by Monte Dutton
The band works well together despite the fact that the bassist, Denny Bixby, is on loan from Rodney Crowell. A recent birth in the family of Byron House created the gap that Bixby adroitly fills. The friendship between Miller and his jack-of-all-trades, Phil Madeira (on organ, accordion, lap steel, and guitar), and drummer Bryan Owings is obvious as they exchange private quips during the entire concert.
"My voice is trashed," says Miller, "so I'll call it character."
Worn or not, Miller's voice is nothing if not strong and distinctive. In terms of plaintiveness he's kind of a male alternative to Lucinda Williams. I haven't heard a voice as distincttive since the relatively brief prime of Vern Gosdin's career. It's a take-no-prisoners voice, and since Miller doesn't sound like a thousand other singers, it's probably an acquired taste for some listeners. There's a lot of blues and soul there, but most of the songs are hard-core traditional country. Many of the songs are the creative work of Miller and his wife, but the concert also includes samplings of Mark Heard, the Louvin Brothers, Bob Dylan, Tom T. Hall, Jim Lauderdale, and, near the end, Hank Williams, who never sang "You Win Again" any better.
Twice nominated for a Grammy Award, Miller seems blissfully unaware—and if not, then ambivalent—about his own considerable talents. Although he won a Grammy neither time, he takes pleasure in telling the audience that one of the losses was to Bob Dylan. The most memorable aspect of the Grammy ceremonies just completed, he says, was the fact that the food "was so beyond anything you can imagine."
"I'm one of those guys who can't tune and talk at the same time," he says during one of the between-songs monologues. "Actually, I can't tune . . . and I can't talk."
The lead-in act, by the way, is a pleasant surprise. Miller produced Bill Mallonee's CD Audible Sigh, and Mallonee, who lives in Athens, Georgia, performs for about an hour, accompanying himself with guitar and harmonica, before Miller's band joins him for a couple of songs at the end.
When I walk out into the cold night air, I get sidetracked on the way to my truck by the sound of music being played nearby. I head in the direction of the sound and find a couple of young men set up in the grass, one with an electric guitar and the other on drums, in front of a small specialty shop. After listening to a couple of Hank Williams Jr. standards, I put a couple of bills in the guitar case. They outnumber the audience two to one at this point since several people leave as I arrive in the yard. For a few moments I pick up a spare guitar and strum it, although an electric guitar is alien to me, not to mention trying to play it with a stiff pick (plectrum, I believe, is the formal term).
It's hard to embarrass oneself in a group of three people, but I'm doing it, so I put the guitar up, chat for a while, and then they indulge me by letting me sing a few verses of Hall's "The Year That Clayton Delaney Died." I fumble the lyrics several times, so they let me acquit myself with another simple standard, Harlan Howard's "Pick Me Up on Your Way Down." That's enough to send me on my late-night way with enough adrenaline flowing to make it home safely.
I get my nephew to accompany me the following night after he discovers that Charlie Robison's song "El Cerrito Place" is currently being featured on Country Music Television. Once we arrive in NoDa, we queue up until the doors open, at which time we walk into the arena to mark our seats, then, with a plastic band safely fastened around our right wrists, we walk back outside to window-shop at the various galleries and antique shops. The first sign that something is slightly amiss occurs when two women in line with us inform me that they have never heard of Robison, that they are "huge fans" of Paul Thorn (the opening act), and that they have come all the way from Virginia to see Thorn.
My nephew, Ray Phillips, does not share my political views, and he smells liberals almost immediately when we start walking around. He seems as confused and mystified by the existence of affluent liberals as I am by working-class conservatives.
I've heard of the Paul Thorn Band, but I've never heard a single one of his songs. All I know about him is that some members of an online message group are really big fans. Based on these recommendations, I await his concert with some enthusiasm. I'm not disappointed. Thorn is about as far from country as anyone in these pages, but he's the kind of artist who springs, powerful and unrepentant, from charismatic religion. It comes as no surprise when Thorn tells the audience that he has a father who is a Church of God preacher and an uncle who is a pimp. He says his father taught him about God and his Uncle Merle taught him about women, and off we go on that tantalizing Jimmy Swaggart/Jerry Lee Lewis slippery slope.
