Friends of Bob; January 2002
Friends of Bob live music co-op / October ‘08 newsletter
Sunday, November 9; 7:00 p.m. (doors 6:00)
Early show!!!
from Austin TX
Yep Roc recording artists
The Gourds
Lafayette Brewing Company, 622 Main St., Lafayette
$10 advance/$12 (day of show)
at Lafayette Brewing Company, Von's Records, JL Records, and McGuire Music
Advance tickets by mail are $11. Send your check to:
Friends of Bob, PO Box 59, Battle Ground, IN 47920
Please provide your name, address, phone #, and e-mail address.
Booking semi-obscure bands from Austin, Texas, isn’t as easy as it looks. We’ve been working on a Gourds’ date for years, and there’s a reason for our perseverance. This band is a live music experience that’s worth waiting for.
So please join us for this early evening show. Things will kick off at 7:00 sharp and the energy that The Gourds bring to the table will launch us into a new week all the better because of it. Their energetic mix of Tex-Mex, country, polka, rock, folk, blues, and daftness should not be missed.
The Gourds are known for their rollicking live shows and also for their witty, ironic songwriting. Indeed, some would rate them among today’s finest songwriters. If you aren’t familiar with the band and you’re inclined to do some pre-show checking ‘em out, the CD we’d recommend as a place to start is Cow, Fish, Pig, or Fowl (2002), though there are no clunkers in their 10-album back catalog. If their most recent release Noble Creatures (2007) proves easier to locate, it’s great too.
The band has an Americana celebrity in its line-up. Max Johnston was a member of the seminal roots bands Uncle Tupelo and Wilco—and he’s also Michelle Shocked’s younger brother.
Please help us publicize this show by downloading a poster from our website:
A big thanks to Learning Systems, Inc. and Alan Rainey for a generous donation to FoB in support of our international concerts. Learning Systems is a local company that publishes classroom materials for local professors. It’s gratifying that a business is willing to step up and support local culture. Alan sends us a check a couple of times a year. Thanks!!!
Thanks also to Alice Abbott and Jess and Shelley Lowenberg DeBoer who helped sponsor our October concert with Etran Finatawa.
Our nextOrganizational Meeting will be onMonday, November 3rd at 7:30 at the Lafayette Brewing Co. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to attend. We meet at the back of the first floor—by the brewing kettles. Come and get involved!
Please Do the Dues!!! Membership dues are by the calendar year—2008 dues are due! Your donations are crucial!!! Dues pay for this newsletter and provide a safety net for when admission charges don’t cover expenses. Please help us keep the music coming. Become a Friend of Bob! Dues are $10 per person. If you can make a donation above the $10 we would greatly appreciate it, and since we are a 501[c][3] not-for-profit organization, donations above the dues are tax-deductible and really assist us HUGELY in what we're trying to do. The following people have sent in their dues since our last newsletter.
Alice Abbott
Diana Battiste
Bill & Flo Caddell
Dennis Carson
Doug Dawson
Art Dragoo
Tama Eckert
Thomas & Robyn Henderson
Elizabeth Hrepek
Michael Kelsey
Wilma Kelsey
Gary Mervis
Mary & John Mason
Sharon McKnight
Dixie Pederson
Robin Pickett
Sundeep Rao
Thomas Roberts
Sally Ross
Louis & Debra Sherman
Beverly Skinner
Dan Voglund
Some exciting shows have been booked in recent weeks. On Saturday, December 6 we’ll have a soul/funk extravaganza with The Dynamites featuring Charles Walker, an exquisite 60s-style soul review complete with horns, Hammond B3, guitar, bass, drums, and the stunning vocals of Charles Walker. Soul music is riding a wave of revival currently, and the Dynamites are as good as it gets. Charles Walker was active in the first wave of 60s soul, when he led a band called Little Charles and the Sidewinders, playing venues like the Apollo Theater and opening for the likes of James Brown, Etta James, and Wilson Pickett.
Walker was hired by the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville for an event launching their major Night Train to Nashville exhibit a couple of years ago. It was there that he was “discovered” by Nashville songwriter and guitarist Bill Elder, who had written a batch of Deep Funk songs and was looking to put a band together. He couldn’t believe he had stumbled upon such a perfect old-school singer. The Dynamites were born! Their album Kaboom! is terrific—this promises to be a night of funfunfunk!
Graham Parker wrote and recorded dozens of stunningly great songs in the late 70s and early 80s. Though he hasn’t worked with his band The Rumour for some time, he has continued to release consistently superb material—a case in point being Don’t Tell Columbus (200), his most recent album. Graham will play a solo acoustic set for us at Duncan Hall on Friday, April 3rd.
“Music for the unwashed and well-read" is how this ragtag Austin, Texas ensemble characterizes itself, and their clever (when intelligible) wordplay and responsive string play has inspired legions of ardent fans. After 9 albums, the jig is still not up. The Gourds' hodgepodge of bluegrass, rock, country, zydeco, old timey etc. continues to resemble none of the above, while songs like "Declinometer" exemplify the joyous cacophony of not knowing exactly what to call it.
