Dale Watson

Gypsy Picnic Trailer Food Festival

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October 18, 2011

First of all, if you’re offended by the term “gypsy,” back off. It ain’t like that. Here in Austin we think of gypsies as freedom-loving people who can’t be tied down – sort of like the homeless people in the Kris Kristofferson song “Me and Bobby McGee.” You know, the kind of folks who aren’t ashamed to hitchhike or carry a dirty red bandana, desperate types with “nothing left to lose.” This, of course, could describe a lot of people of unsavory mien: escaped convicts … psychopaths … terrorists … axe-murderers. But for the generally bourgeois demographic of Central Austin, the gypsy aesthetic is a much more benign and romantic notion. Like communism or gerbiling, having nothing left to lose is much more attractive as a theoretical construct than in actual practice. Being encumbered with nothing is the naive fantasy of those encumbered with too much. We all like to think of ourselves as Bear Grylls from Man vs. Wild … all alone out there in the wild … surviving by our wit and instinct … never even asking the cameraman or sound engineer for a protein bar or a foot massage … really roughing it. Really, Bear Grylls is just like us … only he comes from a much better family and went to Eton College. Regardless, just because we’ve never been “busted flat in Baton Rouge” doesn’t mean we couldn’t handle it, even enjoy it. Really, who hasn’t fantasized about being flat broke and having to hitch a ride in the land of alligators, drunk Cajuns, and David Duke? What’s the worst that could happen? Sure, you might have to send an embarrassing text to your parents from your iPhone to get them to add some money to your checking account so you can get your morning Venti at Starbucks, but hey, that’s just the cost of your gypsy life of freedom, isn’t it? Even Bear Grylls gets tired of eating grubworms, showering in the snow, and shitting in the woods, Bear though he may be. The notion of freedom and self-reliance however, no matter how bankrupt and fallacious, still sounds sexy. Gypsies don’t have to worry about mortgages, car payments, utility bills, retirement accounts, taxes, or even holding down a job. The costumes are pretty fly as well. Think Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow or maybe Stevie Nicks in her goth phase: lots of dangly bling, tats, and billowy clothing, not to mention the obligatory bandana do-rag. Yes, the nomadic life has its romance and allure – well, at least the European version. Back in the day, Texas and most of the plains states were populated almost exclusively with exotically dressed nomads, until we killed most of them and herded the remainder into reservations. Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose until you actually lose your freedom. Then it might as well just be another word for wings, antlers, or a 14-inch penis: something you don’t have. So rather than being a pejorative and ethnically erroneous label for the people of Romany, the term “gypsy” really denotes a longing for a romanticized ideal of what we don’t have: Freedom. In the case of the Gypsy Picnic, it’s the ability to roll up your awning, hitch up your trailer, and move it to some more desirable location … perhaps one that isn’t so visible to public health inspectors … or maybe someplace visible to nearly everyone. This weekend that place is Auditorium Shores, where nearly 40 food trailers from all across Austin will set up shop for the Gypsy Picnic Trailer Food Festival. This is a great chance to sample a lot of different, interesting foods without the annoyance of silverware. Along with the food there will also be a craft beer bar with selections from independent breweries, live music (Boy, Alabama Shakes, Dale Watson, Hacienda, and Delta Spirit), and a trailer food cook-off judged by local celebrities including Bryan Beck, Todd Boatwright, and the Chronicle‘s Mick Vann. Admission is free, but bring some folding money because the food isn’t. Each trailer will, however, offer one signature food item for $3. To some that might seem a little steep for something bought off the back of a roach wagon, but this is Austin, so even our trailer food is bourgeois. Don’t fight it. Embrace it. Maybe real freedom is blowing all your money on beer and trailer food.

