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The Gourds, Longhorn Saloon, Ft Worth, June 27, 2009
It was about 3:00 or so Saturday afternoon when I called our friends in Ft Worth to cancel out on the evenings festivities. It really did look pretty hopeless at that point; stranded in a 7-11 parking lot off I-30 in Arlington, sweltering in the 100 degree heat, waiting for a tow truck to come and take our badly overheated car back home.
Then I suppose it was due to the angels intervening on our behalf but things all started coming together in our favor. The tow truck showed up hours before we were expecting it and got us home just in time for a neighbor to offer to loan us his car and just like that, it was on again!
So after all the high drama we still made it out to the Fort Worth Stockyards and got to the newly re-opened Longhorn Saloon plenty early enough to score a choice table.
It’s a very nice room, that Longhorn Saloon, with a couple of levels, three bars, reasonably good sound and it’s got a whole lot of history too. After Saturday night’s Gourds show, they can probably add another chapter

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So the Gourds played the Gothic Theater down south of Denver last Saturday night (March 14).

I shamed Gracey into coming with me. I’ve been trying to force her to listen to the Gourds for about a year. Truth is, it’s really hard to get her to listen to much besides the Drive-By Truckers and her local Wyoming bands (see Hogback). But there were other, more worldly, folks coming down from Wyoming (peer pressure still works) and I promised her some corn chips. That did the trick.

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So I’m listening to the Gourds new CD “Haymaker” this week.

This isn’t so much an indepth review of the CD (alright then – here’s the review: It’s good. Go buy it. You don’t really need me to tell you that, do you?) as it is a discussion of dem Gourds and how they make people happy.

You know how I know that? I listen to their stuff. I make my friends listen to their stuff. I make my kids listen to their stuff until they know all the lyrics. It’s good for their vocabularies. Even my cat likes to twist and juke to the Gourds. . .

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OK, so I had no idea what to expect from a Gourds show at Central Market in Ft Worth.

For one thing, I’d never been to Central Market in Ft Worth. I’ve been to the one in Dallas and couldn’t quite envision a band playing there. But there it was – a Thursday night free Gourds show at a grocery store.

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The Austin-based band, The Gourds, has put out its eighth CD, and just when you think this ragtag clan of modern day redneck hippies may be pushing too hard to maintain the magic, they turn it up two notches. In "Heavy Ornamentals," everyone in the band puts in his best performance each in a somewhat new way.

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It would seem to me that if ever an event and a band were made for each other it would be The State Fair of Texas and The Gourds.  I mean both the Fair and the Gourds are big and diverse.  And the Gourds cover almost every aspect of Texas music, from country to Cajun, from Tejano to blues and on and on.  So when they were scheduled to play two sets at the State Fair on Columbus Day, it was a good excuse to leave work early and head on down to Fair Park.

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The Gourd’s “Blood Of The Ram” (Eleven Thirty Records)  is another hook-filled, genre mixing full-length album of highly listenable, if abstract nods to country, Cajun, folk, R & B and plain old rock and roll.

And, of course, they employ every instrument in their repertoire.

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The Granada Theater in Dallas celebrated its one year anniversary Friday, August 19, with a near capacity show featuring The Gourds, The Bottlerockets, and The Drams. The Granada’s been around a whole lot longer than one year; but a year ago it was launched as a strictly live music venue.

They did a great job of refurbishing the place, leaving the murals and ornate, carved wood molding intact, and installing a state-of-the-art sound system. The Granada now boasts the best sound system of any venue in Dallas. And if you don’t mind parking two blocks away on the street or shelling out 10 bucks for the close-in lot, which was free a year ago, then you really can’t beat it.

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