Flanfire

It seems that just about every day (or night) I run into yet another musician (like Brett Randell or Colin de los Santos) or music lover who has just moved to Austin to add to our city’s chorus of song.  Maybe that’s why just about every week I also get out to a brand-new (at least to me) bar, restaurant, and/or music venue — for example, Lustre Pearl (behind IHOP at IH-35 and Cesar Chavez) or Quoffer’s out in Elgin, where I recently caught up with Slim Bawb and Gator Bait (northern California music veterans who moved here a few years back).  I could also write volumes (if I ever had time) about emerging bands in Austin (like The Canvas Waiting or Bus to Brooklyn) who are playing good music.

But this column will begin by talking about the band whose members I knew long before I ever got to hear them play together as a band — I have no idea why it took so long for me to get to a porterdavis show, but I will see this amazing trio any time I can. 

PORTERDAVIS – THAT’S SIMON WALLACE, DANIEL BARRETT,AND MIKE MEADOWS (l-r)

You have to feel for Daniel Barrett.  I mean, bandmate Simon Wallace wins the Austin Music Award for best miscellaneous instrument (harmonica, in his case), and bandmate Mike Meadows wins the Austin Music Award hands down for best drummer/percussionist.  Meanwhile Daniel comes in sixth for best electric guitarist — and yet he plays acoustic guitar (and some electric slide) in porterdavis.  An all-star lineup may not always generate great music, but this band grabs at you when you hear them live, and their debut studio album (can this really be?) of music (simply titled porterdavis) is just as captivating.  [There was this "Live at Eddie's Attic" (that's in Atlanta) disc the lads used to tote around, I am told.]

It is not exactly a secret that the band’s name originates in Boston, where Daniel and Mike busked at Porter Square and Davis Square subway stations (according to the band bio), or that the lads have been in Austin since 2004 (where they found this Brit who played Chicago style blues harp).  FIVE years later Ray Wylie Hubbard gets the trio into the studio with the legendary Gurf Morlix, and at long last there is portable porterdavis for the IPOD or the late night spin using older technology (appropriate, given that this recording was done without ProTools).

Stunning!  Beautiful songs!  Yada Yada.  How do you describe this music?  I like what blogger KellieDeAnn in Louisiana said: “Their music can be classified as rootsy blues rock something or ‘nother…or just simply – good stuff!”  As Kellie DeAnn says, Meadows “can make so many differents sounds and keep various beats and rhythms going at the same time…it truly is amazing! Something you have to see to really appreciate. Now he has developed a fancier version of his instrument – the Black Swan Drum – but back then I used to tell folks, ‘He sits on and plays a wooden box!’”

Well, an acoustic guitar is also sort of a wooden box, and Daniel Barrett has darn good skills and writes (sometimes with his bandmates) some darn good songs.  Even so, two of the best songs here are from longtime friends. Atlanta native Brian Webb moved to Boston and busked at the same subway stations as Dan and Mike, and his “Strange Way to Grieve” is but one of his many powerful songs — and, oh yeah, he just might be the guy who turned our lads onto Eddie’s Attic.   “Heaven help me when I think I’m not enough, heaven help me when I think I am,” Webb wrote, and who has not felt both inadequate and overconfident at the same time?  The punch in this number is Wallace’s bouncy solo.

But my clear favorite here is “Grass (Growing Through Concrete),” from Bill Davis (aka William U. Davis or Bill Davis of Underwood), whom you may find on a Tuesday night at Trophy’s helping run the open mike.  If Austinites celebrate the songs of the late Blaze Foley, they ought to recognize in this great rendering of just one of many powerful songs from this UT grad who calls himself “positively unemployed.”  “It’s been different since you left me, some sucker stole them shackles from my feet, left me stronger than when you found me, now I feel like grass growing through concrete….”

