TCB

Photo By Todd V. Wolfson

Road Trippin'

Onetime Austinite, now itinerant troubadour Davíd Garza pulls into Stubb's Saturday night, and he won't be empty-handed. Far from it: He'll be performing songs from the five new albums he's recorded for his own Wide Open label. There's the electric/electronic Amorea, lo-fi Secret Album, folky Alarm Spring, and Covers/Colcha, an English/Spanish collection of songs by Lydia Mendoza, Roy Orbison, Iris Dement, Los Tremendos Michoacanos, and several others. Then there's Summer Songs Four, a rock opera documenting the presumably fictional battle between the Bears and the Artcloud Army. "The only unifying style is I performed all the instruments myself," says Garza by phone from the Midwest. Garza recorded the discs in Austin, New York, Los Angeles, and the Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, a 3,000-acre pecan farm 30 miles east of El Paso also favored by fellow "Texas freaks" Pantera and Ministry. Though lately he's been grappling with the elements and a car that wouldn't start, living on the road seems to suit the former Twang Twang Shock-a-Boomer. "I love it," he says. "I have places I can always come back to." Besides Austin, those places are L.A., where he's been holding down a weekly slot at the Largo with Jon Brion, and New York, where he'll start a residency at the Mercury Lounge later this month. Garza also appears on KUT's Eklektikos today (Thursday) at noon.