Jon Blondell CD Release

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July 7, 2010

Elephant Room

Yes, you can dance to jazz, sort of in the same sense you can milk anything with nipples. At some point, however, perhaps when you have a double-fisted death grip on the teats of a stampeding mother rhinoceros, you’re going to find yourself asking, “Was it worth it?” Yes, jazz dancing has its pluses. The biggest of course is that you get carte blanche to do the Bob Fosse “jazz hands.” Nowhere else outside the realm of street mime performance can you get away with such overt hamminess without inspiring a gangland style beatdown. If you’re going to swing for that fence, you might want to put on a pair of white gloves first – really makes it pop. Then there’s the footwear issue. Jazz dance traditionally requires jazz shoes, but those are for formal jazz dance – the kind you learn in a real dance school. Dancing to jazz music only requires the shoes of a questionably crazy person, and here the styles of footwear are as diverse as the variations of insanity itself. To be sure, actual jazz dance shoes are pretty nutty looking outside of an actual dance studio, but don’t discount Crocs and socks, woven huaraches, or Vibram FiveFingers, those creepy looking glove shoes. Wearing FiveFingers is pretty much an outright admission that you never want to get laid again for the rest of your life. If the Vatican ever finds out about FiveFingers, they will become standard issue footwear in monasteries across the globe. Not even an altar boy would allow himself to be molested by someone wearing FiveFingers. “Forgive me Father, but you and Vibram have committed a mortal sin.” Really, the only place FiveFingers are apropro are Leftover Salmon/String Cheese Incident mosh pits and … well … jazz clubs, where ruthlessly innovative footwear has an actual chance of gaining a toehold, especially among people for whom nerdiness is a badge of honor. Make no mistake, jazz is cool. There is even an actual genre called “cool jazz,” but jazz is the absolute nerdiest of music forms, edging out even classical and polka. If music were math (and essentially, it is), jazz would be calculus, and jazz musicians would be mathletes. When someone has the chops to reach the level of a music mathlete, they usually turn to jazz. It is at this point that their nerdiness reaches such a density that it actually folds in on itself like a collapsing star and creates an alternate universe of cool. Aside from some obvious anomalies like axe murdering and scrapbooking, nothing is cooler than being exceptionally accomplished. Great jazz musicians are exactly that. They may be broke, alcoholic, homeless, marginally or even fully insane, but at the very least, they are exceptionally accomplished, and that is cool. Knowing that you can do/have done something that few people in the world ever will is surely liberating in many ways. If, for instance, you forget to bathe or shave or pull on some clean clothes in the morning, it’s probably no big deal. At least you can still do some amazing improvisational runs that might get you some free drinks and maybe even a roll in the hay with some moon-eyed jazz lover. Life is good in 5/4 time. This Friday at the Elephant Room you can find out how good when the Jon Blondell Quintet celebrates the release of its new CD, Bone-Nanza. The band features David Bowen and JJ Johnson on drums, John Fremgen on bass, Carter Arrington III on guitar, Jeff Helmer on piano, and Jon Blondell himself on trombone. Even if you don’t know Blondell, you’ve surely heard him. If not on his signature trombone solo on Sublime’s “The Wrong Way,” then surely as a bassist or trombonist on cuts by Willie Nelson, Ani DiFranco, B.B. King, Pat Green, Doug Sahm, James McMurtry, Dale Watson, or Ray Benson, just to name a few. Point of fact: Jon Blondell is huge, not only in stature but also in talent, and even if you aren’t brave enough to dance to his music, you will appreciate and enjoy it nonetheless.

35th Annual Deutschen Pfest

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May 11, 2010

Pfluger Park

Nothing brings people together like a shared enemy – except maybe a shared enema. It’s one thing to share hatred with other people – even complete strangers. It’s quite another to share an enema tube – even with your bestie. It should come as no surprise then that statistically, at least, hatred tops enemas by a large margin. Regardless of President Clinton’s exhortation for Americans to expand the definition of “us” and shrink the definition of “them,” we’re still very comfortable with the hatred. We seem to like getting our panties in a wad. We especially like to hate on our neighbors to the north. Not Canadians. Hating Canadians is like hating Jesus or Santa Claus. Sure, they’re so sweet you get sick of them every now and then, but if you start posting Photoshopped pictures of them having sexual congress with assorted farm animals on your Facebook page – however hilarious they might be – you would, in the end, only be screwing yourself. Besides, people hate a mean drunk. That’s why Billy Joe Shaver could shoot one in the face and still get acquitted. Of course, if you decide to try that in the parking lot of your local shithole honky-tonk, make sure you have plenty of celebrity friends and Dick DeGuerin heading up your all-star, pro bono legal defense team. Canadians may have dangerous socialist tendencies, but it’s universally accepted fact that they’re happy drunks. Plus, you don’t have to travel that far north to hate, just cross the Red River. Okies are as easy to hate as Tim Tebow on a Vegas bachelor weekend. Why? Simple. Oklahoma’s football team has won more national championships than ours. Admit it. In terms of offensive behavior, they could just as well have gang-banged Bevo and broadcast it on the Godzillatron at the Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium. Being better than Texas at football is nearly unforgivable, but Okies somehow manage to up the ante by being equally loud and obnoxious drunks – superseded only by Alabamans, who are even louder, more obnoxious, and completely incomprehensible after a few Budweisers. Is it any wonder they have the most national football championships of all? Still, no matter how ugly a drubbing they gave us in the Rose Bowl, it seems a lot of trouble to cross two states to piss on the Crimson Tide when we have crimson and cream right upstairs. Fortunately, you don’t even have to go that far north to find someone to hate and ridicule – especially when you have Pflugerville just 10 minutes up the interstate. Yes, desirable, affordable Pflugerville. What’s not to hate? First, there’s the galling effrontery of sticking a “silent” P in front of a perfectly good F. F alone isn’t good enough for you Pflugerville? Well, F you with a P on top. Pflugerville also has good schools, huge sports fields, a lake, roomy houses, and the celebrity cachet of having been the filming location for Pfriday Night Lights. Hate you, Pflugerville. Adding insult to injury is its annual Deutschen Pfest, a three-day pfestival pfeaturing pfood, arts & crafts, music (yes, they scored Dale Watson and Bruce Robison), and even a 5K Pfun Run/Walk. You’re probably tasting vomit in the back of your mouth right now, but if you can somehow get over your Central Austin hipster haughtiness, you might find that you have a lot in common with your northern neighbors – if not genetically (really, who in America hasn’t been pfucked by a German?), then perhaps spiritually. After all, you probably come from the ‘burbs just like they do. “Them” really are “us.”