Which is not to say that Barrett’s songs are weak — “Carter’s Tune,” which features Eliza Gilkyson on harmony vocals, sings of a wanderer who “found a home,” where he “sang my sadness, sang my love.”  But he is “never going home, tell my mama I love her so …. sometimes a man gotta make the world his own.”  When Barrett sings about reaching Baton Rouge driving down Highway 61, he notes that this is the “Old Man River of which the Gospel spoke” — and having lived there for eight years, and driven up and down Highway 61, I feel a special kinship to this delta blues influenced ballad.

But then again, there is “That Way,” which Daniel co-wrote with my pal Kevin Carroll – and this, too, is a tender love song that reaches deep inside.  “Smack You Back,” “Hey Now Jack,” and other cuts step up the beat and get you grooving as sometimes live the trio extends a number without ever sounding like a jam band.  Fittingly, the record ends with a Muddy Waters song, “Can’t Be Satisfied.”

SLIM BAWB – Hillbilly Fellini

Slim Bawb (Bob Pearce on national steel, mandolin, banjo, bass, and sometimes pedal steel and who knows what all else) and Gator Bait (James Curry, who once played with Blue Cheer, on drums) are still members of the Bay Area (that’s California) band the Beer Dogs (they play at least one show a year to roaring crowds).  But the gold in California has turned to pyrite, and so our adventurous duo wagon trained to Austin a few years back.  Bob plays often with the Texas Sapphires, and Rebecca Lucille Cannon and Justin Kolb both lend their talents to “Hillbilly Fellini,” which opens the disc with Bawb on banjo (I would swear this is a song about the Beer Dogs):  “First they play a two-step, then they play a Cajun waltz … if you don’t dance, it’s your own fault.”  And, yeah, Bawb plays banjo!

Slim Bawb’s gruff voice sounds like another instrument when he sings and plays live — as I saw the duo out in Elgin the other night.  These guys are seasoned musicians (grizzled and travel-worn) who are a lot of fun and have a lot to sing about.  With so many weapons at his disposal, Slim Bawb can make the twosome sound like Scott H. Biram sometimes and like Tom Waits at others.

Musicians on this record include Bastrop’s Tres Womack (Slim Bawb does live in Cedar Creek), Charlie Irwin, fiddler Josh Drogemueller, Perry Rowe, Kat Kairns, Bo Ely, Dave Moats, Ron Sherrod, Steve Stizzo, and Flaco Jimenez on “Barcelona Rain.”  The record is strewn through and through with Cajun music (“Louisiana,” notably — and quite a story can be found in this song), even though Bob has never lived there or even (so he says) played a Slim Bawb show in the Bayou State.

“Sophistikuts” is another song about a music venue, “a small town place” where “you can drink and you can cuss and you can know who you can really trust.”  Sounds like Sam’s Town Point, a joint that this band ought to KILL in.  “Black Jack Road” gets busy with the pedal steel and dobro — and Gator Bait’s percussive drumming (never overpowers, just keeps the beat interesting).  One of my favorites here is “Bourbon Cowboy,” even though I only drink Irish whiskey (and that for medicinal purposes).  Beer lovers get “I Need a Beer,” “No Bar Too Far,” and really the whole record.  This is danceable music, drinking music, and music to laugh and tell tall tales with your friends to.  As the boys close the bar, the final song of the night (choose your partner and hold her close) is a rendition of “Georgia on My Mind” heavily laden with Bawb’s dobro.  One final note — Bawb says that Rebecca Lucille is back with the Texas Sapphires after a “brief” leave of absence (girls just gotta have fun).  And that, too, is very good news.      

STEVE BERNAL – Decibels

I just realized I had not yet written about this other recording I have had around for a few weeks — by cello virtuoso Steve Bernal (whom I well remember holding a Scoot Inn audience gaspingly quiet one evening as he played solo).  Darwin Smith produced with Steve, with the recordings done in summer 2008 — but you may not have seen Steve perform this music or even the CD itself.  But given the number of cellists now finding work in town, and the even larger number of fans of this wonderful instrument (Steve also plays bass here), I just had to write something for all of you.

