Tag: Austin

BGS 5+5: Jesse Dayton

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Jesse Dayton
Hometown: Beaumont Texas, but been in Austin forever.
Latest Album: Gulf Coast Sessions, out July 24
Personal nicknames: AKA the Beaumonster, AKA Country Soul Brother

What other art forms, like literature, film, dance, painting, etc. inform your music?

Books and film have been the biggest inspiration outside of listening to other folks’ music. I remember seeing Ralph Steadman’s subversive art in Rolling Stone magazine when I was a kid and then reading the words under it, which were Hunter S. Thompson’s words. I had read some of the classics at this point, but that was my first introduction to outsider, almost punk rock-like, literature. Then I got into the Beat writers and after that it was the Russian writers, then then Irish writers, up until Latino surrealist like Márquez.

I always gotta a book going. Right now it’s On Tyranny by Timothy Snider. The biggest thing I learned from the writers I love is sometimes the narrative of your story/lyrics don’t have to be perfectly defined. When people digest art, the only thing they usually remember about it is how it made them feel. Same with films. Truffaut, Scorsese, and PT Anderson have all made me think, “Wow, that’d make a great lyric.” I directed a horror B-film that starred Malcolm McDowell called Zombex on Amazon. I’m writing a book for Hachette Book Group/DaCapo Press which will be out 2021.

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

I bought a house in South Austin about 18 years ago and we have access to a beautiful greenbelt forest that runs outside of town next to a flowing creek and that’s where I trail run. Besides the mental health benefits I get from defeating the shitty committee in my head that’s always trying to talk me out of exercising, I get lots of song ideas out in the woods that I wouldn’t get running on concrete. Besides, country music is not just a genre, it’s an actual place and sometimes ya gotta get out in the woods away from folks to receive clear messages about your work. I’m buzzing at a different frequency when my feet are in the dirt.

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

Well, as long as we’re “dreaming,” I can’t think of anything better than having a big plate of Cajun seafood, oysters on the half shell, Fried red fish stuffed with crab meat, and a shrimp cocktail, circa 1955 at Antoine’s in the Quarter in New Orleans with the father of American music, Louis Armstrong. What’s not to love? By the way, I rarely eat seafood anymore and eat mostly a plant-based diet so I don’t keel over like all my other relatives did in their 50s from clogged arteries. But I will go fishing and eat my catch from time to time.

How often do you hide behind a character in a song are use “you“ when it’s actually “me”?

I’m guilty of doing this sometimes when I write personal and vulnerable lyrics that couldn’t be about anyone else but me, but I write it as “you.” I do like the idea of creating characters vocally though. All my favorite singers have created them throughout their careers, whether it was Mick Jagger’s country voice on “Wild Horses” or his blues voice on “Midnight Rambler.” Everyone from Jerry Reed to Bob Dylan to Howlin’ Wolf all create characters in their lyrics and in the vocal booth.

If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?

Try to give back more than I receive and keep my expectations lower than my gratitude. The more I do this, the better I feel.

Photo credit: Ray Redding

WATCH: Waylon Payne, “All the Trouble”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Waylon Payne
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Song: “All the Trouble”
Album: Blue Eyes, The Harlot, The Queer, The Pusher & Me
Release Date: Sept. 11, 2020
Label: Carnival Recording Company/Empire

In Their Words: “I had just made the jump in November and moved back to Nashville [from Los Angeles] in 2015. The house I had rented was cool, but I had no sooner signed the lease before my friend Lee Ann asked me to join her on a writing weekend up in the Hamptons. I had not been there in many years, but Adam Wright and I flew to somewhere and met the bus and woke up on Long Island. There was a chill in the air and there was a good feeling going.

“Lee Ann Womack has been my friend for many years. I hold her and her family — Frank, Aubrie, and Anna — as my family and it has always been that way. She had set us up in a huge mansion with stellar views and fireplaces in each room. An added bonus came from a foul-mouthed top chef named Sylvia, who continually supplied (or plied) us with delicious five-course meals — every meal. The evenings were often wrapped with a hot toddy, full of bourbon and butter. We were there for almost a week and the songs started flowing. Adam, Lee Ann, and I wrote a song called ‘All the Trouble’ and another song called ‘Pictures.’ We also wrote some other songs with the band and Ethan Ballinger. The week felt like a success, and we all returned to Nashville just before the Thanksgiving holiday…” (Read more below.)

