Flanfire

I will never forget Labor Day at Ski Shores … Randy Weeks and Will Sexton playing for over 200 minutes straight (Randy’s songs) for a bunch of friends and with a very special guest who was the one really responsible for getting her daddy and his friends out on a sunny afternoon.  Nor will I forget one Wednesday happy hour earlier this year when I walked into Z Tejas and Will (noticing that every table was occupied) asked if someone would let his friend Duggan sit at their table.

Nor can I forget that night at the Driskill when Will was so excited about going into the studio with Mark Hallman and Andre Moran to cut all the tracks on his brand-new CD “Move the Balance” in one day.  Or his joy at getting a new MySpace page (which of course someone else is monitoring).  Then there was that night a few weeks back when Ruby James and I drove up to NXNW with some friends in from California and Will and Charlie Faye extended their set for a full hour just for us.  And that night, even more recently, when Ruby hopped on stage at the Hole in the Wall and realized that Will could not remember the words to his own songs.

I can write this last note because the whole town now knows that Will had a mild stroke — and that his friends in Austin have responded with great generosity and love to give him a cushion to rest and recuperate.  So right now the best thing we can do for Will — but even moreso for our own enjoyment — is to get down to Waterloo (or wherever good music is sold) and buy one, two, three or more copies (yeah, it’s after Christmas now, but good gifts are always in season) of the CD which has on its inner sleeve, “White Middle Aged Well Dressed Man Looking for Love.”

Will plays guitar and bass here, with Bukka Allen on B3 and accordian; Mike Thompson on piano, guitar and even trombone; and Dony Wynn on drums and percussion.  Ray Bonneville (harmonica), Bill Carter (bass), and Hallman (bass, vocals and lots more) are joined by Ruby (Red) James, Charlie Faye, and Noelle Hampton as guest vocalists for eleven songs written by Will (sometimes with friends and family).  All 11 songs, IMHO, are suitable for lots of airplay, and I even had the “bright idea” that we could raise a lot of money for Will (and get his great songs heard around the world) just by persuading some of his and brother Charlie’s high-profile friends to contribute their own vocal tracks to each of the songs here — for example, Steve Earle, who along with Charlie Sexton co-wrote “Amnesia Lights,” and why not Bob Dylan on “Pissed Off Nights”?  But then again, people worldwide just oughta hear Will singing these songs.

The title cut, “Move the Balance,” opens the CD, with Ruby on backing vocals, and Mike Thompson’s piano paves the way for this lilting, very moving song .. that you just want to play over and over again [but that's true of every song here].  One of my very favorites is “Certain Kind of Something,” with Will serenading his lady, explaining that she has “got me running round in circles with your image in my brain … “  This is like Buddy Holly meets the early Beatles … but up to date musically.  [Mind you, John, Paul & Co. modeled themselves after the Crickets!]  You just have to start singing along by the second time the chorus comes around.

But “Sunday Driver” is just as smart lyrically, with Will singing that, “and I know you’d like to be known as the world’s strongest known survivor, but I’ve done about all I can do, my Sunday driver.”   But ”Pissed Off Nights”  may be even better — “those you left behind keep getting nearer and nearer, and those you stand behind just keep on disappearing ….”  There is a LOT of Mike Thompson here, and Bukka on B3, and that’s always good.  But what about “For Always”?  A bouncy little ditty — easy to dance to — all about “my destination blues” — “but with all of the keepsakes of my heart, you know you will always be a part … for always.”  I again am hearing the ghost of Buddy Holly here …. even in the guitar solo.  And Charlie Faye!

“Best Intentions” is like Will as Tom Waits — his voice gets low and down and dirty … with Bonneville’s harmonica adding in lots of fog.  This song has Greg Goshorn and Stephanie Smith as co-writers … This is late-night music — for the 3 am club.  Next up is “Beauty Pageant,” a lament marked by some beautiful piano … that just grows on you. 

“Amnesia Lights” gets you dancing close with your honey … “we were only trying to find the time that passed us by …  if you try you just might forget it all tonight, underneath the amnesia lights …”  Now Ruby and Noelle join Will on “Little Late for Loving Me Now,” a rocker that once again evokes The Crickets (though Holly’s lads would not have added the ”whoo hoo hoo’s) and a hot guitar solo and Dony’s classic rhythm.  YUM!

All very good — and yet the final two cuts are my very very favorites.  “Closing the Airport” is like “Blue Christmas,” a sad ballad in whic ”time has tangled up all my thoughts, all I need to know no one can tell … seem to have lost, misplaced everything … close the airports and the highways in this town, close the street that I live on….”   Just beautiful.  And then there is “Happy Hour,” one of my favorite songs of all time … and so autobiographical.  Will sings, ”here comes the lonely clown, here comes the lonely clown, here comes the lonely clown with the big red heart … ” And yet, “Since time began the wisest men will meet again at happy hour.”  [Which must mean Bill Carter, Stephen Doster, and Will at Z Tejas every Wednesday.]  We get Thompson’s trombone as part of the happy hour celebration music at the end of the song … as the loneliness fades away while wise men play joyfully together….. you gotta be there!

