Carolyn Wonderland

Poodie’s Picnic

The Luv Doc Recommends

June 23, 2009

Sometimes it seems like you’re the only person in Austin who hasn’t gotten high with Willie Nelson in the back of his tour bus. Why the dis, Willie? Just because someone comes across a little bit straight edged doesn’t mean they’re not willing to make the bowl glow like a thousand suns … in the right circumstances … and what circumstances could be righter than the back of the Honeysuckle Rose IV, a biodiesel chugging Amsterdam on wheels where ex-football coaches, preachers, and even asshole rednecks check their sanctimony at the door? Hell, even people who have never tried pot are happy to get their ganja cherry popped by the Red Headed Stranger himself. It’s not like shooting heroin with Boy George or snorting meth with Courtney Love. There’s a certain Zen involved – a high tolerance, if you will. Why else would chick-hater Toby Keith get to burn one with His Willieness, even though he claims he’ll never smoke weed with Willie again? Criminal. At least he got the offer … and don’t think for a minute that given a second chance he won’t be sucking on Willie’s spliff like a Detroit crack whore. Why wouldn’t he? It’s no secret that Willie’s weed is some really awesome shit – good enough to justify a second residence in Maui maybe? Who knows? Well, everybody except you apparently, and just because your plumber, your hairdresser, Matthew McConaughey, and that pimply-faced kid who checks your receipt at Guitar Center have all gotten stoned to the bejesus belt with America’s favorite write-in presidential candidate is no reason to be all sulky. Willie ain’t stuck up. More likely it’s just that your timing is off. Don’t worry, Willie has clearly negotiated some sort of Keith Richards deal with the devil (or Jesus?) and will likely be around long after you and your progeny are dead and gone. He also knows the secret of the immortal: If you live long enough, all your friends die, so you damn sure better keep making new ones. Tragically, one of Willie’s oldest and most beloved friends just died back in May, so there’s a huge space left open. Poodie Locke, voted in 1952 the Most Beautiful Baby in Waco, was Willie’s longtime stage manager as well as the owner of Poodie’s Hilltop Bar & Grill in Spicewood. Not only was Poodie a truly nice guy and the very definition of a bon vivant, he was a true ambassador and representative of Williedom for those not quite lucky enough to make the inner circle. Poodie welcomed everyone, consistently paying forward Willie’s good vibe. When he wasn’t on the road, he was at the bar drinking tequila, listening to music, sharing stories, and a bit more clandestinely, Willie’s intoxicant of choice. Not surprisingly, Poodie’s circle of friends was huge and devoted and included a lot of musicians, both famous and not. This Sunday at the Backyard, they’re throwing a concert to celebrate his life. The show, called Poodie’s Picnic, is a nine-hour musical extravaganza that is worth far more than the $20 admission. Included on the bill are Joe Ely, Reckless Kelly, Cross Canadian Ragweed, Cory Morrow, Billy Joe Shaver, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Gary P. Nunn, Bobby Boyd, James Hand, Billy Bob Thornton & the Boxmasters, Carolyn Wonderland, Paula Nelson, Folk Uke, Waylon Payne, Scotty Emerick, and more. Plus there’s always that chance the Honeysuckle Rose IV might roll into the parking lot and make your day.

KOOP Easter Sunday Soiree

The Luv Doc Recommends

March 18, 2008

Here’s hoping your band got signed last week so you can peel off those skinny jeans and let that thing breathe for a while. Your privates don’t need to be sealed up like a Nazi treasure cave or Christ’s tomb. It was 95 degrees last Friday. Heat like that demands a certain amount of ventilation, so unless you’re cooking up a big batch of cooter stew, you can untruss yourself and just … by God … let it flap around a little. Plus, if the sales associate at Urban Outfitters wasn’t tea-bagging Mammon, she would have done you a solid and had you turn your ass to the mirror so she could point out the areas where you and the anorexic model in the Lucky Magazine ad diverge morphologically. It’s so hard to get good service these days that honest service is just a pipe dream – sort of like your skinny jeans. Same deal for your drummer. Tell him he doesn’t always have to dress like he did in the picture on your MySpace page. You were going for that brooding goth look, which dovetails rather nicely with the climatological idiosyncrasies of the Pacific Northwest, but to survive in the music business, you have to adapt. Get out some scissors. Carve up some evil looking Daisy Dukes. Don’t worry that the world can see all your ingrown leg hairs. We were already imagining them. It’s OK to be all funereal and whatnot, but trolling around in a black hoody, leather pants, and Dr. Frank-N-furter mascara in the middle of a sunny afternoon in the ATX isn’t goth, it’s just fucking silly, and being silly is pretty much anti-goth – at least as anti-goth as the Visigoths and Ostrogoths, who were more about kicking ass than shopping at Hot Topic. Point is, you can unbutton, unbuckle, and undo now because there isn’t anyone left in town to impress. No matter how we tried to front last week, Austin is still Austin, after all, and even the sharks in the dance floor at Qua could care less about your high-dollar, ghetto-girl wardrobe. Shit, they’ve been staring up into the eye of God for so long now they’re blind to the window dressing anyway. So just relax, let your hair down and have a noncorporate sponsored beer of your choosing. You might have to pay for it out of your own pocket, but karmically at least, it’s much less expensive. Sometimes free isn’t really free at all. Take radio for instance. You can either pay for it up front (Sirius, XM) or pay for it on the back end by having to listen to annoying ads. Ever find yourself humming the jingle for a plastic surgery center? Yeah, you’re going to hell, but before your flesh is consumed in an eternal lake of fire, you might want to drop by Ruta Maya International HQ this Easter Sunday to support the resurrection of KOOP, Austin’s free community radio station that was the victim of a recent arson attempt. Starting at 8pm you can rock out to a truly Austintatious musical lineup including Wendy Colonna, Carolyn Wonderland, Shelley King, Dave Madden, Dan Dyer, and Guy Forsyth. Wear your skinny jeans if you want, but just remember: No one will care.