Some of Thorn's songs could've been sung by Marvin Gaye or Al Green. Some are rock. Some are rhythm and blues. Some are just blues. Precious little could be categorized as country. The music is satisfying, though, and full of humor and occasionally even wide-eyed innocence. The be-tween-song monologues are priceless. Thorn tells about how he and his honey used to sit around the trailer, eat bacon and Miracle Whip sandwiches, and procreate while watching Jerry Springer. He misses watching her prance around in her purple thong, he says, but the breakup was his fault.
"I cheated on her," Thorn says, "and she cheated on me, and pretty soon we was having us a cheat-a-thon."
One of his songs is about "Joanie the Jehovah's Witness Stripper." There's a little something that's demeaning about watching this throng of Thorn fans rollicking at one zany song after another. Thorn sings about his life—of that I have little doubt—but to those around me who have taken up most of the seats in the front rows, it's almost like slumming. Most of these people arrived in BMWs and Lexus SUVs. It's easy for them to look at Thorn as being some kind of musical version of The Beverly Hillbillies' Jethro Bodine, and that's selling him and his background fairly short. But I guess it's a living.
After a break, most of which is dominated by Thorn fans streaming to the exits, Charlie Robison arrives onstage to a crowd grown sparse and quiet. A couple of drunks seem to exist to block my view. One carries a sixteen-ounce can of Budweiser that he repeatedly hoists with one hand while signaling the stage with the two-fingered "Hook 'em Horns" gesture familiar to University of Texas fans.
Bud Man does everything but climb up on the stage. Ro-bison, who has experienced limited mainstream success with three stellar studio albums in a row, mentions with a somewhat sheepish tone that the video is number seven on the cmt charts and encourages fans to vote for it online. He's uncomfortable with self-promotion, though, and he acquits himself a bit by saying, "Besides, I'm tired of watching Kenny Chesney frolicking on the beach all goddamned day."
The Robisons of Bandera, Texas, represent quite a contrast in styles. It's hard to believe that Charlie and Bruce Robison are brothers. One similarity is that both married well. Charlie's wife, Emily Robison, is one of the Dixie Chicks. Bruce's wife, Kelly Willis, is a phenomenal vocal talent who is inexplicably underappreciated outside the borders of the Lone Star State.
Charlie Robison calls brother Bruce "the greatest songwriter on earth," and while there might be a bit of familial bias in that, Bruce concedes, "The main thing that I make money from is songwriting." He wrote "Lonely Too" (Lee Ann Womack), "Travelin' Soldier" (Dixie Chicks), and "Angry All the Time" (Tim McGraw). Bruce Robison's most familiar tune, at least among those heard on radio, is "What Would Willie Do?" a whimsical ode to Willie Nelson. Another notable song is "Wrapped," which was the title song of his own album and was covered by his wife on her critically acclaimed 1999 CD What I Deserve.
Bruce is laid-back, with a vocal style that somehow reminds me of Don Williams. Charlie is out there on the rock edge of country. Charlie's show is full of crowd-pleasers like "Barlight" (a nursery rhyme for grownups), "Sunset Boulevard," "My Hometown," "Desperate Times," and "The Wedding Song." The last was released on his Step Right Up CD as a duet with the Chicks' Natalie Maines. In concert
Charlie sometimes recruits audience members to sing the female part.
Irony defines Charlie Robison. Why else would there be a song called "Life of the Party" on his 20
01 album Step Right Up but no such song on his album called Life of the Party, which came out three years earlier?
It's a great show but a strange one. I've seen Robison play to raucous, beer-chugging Texas crowds, and it's no inconvenience to me that this audience has only two obvious drunks in it, although I would prefer that those two were not blocking my view of the stage. One, by the way, eventually gets escorted out. Robison watches with good humor and notes that he's played to rowdy audiences and he's played to sedate ones, but rarely has he played to such a polarized one as this.
