Cornell Hurd

Artly Fest

The Luv Doc Recommends

July 1, 2011

Here’s something the Austin Chamber of Commerce fliers fail to mention: Usually when some hoary old beer-bellied coot starts blathering on about the good old days when Austin was cheaper, cooler, friendlier, more relaxed, and less pretentious, he’s not fucking around. It’s true. Back in the days of the Armadillo World Headquarters, Lone Star was a nickel a pitcher, pot was a dollar an ounce, and condoms were as rare as the Hope Diamond. In fact, you needed to be at least that hard to put one on. No one ever wore them mind you, because the CIA hadn’t even invented AIDS yet. That’s why pretty much every house party or beer bust devolved into a roiling clusterfuck reminiscent of the tangle of earthworms at the bottom of a bait can. When people weren’t sunbathing nude down at Barton Springs, they walked around shoeless and commando. The only fashion (other than freeballing) was daisy duke cutoffs and worn out “Keep on Truckin'” tank tops, and you really only needed a car if you had to drive some place way out on the edge of town like Oltorf or North Loop. Sadly, there weren’t any smart cars back then … only art cars. There was nothing smart about art cars, but they were wicked clever. For instance, art cars didn’t come with amenities like windshield wipers, door handles, or brake lights, but then again Detroit never offered a car that was completely covered in plastic army men, Lone Star bottle caps, or snow globes. In Austin, art was a pretty big deal back in the day. Everybody did art all the time, even if they were smoking pot, dropping acid, or making huge submarine sandwiches. The best way to make really good art is to not have a job, and back then you didn’t need one. Everybody shared everything: clothes, food, transportation, housing …. Instead of dropping major coin on an expensive Downtown condo, you could just crash on the sofa of Willie’s tour bus, park your Good Times van down by the river, or pass out in a bathroom stall at some dive bar down on Sixth Street. Yes, dive bar. It’s nearly impossible to imagine now, but Sixth Street used to be skeevy for very different reasons than it is now. Instead of teeming with crowds of binge-drinking tourists and douche bags with gelled hair and Ed Hardy shirts, Sixth Street used to be a dark, lonely place with just a smattering of bars, restaurants, and porno joints. In 1974, local artist Jim Franklin and his friend Bill Livingood got the Sixth Street ball rolling when they opened up the Ritz Theatre as a live music venue. Two months later, the Uranium Savages played their first show there. Thus began a colorful 36-year-and-counting career. Yes, these days the Savages all qualify for AARP discounts and abdominal trusses, but they’re still cranking out music that defines the Austin aesthetic: daring, derivative, irreverent, sloppy, fun, funny, and thought-provoking. Plus, they do it in freaky costumes with zany props. Artistically and stylistically the Uranium Savages are all over the map, which is just the way Austin likes it. This Saturday, they will be at the corner of Barton Springs Road and Riverside Drive at Threadgill’s World Headquarters (owned by a beer-bellied old coot from the Armadillo days named Eddie Wilson) for Artly Fest, a benefit for one of the Savages’ own, Artly Snuff, who was injured in a car accident back in December 2010. Bands on the bill include Extreme Heat, Cornell Hurd, Rick Broussard, Larry Lange & His Lonely Knights, and of course, the Uranium Savages themselves. Not surprisingly, Artly Fest also coincides with International Eddy Day, the Savages’ annual celebration of the Patron Saint of 709. If all this sounds strange and confusing, welcome to Austin. Just remember, it’s not as fun as it used to be.