“…Later, Frank asked if I would like to go with them to Houston to record Lee Ann’s new album. He also asked if I would play guitar on the session. I am a lot of things, but no one has ever really referred to me as a guitar player. [My dog] Petey and I loaded up in a rental car and took off to Houston. The session was electric, and it was amazing to be there with my extended family to make music. Later, when the album came out, I had four songs on it. A few months later, I was sitting in the audience and nominated with Lee Ann and Adam for a Grammy. We didn’t win, and I didn’t mind that we lost to Brandi Carlile.

“As we were cutting this album, I had not planned on including ‘All the Trouble’ until Frank and Eric Masse suggested I give it a shot. I am proud to say it is one of my favorite tracks on the album. Thank you Lee Ann for including me on this fun journey!” — Waylon Payne

Photo credit: Bridgette Aikens

WATCH: Charley Crockett, “Run Horse Run”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Charley Crockett
Hometown: San Benito, Texas / Austin, Texas
Song: “Run Horse Run”
Album: Welcome to Hard Times
Release Date: July 31, 2020 (album)
Label: Son of Davy/Thirty Tigers

In Their Words: “I remember seeing the races at Louisiana Downs in New Orleans when I was a kid. I remember the tension in people’s hands while they waited to see who would win. Like a coin flipping in the air. The dirt flying behind those horses as they ran. They looked like they were running as if they’re life depended on it. I’d say it did.” — Charley Crockett

Photo credit: Bobby Cochran

LISTEN: Monte Warden and the Dangerous Few, “Martini”

Posted on by Editor

Artist name: Monte Warden and the Dangerous Few
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Song: “Martini”
Album: Monte Warden and the Dangerous Few
Release Date: June 19, 2020
Label: Break A Leg Records

In Their Words: “As we first started playing shows, new fans would come up and enthusiastically ask, ‘What do you call this music?!’ We described is as ‘martini music.’ My wife Brandi suggested we write a big, fun up-tempo ode to the martini, so we rode over to Floyd Domino’s house and all did our best to just get the hell outta this song’s way. It’s one of those rare little gems that seemed to write itself. That line ‘country club mosquitoes’ had us all goin’ nuts. I can count on this song to always deliver a musical shovel-to-the-face at any gig.” — Monte Warden

Photo credit: Sean Mathis

LISTEN: John Baumann, “Second Wind”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: John Baumann
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Song: “Second Wind”
Album: Country Shade
Release Date: June 5, 2020
Label: The Next Waltz

In Their Words: “When I think of myself from ten years ago, I recall a much more naive and unaware version. Blindly ambitious, I was willing to chase a carrot as far as needed, to feel validated as an artist and writer. It was before I had taken a few licks and gotten knocked down. It was before my expectations had been tempered, before my sight had been adjusted to reality. The highs and lows, the ebbs and flows. I sometimes wonder what it would be like if I could only bottle that feeling of invincibility, and take a dose of it every day for the rest of my life. It really speaks to the power of youth and the strength that people have when they are motivated. This song is about questioning your motives, where you have gone right and wrong, remembering who you can lean on, and ultimately finding how to harness that long lost feeling of unbridled motivation to push forward and find that validation.” — John Baumann

johnbaumann · John Baumann – Country Shade – 09 – Second Wind

Photo credit: Jordan Fischels

The Shift List – Mark Buley (Odd Duck, Sour Duck Market) – Austin, TX

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week, host Chris Jacobs continues The Shift List’s feature on music and restaurants in Austin, Texas with Mark Buley, chef and partner at Odd Duck and Sour Duck Market.

LISTEN: APPLE PODCASTS • MP3

In 2009, Bryce Gilmore opened a food truck, the Odd Duck Farm to Trailer, with his brother in South Austin. The trailer featured dishes utilizing fresh and locally-sourced ingredients, which was still something of a novel idea at the time, and it became the cornerstone philosophy behind all of their endeavors moving forward, including the eventual brick and mortar version of Odd Duck and the more casual Sour Duck Market.