Dale Watson’s Annual Christmas Show & Dance

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December 22, 2009

Ideally by now the manic materialist melee of the Christmas shopping season is behind you. There may be a few last-minute convenience-store runs for retaliatory gifting, but hey, you can’t anticipate everything. It’s not realistic to expect gifts from your yoga teacher, your postal carrier, or the person who towels sweat off the equipment at your gym. What the fuck? This isn’t Japan. People should at least be on a bro hug basis before they start buying useless shit for one another. A good rule of gifting is that if a present can be procured at the dollar store, a nice card will probably suffice. Handmade will do, too. You might even get away with a Monk-e-mail. Popping for Uchi gift certificates or weekend stays at the Four Seasons is downright creepy unless you’re a real estate agent or a personal injury lawyer. Even a box of Godiva chocolates is a bit ostentatious for any relationship that doesn’t involve blood relatives, heavy petting, or perhaps some sort of disturbing combination of the two. Otherwise, disproportionate gifting just has one effect: awkwardness. Sadly, as much as you might try to duck and cover during the holiday season, somebody you would never expect will inevitably drop a gift bomb on you. That is why you should say a little prayer of thanks for all the unrepentant heathens who keep their 24-hour convenience stores open year round. You just never know if your reclusive next-door neighbor with foil on his windows is going to drop by with a fruit basket, a cheese ball, or a used pizza box full of pot brownies. Even though you know for an absolute certainty that his heartfelt offering of friendship will soon be clogging up your garbage disposal, you will still feel enough of a tinge of guilt to send you down to the corner store at 9 o’clock on Christmas Eve to buy him an ice scraper and a bottle of 10W-30 motor oil in retaliation. You could get him a sleeve of Donettes and a six-pack of Smirnoff Ice, but you won’t want him thinking you’re trying to get in his pants. Smarter, shrewder types will just leave the giver hanging … not even a thank you note. It’s a ballsy play, but the idea behind that strategy is solid: A giver is like a hungry kitten at your screen door. If you just ignore it, it will eventually go away. In the real world, not everyone has the cold chrome heart it takes to ignore a hungry, mewing kitten – not even a metaphorical one. Money can’t buy everything, but occasionally it can buy some last-minute peace of mind, and sometimes that peace of mind just happens to come through a metal sliding drawer beneath a bulletproof glass window at 3am on Christmas morning – or as the Sikh on the other side of the glass likes to call it, “December 25.” Regardless of what you call it, at least on Christmas Day the pressure is off. You might have done good or completely screwed the pooch with the gifting, but on C-Day there’s no use worrying about it. In the immortal words of Clayton Williams, you might as well relax and enjoy it. “It” ideally would be Dale Watson’s annual Christmas Show & Dance at the Continental Club. If you’re on the fence about country music, Dale will definitely make you a believer. Plus there’s no better way to meet the opposite gender in Austin than knowing how to country dance, so stop being stuck up and give it a whirl.