One highlight is a 19-minute piece, “Dreams and Concrete,” written with Loren Dent, which was commissioned by First Night Austin 2008 — for solo cello, electric guitar, computer and drum set.  Another is the “suite for solo cello and subsonic continuo” which Steve wrote to accompany the art of Michael Wutz.  A third set, “Pluto: Requiem for an Icy World,” was written by William Meadows and recorded at Real & Imaginary Music Studios.  The piece I most want to hear live, though, is Bernal’s “Hidden,” for three cellos and bass, which opens this recording.  Steve as been playing some shows with Aimee Bobruk, but will showcase his own music for solo cello and electronics at Flipnotics on November 12th (at 8 pm).  Lovers of the cello and just good music would be wise to attend.

“Scars can fill us up with pride .. Scars can also make us hide those wounds we got when a part of us died….  How many scars do you have?  Will you ever show your scars to anyone?” 

At the memorial service two Januarys ago for my darling wife Nancy, I found myself speaking words about scars — how sometimes people’s scars are invisible to the eye but painfully obvious to the touch, especially a touch that is just not gentle enough to bring healing and comfort.  I was talking about how we need to be aware of who we are conversing with, how not to put foot in mouth or down their throat — how to spread life and not the crush of death.

That’s why I don’t listen to Lucinda Williams any more — except of course at the annual Hank and Lucinda Williams Hoot at the Cactus Cafe, the brainchild of fellow Red Sox fan Jenny Reynolds.  You see, it’s not that she left Austin, not that the last time I saw her at ACL Festival she was (well) not all there on stage.  It’s just that song.  You know, the one BettySoo [shown here with Charlie Faye at the Saxon last Saturday] sang Tuesday night …. the one that breaks my heart every time I hear it — the one that every time I hear any song of Lucinda’s it breaks my heart because I cannot forget that song.  The one that tells me my Susan is never going to call me on the phone — or ask me to iron her shirt for work — or give me a long lecture about how I need to love people better — again.  [Well, on another plane, she does come to me over and over through the people I meet out on the streets of Austin.]

“See what you lost when you left this world, this sweet old world….”   You see, I can hear those words once a year (or any other Lucinda song) because July 27th is Susan’s birthday — and I have to celebrate her life every day but especially at this special time.  When it matters most.  And somehow (though a day after this year) the Williams Hoot always helps me (though this is just the third year) celebrate Susan’s wonderful life — the life she chose to sacrifice thinking it would be better for the rest of us.

The nights SHE would wander the streets of her beloved Houston to seek out her lost girlfriends and try to bring them home to safety.  The weekends she spent with her disabled friend, even going to New Orleans for Mardi Gras and still getting back for her American Humanics meeting.  The day she died, she went to her job interview and then to the graduation ceremonies at the elementary school she had volunteered at, teaching reading to immigrant first and second graders.  And then the love our family was shown by Austin’s music community (in which we were still fledglings at the time) that has driven the Flanfire ship for nearly six years now.  For me, of course, the song sounds like, “See what I lost when you left this world,” except that out of that loss we have had great gain.  As you all know, life is made better through celebration … and knowing that we are all dying and so should live life to the fullest every living breathing moment.  [I can never think of Susan and not see Snoopy dancing.]

