Madden in the Lone Star State
As it’s 20 years since we released our debut album as the Earlies my eyes keep wandering over the calendar and I think of what we were doing that year. I know there’s nothing inherently special about 20 years but we’re an animal with 10 fingers and every time a number with a zero at the end pops up we’re happy and amused. Some people do celebration tours or re-releases for every zero year that comes around, I know I’m doing at least one tour this year based around such nostalgia and I’ve bought plenty of repackaged albums in this spirit. The recent Beatles re-releases were actually some of the best nostalgia money I’ve ever spent, I don’t think I’ll go back to the old mixes of Revolver. I’m not sure if Earlies nostalgia will stretch to a Giles Martin box set with outtakes or an arena tour but we’ll take a few moments across the year, probably only here on Substack, to remember what those young mavericks were up to back in 2004.
The reason I’m thinking about it this week is that I remember that on February the 9th we had our first visit to Texas, which was my first trip to America of any sort. Imagine that! Most British people dip their toe in with a trip to a theme park in Florida or a long weekend in New York but we were dropped straight into Dallas and it was weird and brilliant. For some reason our record label released a bit of money early to pay for our flights, I think the aim of the trip was to get some photographs of us all together or something, or finish the album maybe. We failed on every count anyway but I did put a stone on in ten days, that’s quite the feat in your 20s. We just trawled around bars and restaurants eating and drinking everything we possibly could. I don’t have any photos to show for it, I’ve never been good at taking them and I probably never will now.
Half way through the trip we had a weekend in Austin and it was probably my favorite part because of the music scene there. We went again a year later with the full band to play at SXSW but that was comparatively turd, somebody had filled it with British indie bands and the lower echelons of the London music industry. To go to Austin on a normal weekend was a rare and undeserved privilege, there were country music legends playing in every other bar for tips and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Or ears actually.
We saw Redd Volkaert a couple of times at the Continental so this 17 year old low resolution video probably does it justice, if I’d have had the presence of mind to pull a phone out it might’ve looked like this. He’d been Merle Haggard’s guitarist, that was the morsel of biographical information that pulled us through the door. I don’t suppose you land the top tier country session jobs by accident and he was truly phenomenal. Everyone gigging or pontificating on improvisation at music colleges in England was only ever considering improvisation through the lens of jazz. Standing watching this guy really made realise that country improvisers really can be some of the best out there. It might not sound like a massive revelation but it was obviously a moment that stuck in my head, standing there thinking “this guy solos better than anybody I’ve ever seen at a Matt and Phred’s jazz gig and I’m enjoying myself more…”
We saw Earl Poole Ball playing in a converted train carriage with old people doing traditional dancing all around him. At least I thought they were old, they were probably 47. Everyone got us through the door telling us he was Johnny Cash’s piano player, it was only when I got home and checked a few album credits that I realised he was the pianist on Sweetheart of the Radio too. This clip has nothing to do with what we saw but the understated everyday naffness of it is evocative of the situations these musical legends are poked into every weekend.
That sort of neatly brings me to the fact that on the Sunday we went to Ginny’s Little Longhorn and played Chickenshit Bingo, you can find everything you need to about the game in the video above. I didn’t win despite screaming at the animal when it was near my number. I felt a bit mean, which is weird because I eat chickens. Anyway, crammed into the corner filling the time between games was Dale Watson and his band, I think it was the first time I saw a pedal steel player in real life.
I doubt Austin is the same anymore, when a place is that cool everybody cottons on and it populates with plonkers. I’m sure it’s filled with expensive coffee, craft ale and the alternative Northern Quarter homogeny that everybody thinks of as different nowadays. I’m glad we got in there when we did. God bless the lone Star state, without it the Earlies would just be a Burnley cover band with Giles drinking the rider.
The Muppets and Fallon
A ten year old clip from my favourite (current) American talk show. I can’t believe I only just saw this but I love it so much, something about watching the Muppets do a Band song makes my eyes fill with salty water. When I first started watching the Band I was instantly struck how much they reminded me of the Band, there’s no need to inform me that I’ve gotten the direction of causality wrong-I get it now. They sort of missed a trick not letting Floyd take the Crazy Chester verse, he was literally built for it, but other than that its perfect. The attention to lighting and camera angles is phenomenal, I love that Jimmy Fallon cares about this stuff.