Heat, Honky Tonks, etc.

It’s been brutally hot here lately. Monsoon season just started, but it’s been a pretty nasty drought, and the rain has just made the day after muggy beyond belief. Since Cruces is a college town, it sort of shuts down during the summer. Needless to say, this stifling heat and lack of things to do will kinda wear on a soul.

                When I got an invite to a house show over at Steve MacIntyre’s house, I jumped, because the heat and the lack of people around, frankly, had me a little down in the mouth. The band playing was Aquarena Springs, based around a brother-and-sister pair of Texas ex-pats. Country music and a party? Just what I was needing!

                I get a little defensive about country, especially when people use words like “honky-tonk” to describe their sound. It’s a word that gets thrown around a lot, even if it describes a specific kind of place and music. Honky-tonk is a music you can’t fake, it arose, at least partially, out of Western Swing. You can either swing the beat and make the rhythm snap, or you can’t. I was just a little bit worried that I was going to see another hipster band that made a joke out of playing Honky-Tonk, without understanding where it came from, or what it was. Honky-Tonks were places where displaced rural people could meet in the city, be amongst their own, and listen to music that spoke to their experiences. (As well as drink, dance, and fight) Most importantly, you could dance to it. It’s how people my grandparent’s age met their spouses.

                As it turned out, I had nothing to worry about. The folks in Aquarena Springs could make the beat swing like pros.  There were strong family/friend connections throughout the band, and the bond was evident in the way they played. There were was a guitar, drum, bass, and keyboard. Normally, when I see a keyboard, I think “Keyboard” i.e. something off a Weezer record. An Oakland guy with a cool sideways haircut that can play twinkly honky-tonk piano is a good thing. Their merch people even knew how to two-step to the music! Two-stepping is what the whole thing is about, music as a social activity.

                 I think the big show stopper was a cover of Dylan’s “You Ain’t Going Nowhere”, which is itself, probably more famous for being covered by the Byrds on “Sweetheart Of The Rodeo”. If you’re keeping score at home, that was probably the first time California rock bands took notice of country music. There was an easy, unforced harmony, with each member of the band singing a verse solo and chiming in together on the chorus. The song is one of those songs that binds together country fans of different generations and backgrounds, and in the hands of Aquarena Springs, sounds like a torch being carried strongly forward. Their originals speak to heartache, loss, and displacement in a way that sounds completely contemporary and unique to their situation, but also fit right into the honky-tonk tradition.  They also sang a train song that their Dad wrote, which wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a Ray Price record in the 50’s, or a Merle Haggard album in the 60’s, or a Waylon record in the 70’s, etc. etc. These aren’t hard-core traditionalists like Dale Watson (who I think is awesome), nor are they “alt-country” fakers who jumped on the band wagon when punk rock got too hard to sing. They’re taking the tradition, adding their own spin to it, and carrying it forward.

                Are Aquarena Springs hipsters? I have no idea. They have hip haircuts and are so skinny, I wanted to feed them all. (As it was, I just bought them beer.) I do know that they know their stuff, and made what would have been another boring, sweltering night into something special. I hope they keep making music, because they have something between them that can light up a room. I hope they come back through, and I hope I can have them on my radio show in the future. But mostly, I hope they keep swinging that beat, and making people dance. As long as they are playing their music together, honky-tonk is in another set of good hands.

Aquarena Springs 

Steve MacIntyre/Alister M

Ending The Night On A Win

It was a Friday night, and I had been hauling hay with my Dad in 100 degree weather. Thirsty work and I couldn’t scare up a pal in El Paso for a beer. Driving around, I didn’t see any bars that didn’t look too crowded, or too loud. (I don’t like bars with more than one TV or a TV that is on too loud) Cutting my losses, and feeling kinda hungry, I headed back to the farm. On a whim, I decided to drive through Fabens, the town closest to home. The McDonalds there is perpetually swamped, and not anything I would eat. Everything else was closed, but I did see a taco truck in the vacant lot next to the old bank.

