Dancing About Architecture
By Ken Lieck
We're not kidding with that "Dog Days of Club Doldrums"
article elsewhere in the music section this issue. Things are definitely
getting tougher for clubs in Austin. In the last week alone, two live music
venues in town have called it quits, and more are looking in the face of
impending doom. Sneakers sneaked quietly off of Sixth Street (as I briefly
mentioned last week). Lips are tight on the matter, but basically it seems that
the club's owners decided to stop pouring money down it. Instead they're
concentrating on pouring money into Joe's Volcano, their new enterprise at the
old Sneakers location on North Lamar. La Zona Rosa also gave up the ghost
(again) with various stories surrounding its demise. Some tales have gone
around claiming that the venue was once again retrenching and would return, but
a reliable source who spoke to one of La Zona's investors in California
recently says that he admitted "it's over," and that they had lost too much
money to think about continuing the club's existence. Further evidence is
contained in an anonymous letter received by the Chronicle from an ex-La
Zona employee claiming that the club's staff had been shafted out of the last
month's pay. All phone lines to the club have been shut down; the
above-mentioned investor has not returned the Chronicle's calls to his
pager. At presstime, it looks like the Rounder Records showcase with Beau
Jocque, Steve Riley, and Marcia Ball that was scheduled there for
June 10 will likely end up as part of the "Louisiana Swamp Romp & Crawfish
Cook-Off" on Sixth Street that same weekend.
Down at Babes on Sixth Street, manager Jim Hawk says
that after five years, the current investors in that establishment are "done,"
and he's looking for new ones with the intention of purchasing Babes himself
(including keeping the name). "Live music was never a high thing on their
list," he points out, and anyone looking for the venue in the telephone book
can vouch for that; "Babes Old Fashioned Hamburgers" doesn't sound like the
number you'd call to find out when Alvin Crow or Don Walser are
playing. Unlike Danny Crooks' situation at Steamboat, however, Hawk says
that he's under "no pressure" to rush and purchase the club. You'd better rush
down to the Austin Outhouse however, if you'd like to get a good whiff of the
ambience there. The club has lost its lease, and it looks like the June 30 will
mark the end of the Outhouse era. Clubowner Chuck Lamb says he's been
making offers to keep the place, but that things "don't look good." He's on the
lookout for a new location, but hasn't found anything to his liking yet. Of
course, as he points out, it's extra hard to like a new place when you don't
want to leave the old one.
Lounging Around
Despite the best efforts of interviewees the Butthole
Surfers, the Austin entry in the new Rolling Stone's batch of
cool/hot spots around the country (Don McLeese sends you to La Zona
Rosa) comes off pretty stale (or maybe I've just read it all before in
Details). Still, they manage to get another national plug in for the
Carousel Lounge's hero o' the Hammond, Jay Clark. I'm told that when the
Clarkmeister gets his full band to play along with him (you didn't know he had
one, did you?) the results are truly magical; unfortunately, repeated efforts
to get Clark to reveal when the band will next play together have failed. One
Lounge employee explains that the guys are just "too shy" to let anyone know
more than a couple of days in advance. While I'm on the subject, we took
Jonathan Richman and his drummer (who is also the percussionist for
Friends of Dean Martin) down to Lala's (where it's always
Christmas!) after his Electric Lounge show last Thursday. Richman was quite
amused by the little elves who drop down over the bar when the bathroom door is
opened; the drummer, appropriately, was more interested in the martinis.
Double "Ville"
This week marks the preliminary events leading up to the
Clarksville-West End Jazz and Arts Festival, kicking off Sunday with a sunset
show at the Oasis on Lake Travis featuring Tom Braxton & No Compromise,
Sebastian Whittaker & the Creators, and Connie Kirk's Jazz
All-Stars. Monday at Cedar Street is a happy hour showcase with Martin
Banks Quartet, Hope Morgan, and the Frederick Sanders Trio. Tuesday
sees the Jazz Pharoahs at Frank and Angie's, then it's back to Cedar
Street on Wednesday for the Austin Jazz Players and Critics Awards Show/Women
In Jazz Vocal Showcase (whew!) with Willie Nicholson, Pamela Hart, and
Tina Marsh. Finally, on Thursday at Central Market, there's Carl
Settles' Blue Orpheus Revue, Mike Mellinger & the Austin Jazz Workshop,
and the Lourdes Perez Band. More as the Fest continues next week.
If folk is more your bag, you already know that the
Kerrville
Folk Festival is continuing this week, and on through June 11. The lineup:
Friday - David Massengill, Catie Curtis, The Billy's, Vicki
Pratt Keating, Tom Paxton with Steve Kauffman, and Peter Yarrow;
Saturday - Peter Keane, Caroline Aiken, Pierce Pettis, David Mallet,
Iris Dement, Bill & Bonnie Hearne, and Limpopo; Sunday - Rick
Beresford, Eliza Gilkyson, Iain Matthews & Martin Simpson, Dah-Veed,
Domestic Science Club, and Austin Lounge Lizards; Thursday, June
8 - David Amram, David Broza, Linda Lowe, and Townes Van Zandt.
