Singer-songwriters are plentiful these days. Have a guitar, smartphone and social media account? Suddenly you’re giving concerts.
There was a time, though, when anyone stepping on stage at a coffeehouse had to truly engage an audience with songs, stories and a sense of humor. If you wanted to work, you had to entertain.
Ellis Paul is old school in all the best ways. His Oct. 21 performance for the Americana Community Music Association had him demonstrating how an acoustic guitar can sub for drums and bass, explaining why he’ll be buried with that guitar and hopping off stage and into the audience for a touching encore of “Over the Rainbow.”
Ellis Paul at Americana Community Music Association in Fort Myers
Paul is on his 30th anniversary tour and he reflected on the evolution of his songs. Early on, young songwriters tend to focus on romance and relationships, but over time, you need to expand your perspective, Paul explained.
That explained his raucous “Kick Out the Lights,” an account of the Man in Black losing his temper on stage at the Grand Ole Opry, with its refrain “Johnny Cash, Johnny Cash.”
Paul’s reflection on dysfunctional families led to a memory of his own family’s worst day, a reunion documented in “Five Alarm Fire on the 4th of July.”
Paul, whose most recent album 55 was inspired by his birthday of that number, also offered up “You’ll Never Be This Young Again,” a buoyant song about never giving up on your dreams.
And so the evening went: wildly diverse songs, entertaining stories, the occasional singalong and an absolute rapport with the audience. Talent and experience make all the difference.
Opening up the show was Gene Martin, an 84-year-old retired radiologist, living the lyrics to Paul’s song about dream-chasing. Miller’s brief set was warm and fun and featured the evening’s most memorable song “Prep Day.”
Gene Martin
“That was the best song about a colonoscopy I’ve ever heard,” Paul proclaimed, beaming at his opening act sitting in the front row.
It might sound like an unlikely pairing for a singer-songwriter show – a famously curmudgeonly Anglo man in his early 60s and a Korean-American woman in her mid-40s. But the recent five-week tour featuring James McMurtry and BettySoo has been, by all accounts, a big success. The two wrapped up their current tour at Houston’s Heights Theater on October 7, with McMurtry rewarding longtime fans with an excellent full-band show and BettySoo charming those already familiar with her work and likely winning new followers as well.
BettySoo (Photo by Paul T. Mueller)
BettySoo opened with a well-received set that included five songs performed solo and four with the backing of McMurtry’s drummer, Daren Hess, and guitarist Cornbread, who plays bass for McMurtry. BettySoo, who owns a lovely voice and impressive guitar skills, put both to good use in service of some well-written but mostly downbeat songs about romantic difficulties, such as “One Thing,” “Down to Nothing,” “Don’t Say It’s Nothing” and an as-yet-unrecorded song that might be titled “Just a Matter of When.” The band-backed selections included the haunting “Blackout” and a nice cover of “What Do You Want From Me Now?,” which she credited to fellow singer-songwriter Ralston Bowles. She also won applause for her defense of oft-maligned Houston, noting that she had grown up in the Houston suburb of Spring.
For his part, McMurtry drew from a wide cross-section of his extensive catalog, opening with “Fuller Brush Man” from 1995. Three songs later came “Canola Fields” from the most recent collection, 2021’s The Horses and the Hounds. Other highlights of the 14-song main set included the raucous family-reunion tale “Choctaw Bingo,” wryly introduced as “a medley of our hit”; a solo, unplugged take on “Blackberry Winter,” from Horses; nice renditions of “You Got to Me,” “Levelland” and “No More Buffalo,” and a rousing “Too Long In the Wasteland,” the title track of McMurtry’s 1989 debut album, to close. McMurtry accompanied his distinctive vocals with impressive work on a variety of guitars, both acoustic and electric, while outsourcing some of the six-string duties to guitarist and accordionist Tim Holt.
James McMurtry (photo by Paul T. Mueller)
After a short break, McMurtry’s band returned to the stage and launched into a well-done rendition of “That’s How I Feel,” an instrumental by The Crusaders, a jazz band that started out in Houston in the 1960s. It was a nice tip of the hat to some local heroes. When McMurtry and BettySoo returned a few minutes later, both were in drag – BettySoo in a sharp-looking men’s suit, McMurtry in a stylish red dress accented by a black beret and scarf, two strands of pearls, fishnet hose and red lipstick. The crossdressing originated a few weeks ago in Tennessee, as a dig at politicians seemingly obsessed with the dangers of drag shows there, and seemed almost inevitable for a performance in a state where many elected officials seem equally unsettled by gender issues. The one-song encore was the longtime favorite “Lost in the Back Yard.”
BettySoo and James McMurtry (Photo by Paul T. Mueller)
McMurtry, not known for a talkative nature or outward displays of happiness on stage, stayed true to form, with the exception of the occasional comment on a song. But he did seem comfortable and genuinely appreciative of his audience, and also had good things to say about BettySoo and about his son, Curtis McMurtry, also a singer-songwriter (and, as it happens, the driving force behind BettySoo’s 2022 release Insomnia Waking Dream).
There’s a belief in some quarters that everything coming out of Nashville these days is formulaic dross, but Lori McKenna and Brandy Clark put that idea to rest in their Sept. 28 co-headlining appearance at Houston’s Heights Theater. The 90-minute show, the first on an 11-date tour, amounted to a two-person guitar pull that drew heavily from the singer-songwriters’ recent releases. Taking turns performing their finely crafted songs, McKenna and Clark rewarded the capacity crowd with a brilliant showcase for their writing, singing and playing, with some bonus comedy thrown in.
Brandy Clark and Lori McKenna (Photo by Paul T. Mueller)
McKenna, who lives near Boston but spends time writing in Nashville, is a master at capturing the nuances of human emotions and experience. She performed several songs from her new album 1988, including “Happy Children,” “The Old Woman in Me” and “Town in Your Heart.” There were older favorites as well – “People Get Old,” a wistful but clear-eyed look at aging; the rueful “All the Time I Wasted on You,” and the sad and haunting “Halfway Home” – the last performed, she said, at the request of one of her Texas fans.
