Pastiche: Lose Your Idols

Editor's note: Pastiche is an occasional column exploring the diversity within the Austin music community. The views expressed in Pastiche are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the outlook or beliefs of anyone else in the IST network.

It’s widely known that the phrase “Live Music Capital of the World” was clever advertising prior to becoming fact. In truth, the city has talked big but worked hard to foster the sort of climate where live music was as inescapable as it has become today - a place where the grocery store, taco joints, coffee and head shops, theaters, and of course clubs are liable to break out into broadcast sound at any given moment. Every religion has its saints, and the faith of the Live Music Capital of the World has enlisted a long line of promoters, instigators, and musicians into its canon. Names frequently spoken with bated breath are those of Willie Nelson, Townes Van Zandt, Clifford Antone, Louis Black, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Roky Erikson, Daniel Johnston, Randy Turner, and - for her brief but memorable tenure here - Janis Joplin.

Image from Jose Ole on Flickr

The spaces (almost all extinct) that acted as cathedrals for the disparate emergence of everything from Cosmic Cowboy country/rock to fledgling queercore included the Vulcan Gas Company, Liberty Lunch, and The Armadillo World Headquarters. Try to spend ten minutes at an some audiophile’s haunt without hearing about one of the above-mentioned, and I’ll buy you the patented “Jeremiah the Innocent” figurine (one per reader). To say that Austin has rested on its laid-back laurels is not a claim I’ll be making - hence this site's efforts and that of many others continuing dedication to the emerging music (both live and recorded) coming out of Austin.

We can be proud of our city’s contribution to every known genre, from tejano to techno, but what I do aim to address here is the unmistakable tendency in this city to heap praise on the past; a past which grows more sepia-toned and more formless with each passing year and dewy-eyed reminiscence. A substantive music scene is something we have, no doubt. But this geographical tendency to elevate and idolize and refuse to grow apart from the visionaries and originals of Austin music is dull at best, and stunting at worst. Austin needs to kindly say goodbye to its forefathers and mothers if it ever wants to grow apart from their long shadow.

Image from patti_heck on Flickr

About a year ago I went to a presentation of the House of Songs at Threadgill’s World Headquarters off of Riverside. The event was intriguing, as it imported musicians from Denmark to Austin for the purposes of co-habitation and creation. From the press release: “...these visiting Danish artists will spend one week in ‘the Live Music Capital,’ soaking in all that Austin has to offer while working on new material, collaborating, co-writing and performing with some of Austin’s finest.” The country-wide exchange of ideas was too interesting to pass up, and I ponied up to the restaurant to see what had transpired over the week of brain and guitar picking. While I took another chance on the restaurant’s offerings (as unmemorable as comfort food comes, unfortunately), performer after performer strummed an acoustic guitar to the now warmed-over themes of trains, killing time, and, of course, Texas itself. “Lots of songs about ‘mama’,” I wrote in my notes.

It must be said that one night at one venue isn’t enough to brush off a genre of music or even a concept as enlightening as the House of Songs. What continues to itch at me though, a year later, is how so many performers and organizers in Austin (including those at this performance), instead of emulating the approach and ethos of our most vibrant upstarts, tend to instead emulate everything else, from the playing to the accents to the fashion.

Kenneth Threadgill, founder of Threadgill’s, helped to hasten a new approach to music in the ‘60s by allowing the worlds of hippiedom and country to cross-pollinate at weekly “singing sessions” on Wednesdays at his restaurant. At the time, folkies and hippies had an almost unimaginably difficult time in this conservative state, and even Austin wasn’t entirely immune to the chafing of societal upheaval inherent in the decade. Threadgill had a strong affection for old-timey, bluegrass and folk music, and so did the folkies (obviously). By bringing together the strains of campfire songs with social consciousness, Threadgill incubated a movement that was not without controversy. Even Willie Nelson, during his first visit to the Armadillo World Headquarters, felt out of sorts at the bleeding edge of weed smokers and whiskey sippers (a distinction he has helped erase over some 50 or so years). While it seems as natural as a gourmet taco these days, the worlds of country and rock were seen as mutually exclusive by many - purists blanched at the idea of The Byrds playing at the Grand Ole Opry, and some psychedelic rockers had no patience for artists not exclusively dedicated to mind-expansiveness or the Brotherhood of Man or whatever. And still, the daring paid off, and the two worlds merged deliciously. The resulting musical movement has been well-documented and consistently unearthed again and again by media outlet after media outlet, and part of that exposure has resulted in a cottage industry of Austin musicians paying tribute to solely to the sound of the times instead of the spirit.

