Janice Williams Loves Austin

I am a homebody, there is no doubt. So for someone that loves live music, I always face that dilemma. I want to see music, I want to be out enjoying it, but I want to be home at the same time. Or at least in my pajamas. That is frowned upon in some Austin bars. But yesterday I read my own calendar and saw that Audrey Auld-Mezera was highly recommended at Momo’s at 5:30. I like to take my own recommendations, so I made myself show up for this one.

I’m so glad that I did. All I knew about Audrey was that she was Australian. I had received a couple of records at the station that I liked, especially her singing with Bill Chambers (Kasey Chambers’ dad) on the classic country song “Faking Love.” I knew she could really sing country. And she could. She really knows the way a yodel and a twang should sound, even though she grew up in south Australia (in Tazmania, I think).

When I got to Momo’s there were only a half-dozen people in the place, including Eddie Wilson, of Threadgill’s, who is, apparently, a friend of Audrey’s and her host when she is in Austin. She started right at 5:30, which I SO appreciated, and played a full hour. Before she got very far into the set the place began to fill up and there was a sizable crowd by the end. It was just her and a guitar player named Andrew Hardin. Both had a beautiful way of filling a room with picking. I watched her hands, trying to see how she was getting that much music out of that guitar, but I couldn’t figure it out and had to stop myself from studying and just sit back and listen.

Not being familiar with her music, really, every song was new to me and I really appreciated how they were not the same old tried-and-true themes of love and loss or love and gain, etc. Or, when they were, they were certainly a new twist on the idea. I was especially impressed with a sweet song called “Bread and Roses” (here’s a video of it). She sang for prisoners at San Quentin and was told, of course, that she could not bring anything in to the prisoners, she could only sing. So the song is what she would like to be able to give to them. Serious, but still with humor. And an abundance of compassion.

Audrey also wrote the Sunny Sweeney song “The Next Big Nothing.” I did not know that connection and liked her version, too. She thanked Sunny for recording it and providing her some royalty mailbox money.

There was supposed to be a cover charge and there ended up not being one, so I bought a couple of Audrey’s albums to make the show worthwhile for her. She had a cute song “40″ that I was able to relate to (a few years ago!). You can hear it on her myspace.

I thought I would see some of Austin’s singer/songwriters on hand for the show, but, if I did, I didn’t recognize them. I did see a longtime friend of Mark’s, Denise. I’ve never had a long conversation with her and she entertained me with her tales of her hairless cat Butterbean. She said she missed me on the radio with my stories of Nathan Jr. and Willie. Her cat sounds like the one that needs to be on the radio. She said hairless cats are said to be a personality combination of cats, dogs, chimps, and human babies. They really demand attention and care. Her Butterbean gets a “spa day” once a week with a bath and toenail clipping. Butterbean wears a turtleneck sweater and walks on a leash! He goes with her to her office and rides in the truck with his head hanging out of the window! I have got to see this cat Butterbean.So, all in all a great evening out. I liked Audrey, a very down-to-earth, normal person, it seemed. Before the show she came by and said hello to me and commented on how much she liked my necklace. Just a little connection, but nice. She’ll be in Beaumont tonight, San Antonio tomorrow night at Casbeer’s (have you ever been there? wonderful place), and back at Gruene for the Fred Eaglesmith weekend. She’ll play Sunday afternoon if you are down that way.

I AM going to see some more live music tonight, so maybe I am getting out of my allergy-induced, housebound rut.

Everything I want to write about tonight would take some time and the Nyquil has kicked in and is urging me toward bedtime. So I just will post a cool picture of downtown Austin. I really would like to spend more time there on foot instead of a car and be able to see so many of the fabulous buildings up close. Do you know which one this is?

Last night I got to go to the Paramount Theater for the filming of a special called “The Outlaw Trail.” An all-star lineup included Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel, Jessie Colter, Carlene Carter, Raul Malo, Del Castillo, Rodney Crowell, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Suzy Bogguss, Lee Roy Parnell and more. It was really an interesting night.

Not knowing what to expect, I was afraid I was in for a night of songs like “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” and the really Western part of Country and Western, but the song choices were inspired! I don’t know who chose them, but my hat is off to them. The theme was “the outlaw trail” and the narrator (a cowboy poet) read pieces between the songs loosely gathering the songs into a theme. There were classic country songs like Folsom Prison Blues (Asleep at the Wheel did a great job on that!) and El Paso (my God, Raul Malo could sing the newspaper and it would have the crowd on their feet). But they went beyond that to “my” era and favorite songs like Rose of Cimarron (Poco did it originally, Del Castillo was fabulous with it last night) and Dueling Daltons and Desperado from the Eagles (but Holly Williams, Hank’s granddaughter, really put it out there, and Bukka Allen on keyboards was superb). It wasn’t even all country with Raul Malo REALLY getting the crowd on their feet with Bad Company (by Bad Company originally). I’m so far gone from my rock roots I had to ask my friend Marsha what the song was. I knew I knew it, but didn’t know what it was. It was completely electrified and it completely electrified the audience, too.

Some of the performers did their own songs, like Rodney Crowell singing  Ain’t Living Long Like This (I think that was it, I didn’t take notes and now I’m uncertain). Russell Smith (who was with the Amazing Rhythm Aces) sang The End is Not In Sight, which is one of my favorite songs of the 70s, but it sure slowed the energy down last night, coming on the heels of Raul Malo’s Bad Company.

Ray Wylie Hubbard sang a song I had not heard him sing before about gambling, along with Walt Wilkins (my third show with Walt in as many weeks).