Concert to Save Town Lake

Luv Doc Writings, The Luv Doc Recommends

JULY 17, 2007

Really, the question is, who wouldn’t want to live in $500,000 condo in a 44-story high rise on the breathtaking shores of Shoal Creek? Imagine leaning over your balcony railing on the 42nd floor and squinting downward at that tiny fissure of green space below and knowing that, just a few miles upstream under a bridge in Pease Park, a homeless man just dropped trow and is squeezing out a three-coiler on the dry creekbed – a pungent pâté of digested pizza rinds and cinnamon sticks from the Mr. Gattis Dumpster. Don’t worry, there’s not enough line in your Pocket Fisherman to get your lure below the 20th floor anyway, much less hit top water, so you don’t have to worry about reeling in a big batch of E. coli. Besides, it’s not like you really want to fish, it’s the idea that you could fish if you wanted to. You like to be close to the water, even if that water is a fetid drainage ditch for Downtown developers. Sign here … and here … and here. After all, you didn’t just spend half a mil on a condo, you bought a lifestyle. You wanted to be able to roll out of bed at 10am, take a quick four minute elevator ride to the ground floor and hire a pedicab to pump you up to Starbuck’s for a Vende Latteccino and a copy of The New York Times. Maybe afterward you could strap on your heavy hands and take your (circle one) Shih Tzu/Pomeranian/Chihuahua/Pekingese for a brisk power walk around Town Lake … but wait … some asshole put a 26-story condo right in the middle of the hike and bike trail. Worse yet, the City Council signed off on the deal. Now, just like the rest of Austin, you’re getting the runaround. Enraged, you shake your fist at the cranes and construction workers and without a trace of irony yell, “Damn you, developers! Damn you!” What kind of livable city is it when you can only enjoy Town Lake from behind the plate glass of an expensive condo? Well sure, it’s livable all right. So is the riverwalk in San Antonio. C’mon, they turned their drainage ditch into a tourism gold mine. With some knee-jerk urban planning and lack of foresight, Austin can turn Town Lake into a similar cement moat – maybe even with flatboats full of fat Midwestern conventioneers. Dare we dream? Maybe. If you want to have a voice in whether Austin will go from River City to Moat Metropolis, show up down at Stubb’s (nestled on the beautiful shores of Waller Creek) for the Concert to Save Town Lake, a fundraiser for Austinites for the Responsible Development of the Town Lake Corridor, an organization with a tough job and even tougher name from which to draw an anagram. Local musicians Bob Schneider, Dale Watson, Stephen Bruton, Jimmy Lafave, and Kinky Friedman will join forces to rock block the potential riverwalk.

Dale Watson Record Release

Luv Doc Writings, The Luv Doc Recommends

APRIL 24, 2007

Nobody could argue that Dale Watson hasn’t lived up to his end of the bargain when it comes to keeping Austin weird. He may not parade around in a chartreuse banana hammock, twirl flowers on Sixth Street, or spout paranoid vitriol on late night access TV, but Dale still has enough quirks to peak most people’s freak meter. Unlike many of his country contemporaries, Dale brings it old skool 24/7. He rocks a Jethro (that’d be Beverley Hillbillies and not Tull) style pompadour, the upkeep of which probably requires vintage hair products found only on eBay or maybe a dusty bottom shelf in the back of some bordertown farmacia. He tools around on a big, fat Indian motorcycle, an anachronistic steel Clydesdale that looks like it was hand-crafted out of pig iron and buffed to a pearly shine by a small town blacksmith from the 1950s. He wears vintage clothes (or maybe they just look vintage when he’s wearing them) even when it’s blistering hot or freezing cold and every song he sings sounds like classic country regardless of what style music he’s singing. Most importantly, he never breaks character because he is the character. Unlike his idols, Watson wasn’t born in a sharecropper’s shack and he didn’t spend time in San Quentin. He’s a city boy born in Alabama and raised in the smoky stank of Pasadena, Texas, but, in the words of country legend David Allan Coe, “If that ain’t country, it’s a damn good joke.” Watson may be a living caricature of a classic country singer, but he’s definitely not a joke. Sure, he’s gone a little batshit crazy in recent years – and with good reason – but no one has ever doubted his sincerity. In fact, one of the things people love most about Dale Watson is that he can’t be anything other than Dale Watson. That’s a rare commodity in a time when most peoples’ intellectual and moral compasses are spinning off the post. Dale’s compass is always true north, and that makes him something of a freak, but maybe a freak isn’t such a bad thing to be – especially not in Austin. As weird as he is, fundamentally Dale is a really nice guy who went through some really hard times and came out reasonably intact. He’s the kind of stuff country music legends are made of, and if country music ever comes back in style, Dale will be carrying the standard. This Friday he’ll be at the Continental Club celebrating the release of his latest CD, From the Cradle to the Grave, which features 10 songs written by Dale in three days at Johnny Cash’s cabin in the Mountains of Tennessee – a cabin owned by Johnny Knoxville. Weird? Yes, but weird is often how legends are made.