It’s coming…

I’m still trying to wrap my head around the idea that Cokie Roberts wrote this.

It really hasn’t been all that long since Slobberbone broke up. Just a few years.

And you could make the argument that they didn’t really break up at all, just went through another personnell change, changed their name to The Drams and tweaked their sound a little.

So why did Tuesdsay night’s show at Dan’s seem like such a return to a time long ago?

They were billed as Whiskey Glass Eye, the world’s premiere Slobberbone tribute band but there wasn’t a person in the jam packed club that night that didn’t know it was a reunion show. Brent Brest, Jess Barr, Tony Harper and the return of Brian Lane (with Scott Danbaum sitting in on about half the set.)

And there I was feeling all nostalgic and shit.

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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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Old 97s - Blame It On Gravity

New West Records

Back in the day, when “alt country” was still an indefinable thing, something you couldn’t really nail down specifically but you always knew it when you heard it, before the corporate record music people got together and dubbed it and anything remotely like it “Americana,” The Old 97s were in the vanguard of that insurgent sub-genre. Read the rest of this entry »

Slacker Country was deeply saddened to hear of Chris Gaffney’s passing on Thursday, April 17 . We didn’t even know he was undergoing chemotherapy for liver cancer.

He fronted The Hacienda Brothers and was lately a regular member of Dave Alvin’s band The Guilty Men, as well as a truly great solo performer. He combined the best elements of country, rock and roll, rhythm and blues, zydeco and tejano music to create his own sound, East LA Soul.

Here’s a clip of him performing “In The Garden” with his old band, The Cold Hard Facts

Somewhere between awesome and cool, Stewboss has always been about road trips, dreams, favorite songs, wanting to meet girls, meeting girls, losing girls, missing girls, and wanting to get back with girls - all while doing a really serious head bob to a wicked ass groove that screams for more cowbell. It’s an approach that works for them - partly because of the passion and sincerity that come with the deeply felt sentiments - and partly because of the wicked ass grooves. As far as I can tell, wicked ass grooves have never hurt anyone, except possibly the odd groin injury. Read the rest of this entry »

So this is from Front Porch House Concerts. I went to this show last year and I’m still thinking about it. Especially this cover he did. Thought I’d share it with you.

If you haven’t heard all the raving about the newest Drive-By Truckers’ release, Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, then you haven’t been paying attention! This one’s getting lots of positive press. Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley and Shonna Tucker have written the 19 songs on this 75 minute long album, which has exceeded even my expectations and I expect a lot.

I’ve been pretty much obsessed with this band since I first heard them on a scratchy cassette tape on a road trip in ’04. Got home and quickly educated myself on Southern Rock Opera (I grew up down there; it wasn’t hard to grasp!). I marinated in The Dirty South and Decoration Day and all those educational little ditties for a year or two until I emerged to A Blessing And A Curse, two nervous breakdowns, only one of which was mine, then a Rock Show, The Dirt Underneath Tour, a couple of t-shirts and I’m okay now. Read the rest of this entry »

Watermelon Slim and The Workers at Pearl, Dallas, Texas
Saturday, January 12, 2008

Watermelon Slim has got to be to be livin’ the life these days.

He’s got quite a bio, hard knocks, hard times, hard work and all the while “making sure the boss gets paid.” Now that his own dues are paid- in spades, he says he finally gets to practice his true vocation. Bluesman.

And if you go see him play, you get to hear all about it.

I got hipped to him by a friend who sent me his second CD, The Wheel Man, for Christmas. It had me with the first spin.

He played Pearl in Downtown Dallas Saturday night with his band, The Workers, to a pretty impressive crowd.

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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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