Clark featured songs from her self-titled fourth album, produced by Brandi Carlile and released earlier this year. She paid heartfelt tribute to a beloved grandmother with “She Smoked in the House,” while “Northwest” was a love song to her home state of Washington. One of the biggest moments came near the show’s end, with “Dear Insecurity,” recently featured as a duet with Carlile during the Americana Music Association’s annual awards show. Clark’s fine older material included the regretful “Who You Thought I Was” and “Pawn Shop,” a ballad about broken dreams, both from 2020’s Your Life Is a Record.
The ”encore” consisted of one song each from McKenna and Clark, each of which became a hit for a more mainstream Nashville artist. The two alternated verses on “Girl Crush,” written by McKenna, Hillary Lindsey and Liz Rose, and recorded by Little Big Town. Clark closed the show with a rousing rendition of “Mama’s Broken Heart,” a co-write with Shane McAnally and Kacey Musgraves that found success with Miranda Lambert.
McKenna and Clark got excellent support from guitarist Cy Winstanley and bassist Vanessa McGowan, transplanted New Zealanders who also perform as Tattletale Saints. Louisiana native turned Nashvillian Brandon Ratcliff opened the show with a six-song solo set that featured his strong songs, excellent guitar and vocal skills and engaging stage presence.
It’s always a joy when an artist and songwriter is an unabashed music fan like the rest of us.
That’s certainly the case with Kent Blazy, whose new album From The Beatles to the Bluebird, is fueled by a love of John, Paul, George and Ringo.
Blazy, a 2020 inductee into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, has had an extraordinary track record, including writing “If Tomorrow Never Comes” with Garth Brooks, the Brooks hit “Ain’t Goin’ Down (‘Til the Sun Comes Up” and Chris Young’s classic recording “Getting’ You Home The Black Dress Song)”
The new album isn’t about Blazy’s hits of the last 30 years. Instead, it’s a full-throated celebration of the Beatles, songwriting and living a vibrant life.
Album opener “February 9th, 1964,” chronicles the night the Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and inspired an entire generation to ask for guitars on their next birthdays. The song was co-written with Steve Allen, who also contributes vocals.
On the title track, Blazy draws a direct line from that night to his later success as a highly successful songwriter playing at the Bluebird Café, Nashville’s songwriting haven. On “Die Young,” Blazy tips his hat to Paul McCartney in his ‘80s, and offers these words of wisdom: “I want to die young at a very old age.” This should be the personal anthem for anyone with a senior discount.
The rest of the album is less Beatles-centric, but always fun and thoughtful. “Just Writing Songs” is a particularly upbeat song about how writing songs for the pleasure of it can sometimes bring unanticipated rewards.
Many successful songwriters reach a point where they set aside their art and just make regular trips to the mailbox for royalty checks, but there’s no slowing Blazy down. He still writes, performs and releases albums on a near-annual basis, still drawing on that magical night in February of 1964, as this new collection attests.
Jason Wilber was among friends and family as he took the stage in Fort Myers, Florida on June 24. There was his wife Michelle in the second row. Sitting next to her was Jason’s father. On the left side of the room were friends from Bloomington, Indiana. And pretty much everywhere there were fans who loved his work as a member of John Prine’s band.
No matter, though. Even a room full of strangers would have been won over by Wilber’s engaging, low-key set.
Wilber opened with the upbeat and inviting “Time Traveler,” a song he says was partly inspired by the science-fiction classic novel “Time and Again.” It was a fitting start to a set that spanned decades of music.
The oldest song was also the most moving. “A Song For You” was written and recorded by Leon Russell in 1970, and was later covered by Ray Charles, Herbie Hancock, the Carpenters the Temptations, Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Willie Nelson and many others. Despite all of those other interpretations, Wilber’s stripped down version was absolutely striking. From the beginning, it was a song written by a road musician for the woman he loved. Wilber’s take sounded true.
Wilber didn’t disappoint those who came to see him because of the Prine connection, playing “Far From Me” from John’s first album and “Souvenirs” from the Sweet Revenge follow-up in 1972.
John Prine also came to mind when Wilber performed his own song “Quakertown Optimists Club,” which explores why an Optimists Club would call it quits. The song and story behind it were very entertaining.
Jason Wilber is an extraordinary guitarist and he offered up sometimes intricate and always impeccable playing throughout his set. From his cover of “Annie You Save Me” by Graffiti6 to his stirring closer “Ghost Light,” he packed a lot of variety and surprises into the evening.
Bruce Gallant opened the evening with an exuberant performance. It’s always a great sign when the artist is clearly having as good a time as his audience. We hadn’t seen Gallant before, but quickly recognized that his “Living in Paradise” is a local anthem:
“Living in Paradise, I ain’t got much, but it sure is nice. A ten by fifty mobile home, that sets on land that I don’t own”
There’s some Roger Miller in there – and that’s a good thing.
The concert was presented by the Americana Community Music Association, a remarkable organization of volunteers who bring great live music to Southwest Florida. Their base is the All Faiths Unitarian Church in Fort Myers. Picture a good house concert with top talent, comfortable chairs, good lines of sight and first-rate sound. These folks have built a vibrant music community out of a sheer love of Americana music. Highly recommended.
Ken Paulson is the editor of Americana One and the host of The Songwriters, seen on PBS affiliate TV stations nationwide.)
Gretchen Peters, wrapping up a long touring career, gave her fans in Houston a fine show to remember her by. The prolific singer-songwriter and her husband and musical partner, Barry Walsh, performed for a nearly full house at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church on June 22, the final show in the church’s Coffee House Live spring concert series.
Peters fittingly opened with “The Show,” a ballad about the life of a touring musician. The next few songs included some dark stories of violence and death, including “Wichita” and “Blackbirds” (she introduced the latter by noting, “There’s always a high body count at my shows”). The murder tales eventually gave way to gentler fare, including a lovely rendition of Tom Russell’s “Guadalupe” and “When You Love Someone,” one of the dozens of songs Peters has written with Canadian singer Bryan Adams.
