Lounge Aid '99 Electric Lounge, Friday 22 -- Sunday 24 
There's a whole mess of bills coming due, and despite the fact that the Electric Lounge has consistently improved its financial situation with each passing year, skyrocketing property values and other costs are increasing beyond the club's means. Fortunately, when you have friends like the musicians who are donating their time and talent to Lounge Aid '99, surrender won't come quickly. There are droves of fans and bands in this town for whom the Lounge is as close to a heart as the local music scene has, and for whom the thought of not having the live music venue is a terrible, unacceptable prospect. Thursday night's rock show is strong all night long with Sixteen Deluxe, Fivehead, and the Mittens. On Friday, Mariachi Estrella holds their weekly happy hour, followed by an evening full of the Gourds and a slew of special guests. Saturday, this week's cover story, Spoon, headlines with able support from a couple of Lounge faves, Wannabes and Monroe Mustang. Sunday night, Brown Whornet, Viper Horse, and Kitten Trap wrap up the benefit. Call the club for details. Support live, local music. Save the Lounge!!
Roy Hargrove Quintet
The Mercury, Friday 22 & Saturday 23  There is some serious jazz going on in the clubs of Austin. Following hot on the heels of a house-packing two-night stand by the Earl Harvin Trio, the Mercury brings you another Dallas heavyweight in Roy Hargrove, one of the most celebrated young trumpet players in the world. This past year saw the Texas trumpeter playing around with other hornmen like Nicholas Payton and Wynton Marsalis (check out "The Three Trumpeteers" on Payton Place for a beautiful triple-horn breakdown), and to kick off '99, he's bringing the funk. With Shelley Carrol on tenor sax, Hargrove's band will consist of Austin favorites Fred Sanders on keys, Yoggie on bass, and Brannen Temple on drums (that's one half of the original Hot Buttered Rhythm to me and you). If there's one show you don't want to miss, it's these people playing this music. Openers are the Ephraim Owens Quintet on Friday and the Edwin Livingston Group on Saturday.
Edith Frost, Lullaby for the Working Class, Knife in the Water
Emo's, Saturday 23  Rooted somewhere in the Midwest, there's a vast family tree growing from the mulch of Nineties indie rock. Its branches are surnamed experimental, post-rock, shoegazer, and otherwise pruned-down sparse-rock too young to be named, composed of the members of Tortoise, Gastr del Sol, Palace, and a gazillion others. Recently alit on its gnarled, inbred branches is Chicago songbird Edith Frost, who can't believe how her former nest of Austin, which she left early this decade, has grown. Her openness and excitement about this and every topic belies the often turbid waters of her musical gene pool.
"It blows my mind every time I go back because the landmarks are different." She gets nostalgic, angry even, over the passing of downtown's neon Terminix bug, and Club Foot, then catches herself, lest she sound too old-fogeyish. "But there's some things that never change -- like Toy Joy. You can't go home again, really. Austin's gotten so huge." Frost and posse galloped through Emo's last year for an intimate Mother's Day gig (with proud Mama Frost in the audience), her subtly sweet, never-saccharine vocals blowing over the stark, wintry soundscapes, convincing you she means every word of her high-lonesome songs. In fact, with 1997's Calling Over Time, backed by the Drag City supergroup of David Grubbs, Jim O'Rourke, and others, and last October's release of the warmer, noisier Telescopic, that Frosty voice is becoming more and more in demand among her cross-pollinating contemporaries, evidenced by an ever-growing list of collaborations including Songs:Ohia, the Willard Grant Conspiracy, Archer Prewitt (Coctails, the Sea and Cake), the Pine Valley Cosmonauts, and the Boxhead Ensemble. "I really love helping people out that way; it's so much fun and so rewarding," gushes Frost when asked about her burgeoning résumé. "People find out about you who wouldn't have otherwise. I don't really have to do anything but show up and sing, and I get all these props for it, not money-wise -- at all -- but the feeling, 'Yes. I'm so psyched I got to be a part of that.'" -- Kim Mellen
Vic Chesnutt
Cactus Cafe, Tuesday 26 & Wednesday 27  "I didn't want to. I was fighting it."
In the middle of his last tour, cult hero, singer-songwriter, and paraplegic Vic Chesnutt ditched his band, fled across several state lines, filled his pockets with rocks, parked himself beside a motel pool, and for a week, contemplated suicide. Chesnutt, who, with the aid of the Nashville alt.country orchestra Lambchop, recently released The Salesman and Bernadette, his seventh album, obviously overcame the urge to take a dip. And like the young female protagonist in the Velvet Underground song, Vic Chesnutt's life was saved by rock & roll. "The final straw which made me go, 'Okay, that's it. I'm gonna live,' was that I was sitting beside this Motel 6 pool and I had my door open and it was late at night and videos started coming on the TV. So, I'm sitting out there and nobody's around because it's like four in the morning, and I heard Cyndi Lauper wafting through the door. And she was belting it out -- one of those videos of hers, "Time After Time" or something like that -- and I thought, 'Ah, some things are good.' Isn't that odd that it was Cyndi Lauper who was beckoning me back?" Odd? Understatement. But maybe it's apropos for Chesnutt, who on cursory inspection is a curiosity himself. A car accident at 18 left him bound to a wheelchair and with a mangled hand that makes his playing the guitar an accomplishment in itself. Yet, despite his physical condition, not to mention a gravelly voice, Chesnutt still manages to etch out strangely beautiful compositions. "It's kind of an interesting aspect of me," he says. "People don't know too many people who broke their necks and are writing songs, and they want to know, 'Is this what drives him or not? Is this the central thing in his creative life?'" The Georgia native claims the answer to both of those questions is an unadorned "No," and that his cloudy mental disposition was entrenched long before his body was marred. "The big regrets have nothing to do with me. I look at the world and think, 'God, what a crazy world.' I think, 'God, it was so close. We could have lived with the Indians and not killed them all. That would have been great.' We were close, so close, right on the edge from realizing, 'No, you don't want to slaughter them.' We could have had a whole different world in the Americas. That makes me depressed." -- Michael Bertin
 Susan Tedeschi
La Zona Rosa, Wednesday 27 Lots of people will tell you that Boston blues singer/ guitarist Susan Tedeschi sounds a lot like Janis Joplin. If you're one of the many Austinites who takes that comparison seriously, you'll think (and rightly so) that she sounds more like Bonnie Raitt. Tedeschi is quickly establishing her own sound, with a guitar style that's spare, minimalist even, complementing a powerful and raspy voice that owes as much to Etta James as it does to Joplin. Her Tone Cool debut Just Won't Burn is an even mix of Tedeschi's originals and covers by folks like Junior Wells and John Prine. --Christopher Hess
ALSO PLAYING: Friday: Joe Ely live recording, Antone's Saturday: Buddy Miles, Dessau Music Hall Sunday: Jeff Helmer Band with Elias Haslanger, Elephant Room Monday: D. Everett Blues Jam, Babe's Tuesday: The Privateers, Speakeasy Wednesday: Fiddler's Reunion, Broken Spoke Thursday: Bad Livers, Stubb's |
