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Tom Waits at The Palladium Ballroom, Dallas 6/23/08

I don’t usually make it out to shows on Monday night. But in this case, Tom Waits (Yes, that Tom Waits) playing his first show here in thirty years, my first ever opportunity to see him live, I think I can make an exception…

The Palladium was already packed when we got there just a few minutes after eight. We took a spot on the floor where it was as hot and crowded as the bowels of Hell. Somehow, that seemed kind of fitting.

The stage was set up pretty minimally with a bunch of horn like speaker-phones of varying sizes mounted on a huge trellis in the back and three more big speaker-phones up front suspended with some lights hanging down on the left side of them, giving the whole thing an off-kilter, slightly cartoonish quality. It was perfect.

At about 8:30 or so, just enough time to grab a beer at the shortest bar line we could find, Tom Waits and his band came out and launched straight into “Lucinda” from his most recent 3 disc set, Orphans. He stood center stage, dressed in a dark suit and a bowler hat. He waved his hands around, shook his fingers and bellowed it out just the way you would imagine Tom Waits would do. He was totally mesmerizing.

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The Old 97s and The Drams
New Year’s Eve at The Longhorn Ballroom, Dallas

There’s something about the Longhorn Ballroom.

Something that hits you the minute you walk through the door. The room just permeates history from every corner and crevice. It’s an awesome place, in the truest sense of the word awesome. For one thing, it’s as big as an aircraft hangar. For another, it’s the real thing.

Any performer who was anybody in country music played there back in the day. Bob Wills owned the place in the 50s and 60s. Later, it was resurrected briefly in the 80s as a live music venue banking on its biggest claim to fame that it hosted The Sex Pistol’s Dallas show just a few short days before that band broke up.

Having seen a number of shows there through the years, I can personally attest that just being on that enormous stage, where so many came before and made history, seems to inspire bands to go above and beyond what anyone would expect of them.

I had all that in mind and more when we went there on New Years Eve to see The Old 97s, The Drams and The Boys Named Sue.

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47 Drams - Straight To Hell

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What can I say- that Tequila Brad sure knows how to throw a damn party.  Saturday night at Dan’s Silverleaf was a total liquor fueled, pull-out-all-the-stops, crank it up and rock this place throw down. With cake.  Todd Mankin and his band started things off.  We got there in the middle of his set and he was already in full rockin’ mode.  He’s got a great voice, some good songs and a kickin’ band behind him. He closed his set with Ted Nugent’s Stranglehold.  Austin’s Band of Heathens were up next. I’ve heard their fine debut CD, Live At Momo’s- and it’s good, but I was still surprised by the full force of their set. Read the rest of this entry »

Jason Isbell is an outstanding performer.

He took charge of the stage and his band, the 400 Unit, and put on quite a show from the very beginning. By the second song, I had forgotten that he had ever consorted with any Truckers at all. Starting out his performance with “Down in a Hole” (which I always thought was called “Trouble” before I bought the album) was brilliant and surprising. Then he jumped right into “Try”. (”You can’t make a woman sleep alone, but you try don’t you? You can’t make her stay her ass at home.”) Read the rest of this entry »

Anybody know Tequila Brad down there in Dallas?

You might if you go to certain shows in the Dallas area or you visit certain discussion boards (The Drams, The DriveBy Truckers, for example).

Well, even if you don’t, you just might want to check out Brad’s birthday party this weekend (Saturday, November 17, 9:00) at Dan’s Silverleaf in Denton, Texas.

See, Brad had this great idea. What if he got three of his favorite bands and had them all play at the same venue for him as a birthday present for himself??? He figures there is not a lot of overlap between the fan bases for these three groups and he might be doing some people some favors by introducing them to more good music. So, these Texas bands, not necessarily in this order are: The Drams out of Denton, Band of Heathens out of Austin, and Todd Mankin out of Fort Worth.

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The little kids almost stole the show from The Gourds Thursday night at Central Market in Ft Worth. They hit the dance floor early, by the first verse of the opening song. Two little girls at first, cute as all hell, waltzing and twirling to “Dying Of The Pines.” They were soon followed by the all the rest of the kids there and by the end of the second song, the highly danceable “My Name Is Jorge,” it looked a little like first grade free form dance class out there, only with better music.

My friend who turned me onto the place once described it as “the only bar in town with a playland.” So when the Gourds faithful showed up, they brought the kids. And the kids seemed to love it.

Of course at a show like this, it’s easy to forget you’re at a grocery store, not a bar. Even with a half dozen toddlers hamming it up.

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“This is a really big deal for us” she confided, midway through their set on the first day of this year’s Folks Festival. “We’ve never been the closing act at a music festival.”

This was after we had abandoned our tarp and moved to the front, to get away from the talking mommies in the back. It was a good move. In front, the crowd wasn’t talking. In fact, between songs, and after the loud applause died down, mostly what we could hear were the crickets chirping, such was the level of the concentration by the crowd with respect to what was happening on stage. Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t you just hate it when one person has to ruin it for everybody?

I’m sure it was nothing, probably just a fan who wanted to ask Todd Snider to play a favorite song. Or something.

But she definitely took the wrong approach Friday night at The Sons Of Hermann Hall. Read the rest of this entry »