Many Austinites, especially veteran residents, are so positively dedicated to whatever once-controversial genre (be it psychedelic or country rock) that the entire city as a result seems to move only as far as the memory of Erickson and Nelson’s finest performances will allow. How else to explain the weekly dump of musicians plying the country and blues trades every night on 6th street? Act after act clot the stages of the Continental Club and Maggie Mae’s and The Cactus Cafe and Antone’s and Threadgills, attempting to one-up one another as they burn a torch for music made and dispensed with long ago.

Witness the band Robert Johnson’s Soul, who face-plantingly name-check the godfather of the blues while doing nothing to further the development of the genre. Tellingly, the band is on the Valljeo Music Group label, founded by the local group Vallejo. The latter were once briefly interesting for their fusion of Latin music and rock. Now, like their progeny, Vallejo are more concerned with recreating the past. In the case of many musical acts who have ceased saying anything new, the past they emulate is - somewhat oddly - their own. The worst offender of them all, though, is Bob Schneider, whose unremarkable musical vision is rivaled only by his unrivaled (regional) popularity. Schneider’s songs range from the introspective to “funny,” but Schneider, with his gruff voice planted firmly in front of all of his recordings, labors to make an impression over instrumentation that threatens to turn into wallpaper. His past includes time spent in Joe Rockhead, which aped the funk-punk explosion of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, and in The Ugly Americans, which aped the country-rock sound mentioned earlier. His band The Scabs eventually materialized with a sound Margaret Moser somehow felt apt to describe as both “sexist” and “sexy.” Schneider’s dirty mouth might be considered taboo (“Big Butts and Blowjobs” probably won’t win him many feminist fans), but his obscene schtick is as tiresome as it is unasked for. His syrupy cover of “Over the Rainbow” basically says it all - I’m taking this old thing, and doing something with it, but I’ll be damned if I could tell you why.

Another offender is rote nu-metal act Blue October, whose complicated back-story is repeated like gospel by fans to anyone within earshot, especially to detractors like yours truly. The substance of their music is almost always obscured by drama related to lead singer Justin Furstenfeld, as if to distract the listener from the tiresome song progressions and the radio-ready production in which they douse every one of their compositions. The band is as little worth noting as ever, save for a recent announcement that the newly-launched Austin City Limits Live will have the band as a guest in late April. That this band - indistinguishable from any of grunge’s bastard children - will represent our hometown to millions of viewers is, in a word, shitty.*

Hope is not lost, though. Take the case of native son Ian Moore, who was once groomed to be the next blues guitarist in the tradition of Stevie Ray Vaughn or Kenny Wayne Shepard or some other three-named wanker. His album Live from Austin in 1994 largely wallows in unnecessarily elongated performances (his cover of “Me and My Guitar” presses on for seven long minutes), but through the cheesy synthesizers and melodrama you can hear Moore’s passion, reigned in by what was expected of him and what he believed of himself. But by 1998, Moore had dispensed with that weight, releasing the introspective and heady (albeit playful) Ian Moore’s Got the Green Grass. The record disappointed blues/rock apologists, but the damage to his career as the next Name Name Name is more than made up for by this unbridled, bright and eclectic collection. Ian Moore’s departure from what would have clearly been a comfortable career as part of the Stevie Ray Vaughn lineage may have been difficult, but it was inspired and very, very worth it.

Image from Ian Moore

Every artist’s talents begin somewhere, usually a stone’s throw from the artists who first persuaded them to pick up a guitar or a paintbrush or a pen. To pay tribute to and emulate your forebears is not verboten - hell, it’s probably necessary. But it is crucial to find a place in the continuum that hasn’t already been slashed and burned by generations of hopefuls. When I first heard demos from a fledgling local band called Voxtrot in a recently-adopted member of the band’s apartment, I was startled at how closely Ramesh Srivastava’s original recordings mirrored those of obvious influences Belle and Sebastian, with one song appropriating “Sleep the Clock Around” to the point of near-parody. But in their years of development, the group managed to marry the foundations of the pop they loved to something brash and urgent and - I’ll say it - new. This same paradox applies to writers as well, of course. I’ve beat a drum for both under- and over-appreciated Texas authors like Grover Lewis and Larry McMurtry, but if any of us who want to write stop short at just emulating their prose, we’re better off cashing in our chips and lending what talents we do have to some other expanding field - the food truck industry seems like a good one, at least until someone devises a way to create one master food out of an “artisan sausage,” a doughnut, and alcohol. Until that day, we should feel free to create, with reverence paid to those who came before us but with our eyes fixed forward. Or, in other, more poetic words, we can take heed of Srivastava’s lyrics: “I had to lose my idols to find my voice.” Food for thought, Austin.

* - Thanks to a clarification, I realized I confused the Austin City Limits television show with the Austin City Limits Live venue (to say nothing of the festival?!). So, they're unrelated, and it's my mistake. Blue October will not be broadcasting their shittiness to millions of viewers, but instead to however many attendees come see them play.