Keep Austin Young: Celebrating the Life of Danny Roy Young

The Luv Doc Recommends

October 14, 2008

Sunday night’s Keep Austin Young concert at the Music Hall might be a little misleading. A quick scan of the lineup reveals that pretty much everyone on the bill qualifies for an AARP discount … or soon will. Surely this irony wasn’t missed by the promoters. More likely they embraced it because the Keep Austin Young concert isn’t a scenester rave or a Methodist youth rally. It’s a celebration of the life of Danny Roy Young, a man who would have appreciated the title’s irony more than most. Young, who died in August at the age of 67, was the owner of the now defunct Texicalli Grill, a restaurant that in its later years occupied a converted Taco Bell on Oltorf next to Curra’s. Unlike its corporately homogenized predecessor, the Texicalli was a uniquely Austin establishment. The walls were cluttered with Young’s collection of music memorabilia, and the tables were usually filled with his colorful collection of friends: musicians, politicians, bubbas, hippies, and slackers. All came to eat good food, drink, and swap stories. Young was as much a raconteur as a restaurateur, and a good part of the charm of the Texicalli was the outgoing, good-natured banter of its owner, the “Mayor of South Austin,” an honorary title that was the result of Young being named Best Mayor for the City of South Austin in the Chronicle’s 1992 “Best of Austin” issue – partly for his political activism opposing expansion of South Lamar (where the original Texicalli was located) and partly because Young was so beloved by his unofficial constituency. As with any true South Austinite, Young was also a musician – a rubboard player for several bands: Ponty Bone, Texana Dames, and perhaps most famously with the Cornell Hurd Band. During their Thursday night residency at Jovita’s, Hurd would often refer to Young as the “Lord of the Board.” In true South Austin style, Young’s rubboard was handmade, played with leather gloves that had mercury dimes glued to the fingertips – exactly the kind of thing you might come up with while stoned at a South Austin back-porch jam session. Although Young retired from the restaurant business a couple of years ago, he continued with his rubboard career as well as his role as a South Austin icon, emblematic of an era when Austin valued creativity and talent more than money and style. The fact that Young’s benefit is at the Austin Music Hall piles on further irony. All the rapacious development – those towering new condos and sleek new businesses were built on the bones of the scene that greedless good timers like Danny Young created. It’s fitting that Young’s family should benefit from them in turn, if only indirectly. If you didn’t know Danny, you still have plenty of reason to pay your respect. He’s part of the reason you and thousands of other people live in Austin. If that’s not reason enough, how about several hours of music from the crème de la crème of Austin’s old guard musicians: the Texana Dames, Ponty Bone, Marcia Ball, Ray Benson, the Cornell Hurd Band featuring Teisco del Rey, Floyd Domino, Blackie White, the Antone’s House Band, and perhaps the finest songwriter in the known world, James McMurtry.

Cornell Hurd

Luv Doc Writings, The Luv Doc Recommends

FEB. 12, 2007

People are strange, but love makes them even stranger. If love makes the world go round it’s only because it’s spinning beneath the heels of people running away from lovesick crazies. News reports generally refer to them as “stalkers” or “spurned lovers.” They run the gamut from prank-calling preteens to wild-eyed, middle-aged astronauts who drive 900 miles in a pair of diapers to pepper spray and possibly kill and dismember a rival lover. Other than the diapers, wig, pepper spray, knife, hammer, and BB gun, not much about Lisa Marie Nowak’s wild ride makes much sense. It’s safe to say she was bat-shit crazy, but it’s also possible she was just in love. Sometimes the difference between the two is indecipherable. Love, like any respectable intoxicant, tends to addle the senses. People in love may act normal, but beneath the surface they’re drunk on a frothy brew of emotions and pheromones. Add a little insanity to that mix and you get Nancy Kerrigan in a knee brace, Mary Jo Buttafuoco in ICU, and Nicole Brown Simpson in the morgue. Those are, of course, extreme cases, but they all involved some sort of twisted logic. Lisa Marie surely had her reasons too. She also had a plan that included along with the items mentioned above, latex gloves, rubber tubing, and trash bags. In other words, she was crazy in love, but not so crazy she couldn’t provision herself with an array of weird items that made her seem even more crazy. Rubber tubing? A BB gun? Damn, this chick is good. It’s like premeditated insanity. Any normal person with an MS in aeronautical engineering would have at least brought a shotgun and a wood chipper. A BB gun however, is pretty much the key that unlocks the dressing room door at The Montel Williams Show – a little nest egg in case the whole kidnapping/murder/dismemberment thing didn’t work out. What a memorable Valentine’s gift that would have been. Certainly beats boiling the Easter Bunny. Rest assured however this isn’t the last you’ll hear of Lisa Marie. Her ratty-ass mug will be back clogging up your daytime TV quicker than you can whistle the tune to “Crazy.” So just remember while you’re out there birddogging your next true romance that being too serious can be a serious problem. If, in light of recent events, you want to keep it on the light side, this Saturday you can check out Cornell Hurd on the deck at Central Market North. Cornell may be dressed in black, but he’s all sweetness and light when he’s onstage and his band features some of the best country musicians in town. They’re sure to keep the world spinning beneath your feet even if the lovesick crazies don’t.