Robbie and Jack Saunders

By Paul T. Mueller
–In the beginning, at least, the atmosphere in the Old Quarter Acoustic Café in Galveston  on the evening of June 15 wasn’t exactly the quiet, attentive ambience you might expect at a CD release show by a respected artist. Far from it – Jack Saunders’ show had more the feel of a rowdy Friday night in a tiny beach-town dive.
But if Saunders was bothered by the yakking and whooping – and the persistent efforts of a middle-aged patron who seemed to believe his bar purchases included the right to carry on a high-volume personal conversation with the guys on stage – he was professional enough not to show it. Instead, he just played and sang a little louder, and eventually most of the more annoying fans either left or quieted down, making the rest of the show an intimate and thoroughly enjoyable experience for those who came to listen.
If the behavior of some audience members wasn’t entirely appropriate, the venue certainly was. Named after the long-closed Old Quarter in Houston, where Townes Van Zandt recorded a legendary live album in 1973, the Café is owned and run by Rex “Wrecks” Bell, who played bass for Van Zandt (and for Lightnin’ Hopkins, Lucinda Williams and many others). The club, in a funky old building on the edge of downtown Galveston, is known as a songwriters’ haven and listening room, as well as a virtual shrine to Van Zandt.
Saunders, a Houston resident and a fixture on the Texas singer-songwriter circuit for many years, was celebrating the release of his latest CD, A Real Good Place to Start. His 90-minute set, which also featured his nephew Robbie Saunders on acoustic and electric guitars, Dobro and lap steel , was a lively mix of hard-earned wisdom, fond reminiscences, love songs and odes to the road, most of them written or co-written by Jack Saunders.
Saunders, who is also a well-known producer and studio owner in Houston, accompanied himself on guitar, Dobro and harmonica, showing off some fine skills on all three. He frequently traded licks and solos with his nephew, who at 25 has been playing guitar for nearly a decade and a half and whose playing seemed to improve as the evening went on. He spent most of the show playing an acoustic guitar that his uncle had given him – the same guitar, Jack Saunders said, on which he had written his first song.
Some highlights:
– “Elegant Grace,” a gentle love song Saunders said was written with film star Grace Kelly in mind, which he dedicated to a couple in the audience who had gotten married earlier in the day
-“You’ll Have to Wait,” a hey-hang-in-there-it-gets-better song Saunders wrote for his nephew during trying times a few years back.
-“Red Dirt and Rusted Steel,” a tribute to the landscape of the West that featured plenty of high lonesome imagery and some nice electric guitar accompaniment by Robbie.
-“I’ve Got a Lot,” written by Robbie Saunders, himself a singer-songwriter, which he described as a song about things one doesn’t do or say in a relationship
-A nice rendition of Tom T. Hall’s “That’s How I Got to Memphis,” featuring Robbie on Dobro.
The show ended with a long, jammy take on “Doors of Amsterdam,” a song Jack Saunders said had its roots in a couple of weeks spent “licking his wounds” at the end of a European tour with country singer Tracie Lynn.