Meredith Ochs, npr.org, Top 10 CDs of 2006
“The Gourds bring their iconoclastic country/folk/Tex-Mex/Cajun rock to the stage with tunes from their album Heavy Ornamentals and crowd-pleasing favorites from their early years.”
pbs.org Austin City Limits
Attendees at live shows can expect an experience that incorporates country (multi-instrumentalist Max Johnston wields, depending on the song, a banjo, a fiddle, a mandolin or a dobro) with a good bit of rock'n'roll and traces of zydeco (Claude Bernard plays accordion on most of the songs), bluegrass, and folk. Along with Johnston, bassist/guitarist Jimmy Smith (who released a self-produced solo album last summer) and mandolinist/guitarist Kevin Russell trade off lead singing duties, mixing ballads like Smith's "Rugged Roses" with foot-stomping romps like Russell's "Ants on the Melon" that make for quite a live performance. Will Furgeson, Daily Texan
The Gourds are a good-time, honky tonkin' band with enough quirk and underground appeal to more than earn the "alternative" in "alternative country-rock band." Part of Austin's vibrant scene and popular performers at the city's national music showcase SXSW, the Gourds first gained the attention of the No Depression crowd with the drunken porch jam sound of their debut, Dem's Good Beeble (1997). The band's quirks came out more on their follow-up, Stadium Blitzer (1998), with songs of questionable subject matter (not offensive, just truly befuddling) like the title track and "Plaid Coat" and the goofiness of "I Ate the Haggis." Later that year, the Gourds broke through to college radio with a couple of covers on the live EP Gogitchershinebox. While their cover of "Ziggy Stardust" may have raised some eyebrows, it was the Gourds' galloping twang remake of Snoop Dogg's "Gin and Juice" that really captured listeners' imaginations. Unfortunately, the demise of Watermelon Records took their recordings out of print right after the release of their third album, Ghosts of Hallelujah in 1999. Happily, Sugar Hill Records stepped in, and without missing a beat, the Gourds' fourth album, Bolsa de Agua, came out the following year. Over the next year, Sugar Hill also reissued the rest of the Gourds' catalog. The Texas group started out with multi-instrumentalist/vocalists Kevin Russell and Jimmy Smith, who also share songwriting duties, accordionist Claude Bernard, and drummer Charlie Llewellin. In late 1997/early 1998, Llewellin was replaced by a longtime friend of the band, Keith Langford, who was kicked out of the Damnations TX when his bandmates saw that he wanted to join the Gourds, but might feel too bad about quitting to actually leave them. Then, after playing banjo, fiddle, and more on Ghosts of Hallelujah, Max Johnston (of Uncle Tupelo and Wilco) also became an official member of the band. With the new lineup intact, the Gourds released Bolsa de Agua in the summer of 2000, Cow Fish Fowl or Pig in 2002, Blood of the Ram in 2004, Heavy Ornamentals in 2006, and Noble Creatures in 2007. They also provided the score to the Mike Woolf documentary Growin' a Beard.
Allmusic.com
“The Gourds are something like a potluck chili of indigenous American music, traditional and otherwise; a three-day folk festival rolled up into 50 concise minutes, then given an insulin shot of weatherbeaten rock'n'roll.” blogcritics.org
Austin-based Americana artist the Gourds have long existed comfortably in a place somewhere between mainstream success and a fringe following, carving out a reputation as a freewheeling band with a penchant both for serious songwriting/instrumental chops and for not taking themselves too seriously. Well-versed in the techniques and tones of rock, bluegrass, folk, country, and blues, the band’s versatility has earned them a great deal of respect, while their image as a bunch of good ol’ Texas boys with the ability to eloquently address cultural phenomena over a round of longnecks has won the group unyielding loyalty from devoted fans.
Over the past decade, the Gourds have blended elements of each style in which they have displayed such striking ingenuity to create a curious and winning sound that has simply come to be known as “Gourds Music”. With principal songwriters Kevin Russell and Jimmy Smith laying the foundation for the band’s inventive, ironic material, and bandmates Keith Langford, Claude Bernard, and ex-Uncle Tupelo/Wilco compatriot Max Johnston fleshing the work out with great skill, the band’s ability to place their singular energy on full display has never come into question. On their tenth release, Noble Creatures, the band deviates ever so slightly from their modus operandi by placing what the album’s press material labels an “unprecedented focus on balladry.”popmatters.com
Had James Joyce been born in the Texas Hill Country and raised on down-home Americana music, Finnegan's Wake may have come out sounding a lot like a Gourds' album. The group's back-porch, high-octane roots music, laden with dense and oblique lyrical allusions and tongue-in-cheek punning, has made them an Austin favorite of both rowdy drinkers and string-band traditionalists, crossing generations as much as they do genres. Although the Gourds formed in 1994, Jimmy Smith and Kevin Russell, the group's dual songwriters, first joined forces in the Dallas-based Picket Line Coyotes in the late Eighties. When the two met again in Austin, they recruited Claude Bernard and Charlie Llewellin into the expansive musical lineup. In 1997, the Gourds released their debut, Dem's Good Beeble, on Dutch label Munich, followed the next year by Stadium Blitzer on Austin's Watermelon Records, where the group began honing their eclecticism into a uniquely coherent sound. The Gogitchyershinebox EP that same year preceded Watermelon folding, even as the Gourds' countrified cover of Snoop Dogg's "Gin and Juice" launched them to national attention. The group changed personnel in 1998, drafting Keith Langford from the Damnations to replace Llewellin on drums and adding Max Johnston, who played with Uncle Tupelo, Wilco, and Freakwater, for 1999's Ghosts of Hallelujah and 2000's Bolsa de Agua on Sugar Hill. The group has since continued its prolific pace, recording almost an LP a year including the soundtrack to the hirsute documentary Growin' a Beard, Blood on the Ram in 2004, and 2007's Yep Roc debut, Noble Creatures. Russell also released his solo debut, Buttermilk and Rifles, as Kev Russell's Junker in 2002. – Doug Freeman
Austin Chronicle
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