Flanfire

Sunday marked the inaugural meeting of the Austin Pie Council, which is the brainchild (sic!) of the lovely and talented Mona [nocakeissafe] Pitts, photographer and model, mother and great lover of all things fun! We met at Zilker Park (I brought pizza pie) and gobbled pie and just enjoyed a beautiful day together … and made new friends and deepened relationships with older ones … And, yeah, the pie is just the excuse for hanging together … but it make for good eating, too!

Afterward, it was on to Flipnotics for Sweet Bunches of Daisies, the brainchild of fiddler, cellist, and keyboard player Danny Levin, who among other things was a founding member of Asleep at the Wheel (and, yes, I hardly remember seeing a fiddle player in the band when they played those shows at Emergency! on M Street in Washington, DC, back in 1970). Tonight’s players included Dennis Ludiker, Phoebe Hunt, and Noah Jeffries — plus special guest on mandolin Dominic Leslie, down visiting from Berklee School of Music in Boston but actually from Colorado. Smiles galore and audience gasping sometimes for breath the music was so fine! With free admission you just dug deeper into your pockets to show your gratitude. The group is playing again on March 14th at the Tequila Mockingbird pre-SXSW soiree at 306 W. 16th Street (near the Clay Pit).

I really love this bunch, maybe in part because my grandfather, who was in his eighties when I was born, was the Dennis Ludiker of his day a century earlier and more — which is to say he was a Texas champion fiddler and with his cousin won many a fiddling contest in north Texas and parts unknown long before my father was born. So I guess the love of the fiddle is in my blood. John Henry Flanakin (grandson of Old Three Hundred pioneer John Henry Isaiah Flanakin — and yes I do have a copy of the original land grant, which is housed at the University of Texas) went to Add-Ran Male and Female Christian Academy (the forerunner of TCU) after losing his father and mother by the time he was eight years old. He was a barber by trade and a restaurant owner and musician by night – raised nine children and stayed married to the same women for 62 years.

Next I trekked across the street to Romeo’s (thanks, Aly Tadros, for the Facebook reminder) to catch Brian Hudson and Raina Rose (Jack Wilson sat on on two songs), and chowed down with yet another fiddle genius, “Dr.” Sick (who is turning 30 this Friday). Raina to me is my favorite female songwriter since Joni Mitchell. Enough said!
Then it was back to Flipnotics for the final half of Mo McMorrow’s Living Room Sessions with special guests Charlie Faye and Ben Mallott (who has been hibernating of late). Lots of friends were in the house, including my pal Darwin Smith whom I had not seen in far too long! Charlie says she is about to go into the studio to mix the tracks she did all over the USA last year with a different band in each of ten cities. We can hardly wait. And Mo — what an international treasure! And to think she did not begin her professional singing career until very nearly her 40th birthday and yet her songs are some of the best (even her rooster song!). Great weather, a day at the park, and all of this music (plus pizza and pumpkin pie!). I am ready for what tomorrow brings!

So I was at Momo’s Club tonight (Monday) and ran into my pal Ben Mallott, and he was telling me about his trip to Dallas to see the Longhorns beat North Carolina at the new Cowboys Stadium on Saturday and how after the game he was trekking about town and ran into Graham Wilkinson who was playing a show there.  And so I got the message that it was long past time for me to post comments about Graham’s (to date) masterpiece, “Yearbook,” which Graham had given me a copy of (late even then) at his Halloween party at the Ghost Room.

Truth be told, one reason I had not reviewed it was it has been in my car CD player ever since, and I normally put records (CD’s are records) there AFTER I have finished a review.  I flat-out LOVE the Underground Township, and Graham — dreads and all — is just about larger than life.  But then I know a little something about living with more than one spirit inside … Yeah, there’s enough reggae in this big blond white guy to attract the likes of P. J. Herrington, whom I know through Kris Brown and Mr. Brown, to play guitars.  Other official band members (the “senior class” on the record yearbook) include Matt Morris on drums, Wayne Dalchau on bass, Chris Stringer on keys, and Patrick Herzfeld on drums — but there are often horns, and here and there buddies of Graham (like Alejandro and Hayes Carll) who show up to sing or maybe rap on the furniture in time.  The M&M Horns (Margaret Whitt and Meg Kemp, also known for their work in Jabarvy), Nick Warrenchuk (trombone), Mark Wilson (saxes), and Leila Hanley (alto sax and flute) are on this collection of songs.  For the whole schoolfull, get the record!