Mark Buley, originally from a small town in Wisconsin, journeyed to Austin in 2012 to partner with Gilmore in anticipation of Odd Duck opening as a brick-and-mortar restaurant. The pair have been working together ever since, and in the last decade, the Odd Duck collective has become a staple of the Austin food scene — fun and interesting, not too serious, and done well. Perhaps more than any of the restaurants recently featured on The Shift List, Sour Duck Market is intentionally communal. It’s a bakery, cafe, coffee shop, outdoor patio, and multi-service kind of place that’s designed for customers to stay a while.

Sour Duck and Odd Duck are both open for curbside pickup as things in Austin still move to fully open up during the coronavirus pandemic; listening to this conversation is a reminder of how much we’ve temporarily lost and have been taking for granted, but it also serves as a hopeful promise of what we’ll get back when the time is right.

In the meantime, if you want to bring the Sour Duck ethos into your own home, order a copy of The Odd Duck Almanac, a recently-released, annual cookbook/magazine-style publication that’s as true of a representation of the restaurants as you can get while we wait for everything to reopen.

BGS 5+5: Reckless Kelly

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Reckless Kelly
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Latest album: American Girls & American Jackpot

Answers provided by Willy Braun

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

I get a lot of ideas from books, lines here and there, but a lot of time they’re just ideas. A theme or a mood. I get some ideas from movies as well but that’s a little more rare. I’d say most of my ideas for songs come from things people say or do in everyday life. I’m always writing things down.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

I’ve always known I was going to be a musician. It’s the family business. My dad, uncles, grandpa, brothers, cousins, etc., are all musicians. I grew up singing on stage with my dad’s band and eventually my brothers and I all joined so there was never really any question about what path we were going to go down.

However, to answer the question more directly, I remember when I was about 5 I got up and sang a song with my dad at a chili cook-off. After the show the girl at the concession stand gave me my Coke for free, and I remember thinking that was the coolest thing ever. It may have been what hooked me for good.

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

I have a place in Idaho where I do the majority of my writing these days. It’s in the high desert with mountains all around so it’s really inspiring. It takes me a few days to get in a groove but once I find my rhythm I usually get a lot done. It also helps that it’s off the beaten path so distractions are at a minimum.

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

If I could meet one person it would probably be Sir Paul McCartney. I’m pretty sure he’s a vegetarian so I’d eat whatever he wanted to have as long as we could chat about writing and of course, the Beatles. I’m sure we’d have a couple bottles of wine to wash it all down as well.

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?

I use a lot of metaphors in my songs so that’s a place to hide out, ha ha. I almost always write with a caricature in mind, so even when I say “me” I’m not usually talking about myself. A lot of my stuff is fictional so I don’t worry about hiding much. The new albums are the first time I’ve really explained a lot of meaning behind the songs. Normally I let people make up their own version of what they think it’s all about. This time I felt like it was important to let people behind the curtain a bit because of the concept. I wanted them to get it.

Photo credit: Cynthia Dawn Photography

BGS 5+5: Ruthie Foster

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Ruthie Foster
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Latest album: Live at the Paramount

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

Sam Cooke. Growing up in a mostly gospel singing family, Sam Cooke’s music was playing on the stereo all of the time. He was not only the most melodic gospel soloist I’d ever heard, but he could sing anything from popular songs to fronting a full band with horns, changing stylistically as a singer (Sam Cooke at The Copa). I’d like to think that my music brings a similar energy to the live stage, which is why I decided to record with a big band on my latest release.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

I was about 10 years old sitting on the front pew in my family’s church in central Texas watching and listening to my uncle sing a solo one Sunday afternoon. He’d sang the song many times before but this time it was different. Tears were streaming down his cheeks, his voice was shaky, and he had his hand on my other uncle’s shoulder, who was playing the piano. Visibly moved, he changed the energy in the entire congregation. Everyone was crying, me too. I knew then that singing was a true gift that can be used to elevate.

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

I have a tough time finishing songs when I’m in my head too much; I’ve had no problem starting them at all. “Singing The Blues” is a perfect example. At the time I was getting a little pressure about writing for my next album and I resisted. Touring a lot while house searching from the road and trying to write was stressful. It wasn’t until I decided to put those feelings on paper when I realized that the song was really about my life. So I was able to start and finish it, “Trying to find a new home, trying to write a new song. Trying to find a rhythm, that’ll help me get through it, singing the blues”.

