Bruce Robison and Radney Foster

By Ken Paulson

— The Texas songwriter sessions are always a highlight of the Tin Pan South Songwriters Festival in Nashville and tonight was no exception.

Radney Foster, Wade Bowen, Jon Randall and Bruce Robison showcased their best work and biggest hits at 3rd and Lindsley. Songwriters aren’t always adept vocalists, but all four were first-rate and often disarming performers.

Foster asked the audience if it wanted a new or old song, and the crowd predictably called for a classic. Foster delivered with “Just Call Me Lonesome.”

Foster noted that the first song written with a new collaborator is typically a throwaway, but “I’m In” was the first song he wrote with Georgia Middleman. He said that both knew they had something special.

Randall’s “Whiskey Lullaby” was a stunner. He joked afterward that there’s “nothing like a double-suicide sing-along.”

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By Paul T. Mueller

Colin Blunstone

–You could almost understand it if a band that scored its greatest hit almost 45 years ago – AFTER breaking up – decided to reform for a phone-it-in-and-cash-the-checks reunion tour. That’s been known to happen. No such worries with The Zombies, though. More than 50 years after the band started out in England, these guys are still playing for real, and their fans, old and new, are loving it.

The band, featuring original members Rod Argent (keyboards and vocals) and Colin Blunstone (lead vocals), followed up several well-received performances at South by Southwest in Austin with a March 17 show at Fitzgerald’s in Houston. The audience of several hundred, mostly standing on the open floor in front of the stage and frequently singing along, was treated to a 95-minute set that spanned the group’s history, from its ahead-of-its-time origins to its gratifyingly vital present.

Argent and Blunstone, backed by guitarist Tom Toomey and the father-and-son rhythm section of Jim Rodford on bass and Steve Rodford on drums, served up the hits that many in the crowd were no doubt expecting: “Tell Her No,” “She’s Not There” and of course the biggest of all, “Time of the Season.” They also played several other tracks from the landmark 1968 album Odessey and Oracle, including “Care of Cell 44,” “A Rose for Emily,” “I Want Her She Wants Me” and “This Will Be Our Year.”

Some newer material also got a well-deserved showcase. Several tracks from 2010’s Breathe Out, Breathe In made an appearance, including the title track, “Any Other Way” and “A Moment in Time.” Blunstone sang a couple of non-Zombies tunes – “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted?,” which he recorded with Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics, and “Old and Wise,” from one of his stints with the Alan Parsons Project.

To no one’s surprise, there was also an excellent, rousing rendition of “Hold Your Head Up,” the biggest hit from Argent’s solo career, featuring an extended organ part with a snippet of “The Yellow Rose of Texas” tossed in just for fun.

As many times as the band must have done these songs over the decades, they still sounded fresh, and there was no mistaking the musicians’ fondness for the material or the enthusiasm of their playing and singing. Toomey and bassist Rodford frequently contributed ethereal harmonies (and big grins) to accompany Blunstone’s delicate vocals and the grittier singing of Argent, who delighted the crowd with his borderline hammy but always endearing rock-star posturing. Blunstone, by contrast, let his singing do the talking, as it were, performing most of the time without a spotlight and at other times hanging back with closed eyes and a smile.

The main set closed with the band’s first big hit, the much-covered “She’s Not There,” which predictably turned into a happy sing-along. After a brief break, the band returned with the rocking “Just Out of Reach” and a jazzy, understated version of what Blunstone said was the first song The Zombies ever recorded, the Gershwin standard “Summertime.” On a warm evening in Houston, it made for a sweet ending to a fine performance.

The Houston show, which also featured an opening set by Canadian indie rockers Elephant Stone, was the last on the current North American leg of The Zombies’ tour. After a few months of touring the United Kingdom, the band is scheduled to return in June for several shows on the East Coast.

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Americana Music News — For a fourth week, Cheater’s Game by Kelly Willis and Bruce Robison and Carrie Rodriguez’s Give Me All You Got are in the top two slots on the Americana Music Association airplay chart swapping their positions from last week.  The Mavericks’ Suited Up and Ready/In Time remains in third place.

 New to the chart this week: Low Highway by  Steve Earle and the Dukes (and Duchesses), Dawes’ Stories Don’t End, Bobby Rush’s Down in Louisiana, Gulf Morlix’s Finds the Present Tense, the Howlin’ Brothers’ Howl and Chicago Farmer’s Backenforth, Illinois.