Have you ever eaten a meal you wished would never end? The tacos al pastor weren’t full of chunks of pineapple and onion like they usually are, but still delicious. The green onion was roasted to order, and the ends wrapped in foil before they were put on the fire. The result was less like an onion, and more like a tube full of sweetish, tangy syrup. The baked potato was baked to perfection, and topped with just a smidge of butter. There was a lime, to squeeze on the meat, and a few slices of radish to clean the pallet. (A taco isn’t a taco without a squeeze of lime, friends) The two salsas were a thin, red, hot sauce and a chunky, smoky, grilled jalapeno salsa.  Both were good, but I preferred the jalapeno salsa. It made a better contrast to the latent sweetness of the pork. I sat, finishing my beer, thinking that I had previously marked the night down as a dud. Any night that ends with some delicious tacos is a win, in my books.

Red Headed Strangeness

I’ve been on a bit of a Willie Nelson kick here of late. Which is sorta like saying that animals had a bullet problem when Teddy Roosevelt was around. I just finished reading the massive Joe Nick Patowski (part of becoming a naturalized Texan is adopting three names, it’s on the checklist) biography of him. I’ve also read the autobiography he wrote with Bud Shrake. As well as the two humor/philosophy/memoir books he co-wrote and the western novel he wrote with Mike Blakely. Not all at once, mind you, but over a period of say, four years. All of them were entertaining, and when they weren’t full of good ideas, they were full of dirty jokes. Good advice and dirty jokes will always find a welcome ear. I’ve got a slew of his albums on various formats. I’ve seen him a few times, and if I could, I would follow him around all summer (but not all year, even I’m not that obsessive) at least once.

I was rearranging my vinyl collection the other night and noticed something, looking at all the brightly colored covers. I’m pretty sure the one thing Willie Nelson has never said is “No, I won’t wear that.” Country music now is full of over groomed southern guys dressed like western guys. And they all sound like Bon Jovi. In a climate like that, appearing on an album cover looking like you just fell out of a laundry chute qualifies as more than a fashion statement, it’s a statement of artistic integrity.

The first time I saw Willie, he had carpal tunnel syndrome. The guy that played his kid in Honeysuckle Rose played guitar for him. It was at the Roswell UFO Festival. Merle Haggard opened. I took my Dad for Father’s Day. A crowd of teenagers who were volunteering at the door walked past us, the leader exclaiming “Let’s go sniff Willie’s bus”. Dad still chuckles at that. Willie wore a brace on his arm. I told my Dad “If Willie can feel pain, it MUST be bad.” He put on a good show, even if he didn’t play guitar. Merle had previously threatened to jump on the first UFO that offered him a ride with a startling earnestness. After a statement like that, On The Road Again doesn’t have quite the same excitement.

The last time I saw Willie, he was playing guitar. Opening for Dylan, in Albuquerque. It was a really great show, he played a bunch of his hits and some old honky-tonk chestnuts. I specifically remember that he played a lot of sacred songs. No one batted an eye or seemed aggrieved by this. I found them particularly moving. Out of the context of sitting in church, they seemed to be serving their intended purpose, uplifting people’s spirits. “He must have thought Albuquerque needed some Jesus” I told my Dad, after the fact. Albuquerque is pretty liberal for the rural west. My Dad, not one to miss a beat, said, “He was probably right.”

This is what I have figured out about Willie. Willie plays music because it makes him happy. Willie’s music makes people happy. Willie gets happy that people are happy with his music. Willie makes happier music. People get happier. It just keeps cycling upwards. When you think it can’t get any better, that the level of happiness can’t possibly get higher, he calls it a night. There was no peak, and you’re left wanting more. No one gets let down. I’m sure there’s a life lesson in that. The lesson I’m taking away from this, dear reader, is that I should wrap this thing up right here. It’s Willie’s world kids, and we’re just living in it.