BETTYSOO – HEAT SIN WATER SKIN

Sometimes we import ‘em — the Jess Kleins and Charlie Fayes and Jenny Reynolds’ of the world.  Other times we grow ‘em right here in Austin (Suzanna Choffel, for example), or at least here in Texas (that would be BettySoo).  Or you could throw in Kat Edmonson or Carolyn Wonderland (both, like BettySoo, from Houston), or Eve Monsees (Austin’s own) — or a bunch of others.  Bottom line — there is NO PLACE LIKE AUSTIN for live music.  Not when you are at Momo’s Club (for example) and Jess Klein brings up BettySoo and Suzanna Choffel (with Charlie Faye looking on joyfully) or last Saturday at the Cactus when BettySoo at her own CD release party brought up Jess and Aimee Bobruk and Jenny Reynolds and Ben Mallott and Graham Weber and of course Gurf Morlix himself sang a song for us all. 

WHO IS THIS BETTYSOO?  That was a question I was asking myself after totally missing her contirbution to last year’s Hank and Lucinda Hoot Night at the Cactus (hosted by Jenny Reynolds).  Then one night at the Saxon Pub when I was there to see Charlie Faye and Will Sexton and friends there was BettySoo jumping on stage to sing harmonies.  And there were parties and such — and still it took months for me to get to hear this woman sing — and all I could say was WOWOWOWOWOW!  Plus she’s just a great friend and a real wit.  And she haws a great husband (Mail Man Dave) who plays in her band sometimes.

Okay, you can read all about BettySoo in this week’s Austin Chronicle (she’s the COVER GIRL — not bad for a woman who wrote that amazing song, “Never the Pretty Girl”).  Did I mention that she is scheduled to open for Joan Baez (yeah, that’s JOAN BAEZ!!!) in Wisconsin in August?  Right in the middle of her California tour.  Well, if YOU were BettySoo, you’d drop it all to open for the woman with that pure soprano who was the voice of the Sixties.  Then again, if you are Joan Baez and heard BettySoo on stage before your set, you just might want to get out and share that spotlight — with a woman who not only has a voice to compare with your own but whose real life story (which is really that of her family ofwhich she is a living, breathing part) is more than captivating.

BettySoo did not even tell her parents about her CD release party — she’s had two of those before, and thought, “My folks would drive all the way back to Houston after the show so they could work (as medical doctors to Houston’s poor) the next morning.  But they showed up anyway — and this modest couple had a hard time getting a seat until someone let out who they were).  The CD release party (sorry, folks, no photos) was hands down the BEST SHOW that Flanfire has EVER seen atthis venue.  Standing room only, with people turned away (including Jim Patton and Sherry Brokus, who hosted BettySoo at the Amsterdam along with Karen Mal and Will Taylor the next Thursday [that was tonight]). 

I guess I have to mention her songs — starting with that Little Secrets song from an older album that sends chills up the spine of any cheating husband.  But this is all about “Heat Sin Water Skin,” produced by Gurf Morlix with Fred Remmert doing various things and Gene Elders on violin (and, yes, folks, the incomparable John Conquest has compared the quality of BettySoo’s voice to that of Gene’s lovely wife Betty  – and he is DEAD ON).  Gurf even stuck around hot, sticky Austin just to play at the CD release party — and his guitar solos (someone once said he can play a 3-note solo and it is better than anything most other guitarists can do with much more fanfare) on the two songs JEnny Reynolds did were phenomenal (drawing huge applause).

Okay, already — my favorites are cuts 1-11 (there are 11 cuts).  But how can you not be moved by “Never the Pretty Girl” and “Whisper My Name” (actually, the Chronicle reviewer — not Margaret Moser — called the “Pretty Girl” a little “naked” and “Whisper” “a little schmaltzy” and complained that she does not belt it out enough — is she just jealous?) 

But BettySoo DOES belt out the opening cut — “Never Knew No Love” — and for that matter “Still Small Voice,” a song that bespeaks her upbringing.  “Just Another Lover” opens with Gene Elders on fiddle — and then BettySoo hits us in the breadbasket, asking whether this relationship is real or just a fill-in for self-gratification, without any real contact with the person in the skin he is touching.  Women — and men, too, these days — ought to ask that question if they are looking for real love.  Saves a lot of heartache — and disappointment.  That’s what she is saying to all of us.