Gretchen Peters and Barry Walsh (photo by Paul T, Mueller)
Walsh alternated between piano and accordion and provided vocals on most of Peters’ songs. He got a turn in the spotlight mid-show, performing the instrumental “Belgian Afternoon” from his album Silencio. Peters returned for a lovely rendition of “Say Grace,” a call for compassion and forgiveness from her 2018 album Dancing With the Beast. Other highlights included a fine performance of “Independence Day,” with Peters accompanying herself on piano, and a sweet version of “On a Bus to St. Cloud,” with a callout to the late Jimmy LaFave, who memorably covered the song.
Peters closed with another song appropriate to the occasion, “To Say Goodbye” (she has announced her retirement from touring, although she does plan to play some festivals and other gigs). After a standing ovation she sat on the edge of the stage and crooned an excellent rendition of the Harold Arlen-Johnny Mercer classic “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road),” accompanied by Walsh’s excellent piano. After the show she and Walsh stayed to sign autographs and share memories with their many fans and well-wishers.
Georgia-based singer-songwriter Michelle Malone brought decades’ worth of songs and showmanship to her May 13 show in Houston. The show at McGonigel’s Mucky Duck, featuring Malone on acoustic guitars and Doug Kees on electric, included a career-spanning 14 songs. All were fueled by Malone’s powerful vocals, ranging from a delicate croon to an all-out roar.
She led off with the evocative “Dust Bowl Man” from her 2022 album titled 1977. Other highlights included the anthemic “Just Getting Started,” from 2017’s Slings and Arrows, and “Not Who I Used to Be,” also from 1977. The latter wrapped in a bit of Neil Young’s “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” with a powerful solo by Kees.
Michelle Malone copyright Paul T. Mueller
Malone’s solicitation of requests from the audience yielded a sweet rendition of “32 Seconds,” harking back to her 1990 album Relentless with former band Drag the River, and “Butter Biscuit,” which she called a “silly song” but one that’s often requested. Near show’s end came a new song, “Like Mother, Like Daughter,” in honor of the hours-away Mother’s Day.
RB Morris, a singer-songwriter, poet and playwright based in Knoxville, doesn’t tend to venture too far west from his Tennessee base. So it was something of a rare treat for his Texas fans when Morris played a Jan. 21 show at Live Oak Listening Room, a former church turned intimate concert venue in the East Texas city of Nacogdoches.
RB Morris (photo copyright Paul T. Mueller)
Morris writes with the sensibility of a poet and performs with the soul of a rock ‘n’ roller. He opened with several songs played solo, including the wistful “Old Copper Penny,” and “Thin Air,” which he dedicated to the late Leonard Cohen. Next came readings of a couple of his poems, one about the mockingbird – which, he noted, is the state bird of both Texas and Tennessee.
Other highlights included a lovely rendition of “A Winter’s Tale,” which has become something of a latter-day holiday classic; “That’s How Every Empire Falls,” a cautionary tale once covered by John Prine, one of Morris’ early fans; “Distillery,” which draws parallels between the commercialized and organic forms of liquor and religion, and the powerful “Take Time to Love.”
Morris was backed for most of the show by electric guitarist Tim Lee and drummer Susan Lee, a husband-and-wife duo from Mississippi who perform their own shows under the moniker BARK. Tim Lee’s guitar, by turns subtle and powerful, and Susan Lee’s strong and precise drumming provided effective texture behind Morris’ acoustic playing and vocals.
BARK opened the show with a rocking set consisting mostly of jangly power-pop originals, plus a cover of David Olney’s “James Robertson Must Turn Right.”
A wake can be a mournful affair, but the mood at the Old Quarter Acoustic Café on the first day of 2023 was anything but. As they have every January 1 since 1998, talented musicians and appreciative fans gathered at the small listening room in downtown Galveston, Texas, for the annual wake to celebrate the songs of Townes Van Zandt. This year’s event featured an impressive cast of performers, both professional and amateur, each giving his or her interpretation of one or more songs, most of them either written by or written about the legendary artist.
Numerous such events are held in various locations every year, but no other has quite the same direct connection to Townes, given that this one is held in a venue once owned by Rex (Wrecks) Bell, his former bassist and running buddy. Bell, who for years played bass in Van Zandt’s band (as well as those of Lucinda Williams and Lightnin’ Hopkins, among others), and accompanied him on adventures both legal and otherwise, served as emcee of the event. He played his role with characteristic delight, telling frank stories about tour life and dredging up the kind of bad jokes his old friend was famous for.
Wrecks Bell
The five-plus-hour event featured 65 songs by 24 performers of varying degrees of musical ability, and every performance was received with grace and enthusiasm befitting a community of music lovers. Some of Van Zandt’s better-known songs – “White Freightliner Blues,” “To Live Is to Fly,” “Pancho and Lefty” and others – were covered more than once, proving interesting contrasts between the various renditions.
Van Zandt had his demons and many of his songs reflected his struggles with them, but the love and respect with which the performers interpreted his music infused the evening with joy, in the full sense of that word. More than a few made a point of thanking Joel and Angela Mora, who bought the Old Quarter from Bell in 2017, and Bell and his wife, Janet, who live part time on Galveston Island and maintain a connection to the venue.
Tex Renner
A few highlights:
Galveston singer-songwriter Tex Renner’s gruff take on “Blaze’s Blues,” Van Zandt’s tribute to another partner in mischief, Blaze Foley
A quiet, beautifully harmonized rendition of “White Freightliner Blues” by the Houston-area duo Grifters & Shills (John and Rebecca Stoll)
“The Ghost of Townes,” written as a tribute to Van Zandt by Chad Elliott and performed by Tommy Lewis
A beautifully dark trifecta of “Waitin’ Around to Die,” “Marie” and Steve Earle’s TVZ tribute “Fort Worth Blues” by Waxahachie, Texas-based Bobby Huskins
“Rex’s Blues” by its subject, Bell, and his wife, accompanied by ace guitarist Gary Reagan. Bell, who seems to be aging in reverse, was in fine voice all night; he played using Van Zandt’s fingerpicks.