So far, it's a good thing that folk music is an "unplugged" art, as Kerrville
hasn't been spared the recent storming, and received around four inches of rain
over the Fest's first weekend.
Good-bye, Stubbs
Obituaries are never fun and there have been too many
lately.
Christopher Stubblefield, the Lubbock-to-Austin barbecue king better
known as "Stubbs," passed away last weekend. Stubbs first gained
recognition in his hometown of Lubbock during the early Seventies, where his
tiny smokehouse and legendary touch with brisket played host to visitors from
Linda Ronstadt to Tom T. Hall and, of course, the Lubbock Mafia -
Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, etc. In the
mid-Eighties Stubbs moved his business here to Austin, going from restaurateur
to businessman, creating his own line of barbecue products. (Stubbs once cooked
on David Letterman's show.) I have no idea what they'll put on his
gravestone, but Margaret Moser suggests a line from his Lubbock menu:
"There will be no loud talk or bad talk in this place."
Mixed Notes
That still-untitled album by supergroup P (Gibby
Haynes, Bill Carter, Johnny Depp, Sal Jenco, and
guests) is nearing completion, and is on schedule for an August release. Yes,
Jim Jarmusch is still slated to direct their video; Carter favors the
song "Get Your Ass Back to Oklahoma." Don't want to create rumors of
exaggerated demises, but the buzz has it that with Haynes totally into the P
project, King Coffey's Trance label doing well, and Paul Leary's
successful producing career in full swing, the band known as the Butthole
Surfers may not be much longer... I wouldn't want to be in the cleanup crew
after last weekend's big Crash Worship rave/drumfest. I've only heard a
couple accounts of the precipitation-drenched, hallucinogen-fueled
extravaganza, but I'm smart enough to know that when you put the words "acid"
and "rain" together, they don't indicate anything pretty. One group tells me
they got all the way out to Dripping Springs, and were apparently within a few
yards of the entrance when the sight of an overturned car in the mud made them
realize that perhaps they'd be better off at home... First they were the
"Jungle Nuns," then just "the Nuns" (until they realized that was the name of
Alejandro Escovedo's old band), but former Milktrout head Robb
Froman and company say that their latest appellation League of Nuns,
is "for real." Of course, since a couple of the guys are from the Fort Worth
area, I'm sure they must remember that there used to be a FW band by
name of League of None. So what was wrong with "Jungle Nuns" in the
first place?... Here's the second stage lineup for the Austin Lollapalooza
stop, as best as I can cross-reference the latest information sheet I've got:
Blonde Redhead, Dirty Three, The Roots, Versus, and Mike Watt...
You say you couldn't get Pearl Jam tickets and you've got a dentist
appointment during Lollapalooza? Well, the H.O.R.D.E. tour, with Black
Crowes, Blues Traveler, Ziggy Marley & the Melody Makers, Taj Mahal, Wilco,
and G. Love & Special Sauce, is coming to Austin as well. Yep,
it's out at them big old South Park Meadows, and the date is August 31. Wow.
You're not gonna be able to save any money to see local bands this
summer, are you?... Spoon have finished recording their new album and
are heading out on tour for awhile. Matador Records may not have signed the
band (yet), but they like 'em enough to have set up some of the gigs... The
Texas Music Association's third annual set of Music 101 classes run on Mondays
throughout June at 6pm. The free, educational forums about the music business
feature Austin producers, clubowners, musicians and the like, and the schedule
is as follows - June 5: The Demo (Liberty Lunch); June 12: The Gig (Continental
Club); June 19: Building the Buzz (Liberty Lunch); and June 26: Your Team
(Continental Club)... Some in-stores for this week: Friday at 5pm at Waterloo
Records is Dah-Veed, while at the same time Sound Exchange has
Stretford... Need more Tejano in your diet? Puro Tejano, a
program of videos and interviews with purveyors of the music, is airing locally
on new station KNVA on Sundays at noon... Pariah no more - they broke
up over the weekend... This Sabado, er I mean Saturday (sorry, I was looking at
this damn El Azteca calendar) there's a benefit for hook victim Tim
Hayes of the Cryin' Out Louds (See Tim Stegall's review of
their last show in "Live Shots" for the whole story) at the Blue Flamingo. The
lineup is (I think) the Chumps, Paranoids, Inhalants, and Sons of
Hercules... While we're at it, add Swine King to the list of bands
at Terri Lord's benefit at Liberty Lunch tonight (Thursday)... Waterloo
Brewing Company is having a benefit for the O. Henry Museum this Sunday
starting at 1pm with Bill Rowan & the High Rollers, Olin Murrell,
and a slew of others performing... Regarding the new Showoffs
newsletter: Sorry, guys, but I just can't see Danzig beating
Rollins in a fistfight. Henry's just got so much more head weight on
'im. But then again, why am I arguing with people who can't spell Kurt
Cobain's name right but can correctly spell "espresso"?
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