Flanfire

I am hearing this all over town — that 2010 has started off with a HUGE BANG and is going to be a powerful year.  Flanfire has been busy at home and yet got out to see Ruby James in her debut performance at Happy Now Happy Hour on Thursdays at Maria’s Taco X-Press.  Ruby has pressed copies of her awesome new CD (which we will review very soon) and will be making them widely available at a forthcoming CD release event to be announced.  We had to miss some other CD release parties but did pick up the new Kalu James Live at Ruta Maya record and another hot new project from James Moran (who came to Austin from New Orleans via San Antonio) — and an extra special treat from longtime Austin resident Bonnie Whitmore who for some unknown reason is still up in Nashvegas.  Plus more new music from Jennifer Ellen Cook — and some wonderful stuff from Scott Andrews (two EP’s in fact).

Friday the 14th was a very special evening at Momo’s Club — the first ever pairing of Ouachita with the Belleville Outfit.  I walked in, got my colleague a seat, found none for me, looked over to stage left, and saw Phoebe Hunt dancing enticingly — and so of course I joined her as Ouachita just grooved one.  This band – two of whose members (Drew De France and Dave Pennington) hail from Camden, Arkansas, which is on the Ouachita River – has made major strides in the last couple of months after installing Alabama native Kurt McMahan as the sole lead singer and adding bassist Sonny White.  Keyboardist Jonah Kane-West and saxophonist Hank Bragg round out the band (for now) — do not be surprised if the horn section expands soon.  The lads hope to have their own new CD out well before SXSW — catch them every Wednesday through March at the Saxon Pub or wherever they are playing.  Belleville — they just keep getting better.

BONNIE WHITMORE — Embers To Ashes

Flanfire and the late Mrs. Flanfire became friends with Bonnie Whitmore when she was about 19 and starting to play bass with the Shelley King Band.  We traveled by boat to Cancun together and deepened that friendship, then augmented it greatly as friends of Bonnie and (Jamie) Blythe, getting to know sister Eleanor in the process.  Like Austin native (Bonnie hails from Denton) Rachel Loy, Bonnie was first known for her bass licks, but her singing and songwriting have emerged as she has found her voice.  Many of these songs we can thank to the aftermath of an aborted romance (maybe even her own) – that’s obvious!  — the details of which shall not grace these pages.  Bonnie, as the lyrics show, is one tough cookie despite her curls and (well) curves.

Chris Masterson (Eleanor’s husband) produced and added numerous instrumentation, and Eleanor played fiddle.  Falcon Valdez did the drums and percussion, George Reiff the bass, and Rich Hinman threw down some hot pedal steel.  Most of the songs were recorded here in Austin by Andrew Hernandez.  And that’s enough shop talk.

“Cotton Sheets” opens the disc — where did this city girl get so country?  [DUH - in Nashville!]  I happen to know that Bonnie bought her first cowboy hat in Austin the other day.  ”Embers to Ashes,” the title cut, is toe-tapping and just plain fonky — and that’s all that’s left of that former love.  I would hate to be under these boots!  “Cowboy Lullaby” and “GTO” were co-written with the amazing Amanda Shires, that West Texas woman whirlwind.  The pedal steel on Lullaby leads the way for a gentle waltz that hearkens back to earlier days in love …. yet perhaps the first hint of trouble in paradise (”cowboy return to me”).  GTO is a lament that the end of the engagement left our gal a little dead inside … and wanting to get in her car and drive.  I gotta say this is a very commercial record — but an honest one, too.  Bonnie is just awesome!