Austin-based singer-songwriter and guitar wizard Marina Rocks’ take on the lovely “Snowin’ on Raton,” which started out quietly and built to an emotional, high-volume conclusion
Ocala, Florida-based Chris Ryals, who took on some less-familiar Van Zandt songs – “Our Mother the Mountain,” “Tower Song” and “Colorado Bound”
The evening’s big finale of “White Freightliner Blues” and “Two Hands,” performed by Joel and the Honey Badgers (singer/guitarist Dwight Wolf, bassist Christopher Smith Gonzalez and drummer/venue owner Joel Mora), accompanied by Wrecks and Janet, Gary Reagan and Chris Ryals.
For a band that made only one studio album – 30 years ago – Arc Angels has quite a devoted fan base. That loyalty was clear at Houston’s Heights Theater on November 16, when the band drew an enthusiastic near-capacity crowd for its third Houston show of 2022.
Arc Angels – named for the Austin Rehearsal Center, or ARC, where the band came together – originally included drummer Chris “Whipper” Layton and bassist Tommy Shannon (aka Double Trouble, the rhythm section that backed Stevie Ray Vaughan) plus singer-songwriter/guitarists Doyle Bramhall II and Charlie Sexton. For the current tour at least, Eric Holden is handling the bass duties.
Doyle Bramhall II, Chris Layton, Eric Holden, Charlie Sexton (Photo by Paul T. Mueller)
In a high-volume set of bluesy rock that lasted an hour and 45 minutes, the band ripped through most of its self-titled album’s 12 tracks, starting with the bad-behavior tale “Paradise Café.” Most of the songs found Bramhall (son of Vaughan’s late running buddy Doyle Bramhall) and Sexton (who spent years in Bob Dylan’s band, among others) trading licks and solos, while Layton and Holden supported them with a steady and seemingly effortless groove.
About midway through the show, Sexton led the crowd in singing “Happy Birthday” to Layton (67, for those keeping score). A bit later, the band launched into Charley Patton’s “Oh Death,” prefaced by Sexton’s joking apology to Layton for playing such a song so soon after the birthday wishes.
The main set wrapped up with three of the stronger songs from the Arc Angels album – “Spanish Moon,” “Shape I’m In” and “Living in a Dream.” After a short break, the band returned for a one-song encore, the powerful “Too Many Ways to Fall.”
Austin-based quartet Madam Radar opened the show with an energetic 40-minute set. The band’s sound, and appearance, featured something of an early ‘70s hippie vibe, fueled by the rock-star posturing of guitarist/singer Kelly Green and the cool elegance of bassist Violet Lea. They closed, fittingly, with a faithful rendition of Golden Earring’s “Radar Love.”
Sometimes seeing what a performer is overcoming to deliver a performance is as impressive as the performance itself. Early in his Oct. 18 show at Houston’s Heights Theater, singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell announced that he was battling “the mother of all colds.” But despite a voice that often sounded hoarse and strained, and taking an occasional break to cough (“It’s not COVID!”) or swig from a water bottle, he pushed on for nearly two hours, delighting the capacity crowd with signature songs from his long career and readings from his recent book, Word for Word.
Crowell is the closest thing to royalty in country and Americana music, and he looks the part – still slim at 72, with white hair and a vintage black Gibson acoustic. Without a band to back him up, he played and sang with a confidence born of decades onstage, clearly basking in the love of the hometown crowd.
Rodney Crowell in concert at the Heights Theater
He led off with “Highway 17,” the tale of a career criminal who buries his ill-gotten gains and spends years in prison dreaming of what he’ll do when he gets out and recovers it – only to find that it’s been forever lost under a newly built interstate highway. Afterward he explained that the song is based on a true story involving a family he knew as a child. “Grandma Loved That Old Man,” about his beloved grandfather and the wife who put up with his faults and flaws, got a similar treatment. And so it went, with fine renditions of instantly recognizable songs interspersed with funny stories about how they came to be, and about how their author became a top-tier songwriter and performer.
The show, something of a career retrospective, included songs from Crowell’s days as a hotshot mainstream Nashville artist (“I Ain’t Living Long Like This,” “She’s Crazy for Leaving,” “ ‘Til I Gain Control Again”) as well as several from his more recent phase as an independent, more introspective artist (“East Houston Blues,” “Anything But Tame,” “Telephone Road,” “I Don’t Care Anymore”).
Crowell won enthusiastic responses for some songs he wrote with or about the late Guy Clark, a good friend of his for decades – “Stuff That Works,” co-written in the wake of his divorce from Rosanne Cash, and “It Ain’t Over Yet,” an imagined conversation between Crowell, Clark and Clark’s wife, Susanna.
After wrapping up the main set with “Please Remember Me,” Crowell acknowledged the standing ovation, put in one final plug for his book (“Christmas is coming, just saying,” he had noted earlier) and finished with “The Flyboy & the Kid” from his Tarpaper Sky album, a song he’d dedicated to Clark.
Health issues notwithstanding, Crowell headed quickly for the venue’s lobby, where he spent quite a while posing for pictures with fans and writing personalized inscriptions in the books they’d bought – and apparently loving every minute of it.
You never know quite what you’re going to get at a show by Texas singer-songwriter and bluesman John Egan. A song title might be familiar, but most likely Egan will throw in some twists that make it sound different from what you’ve heard before – sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. This dynamic was on display at Egan’s Sept. 11 performance at Cowboy Surfer in west Houston. The 17-song set comprised both originals, including the mystical “St. Teresa” and the melancholy “Looking for a Place to Fall,” and covers, including Willie Dixon’s “Spoonful” and Lightnin’ Hopkins’ “Once a Gambler.”
