Music: Clarence Gatemouth Brown - Born In Louisianna
Miraculous fingers, majestic vocal chords and a river barge full 'o boogie. The great Gatemouth blessin' the folks in the crowd with
some honey for the soul.
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Music/Livin': Happy Birthday Willie!
Check out Texas Monthly's beautiful tribute to Willie.
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Music: Hayes Carll’s New Album - Trouble In Mind
Hayes Carll's got a new album out called Trouble In Mind. He's the guy who did two of my all-time faves: "Chickens" & "Down The Road Tonight" from his album Little Rock (2005)
From his site:
Hayes Carll is an up-and-coming singer-songwriter from Texas with a distinct country bent and mighty humble beginnings. (Early in his career he had to resort to selling vacuums door to door to support himself.) He has a voice as tough and relentless as a late-night Lone Star brawl and a lyric sensibility worthy of an M.F.A. creative-writing seminar. His major-label début, “Trouble in Mind,” came out Tuesday, April 8, and his tour started the same day, at Stubb’s Bar-B-Q in Austin. Carll posted this tidy animated video on YouTube about his early days performing. Watch for the great anecdote about Jimmy Buffett’s signature song near its end.
Here's some press on him:
“He evokes Townes Van Zandt lyrically, Guy Clark emotionally, Steve Earle stylistically and Ray Wylie Hubbard spiritually.” -Boston Herald
“…you do believe the words in his songs, because it's apparent that he has lived 'em.” -The Houston Press
“Here’s a guy who takes regular old rockin’ Texas folk country and just adds new songs to the canon… right there alongside the songs of Van Zandt, Clark, Earle, Crowell, Shaver, Keen, Hubbard, et al. Houston, we have a poet. “ -Houston Press
Here's the press on his new album:
If you haven’t already heard of Hayes Carll, you soon will. In the three years since his self-released second album, Little Rock became available, Carll has toured relentlessly in North America and abroad (performing over two hundred shows a year), founded a successful singer-songwriter music festival on the Gulf Coast of Texas, secured a record deal with Lost Highway Records, and has even seen Little Rock become the first self-released album to reach #1 on the Americana Music Chart. He’s only getting started.
On his new album, Trouble In Mind, the 32 year-old Carll navigates his way through both stormy weather and calm, sun-drenched waters with ease, emerging with songs that melt even the hardest heart in town (a feat he manages on the plaintive, world-weary "Don't Let Me Fall") or heat up a roadhouse (like the ruggedly strutting "Wild as a Turkey"). Their impact is heightened by the fact that they're songs born of both immersion in the works of his songwriting heroes and plenty of real world experience.
"When I started, I moved down to this place called Crystal Beach, Texas where you need to take a ferry from Galveston across the bay to get to this little peninsula on the Gulf of Mexico," recalls Carll, who grew up just outside Houston. "It's this isolated coastal community with a wild assortment of people either hiding out, hanging on or getting lost-- a lot of drugs and drinking, a fair amount of violence, but at the same time a lot of really interesting people with great stories to tell. Folks in the bars there weren't necessarily interested in what I had to say as a songwriter-- they wanted to hear David Allan Coe and Merle Haggard, and other stuff they knew. So that's what I did six nights a week for four years. I haven't run into tougher crowds since. It was an initiation into becoming a performer."
Those experiences not only gave Carll a thick skin, they gave him plenty of material to spin into songs like the low-slung, finger-picked blues "I Got a Gig" -- populated by characters like the "barefoot shrimper with a pistol up his sleeve" -- and the tear-in-your-beer waltz "Beaumont," in which a suitor bearing a single white rose makes a fruitless trip to try to win over a lady love. Carll says of the latter tune. "I like to try to tackle a heavy topic but do it with a light touch. The more personal, weightier stuff doesn't come as easy, even though that's what I like to think about the most."
Check out some of his new songs on his myspace page or on LostHighwayRecords.com. My new faves: "Knockin' Over Whiskeys" & "She Left Me For Jesus"
Check this out:
Trouble In Mind - Hayes Carll (CD, Amazon)
Trouble In Mind - Hayes Carll (itunes)
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Music: Stevie Ray Vaughan
"Our Mr. Vaughan was the best there ever was" - Ray Wylie Hubbard (Screw you, We're from Texas)
From Wikipedia: Stephen "Stevie" Ray Vaughan (October 3, 1954 – August 27, 1990), born in Dallas, Texas, was an American blues guitarist. He was raised in the city's Oak Cliff neighborhood. Neither of his parents had any strong musical talent but were avid music fans. They would take Vaughan and his older brother Jimmie to concerts to see Fats Domino, Jimmy Reed, and Bob Wills. Even though Vaughan initially wanted to play the drums as his primary instrument, he picked up the guitar when he was eight years old. Vaughan's brother, Jimmie Vaughan, gave him his first guitar lessons. Vaughan was later quoted in Guitar Player as saying, "My brother Jimmie actually was one of the biggest influences on my playing. He really was the reason I started to play, watching him and seeing what could be done." He played entirely by ear and never learned how to read sheet music. By the time he was thirteen years old he was playing in clubs where he met many of his blues idols. A few years later he dropped out of Sunset High School in Oak Cliff and moved to Austin to pursue music. Vaughan's talent caught the attention of guitarist Johnny Winter, and blues-club owner Clifford Antone.
Vaughan's first recording band was called Paul Ray and the Cobras. They played at clubs and bars in Austin during the mid-1970s, and released one single. Vaughan later recorded two other singles under the band name The Cobras. Following the break-up of The Cobras, he formed Triple Threat in late 1975, which included bassist Jackie Newhouse, drummer Chris Layton, vocalist Lou Ann Barton, and sax player Johnny Reno. Barton left the band in 1978 to pursue a solo career, followed by Reno in 1979. The three remaining members started performing under the name Double Trouble, inspired by an Otis Rush song of the same name. Vaughan became the band's lead singer. Continue Reading...
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Music: Robert Earl Keen - Shades of Gray
This here's a clip of Robert Earl Keen on Austin City Limits. And if ya got a minute, check out "Merry Christmas from the Family", it's a hoot. In case you don't know (ok, there's probably only a couple of ya) Robert Earl Keen is a Texas singer-songwriter. Here's a bit on him from LoneStarMusic.com:
For the last decade plus, if one were to say "Lone Star music," the name that frequently would come to mind is Robert Earl Keen. During the 1990s, the Houston native who now makes his home in Bandera became a Texas favorite if not icon, thanks to songs that run from sharp humor to vivid stories to poignant emotional ruminations.
Keen started playing music at Texas A&M University, hanging out on the porch at the off campus rental house where he lived with his longtime buddy, fiddler Bryan Duckworth. Fellow Aggie Lyle Lovett would often drop by and play with them, as immortalized in the song Keen and Lovett co-wrote - called "The Front Porch Song" in Keen's zippy version of it and "This Old Porch" in Lovett's more ruminative take. He landed in Austin after college and began working his way up through the clubs, releasing his first album, No Kinda Dancer, in 1984.
On the advice of Steve Earle - who warned Keen that in Austin the women are too pretty and the pot too cheap - Keen moved to Nashville, but unlike such peers as Earle, Lovett and Nanci Griffith, he didn't win a record deal while there. So by the end of the decade, Keen was back in Texas playing the clubs again.
Continue Reading...
Check this out:
Feelin' Good Again - Robert Earl Keen
Five Pound Bass - Robert Earl Keen
The Road Goes On Forever - Robert Earl Keen
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