Rock & Roll Party

The Luv Doc Recommends

Jan. 8, 2008

If you did them up right, the holidays should have packed a couple of extra pounds of suet on your frame. Don’t freak out and buy an expensive gym membership just yet. Anything could happen. You might swallow a tapeworm. You might go on a hunger strike. Your soccer team’s plane might crash in the Andes. Besides, more and more people are getting right with chubbiness anyway. Take a quick stroll along the drag and you’ll realize that your anachronistic prejudices about body image don’t trouble the youth of today. You won’t see any hint of the roomy, asexual styles of yesteryear. Mostly what you get is clothes that truss the body like sausage casings, split with intermittent herniations of white, doughy flesh. In ill-fitting clothing, nearly anyone can look voluptuous. Take “skinny jeans” for instance. They might make your legs look skinny – especially if you could throw a poncho over your upper torso – say like Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter, but the average pair of skinny jeans these days has belly fat oozing out of the top like dough from a broken can of biscuits. Perhaps it’s Eurocentric designers taking revenge on Bush-voting red states, but clothing seems to be tailored for people who spend their days in the tailgate mosh pit of Oxfam trucks, not for pudgy middle Americans whose most physically demanding tasks are fingering their remotes and cracking the pull-tops on cans of Red Bull and Rock Star. If people aren’t leaving their houses as much (and they aren’t) there really isn’t much need for them to look presentable, but they could at least look and feel comfortable. It’s really sad to think of a whole nation of teenagers passing out, popping buttons and splitting seams in the comfort and privacy of their own homes just because they don’t have enough self-esteem to buy their clothes in the “husky” section of J.C. Penney. If wishes were horses, they probably wouldn’t try to fit into Greyhound harnesses, would they? Ah, but how to change the demented mindset of a whole generation? Fuck that, you’re probably better off buying an Ab Lounger and training for ultra marathons. Or, you could have your mouth wired shut. Before you do, you might want to check in with Jennifer Marchand, who is the beneficiary of a rock & roll concert this Friday at Ruta Maya. Marchand who runs Bleu French Laundry productions, a promoter of musical events like the Zeppelin hoot night and the Stones Sticky Fingers album hoot, was hit by a car in November and suffered, among other things, a broken jaw, which required her mouth to be wired shut for four weeks. This Friday’s show will help cover some of her medical expenses and get her back in business, so to speak. Acts scheduled to play include: Amplified Heat, Chili Cold Blood, the Alice Rose, the Summer Wardrobe, Ralph White, the Murdocks, Carolyn Wonderland, Tony Scalzo, Jade Day, Paul Minor, and surprise guests. The Ruta Maya should be packed tighter than a pair of skinny jeans, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be able to squeeze you in.

The 16th annual AIDS Walk

Luv Doc Writings, The Luv Doc Recommends

SUN., OCT. 19, 2003

AIDS Walk as a name doesn’t really convey the sense of urgency associated with the disease. Walking implies a leisurely pace, basic ambulation, a level of activity just beyond lounging and just short of jogging. As an epidemic, AIDS/HIV is setting a blistering pace. More than 45 million people worldwide are living with HIV/AIDS and more than 14 million children have been orphaned by the disease. Here in America, the number of people infected by HIV is less than a million, thanks in no small part to organizations like AIDS Services of Austin, a local nonprofit that for 16 years has been helping people living with HIV/AIDS, as well as providing prevention and outreach services for the community at large. Given that kind of sustained, long-term commitment, the AIDS Walk makes a lot more sense. It’s about determination, endurance and vision. It’s also a lot of fun. This Sunday at 11am, thousands of Central Texans will meet in front of the Capitol at 11th and Congress for a pre-Walk street fair featuring cross-dressing comediennes the Austin Babtist Women, roots rockers 3 Balls of Fire, local rock diva Lisa Tingle, and singer-songwriter Carolyn Wonderland, as well a slew of booths by local businesses and organizations. Walkers raise money by hitting up friends, relatives, and (gasp!) office mates to sponsor them as they merrily toil over 5 kilometers of Central Austin. Walkers can go solo or in packs or even walk virtually from the comfort and privacy of home through the miracle of the Internet. How many other 5Ks let you do that? Of course, you can dress as freaky as you want at home, but no one will be there to see it. A better bet is to actually break a sweat and negotiate the real course where you’ll have a chance to mingle with several thousand philanthropic folks like yourself. The key is to get online and sign up now so you can still hit up that office hottie for some sponsorship scratch.