and such experiments as opening for the Butthole Surfers at the punk club Emo's have allowed him to reach a large cross section of music listeners. The album is a wonderful throwback to country swing -- pure of heart as the purple sky at sunset Walser must have seen when playing at the Sky-Vue Drive-In, an outdoor theater in the West Texas town of Lamesa where Walser occasionally opened for a kid named Buddy Holly. The classic sound of this record almost feels like it should be coming from a wobbly 78 rather than a shiny digital disc. But Walser's soaring tenor sounds good any which way, and his Pure Texas Band is as fine a group of musicians as you'll find anywhere -- Anywhere, that is, where the classically-trained Kronos String Quartet is not; the group accompanies Walser on a haunting, stunning version of "Rose Marie." Other highlights include Hank Snow's "A Fool Such as I" and the swing-laden "Cherokee Maiden."