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

I love to cook at home when I’m off the road. One of my favorites is baked fish with garlic, fresh dill, seasonal vegetables, and a good wine. I always prep and pair that dish with one of my favorite singers, Tony Bennett!

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

One night onstage at a festival I started to lose my voice from really bad allergies. I tried to sing but after a few songs, I was straining and in extreme pain. I stopped and apologized for not being able to continue, but someone in the audience started singing the lyrics for me, then there were more people joining in on a few more songs and before I knew it, the set was complete and sung entirely by my beautiful fans while I played guitar for them! They had lifted and carried me through the show! I was incredibly moved and grateful.

Ruthie Foster – “Singing The Blues”

I’m very proud of being brave enough to tell my own story about how I came to the blues.

Sam Cooke – “Bring It On Home To Me”

Sam was soulful and a skillful in the music business, owning all of his own publishing.

Tedeschi Trucks Band – “Midnight In Harlem”

This tune reminds me of learning to adapt to my new environment while writing songs when lived in NYC.

Bill Withers – “Grandma’s Hands”

This one captures how I felt about my own “Big Mama” and reminds me of how she still sings through me.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe – “Singing in My Soul”

The very first and baddest rocking mama on guitar ever! Huge influence on my playing.

Photo Credit: Yellow House Studios

Laurie Lewis & Friends, “Dear Old Dixie (Live)”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner
This edition of Tunesday turned out to be an oddly circuitous task. We often take this space to highlight our Artists of the Month, pointing out instrumentals from throughout their catalogs and across their careers, but for singer, songwriter, guitarist, poet, frontwoman, and long-distance hiker Laurie Lewis, the tunes are simply in too-short supply. Not because they don’t exist, but because Lewis’ cosmic level lyricism tends to eclipse her virtuosic command of the majority of bluegrass’s titular instruments. You may most often see her with a dreadnought strapped around her shoulders, but rest a fiddle there instead and you’re bound to enjoy some of the best bluegrass fiddling — with an even sprinkling of contest style, West Coast country, and the melody-driven old-time of the Pacific Northwest throughout.
In this clip from a live performance on The Texas Connection in 1992, Lewis is joined by longtime musical partner and bandmate Tom Rozum as well as Sally Van Meter, Alan Munde, Peter Rowan, Peter McLaughlin, and Cary Black on a sleek and stupefying rendition of “Dear Old Dixie.” It’s a banjo number, naturally, so Munde kicks it off with an uncharacteristically normative, Scruggs-like play through the melody. The remaining bandmates each take a turn, but the fire’s really lit when Lewis saws out her own solo, reminding all of us that she only ends up placing herself behind the guitar more often than not because she chooses to. With slippery, deliciously dissonant double stops she capitalizes upon the signature energy and showmanship concentrated within every note, every bow stroke, and every string pluck she issues.
While a quick stroll through her catalog, especially on streaming platforms, may not immediately land you in a pile of recordings of burning Bill Monroe tunes, or contemplative waltzes, or danceable hornpipes, you’ll probably find yourself confounded by the natural imagery, tender emotion, and raw spiritual power of her lyrics instead. That’s understandable. With a little digging, though, that picture of a legendary artist’s work can be expanded to include lifelong rations of indomitable pickin’ like this, too. And it ought to.

Photo courtesy of the artist.

LISTEN: James Hyland, “Ghost”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: James Hyland
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Song: “Ghost”
Album: Western
Release Date: May 1, 2020
Label: James Hyland Music

In Their Words: “‘Ghost’ is about how strong the past can influence our emotions that drive us to make the decisions that shape our future. This song is about writing and creating songs that my dead heroes would enjoy. I imagine they’re in the room with me as I’m writing and if the line isn’t good enough for the imaginary people there in my room, how could I possibly keep it and play it for the people who are alive? Every couplet counts. The character in the song is haunted by their dead heroes, whose unwritten songs manifest in the writings of the one they influence.” — James Hyland

Photo credit: Ty Hudgins