Photo by Paul T. Mueller
All featured Egan’s gruff vocals and his masterful playing on an impressive collection of resonator guitars. Egan plays with a combination of picking, strumming and percussion, often using a slide, and the result is an almost orchestral range of sounds that bring fresh perspective to even the most familiar tunes. One big hit with the 40 or so in attendance was “Down in Houston,” a raucous account of Egan’s teenage years (he attended high school a few miles from the venue). He added a little snippet from a song by hometown heroes ZZ Top for good measure. Another high point was an as-yet-unrecorded “pandemic song” that might end up being titled “Count My Blessings,” with a sweet theme of gratitude in the face of adversity. “I’ve got an old guitar that I love to play,” Egan sang, “and I count my blessings every day.” That’s a nice message after a couple of tough years.
Steve Earle’s August 31 show at Houston’s Heights Theater began with a seven-song tribute to one of Earle’s musical heroes, Jerry Jeff Walker. Fittingly, Earle opened with “Gettin’ By,” which happens to be the opening track of his latest album, Jerry Jeff, featuring 10 Walker songs, and also the first track on Walker’s iconic 1973 album ¡Viva Terlingua!.
Photo by Paul T. Mueller
Backed by his excellent band, Earle then did full justice to several more selections from Walker’s distinguished catalog, including “Gypsy Songman,” “Hill Country Rain” and, of course, “Mr. Bojangles,” which Earle said he had been singing since age 14. The band then moved into an 18-song retrospective of Earle’s own greatest hits, including “Someday,” “Guitar Town,” “Galway Girl,” “Transcendental Blues” and the classic “Copperhead Road.” All featured stellar instrumental and vocal support from The Dukes, most notably guitarist Chris Masterson and his wife, Eleanor Whitmore, on fiddle, mandolin, guitar and keyboards. After a hardly-worth-it break, the band returned for a 20-minute encore. Earle prefaced “Harlem River Blues,” written by his oldest son, Justin Townes Earle, with an alarming account of Justin’s death in 2020 by accidental overdose. That was followed by the exuberant “City of Immigrants” and an energetic take on the Grateful Dead’s “Casey Jones.” The two-hour show concluded with a lively version of The Band’s “Rag Mama Rag.” The night’s opener was The Whitmore Sisters, consisting of Eleanor and Bonnie Whitmore, plus Masterson, who’s married to Eleanor. The 30-minute set, drawn from the band’s recent album Ghost Stories, featured five original tracks and one by singer-songwriter Aaron Lee Tasjan.
Singer-songwriter James McMurtry released his first CD in 1989, so it’s pretty much inevitable that his shows these days resemble career retrospectives. At an August 26 solo acoustic show at Houston’s McGonigel’s Mucky Duck, McMurtry led off with “Melinda,” from his 1995 album Where’d You Hide the Body.
James McMurtry (photo by Paul T. Mueller)
Next came the title track of 2002’s Saint Mary of the Woods; more songs from other stages of his career followed, accompanied by masterful work on six- and twelve-string guitars. They included “a medley of my hit,” the raucous “Choctaw Bingo,” and “Levelland,” which McMurtry described as “one of the Robert Earl Keen songs that I wrote.” Four songs from last year’s excellent The Horses and the Hounds made the cut; the later-in-life romance tale “Canola Fields” might have held particular significance for audience members, many of whom were old enough to have been fans from the beginning. McMurtry closed on a upbeat note with “If It Don’t Bleed,” a wryly humorous look at aging that tempered ruefulness (“there’s more in the mirror than there is up ahead”) with acceptance (“it don’t matter all that much if it don’t bleed”).
After a year lost to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Cayamo cruise returned in mid-March, rewarding passengers and artists alike with nearly a week’s worth of floating music festival. The chartered cruise, produced by Norwegian Cruise Lines subsidiary Sixthman and held aboard the NCL Pearl, featured more than 40 bands and solo artists and around 2,000 passengers. Cayamo is a happy event in any case, but seemed even more exuberant this year after the unwanted hiatus. It was also an especially poignant year for the festival – the 14th since 2008’s maiden voyage – because of the loss of a number of prominent musicians in the past two years, most notably Cayamo veteran John Prine.
In retrospect, the week is something of a blur of stages, songs and singers. As always, seeing one great show meant missing another scheduled at the same time. Your correspondent was not able to attend every set. But certain moments stand out; here are some impressions from particularly memorable performances.
The Mavericks, Pool Deck, Friday: Cayamoans have been clamoring for The Mavericks for years, and this year they got their wish, with the high-energy band kicking off the March 18 departure from Miami (ports of call were St. Thomas and St. Kitts). The pool deck set was a showcase for frontman Raul Malo’s otherworldly vocals, backed by a very capable three-piece horn section, a tight rhythm section and other instrumentation including guitar and accordion.
Raul Malo (photo by Paul T. Mueller)
Grace Potter and Friends, Stardust Theater, Saturday: The songwriter-in-the-round format has become a Cayamo favorite over the years, and for good reason. It’s highly entertaining to get to see not only artists performing their own songs, but also the reactions of those artists to each other’s performances. Cayamo first-timer Grace Potter’s show featured Malo, the iconic Emmylou Harris, and Taylor Goldsmith, frontman of Los Angeles-based band Dawes. Goldsmith made a big impression with “The Game,” which he described as “my attempt to write a Guy Clark song,” and “House Parties,” an ode to the quiet joys of family vacations. Harris’ selections included a couple of songs from her landmark Red Dirt Girl album – “My Antonia” and “The Pearl (Hallelujah).”
Grace Potter (photo by Paul T. Mueller)
Madison Cunningham, Spinnaker Lounge, Saturday: Singer-songwriter and guitarist Madison Cunningham first played Cayamo in 2020, and this year’s festival was a showcase for her impressive artistic growth since then. Leading an accomplished small band, she played and sang with confidence and joy, with a sound that one observer later described on social media as “Joni Mitchell meets King Crimson.” As is common practice among Cayamo musicians, Cunningham also made several guest appearances during other artists’ sets.