The whole atmosphere is kind of weird. For one thing, the throng of Robison fans is situated mostly in a low balcony, or really more of a platform, to the left of the stage. That's because the prime seats have now been vacated by departing Paul Thorn fans and, presumably, the Robison fans are either too comfortable or too drunk to move. The beer stand is in easy access to the fans watching from the platform. It could be that there are dozens of rowdy fans over there. I can't see because of a barrier at the front. The only drunk I can see is Bud Man, sloshing beer around and dancing like a goose on Quaaludes.
Despite all this, Robison and his really tight band carry on for an hour and a half, performing brilliantly on a night when they could be excused if they cut out early.
Ray, my nephew, is convinced that everyone in Charlotte is a lunatic, but he'll be in college soon and will learn that it's really true of everyone, uh, everywhere.
The Ones That Got Away
March 2005
Jerry Jeff Walker is the artist most responsible for my love of this music. When I was young and wild, he was too, and now I'm older and wiser, and so is he. I relate to his music as much now as ever. I've watched him in concert dozens of times, dating back to the late 1970s, when I was in college. I've seen him alone, just sitting by himself onstage with his guitar, and with his band, the Gonzo Compadres being the current incarnation, in almost every possible setting. I've seen Walker outdoors and indoors, in rundown clubs and upscale opera houses, at music festivals and small-town honky-tonks, and from Texas to Florida to Virginia. I read his book, bought a DVD of a live performance, and bought every record, cassette, eight-track, and CD I could get my hands on.
I've seen Jerry Jeff ornery, thoughtful, rowdy, and sentimental. For all that, I've only spoken to him twice, once when he autographed a copy of his Cowboy Boots and Bathing Suits CD and, in October 2004, when I intercepted him as he trudged across the street, carrying his guitar case, from the Newberry [South Carolina] Opera House to the Hampton Inn, where he was staying.
He had left everything on the stage that night and looked tired. It's the only time I ever saw him when he looked his age, which is amazing in itself, since he has apparently outlived his well-documented demons and fought them to at least a draw. I didn't have the heart that night to ask for an interview, but I told him I was writing a book, that I'd been a fan for decades, and that I wanted to set up an interview for later that year when I'd be coming to Austin.
We chatted a little, and he told me to call Susan, his wife, to set something up. Later I did talk to Susan as well as others associated with Tried & True Music, the company the Walkers own. I tried and failed to make arrangements, sent questions via e-mail for review, and got promises of cooperation that ultimately failed to materialize. The whole project was fraught with spectacular failures and unlikely successes, and it didn't really rankle me so much that things didn't work out. For one thing, I know Jerry Jeff Walker in the sense that I know the words to his songs, which ones he wrote and which ones he covered. There were many other people I needed to get to know, Walker's son Django being one notable example, and the experience of writing this book was more instructive for the new over the old and familiar.
I don't know if it was Walker who said it first, but I know he was the first I heard describe the process of aging in this manner: "I used to take acid. Now I take antacid."
What a life he's lived. This quintessential Texan grew up in Oneonta, New York, wandered the country riding his thumb, sang on the streets of Key West, New Orleans, and dozens of other places, damn near killed himself on drugs and booze, and emerged to inspire a generation of Texas musicians and others, like the great Todd Snider, who migrated there.
An old album depicts Walker standing outside a honky tonk on the edge of a highway, lighting a cigarette with a guitar slung around his back. As I talked with him under the streetlights of Newberry, I thought of the man in front of me and the man from the album photo. Same guy more than thirty years later.
Probably what I value most about Walker is the nature of his concerts. They are unusually extemporaneous, and no set list is immune from radical departures. He sings what he wants to sing, and since his band almost always includes survivors of all those road trips, they move along without a hitch. Every time I've ever seen Walker, he's neglected to sing at least one song I expected and sang one that I'd never heard him perform before. It's not unusual to see him dredge up a tune like "Dear John Letter Lounge" that's from an album so old that I haven't even heard it on a turntable in a decade.
In his heart, from what I can tell, he still lives the troubadour's life.