Because this column is all about SONGS!  “Let It Go” encourages us to “laugh until life makes sense” when things around us threaten to swallow us whole (such as the death of a daughter or a brother).  “Boys and Girls” yearns for a simpler time, “before the false truths were written in stone.”  After all, what we face in real life today is “criminals as politicians,” and “all this pain in so many lives….”  But this record is all about the “Ragamuffin,” Graham’s brother Aaron, and on this powerful song Lloyd Maines lends his considerable skill on pedal steel.  Indeed, the whole record was inspired (Graham tells us) by a band trip to New York City to play a gig with some of his brother’s friends that turned into a month-long tour in the summer of ’08.

On the other hand, the record is also about Graham’s big loving heart – songs like “Star Blue – Spend All My Time with You” and “Our 1st Night,” tender love songs (okay, I just see some Red Skelton soft shoe on Star Blue).  Another one of my favorites is “Ghost,” one of many songs here where Graham talks about the discord in today’s world and wonders, “why don’t we love one another?”  The big guy with the big heart sings this great song, “Blame,” when you want to blame the mess on just about everybody else, but if you want to let love win the day you just let them blame it on you and get over it.  My decade in Baton Rouge (and eternity in Houston) makes me smile at “From Covington,” even though “sister Melody has got some felonies, thirteen class A, in all,” when the one I know best got busted mostly for walking to the Randall’s after curfew to get a soda.

“Blank Pages” is just Graham and a piano in that sepia-sounding effect singing, “scraping with worn fingertips and broken nails, I scream, ‘the living stay hungry, the dead they are not alone…..”  And so, after you listen to the 15-song set all the way through, you find yourself back at track 1, a rockin’ number, “Watertowers & Windmills,” a song about coming to grips with things you cannot understand when the world seems about to fall totally apart (the water tower is two days shy of running dry, and the old windmill has stiopped singing it’s song….”  And “Sunrise,” a toe-tapping, horn-happy ditty that must have been written on the bus on the way back from New York that ends with the sounds of real live Boys and Girls (and of course the intro to that reggae song).

I have to close out these comments by mentioning, “Personality Disorder,” a tap-dance number reminiscent of Richard Gere in Chicago — tap-dancing through the muck and mire of a world “so unbelievably full of idiotic super-natural-light-hearted wild turkey babble ….”  And I am brought back to Halloween, with Bobby Perkins playing bass wearing a grass skirt and me in my Zoot suit …

And that brings me back to why Ben and I were at Momo’s this Monday — but before that I gotta tell you Ben was the victim last Friday night of a flying skillet he had to catch with his bare left hand and all of a sudden unable to play his scheduled gig at Flipnotics.  So naturally, BettySoo and Mailman Dave came to the rescue, showing up on half an hour’s notice for unsuspecting folks like me who had been at Momo’s for an early set or two.  Oh, Ben did drop by, ostensibly to sing a duet (on a Tom Waits song) with Noelle Hampton and her band — and the guy, for some strange reason, grabbed Noelle’s guitar and painfully but poignantly gave his friends the treat of his version of “White Christmas” before yielding the floor to Will Sexton and Charlie Faye and later Jess Klein (all of whom Noelle graciously lent her stage to during the evening).

The very next night I was back at Flipnotics to catch a set from Margo Valiante after stopping by House Wine to hear some new songs from John and Kristen Nixin.  Wise birds got to Momo’s early on Monday to hear Jess Klein and Randy Weeks swap songs for an hour, whetting the appetite for the main event, one that I have a sense might one day be seen as historic.  Dustin Welch has done the string quartet show before — with violinist Trisha Keefer, bassist Joe Beckham, and cellist Brian Standefer, notably at a show I caught at Lambert’s what seems to be a lifetime ago.  This time though Dustin brought out James Duvall and Eli to record the second of two shows also featuring Phoebe Hunt and sister Savannah Welch — with dad Kevin (plus grandparents and little sister) shooting video and the rest of the family basking in the glow. 

And speaking of family week, last Wednesday I got to see Eleanor Whitmore and hubby Chris Masterson at the Scoot Inn and Vanessa and Jason Lively and full band on Vanessa Lively Day at Momo’s.  Just good stuff.  On the horizon — Christmas Night at Antone’s with Blues Mafia, Shelley King, and Carolyn Wonderland, and next Sunday at Threadgill’s North Lamar for Hank and Shadri Alrich (lunch) and then out to the iguana Grill to catch the beautiful Barbara Nesbitt.  Finally, KUDOS to Jazz Mills for collecting (and organizing into gift baskets) tons of stuff for Christmas presents for Austin’s homeless and hopeless.