Madison Cunningham (photo by Paul T. Mueller)
Quitters Coffee Acoustic Mornings, The Atrium, Sunday: The 9 a.m. show, curated by Canadian singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards, was an enjoyable start to the day for those fans and artists able to answer the early-morning call. Edwards, who famously left the music business several years ago to start a coffee shop named Quitters in an Ottawa suburb, recently quit that business, selling the shop in March. Her guests for the show, the second of the weekend, were Robbie Fulks, Steve Poltz, Aoife O’Donovan and John Paul White. Highlights included Fulks’ rendition of Cowboy Copas’ Sunday-appropriate “We’ll Walk Along Together” and O’Donovan’s lovely take on Joni Mitchell’s “You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio.”
Kathleen Edwards (photo by Paul T. Mueller)
Six Questions with Maple Byrne, The Atrium, Sunday: Sixthman staffer Trae Vedder conducted a wide-ranging interview with Maple Byrne, longtime guitar tech to Emmylou Harris, Buddy Miller and other Nashville notables. Topics included Byrne’s memories of a late ‘70s tour featuring Steve Martin and Steve Goodman, laundry tips for tour T-shirts (wash them inside out), Byrne’s top 10 Cayamo moments (he’s a longtime veteran of the festival), and his extensive collections of records and musical instruments. It was a fascinating peek behind the curtain with someone who’s played a crucial, if not always very visible, role in the success of Cayamo.
Aoife O’Donovan, Spinnaker Lounge, Sunday: Boston-based singer-songwriter Aoife O’Donovan brought along an excellent band, but for this show – a full performance of Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 acoustic album Nebraska – she was mostly on her own. Notwithstanding the incongruity between her lovely voice and guitar and Springsteen’s often dark tales, O’Donovan delivered a nuanced performance, adding her own twists to the songs while staying true to the album’s roots. She got assists from fiddler and former Crooked Still bandmate Brittany Haas on “Highway Patrolman” and brilliant young mandolinist and singer Sierra Hull on the closing “Reason to Believe.” Audience reactions, aside from pin-drop silence, included not a few tears and too many smiles to count.
Aoife Donovan (photo by Paul T. Mueller)
Tré Burt, Spinnaker Lounge, Monday: Sacramento, Calif.-based singer-songwriter Tré Burt started off with a nice rendition of John Prine’s “The Late John Garfield Blues” and proceeded through a set of mostly original material, accompanied at times by a young female singer named Levi. Burt’s voice, delivery and lyrics were, to some observers, reminiscent of the early Bob Dylan. A Dylanesque outrage at injustice was certainly evident in “Under the Devil’s Knee,” a pointed commentary on the killing of George Floyd in which Burt called not for sympathy but for action. Burt, who records for the Prine-founded Oh Boy Records label, closed with a sweet tribute to Prine titled “Dixie Red.”
Tré Burt (photo by Paul T. Mueller)
Paul Thorn’s Campfire Sessions, Stardust Theater, Wednesday: This songwriter round, on a stage decorated with fake foliage, a fake campfire and even a fake owl, featured Cayamo veterans Paul Thorn and Richard Thompson along with newcomer Jerron Paxton. Paxton, a California-based artist with Louisiana roots, features an old-timey sound that recalls blues recordings from the early decades of the 20th century. That sound is supported by his astounding command of a variety of instruments, ranging from guitar and banjo to piano and bones. Paxton also dropped one of the best onstage lines of the festival, stopping a song to admonish the audience about clapping along. “The last thing I need is a bunch of white people helping me with my rhythm,” he said with a big grin, earning laughter and applause. Thorn contributed his trademark mix of humor and poignancy, while Thompson applied his virtuosic acoustic guitar playing and expressive voice to “She Moved Through the Fair” and several other songs.
The Mavericks and Friends, Stardust Theater, Thursday: Raul Malo and his merry band opened their cruise-ending set with an impressive rendition of “Us and Them” from Pink Floyd’s landmark The Dark Side of the Moon album. The hit parade went on from there: “Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down” by “stowaway” Jim Lauderdale; a sultry take on “Friday’s Child” by Kristi Rose, accompanied by husband Fats Kaplin (“I think I need a cigarette,” Malo said at song’s end, “and I don’t even smoke.”); Kathleen Edwards performing the Linda Ronstadt hit “When Will I Be Loved?” with high energy and unbridled joy; “Moon River,” with Malo crooning to the accompaniment of Australian guitar whiz Tommy Emmanuel; JD McPherson’s energetic take on Little Richard’s “Lucille,” and Nicole Atkins’ brilliant rendition of The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby,” complete with professional-grade dance moves and backup vocals (and dancing) by vocal trio Rainbow Girls. The Mavericks and all their guests closed out the set with an extended workout on one of the band’s big hits, “All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down.”
Of course there was much, much more: An all-star tribute to musicians no longer with us; an “All the Best” show featuring friends of John Prine; another Prine tribute dubbed “Souvenirs: Songs of John Prine”; a nautical-themed sailaway show by Punch Brothers, featuring frequent shouts of “Ahoy!” by frontman and ace mandolinist Chris Thile; a Stowaway Reveal Show with “stowaways” Jim Lauderdale and Steve Poltz, featuring an album’s worth of songs written especially for Cayamo; the popular Sunday morning pool deck show, this year called Sunday Soul Session; Brady Blade’s Drum and Music Extravaganza, featuring the seemingly omnipresent drummer; an onstage conversation between Emmylou Harris and Fiona Prine, John’s widow; Cayamo debuts that included Austin blues legend Ruthie Foster, UK folk-rock duo Ida Mae, and others, and too many other shows and events to mention.
Next year’s Cayamo is scheduled for Feb. 10-17, 2023, sailing from Miami with stops at Tortola and St. Maarten.