The band was incredible. I don’t know who they all were, but I particularly enjoyed Bukka Allen’s keyboards and especially his accordion playing, Rick Richards and Jamie Oldaker on drums together (I loved watching their stick in sync), and Gene Elders on fiddle. I must find out who the others were because they were excellent, too.

That’s the short version of the night. It will be interesting to see it on a pledge drive later this year on PBS. They even filmed the people pleading for money, though it wasn’t amplified, it was being filmed in the balcony overlooking the show between songs.

I never have written about the fabulous shows we had at Mercury Hall with Sam Baker (1/30/2008) and Walt Wilkins (2/6/2008). I think I am just too inhibited to write about these two songwriters. These two guys know how to pick just the right word and just the right turn of phrase to make you see, smell, and experience a place or a moment. And they do it in a half dozen words and a few lines. I could write here all night and not be able to capture a bit of their amazing performances.

But I can at least tell you about the fabulous setting I saw my two favorite songwriters in last night.

Last month my friend Joey called be late at night after we had been to the George Strait concert. Everyone knows I am always up late, but rarely does anyone ever call me late (and I thank you!). But Joey called, apologizing for calling, and he said, “I just had to tell you . . . I’ve just been to the most amazing place that had Mark and Janice written all over it!” I thought he was going to tell me about some dive bar we hadn’t discovered yet, since we do like those sort of places, but he said, no, it was a fabulous studio out in the Hill Country near Wimberly where they occasionally have a house concert in the living room. He said I had to find out more and check it out because Walt and Sam would be playing there on February 14.

So I got online and found the Blue Rock Texas site. He was right. A gorgeous Hill Country home with limestone and oak trees and lots of polished wood, plus studio equipment! I did want to see this place in person. I RSVP’d on the website for the Valentine’s Day concert coming up with Walt and Sam and quickly found out that it was booked up and I would have to be on the waiting list.

It is nice to know people in high places. It really is. The Lucky Tomblin Band recorded their latest CD, Red Hot From Blue Rock, at this great facility and I knew that my friend Denise, their bus driver/tour manager/guru/counselor/gal Friday would know more about it all. She did and she knew where the strings were that needed to be pulled. She also introduced me to Billy Crockett, the owner of this wonderful place. We were on the list. Thank you, Denise! Thank you, Billy!

Joey had told me it would be easy to get lost on the way to Blue Rock, so I carefully followed the directions and navigated us there last night. It is somewhere between Kyle and Wimberly and I don’t know that I could find my way there again. It was dark and wind-y and I pondered what the folks that lived out in these neighborhoods DO for a living?

We arrived and parked down the “street” and walked through the massive limestone gateposts, up the curved drive with lights unobtrusively lighting the path and the cedar and oak trees all around. The house/studio is massive, with a huge tower standing at least three stories high and overlooking the entire Blanco River valley. We hated to even go inside because we were enjoying the details of the windows and the heavy doors and the porch and the little creek that runs along with walkway bridges that take you to the house.

But the house itself. Man. No way to adequately describe it. Picture pages from the Pottery Barn catalog combined with the King Ranch catalog and magnified. Everything was large scale. Leather couches, heavy wooden benches and tables. A huge marble island in the kitchen covered in baskets of Valentine cookies and Valentine desserts. Picture the size of the floor area in my kitchen (if you’ve been here) and THAT was the size of the island.

We got some coffee and cookies because we had been yawning on the drive over, but the music was about to wake us up. There were about 100 seats crowded (and I really mean crowded, despite it being a huge, cavernous living room) together facing a massive rock fireplace with a stage set up in front. Sam and Walt and also Tina Mitchell Wilkins were soon on stage and entertaining.

Mark had seen Walt and Sam only in a loud, boisterous setting where you could NOT get the full impact of their music and their lyrics. Last night he learned what all the fuss has been about! Mark was truly blown away by all three of them. He adores women that sing and he thought Tina was amazing, which she is. He was also as delighted as I always am at the comedy stylings of these three! Funny funny stuff. Sam was prepared with an amazing assortment of information about Saint Valentine (and his beheading) that he wove into the show.

At the intermission, we went back and saw the studios of Blue Rock. With Mark’s studio experience and love of good acoustics, he was loving it and figuring how he could get his band into this place! I just loved the warmth and “lodge” feeling that the recording studio had. And I wished I knew how to use all that beautiful recording equipment! I have been in maybe five recording studios in Austin and a few more in other cities. I have never seen anything like this. I think of one studio I saw a few months ago that looked like someone’s messy storage facility with a grand piano piled high with papers and drum parts. How could you be creative and inspired in a studio like that? Now, Blue Rock . . . I think even a tin ear like me could be inspired enough to sound good (and they have the engineers that might be able to make that happen, too!). When I am ready to record my accordion debut, I will insist on recording at Blue Rock.

Words really do fail me when I try to describe shows like this. It is just something you have to experience and this was one of those once-in-a-lifetime kinds of shows with the combination of the artists, the setting, and Valentine’s Day!  I hope your Valentine’s was as memorable!
Check out the studios at the Blue Rock Texas website (and be sure and watch the video) and learn more about Walt Wilkins, Tina Mitchell Wilkins, and Sam Baker. Walt is playing with the Mystiqueros next Saturday night at Gruene Hall and Sam will be back at the Mean Eyed Cat on Monday, March 17. Hopefully, Tina will be with them at one or both of those gigs. Get out and experience them all live, especially when you can hear them in a quiet intimate setting.