Gurf’s guitar is dark and murky on “Who Knows,” and Todd Wilson’s organ adds to the aura of this powerful song that sounds a little like one Stefanie Fix would write.  “Forever” fits right in with Deadman’s music — rich and warm and yet quite sad.  “Get Clean” also rocks — especially when she does it live.  But let’s get real — “What We’ve Got” is a love song that is just gorgeous and rich in its imagery (as are many of this woman’s songs).

I will mention the rendition of “Lonesome Whistle,” a collaboration between Gov. Himmie Davis and Hank Williams, for its pure simplicity and BettySoo’s awesome quiet delivery — but ther emay not be a better song on the record than “Next Big Thing,” which opens with a wailing steel and tells th story of the woman who left home in Iowa to become a star on “that music highway.”  Now I guess it was just the right thing that BettySoo made me wait for weeks (well, she cannot find her keys sometime either, I hear) to get my review copy — and I had a self-imposed deadline of getting this done BEFORE the JOINT BETTYSOO-CHARLIE FAYE show at Momo’s on June Teenth [ a show I may not even make, given that Jess Klein and Noelle Hampton are on at the same time in two other venues -- NOT FAIR!].

CHARLIE FAYE – WILSON ST.

So back when a friend of mine was raving about Charlie Faye, I was thinking, who is this Nashville country singer who has come to Austin?  And then I met Charlie Faye — the New York woman with the heels as tall as she is who single-handedly (later on, of course) saved at least some of the famed Wilson Street cottages [hence this album title] from the wrecking ball and kept herself and fantastic neighbors like Jess Klein from being homeless.  Then I got Charlie Faye’s first record and played it 15 times while I was moving back into my old house on Hermitage Drive — alternating with Steve Carter’s great record that Courtney Audain produced.

So the new – AUSTIN – record opens with one of my favorites off that old record, “Bottletops,” a song I must by now have played 300 or more times (it is on my late-night personal playlist), and there is “Lady of the Leading Man” again as well.  But this is not just a redo of the New York record — what we have here is Mark Hallman’s genius and Andre Moran’s engineering (he who is Noelle Hampton’s hubby and guitarist) and featuring that man about town Will Sexton on bass, guitar, and vocals, David Holt on guitar and Rick Richards on drums — with appearances from half the town on various songs.

“Runaround” (co-written with Will) is brassy (reminiscent of Runaround Sue in its chorus, oddly enough), while “She’s Gonna Go” (written with Philip Gibbs) also has a little Dion in it.  Then there is “Simple Seduction,” one of Charlie’s signature songs — about a woman (or a man?) needing a little attention from her man — for example, “you alone without the children and the triple evening blues.”  This cut features Katy Rose Cox on fiddle, Gabe Rhodes on guitar, George Reiff on bass, and JJ Johnson on drums. 

Charlie and Will also co-wrote “Waitin’ (on Something)”, a ballad that has that lazy bayou feel, a song to listen to with a glass of wine and a cigarette (and you know I don’t smoke) in the reverie of the very late evening — a song that provokes us to think about our own failures to follow through with those with whom we are entwined but perhaps not inspired.  This is a KILLER song!

But it is not “Jersey Pride” (and did I mention that Charlie, Jess Klein, and Jenifer Jackson are ALL New Jersey refugees, as are some other of my “New York” friends).  The land of Bruce and Bon Jovi and the Amboy Dukes and the FREAKIN’ RAMONES!!!! — THIS is a song that just shouts out at you — you can leave New Jersey (and “the smell of the backyard pines”) and yet you never forget that it was something good you left behind.  My favorite line — “Now you’re left with all of those damn memories and stories too sweet to tell of secret and unstolen nights in the cradle of America …..”  And, oh yeah, Gurf Morlix plays lead guitar and Joe Humel is on drums and Cornbread on bass here. 

Maybe even better is “Coward’s Lament,” a song that may soon catch up with “Bottletops” on my personal playlist — “Baby, I’m so afraid that the truth will set you free, I’ll become a coward and a liar just to keep you right here with me….”  “Summer Legs,” like Bottletops, features Abra Moore on harmony vocals and Will Sexton singing some key lines as well.  And John X Reed plays guitar on “Lady of the Leading Man,” which features Will and Philip Gibbs on harmonies.  No claws here!

“Ready to Fall” is the final cut here — a love song of sorts.  What we know is that Will Sexton has recorded his own brand-new song collection, and that he even has a new MySpace page.  Meanwhile, Charlie Faye may be gearing up for a run for city council (or to run off the city council that has been shutting down music venues on technicalities that could have easily been worked out peacefully) — and that she is bringing down her friends from New York to live and vote in Austin – and make great music (well, it was Charlie Faye who introduced me to Jess Klein).