If you had any lingering doubts about how performers and audiences are feeling about the recent resumption of live performances, Rodney Crowell’s July 29 show at Houston’s Heights Theater would have put those doubts firmly to rest. Crowell and his excellent four-piece band, clearly thrilled to be back on the road, put on an energetic performance spanning the Houston native’s long career, up to and including his new release, Triage. The near-capacity audience responded in kind.
The show was only the third of the current tour, but you’d never have known it from the band’s tight playing. Multi-instrumentalist Eamon McLoughlin and keyboardist Catherine Marx earned frequent and enthusiastic mid-song applause for their impressive solos, while bassist Zachariah Hickman and percussionist Glen Caruba provided solid rhythm support. Band members also contributed vocals in support of Crowell’s fine voice and powerful delivery.
Crowell started off with the title track of 1995’s Jewel of the South and continued with the anthemic “Earthbound” from 2003. He dedicated “Still Learning How to Fly” to an audience member turning 70. Marx and McLoughlin, on fiddle, showed off their impressive skills on the jazzy “The Weight of the World,” from Crowell’s 2015 collaboration with Emmylou Harris, The Traveling Kind.
Other highlights of the 25-song set included older hits such as “I Couldn’t Leave You If I Tried,” “Shame on the Moon,” “I Walk the Line (Revisited)” (with Hickman handling the Johnny Cash vocals), and the more recent “It Ain’t Over Yet,” which Crowell wrote for his old friend Guy Clark. A mid-set segment of Triage songs included the title track, “Something Has to Change” and “This Body Isn’t All There Is to Who I Am.” “Telephone Road” and “East Houston Blues,” with their local references, got big reactions, as did Crowell’s stories about growing up in the Houston area and about the genesis of some of his songs.
The main set ended with a trio of hits from Crowell’s more mainstream days in Nashville – “I Ain’t Living Long Like This,” “Leaving Louisiana in the Broad Daylight” and “ ’Til I Gain Control Again.” After a standing ovation and a short break, the band returned with “Frankie Please,” which Crowell dedicated to the late Dusty Hill of ZZ Top, and a quiet but powerful solo rendition of his “cautionary tale” of crime and irony, “Highway 17.”
Austin’s Continental Club helped sustain James McMurtry over the years. For two decades McMurtry played regular Wednesday night gigs at the Austin club when he wasn’t touring elsewhere. Now the Texas-based singer-songwriter is returning the favor. The Continental, a longtime fixture on Austin’s live-music scene, is closed due to coronavirus restrictions – as are its Houston offshoot and many other live-music venues. McMurtry is responding by donating all proceeds from sales of a recently released digital EP to the club.
Blasted from the Past, recorded live at the club in 2006, features McMurtry and his longtime bandmates Ronnie Johnson on bass, Tim Holt on guitar and Daren Hess on drums. The five-song collection spans a decade’s worth of McMurtry albums – “Rachel’s Song” from Where’d You Hide the Body (1995); “Saint Mary of the Woods” and “Out Here in the Middle” from 2002’s Saint Mary of the Woods, and “See the Elephant” from 2005’s Childish Things. The closing track is “Laredo,” an ominous rocker written by one of McMurtry’s Austin contemporaries, Jon Dee Graham.
Blasted, which McMurtry calls “whiskey-soaked cowpunk from a bygone era,” is an interesting time capsule from an earlier phase of his career. It chronicles a tight band of seasoned road warriors, playing and singing with the kind of intensity that’s sometimes needed to hold the attention of a rowdy bar crowd. McMurtry’s guitar playing (all electric) is ferocious, and his voice has a roughness and an urgency shaped by years of near-constant gigging (and probably some whiskey along the way).
McMurtry these days is performing solo, streaming his shows live from his home in Lockhart, not far from Austin. Drawing from his extensive catalogue, he comes across as relaxed and relatively folksy. His incisive lyrics and brilliant guitar playing (on an impressive collection of six- and 12-string acoustics) are on full display, but McMurtry projects the ease of a man playing for friends in his living room. It’s a more than excellent experience, but it doesn’t include the rock ‘n’ roll power of his full-band shows. Fans of that side of McMurtry will find plenty to love in Blasted from the Past.
The EP is available via download, in a variety of digital formats. via McMurtry’s website or that of the Continental Club.
By Paul T. Mueller – Gurf Morlix made good use of the early months of the COVID crisis, producing an album titled Kiss of the Diamondback. As might be expected in a time of isolation, most of the nine songs are written from a first-person perspective, dealing with themes including love, insecurity, life’s struggles, and the search for meaning. All are filtered through the Austin singer-songwriter’s distinctive sensibilities; the overall tone is somewhat moody and dark, but with flashes of lightness and humor. And no one dies, as sometimes happens in Morlix’s stories.
A couple of songs focus on beginnings. “She said, ‘I only sleep with geniuses,’ ” / I took a half step back,” Morlix sings in “Geniuses.” (After that promising start, we never quite learn how things work out.) “We Just Talked,” not as dramatic, is an account of a quiet conversation that might escalate. “Magnetism, hard to miss / I could have leaned in any moment for a kiss,” the narrator says. “Somehow that all seemed too obvious / and we just talked.”
Existing relationships also get their due. “If You Were Perfect” is a kind of gently backhanded love song in which Morlix croons, “If you were perfect, you wouldn’t have the same allure,” his delivery accented by sweet strings. In “Reason to Live,” he declares, “I’ll go anywhere with you / Do anything you ask me to.”
A few songs take a wider view. The ominous “Water Is Risin’ ” is an impending-disaster narrative that could be a metaphor for this year’s ongoing flood of bad news. “Lookin’ for hope, but I can’t find it,” Morlix sings. “Fear in front, the unknown behind it / The rain ain’t stopped, we can’t take much more.” The uncertainty of the times is reflected in “Hard As a Hammer, Sweet As a Kiss”: “Hard as a hammer, sweet as a kiss / How did life ever come to this?”
