Flanfire

Floramay Holliday no longer lives in Austin — so I rarely get to visit with her and her harmonica player (and husband) Gabor Racz.  But Thursday night (May 7th) Floramay has a CD release party at the Saxon Pub with her OLD Austin band that includes the amazing Arte Passes.  [Just tonight while at Antone's for a Stonehoney set, a fellow whose band had opened for Kevin Fowler recently was telling me just how amazing Arte was in that band!]

The photos below, however, are from the Sunday night Shelley King Band show at the Saxon with Floramay sitting in for a few songs the two women have written together.  Two of those so much fun songs — “Coffee” and “The Things You Do” — are on the new Floramay record, “Dreams.” 

Words cannot express how much these two women (and their husbands and families) mean to Flanfire — they were good friends (and cruise mates) of my beloved Nancy, and Shelley was among the many who was there for her through her long illness.   Shelley and her band were our first friends in the Austin music community — over nine years ago. 

And we never forgot that long night the week after September 11th when Floramay was doing her usual gig at the Texas Chili Parlor (yes, Virginia, it used to be a live music venue) and closed out her set with a powerful version of “Freedom Songs.”  Or that poignant tribute to fallen band member Kris Van Robbins (who, not coincidentally, was a close friend of Kevin Fowler — I will never forget the benefit those guys and others put on to help Kris’ grieving family).  Good times, sad times, that’s how good friendships grow.  Going to Cancun with Shelley and Perry and Floramay and Gabor and the whole entourage was a heluva wonderful way to share our 25th wedding anniversary (even better, our daughter and HER husband came along for the week-long party).

But to the business at hand.  I love this record — nearly every song touches me in the heart.  Floramay, by the way, grew up on a plantation in South Carolina with her musical family (her brother James Ervin plays bass and a little guitar on this record, her sister sang on a prior one) and later spent time working on a dude ranch in Idaho (and with all those Idaho musicians blowing Austin away, maybe picking up some of her musical skills there too).  Then it was Austin for quite a long time — and lots of great memories — and a storybook romance of her own that she will maybe tell you sometime.

OKAY — forget the first 12 cuts for a moment and concentrate on the “Roseneath Romance” that closes out this collection of songs and stories.  This is a tribute to her grandparents, James and FLoramay McLeod, and the romance begins with Floramay on piano, her brother James on acoustic guitar, plus Jeff Stockham on french horn and Joe Devoli on violin.  The moving instrumental eventually gives way to the song itself — a tale of a gentle courtship that grew into a lifelong love, one that formed much of the framework for Floramay’s own childhood.  I would buy the record JUST for these two amazingly wonderful linked pieces.

But of course that’s not all, folks!  This may be Floramay’s best songwriting to date (and I have loved both of her prior recordings) — some songs are silly, others (including one “co-written” with 18th Century evangelist John Wesley) cut deep, but in all of them we get Floramay’s honest voice and that twinkle in her eye that she is famous for.

“Yesterday’s Girl” kicks off the festivities.  Is Floramay telling on herself (or maybe just exaggerating? — or is she totally making it all up — when she sings, “Born spoiled raised in the land of cotton Way on down in Dixie, She used to dance till dawn with her high heels on, feelin’ young and sexy ….”  Now, I have to mention that Floramay went all the way to upstate New York to find the Barrigar Brothers (Kevin and Loren, on guitars and vocals) and their pals Matthew Rockwell (drums), Andy Rudy (piano), Leonard Stephens (pedal steel), Jeff Stockham (trumpet and French horn), and Devoli.  Shelley King also sings, Gabor sings and plays harmonica, and a huge chorus of Racz women and friends — the Amazing Women of the Lake, or AWOL Singers, contribute to “Girl’s Night Out,” which MUST truly be an autobiographical song!

Speaking of fun, first there’s “Momma’s Motorcycle,” “that pretty little engine R-65,” and yet this simple little song (with pedal steel, no less) has this line about “dreams get lost when you get distracted…”  Then there’s that song Gabor helped write, “Rainbows,” and that line, “You don’t need direction to know where you are…”  See — fun with a bite!  And there’s that good-time-feeling “Big Blue Eyes,” about taking a family drive in the summertime.

“These Days” is anything but funny — “little girl lookin’ out an old front door, Watch her daddy drive away, she’s seen it before … “  But later, “We’re all under the stars, So many children with a broken heart, Find a way to believe in love, Say your prayers before you dream, God gives us the reason, To forgive Daddy’s leavin’ ….” 

My pals Jack Dorman and Geno Hildebrandt over at Hope Chapel love to quote John Wesley’s famed saying, “Earn all you can, Save all you can, Give all you can.”  Here Floramay, in “As Long As You Can,” reminds us that we are loved “by the One up above” and we must therefore not forget to “do all the good you can, in all the ways you can, whenever you can, by and by, to all the ones you can, as long as you can — Amen, Amen.”

One of the best songs (from a songwriter’s perspective) here is a joint effort with Floramay, Loren Barrigar, and Peter Ryan called “Perfect You.”  On the record, it’s just Floramay on vocals and Loren Barrigar on acoustic guitar — and you never really know if this is a tragedy or a song of joy.  Now, there is one cover tune — Megan Peters’ “Something To Tell You,” from her 1997 album “About Time,” which featured Mike Cross on bass and Paul Pearcy on drums.  I think Floramay picked this one to sing to her husband — that part about him being a wrinkled old dude in a hundred years.

My favorite song (other than the Roseneath Romance) on the record seems to be “Slow Rain,”a pure and simple love song — “Singing you a new song Always sets me free, And I love it when you sing along in sweet harmony…..”  But it is the chorus that makes this one special to me — “The sun rose and the moon goes around this old world, And the seasons flow like water when you’re near .. As we grow, I know there’s nothing left to fear, Home is where the heart is, and my heart will be right here, There’s a slow rain falling to wash away the tears…”  And, yes Jenni W., there IS a French horn here!