Sandwiched in between these two is “Tin Man” (guess who?) — as our gal has been “replaced by a girl named Mary who shares my middle name.”  Yet whether she is the lion or the scarecrow she plans to follow the Yellow Brick Road — “Please Take the Words Back” is a piercing plea to the thief of her heart to undo the damage he has done — and yet she cries, “I didn’t mean to hurt you …”  By contrast, “She Walks” is a ballsy Shawn Colvin like song — and, yeah, Bonnie is playing LOTS of gigs in Music City.  Then there’s “Cry on My Pillow,” which might sound very sad — as Bonnie sings, “I’m not made meek, cos I’m not a sheep, but I’m going to the slaughter anyway.”  Yet it is her choice to cry (or not) — this is sultry Bonnie regaining her edge … maybe after a long talk with sister Eleanor.  The guitar work here (Chris M of course) is gritty and a little like gears grinding their teeth. 

Indeed, Eleanor contributed to “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” a very pop song and maybe my favorite of this album.  There’s that Shawn Colvin reference again — I just cannot help myself.  I gotta see this one done live — it will just flat out KICK!  And she will need no machine to pour out the smoke.  The album closes with an oldie but goodie — “Love Too Sweet,” cowritten by Texas songwriter (and longtime friend) Brent Mitchell.  Eleanor’s fiddle   Bonnie promises to play shows in Austin during SXSW — and please, friends, kidnap her if necessary but do not let her get back to Nashville too soon.

JENNIFER ELLEN COOK – A Storytelling of Crows

I remember meeting Jennifer Ellen Cook at Jovita’s as she was dashing around during the heyday of her band Smash Riley.  HIGH energy, I daresay, suitable for the lead guitarist with the Jessica Rabbit (stolen from Indie Sounds NY) wiggle in her walk.  I met Jennifer the other night at Momo’s Club, and met up with her by design a few minutes later at the Gallery at the Continental Club (to watch McLemore Avenue with Landis Armstrong and an all-star cast).  I could write a big piece on that band, but Jennifer is, well, persuasive.  I missed her Carousel show on Thursday with bandmates Julio Figueroa (drums, percussion) and Nathan Lynch (Bas) — Seth Forster, who plays guitar on the CD, is now emeritus with the band.  Indeed, most of the hot guitar here on the record is JEC herself.

Truth be told, Jennifer reminds me a LOT of Cyndi Lauper — and that’s a huge compliment.  She can sing her “Time after Time” songs and her “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” songs with equal verve.  And for that matter, some Annie Lennox could be thrown in here too — like on the first cut, “Snow,” which has that light and darkness duality that is consistent throughout this song cycle (and more I think).  Almost Zoroastrian, she opens with “I will ride a dark horse into light.”  And this is a song about leaving someone behind — except in the mind.  And so it goes.  Song 2, “In My Light,” starts with “I think there is a naughty angel hovering over my bed.”

“Tell It Like It Is” – a bluesy song about that recognition without admission that the jig is up.  In “God Is a Mean Drunk,” Jennifer says she loves the road because there is no moral code .. and if God is love, “well then, love is to blame” for leaving her alone in a “speeding metal box.”  One of my favorites here is “Strangers in Wonderland,” where Jennifer notes that the crow flies away without looking back, but people carry on and destroy even wonderful days.  “Pillow Talk” is a Lauperesque ballad — “I want to steal from poets just to meet our needs…” and yet “a well of darkness and a shotgun blast” may be needed to ger her to listen.

Jennifer ain’t no “Devil’s Doll” — indeed, while he is “praying for a fight, but I’m just praying,” and oh yeah, he has this lover who is not a secret anymore.  So he is a rattlesname who “tastes blood and gin” and wants to play but she is just not having all that.  Yet the next cut, “One Sure Thing,” is from a more hopeful time “when the lights go out and this town [Hollywood, that is] lies naked, I’ll be your guiding star, even if the ground is still shaking…..”  The last cut is “Creekbed,” a flat-out rocker (live, especially) about a woman who “gave up the moral high ground so you could put me down” and who “ain’t your Superman.” 

OK — Kalu and James Moran to follow next time.  Meanwhile, get out to the Haiti fundraiser at Dominican Joe’s on January 18th — and Chad Pope turns 40 (or some age, anyway) on Saturday night at Momo’s with Wendy Colonna.  Bring a paddle to spank him … but do NOT buy him any alcohol.