Morlix closes with “Is There Anyone Out There?,” a dirge-like tune that seems to question the very idea of connection. “Is there anyone out there?” he intones plaintively, accompanied by slow drumbeats and the drone of a cello. “Anybody going my way? Ain’t nobody going my way.”
The album is almost a one-person project – Morlix wrote eight songs, co-wrote the other, sang all the vocals and played almost all the instruments – most notably a lot of creative guitar. He also produced, engineered, mixed and mastered the album at his studio. Other contributors include Rick Richards on drums and Gene Elders, credited with arranging and performing the string section.
By Paul T. Mueller “I’m getting used to living alone,” Eliot Bronson sings on the title track of his new album, Empty Spaces. “I’m getting used to nobody there when I come home… I’m getting used to the empty spaces that you used to fill.”
And that’s one of the happier songs on this 10-song collection.
Empty Spaces is one fine breakup album – written, as Bronson says, as therapy in the wake of painful breakup and a move to a new city. It’s got everything one would expect – sadness, confusion, bitterness, resignation – and, of course, emptiness. One could easily imagine most of these songs on breakup mixtapes, if that’s still a thing. The album is also a pretty good metaphor for the times we’re living in, as we navigate the transition between the world we used to know and the new, harsher reality we find ourselves in.
Several albums into a solo career, Bronson is only getting better as a writer. Around every corner here is another skillful turn of phrase to capture experience and emotion. “Don’t give me words, words can confuse,” pleads the weary narrator of “Let Me Go.” “Words can conceal the weapons we choose.” Confusion and frustration fuel “Good for You”: “If it’s so good for you, why aren’t you kinder? If it’s so good for you, why don’t you step lighter?” And in “Montana,” a sweetly sung bit of misplaced hostility, Bronson vents his rage on a proxy instead of his real target: “Your mountains in the night/Look like the edges of a knife that cut me… You took her away from me, and how could I ever compete with what you’ve got?” In “Gone,” the album’s bleak closer, he sings, “I listen to the rain play on the leaves/Like seconds ticking away, tiny thieves,” accompanied by twangy guitars and a lonely-sounding harmonica.
Empty Spaces encompasses a range of musical genres. “Visitor” is introspective singer-songwriter pop, while “Good for You” has a glossier feel. There’s a little country in “Good for You” and “She Loves the Mountains,” and “With Somebody” is packed with ’80s-style guitars and drums. The title track is a lovely, timeless pop song, full of sweet melody and catchy hooks, layered vocals and understated playing.
The album is also a showcase for Bronson’s talent for composition and arrangement. He shares credit for the project’s atmospheric production with bandmate Will Robertson, who also plays guitars, keyboards and bass. Other contributors included Bret Hartley (guitars), Colin Agnew (percussion), Marla Feeney (violin), Andrew Colella (viola), and Prisca Strothers (harmony vocals).
Bronson has been doing weekly livestreamed shows for the past few months, and for the most part they’ve been lively and upbeat – not surprising from a guy who last year came up with a funny novelty song based on that viral tweet about “30-50 feral hogs.” That he’s written and released an album’s worth of downbeat songs speaks to his skill as a writer, as well as his willingness to bare the darker side of his soul. It’s been said that artists turn pain into art, and Eliot Bronson has certainly done that with Empty Spaces.
Eliza Gilkyson probably couldn’t have made a timelier album. The Austin-based singer-songwriter’s recently released 2020 captures the essence of the troubled times we’re currently enduring. And if she unflinchingly depicts the anger and despair many are feeling, she also channels more positive counterparts such as faith, sympathy and hope.
“We’re on fire, we’re on fire,” Gilkyson acknowledges in the opening track, “Promises to Keep,” before stating her resolve in the chorus: “Thoughts and prayers will never make things right/and I have promises to keep.” That’s followed by “Peace in Our Hearts,” an anthem to what some might call hippie sentiment – “Gonna stand for the earth and our children too.” But there’s toughness, too, as revealed in the final verse – “Gonna stare into the face of the hateful mind/with peace in our hearts.”
Songs such as “One More Day” and “Beautiful World of Mine” take a softer approach, exploring themes such as love, forgiveness and the beauty of nature. They’re essentially the kind of “secular hymns” that have become a Gilkyson trademark in recent years.
Gilkyson bares her lyrical fangs on the ominous “Sooner or Later,” in which she recounts the sins of the oppressors – “They take the oil from the earth, put their coal dust in the sky/Their poison in the water, they don’t care if people die” – before warning, “Sooner or later, it’s a natural fact/Gonna rise up, gonna take it all back.” Age has taken its toll on Gilkyson’s voice, but she’s in excellent form on this track.
Most of 2020 comprises Gilkyson’s writing, either alone or with co-writers, but there are some notable covers. “Beach Haven,” a plea for racial harmony that sets Woody Guthrie’s words to Gilkyson’s music, is described as an adaptation of Guthrie’s 1952 letter about a segregated Brooklyn apartment complex called Beach Haven that was owned by Fred Trump, father of the current president. Gilkyson also gives a haunting rendition of Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” and an impassioned take on Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” – both sadly still relevant after all these years.
The album closes on a gently hopeful note with “We Are Not Alone,” an ode to community that she wrote with Robert McPeek. “A flickering flame each soul holds high/Searching for another kindred spark,” she sings. “We are not alone/We are not alone/Not alone.”
Gilkyson’s son, Cisco Ryder Gilliland, contributed drums and percussion, as well as fine production. He had plenty to work with in the way of contributors – an all-star cast of Austin notables including Mike Hardwick on guitar, Chris Maresh on bass, Bukka Allen on keyboards, Warren Hood on fiddle, Kym Warner on mandolin, and BettySoo and Jaimee Harris on vocals.
Don’t look for Eliza Gilkyson at your local arena any time soon, but with 2020, she has produced a highly relevant musical chronicle of our times that both describes the trouble we’re in and prescribes what we need to do about it. There are voices that need to be heard in times of crisis. Eliza Gilkyson’s is one of them.