Susan would have turned thirty on Monday.  And Monday night, where was I?  Out at House Wine with some of my dearest friends — B. Sterling Archer (whose B. Sterling Band will soon be releasing its debut CD) and Melanie Martinez of Tiny Tin Hearts (which likewise has a CD about ready for prime time) — and Abbi Sims, whose spirit reminds me so much of my daughter’s — adventurous, honest, forthright, caring, and sharing … and in Abbi’s case, a downrightr good singer and budding songwriter and outstanding Open Mike hostess at House Wine.  Also in the house (well, outside in the front lawn) were Craig Marshall and Jon Notarthomas and Will T. Massey and the lovely Valerie Fremin (more very dear friendds) — Drew de France and Kurt McMahan from the band Ouachita, which plays Friday at the Belmont — and one Donnie Jones (shown here surrounded by Kurt along with Abbi and her songwriter friend Anna who hails from just south of Brenham, Texas).  And, oh yeah, Donnie Jones (who is better known these days as a wine merchant and vineyard owner) is a songwriter — a man who counted among his friends Townes Van Zandt and Blaze Foley and John Prine too (and of course Guy Clark), and whose songs are of that same caliber.  Will T is working with Donnie to record a bunch of his songs — some brand new, others buried for maybe decades.  Monday, it turns out, was Jay Sims’ birthday too, but we were mostly there to celebrate Abbi’s birthday on July 29th (which SHE was celebrating at the Cathedral of Junk).

But back to Tuesday night at the Cactus — which opened with Eric Hisaw and Chrissy Flatt and then Kerry Polk and friends and then The Flyin’ A’s (Stuart and Hilary Adamson) before emcee Tom Pittman made his actual debut singing and playing guitar all by his lonesome on a public stage.  After 40 years!  An historic occasion!  And, despite his own protestations, he was good lookin’ – sang well too!

After the break, it was Jenny herself and then Seth Walker, BettySoo and finally Guy Forsyth.  So after the show I found the two world-renowned lads standing side by side and popped out the camera for this photo — and Guy says this may be the first photo ever of the two of them together.  Whatever – Guy had closed his set with a brand-new song he wrote in remembrance of fallen hero Stephen Bruton.  Later he was showing off dozens of photos of his pride and joy, his 2-year-old daughter who is just gorgeous!  I know a little something about being a proud papa — Guy admits it has changed his life.

A few more notes before I go — and I promise I WILL get to those CD reviews sometime soon.  First off, we have Margo Valiante flanked by Etan Sekons and three-string bassist Kyle Clayton at the Whip In, where I was eating some of the best Indian food ever to grace my lips AND enjoying one of that venue’s many nights of fine Austin music.  [Hats off for their support of Groundworks!]  That was on Saturday, and I left at intermission to run to the Saxon to catch a great set from porterdavis (sadly, no decent photos for you).  Just stunning!  Mike Meadows on vocals and his patented drum-percussion rig, birthday boy Simon Wallace on harmonica and vocals, and Daniel Barrett on slide guitar and vocals.  The band was taking orders for their own new CD, which will be available at their August 28th Saxon Pub show — if they make it back home from Nova Scotia.  Then, as noted, it was Bettysoo, who opened with “Do Right Woman,” a Dan Penn song made famous by the Flying Burrito Brothers (okay, theirs was by no means the first, or even the biggest hit version, but Earl Poole Ball played on that record — as did (duh!) Gram Parsons).  No wonder she’s opening for Joan Baez!

The little lady in the yellow dress is Akina Adderley (yes, Nat Adderley, Jr.’s baby girl) — and SHE was the opening act at Sunday’s very well attended Austin2Africa event that was raising money for an orphanage for South African children whose parents had died of AIDS.  [The $20,000 they need for the project is but a drop in the bucket of Oprah's budget for her posh girls' school.]

This was Akina’s fourth show with her Village Playboys in four days (Victory Grill, Antone’s, Marcus Cardwell‘s backyard!) and she had to run out the door to sing the national anthem at a RollerGirls throwdown.  Also on the bill were Kalu James, Tandoorifinger, Paul Banks (who will be back at Momo’s soon), and the amazing John Pointer (who broke a string on his very first song and never slowed down).

Susan would have loved this extended weekend — from Thursday through Tuesday, great music one night after another.  Her favorite, of course, was long-time Austinite Steve Ulrich, whom she used to see regularly at the Hole in the Wall during its glory days singnig in between Quatropaw sets.  I like to think she is hearing the music I hear in Austin from her special place in the clouds.