Earle’s album is the most-added album of the week, followed by Son Volt’s Honky Tonk and Caitlin Rose’s The Stand-In.

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By Ken Paulson

— Cat Mother and the All Night News Boys’ The Street Giveth and the Street Taketh Away (Real Gone Music) is a surprisingly fresh-sounding 1969 release with two claims to distinction: It was produced by Jimi Hendrix and spawned a Top 40 hit in “Good Old Rock ‘n’ Roll,” a medley of “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Chantilly Lace,” Long Tall Sally,” “Party Doll,” “Sweet Little Sixteen” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.” These covers came just little more than a decade after the original recordings (like covering 3 Doors Down or the Dixie Chicks today), but seemed eons ago at the time.

The Hendrix influence isn’t particularly apparent, but you have to believe the band raised its game for these recordings. It’s an ambitious amalgam of rock, folk and jazz.

Most interesting is “How I Spent My Summer,” a pop protest song about police brutality and oppression, tied to the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Melodic and harmony-laden, it’s the Association with attitude.

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Ray Wylie Hubbard

By Paul T. Mueller — While a church is not necessarily the first place you’d expect to see Ray Wylie Hubbard performing, it does make sense in a way. The Oklahoma-bred singer-songwriter has been called the Wylie Lama, after all, and there’s a certain mystical/spiritual thread that runs through many of his songs. So it’s fitting that he was chosen to kick off “Songs of Lovin’ and Redemption,” a free concert series that began Feb. 20 at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Houston.

The series was put together by the Rev. Patrick J. Miller and the Rev. Eric P. Hungerford, the church’s rector and associate rector, respectively. According to Hungerford, it was designed as a gift to fans of Texas singer-songwriters and also as a way to get people thinking about the themes of love and redemption during the weeks leading up to Easter.

Accompanied by drummer Kyle Schneider, Hubbard was apparently untroubled by the less-than-optimal sound system in the church’s beautifully renovated sanctuary (to be fair, it’s no doubt an excellent venue for music of a more sacred nature). The two performed a 14-song, 90-minute set that showcased Hubbard’s excellent harmonica and guitar playing (with and without slide) and gritty vocals, and Schneider’s fine percussion, all in service of Hubbard’s iconoclastic songs. A couple of selections came from last year’s The Grifter’s Hymnal: the antiwar “Red Badge of Courage” and the rock ‘n’ roll memoir “Mother Blues” (“I’m going to see how far I can push this,” Hubbard said by way of introducing the latter).

Other highlights, interspersed with funny stories, included “Without Love,” a quiet, beautiful anthem; “Loco Gringo’s Lament,” a cautionary tale about the perils of fast living; “Snake Farm,” as always a sing-along (and the first song Hubbard sang after announcing, “That’s all the nice songs I know”); and “Mississippi Flush,” a gambling tale played at the request of an audience member. He closed with “The Messenger,” which he prefaced with a story about overcoming his apprehension and belatedly learning to finger-pick when he was in his 40s. The song mentions Townes Van Zandt and poet Rainer Marie Rilke, quoting the latter: “Our fears are like dragons/Guarding our most precious treasures.”

Other artists scheduled for the series include Houston singer-songwriter Shake Russell on Feb. 20, legendary honky-tonker Billy Joe Shaver on March 6, Sara Hickman (former Official State Musician of Texas) on March 13, and San Marcos-based singer-songwriter Terri Hendrix on March 20.

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Americana Music News — Unexpected news release of the week: Mike Nesmith is heading out on tour. While best known as a member of the Monkees (and possibly the most reluctant), Nesmith  write and recorded  Americana music decades before there was a term for it. He wrote “Different Drum,” Linda Ronstadt’s first hit with the Stone Poneys, “Some of Shelley’s Blues,” covered impressively by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and his own country-flavored solo hit “Joanne.”All of his First National Band material is worth checking out, as well as his pioneering video efforts.

Tour dates courtesy of Cary Baker:

Americana Music News — It’s three weeks in a row for Cheater’s Game by Kelly Willis and Bruce Robison to top the Americana Music Association airplay chart, with Carrie Rodriguez’s Give Me All You Got in the second spot.

New to the chart this week: Old Yellow Moon by Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell, Minute By Minute by the James Hunter Six and Robert Randolph Presents: The Slide Brothers.

Most added to Americana music radio: Old Yellow Moon, Milk Carton Kids’ The Ash & Clay and Gulf Morlix’s.

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