Of course, audiences always have fans who are less experienced than I. They frequently scream requests, which almost always irritates Walker, who insists on doing his own thing. The only time I ever heard him relent was one night when he stopped, glared fiercely at the heckler, and said, "All right, goddammit, I'll do 'Railroad Fuckin' Lady.'"
That stopped the guy in his tracks. As for me, the only thing I've ever screamed at the stage was, "Play what you want to play, J.J.!" The man is best left to his own devices.
Out of all the entertainers in the world, across all the forty-eight years of my life, what makes Jerry Jeff Walker my favorite?
I think it is simply that listening to Walker always puts me in a good mood. At a May 2003 concert at the Neighborhood Theatre in Charlotte, Walker, now in his sixties, was a bit down in the back, and he spent most of his two-and-a-half-hour show sitting in a chair while he played his rhythm guitar and sang. Maybe that made him a bit more thoughtful than usual.
Many of my friends don't know who Jerry Jeff Walker is, and many of those who do are only vaguely aware that he wrote "Mr. Bojangles," one of the more widely recorded songs of the past five decades. They ask me who my favorite singer is, and when I say, "Jerry Jeff Walker," invariably they
ask, "Who?"
I only speak for myself; to me he is simply the best.
"Mr. Bojangles," by the way, is sometimes derided because it allegedly fosters racial stereotypes in its sympathetic portrayal of a street singer Walker encountered in a New Orleans jail many years ago. The song has nothing at all to do with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, the black tap dancer who appeared in a number of movies and stage presentations.
One of the less-known facts about the song, in fact, is that the character described in Walker's song was white.
Another significant bit of trivia is how the best-selling version of "Mr. Bojangles," by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, includes a line that is rather inexplicable, cast as it is in the midst of such a straightforward song. While one of the band's future members packed his car for a move to southern California, a college acquaintance told him he ought to check out this new song, and just before the trunk was closed, he tossed Walker's original 45-RPM single into the pile. The record remained in the trunk for months, and when it was finally retrieved, immersed in rusty water beneath the spare tire, it was a bit the worse for wear.
That's why the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, where the words to the song say, "and he spoke right out," sang, instead, "as the smoke ran out."
In Charlotte Walker sang "Mr. Bojangles" and many other songs, some of which he wrote and some of which he did not. He introduced many of the compositions with stories from a lifetime on the road. From Harry Stonebeck, the itinerant "artiste" who once accompanied Walker on one of his cross-country rambles, to the great rodeo cowboy Larry Ma-han
and other kindred spirits, Walker provided running liner notes to a concert that would have been evocative without a word being spoken.
He likened his son Django to the main character in Guy Clark's tender song "The Cape." In fact, one of Walker's great assets has always been his ability to select great songs of other writers and weave them into his own collection. Among the highlights of the Charlotte concert were Clark's "LA Freeway," Ray Wiley Hubbard's "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mothers," Steve Fromholz's "Man with the Big Hat" and "Singing the Dinosaur Blues," and Gary P. Nunn's "London Homesick Blues," all of which have become Walker standards.
Time may have settled Jerry Jeff down, but it hasn't broken his spirit, and even though his back sometimes troubles him, it doesn't prevent him from rising from his chair periodically to jam with the band.
The only conversation I've had with Steve Earle mainly concerned baseball, of all things. After a November 2003 concert at Charlotte's Visulite, I happened to be wearing a Boston Red Sox cap when I approached Earle outside the back door.
"You know I'm a Yankees fan, right?" he asked. A few weeks earlier New York had advanced to the World Series by beating Boston in the seventh game of the American League championship series.
"Let me get this straight," I replied. "Steve Earle is a fan of the team that epitomizes wretched capitalist excess?"
"I know, I know," he said. "What can I say? I've been pulling for the Yankees all my life."
"Well, that's a little different," I conceded. "If you've been a fan all your life, I can respect that and even admire it because that's the way I am with the Red Sox. There are some Yankee fans, though, who pull for them because they win all the time."
During the concert Earle had made the remark that his father once predicted that the older he got, the more he would love baseball. That's one experience the two of us have in common.