Soulhat

Soulhat

"It's just like any other night," shrugs Kevin McKinney to open Live at the Black Cat Lounge. "It ain't no different." That was, of course, the point of both the Sixth Street live music venue and Austin itself in 1991. The biker bar's Bowery charm flourished in Slack Town's still-sleepy, post-1960s/1970s hippie afterglow, soundtracked in the case of Soulhat by airy chords and the stone groove of leisurely kick-off "Find the Time." Guitar and vocal interplay between McKinney and Bill Cassis boiled down strictly Garcia/Weir, if not by design, then in the crucible of Austin's jam rock axis between the Black Cat and Steamboat. The latter and equally extinct club's biggest frontmanic, Joe Rockhead's Bob Schneider, here lands the art layout credit. Another platinum-popular local cassette finally making its digital debut, Live at the Black Cat Lounge, pushed over the 70-minute mark by six additional performances, comes front-loaded. Sunny delight "Garbageman" ("I'll pick up your trash, mama") wafts agreeably into the succeeding "Preacherman," with its famous citation of "Mr. Dragworm," both sets of crystal aqua chords as euphoric as Eeyore's Birthday. The latter-day Santana stab of "Preacherman" in particular executes Hall of Fame needlepoint two decades on, one of the band's early hits. Its eight minutes could have been 20. Unofficial Hippie Hollow theme "Skinny Dipping" takes its clothes off behind a tree, and because "hits" are fewer and farther between after that, the vibe becomes rote as the material drops off, though "Mailbox" pockets leftover change from "Preacherman." Seven-minute closer "... Love Me Now" rotates a heavier, bone-crushing Soulhat. The following year bowed the local fourpiece's debut, Outdebox, and in 1994 its Sony sophomore disc, Good to Be Gone. A picture on the back of Live at the Black Cat Lounge, of smiling proprietor Paul Sessums, who was killed in a car accident in 1998 – four years prior to his baby burning down and becoming a tombstone on Sixth Street – preserves another layer of lost Austin.