The Name of the band is...Cowboy Mouth!

Saturday night was the first official event in the brand new House of Blues here in Houston. For a few reasons, I was really excited about this show. First, I've been waiting for the HOB to open since I heard about it in February. Second, I can think of no better way to break in the new music hall than to have Cowboy Mouth do their thing. As a preview, at the beginning of the show, Fred promised to put on one hell of a show and "Beat these drums like they are my stockbroker." He did just that.

I first heard Cowboy Mouth in the fall of 1995. They were playing the college circuit and I stumbled in to one of their shows almost by accident. I was dumbfounded when, in a ratty college bar where half of the crowd had never heard of them, these guys burned down the house. Fred and the boys demanded that people listen to them and engage in the show, and the crowd responded. (Although I distinctly remember, at one point in the show, Fred actually ate a woman's bra that was thrown on the stage.) They still demand a lot from their audience, but I'll get to that a little later. At that first show in the fall of 1995, I became a Cowboy Mouth Zealot, I would follow them to 2 or 3 shows in a row when they were in Texas. I saw them at Trees, La Zona Rosa, Stubbs, the Satellite Lounge, Numbers, the 3rd Floor Cantina, the Dixie Theater, and countless other venues I've long forgotten.

At the time, CM was made up of Fred LeBlanc, John Thomas Griffith, Paul Sanchez and Rob Savoy. Rob, was the third bass player for the band and left a few years ago. Paul was one of the founding members but left to follow his solo career in 2006. In the Summer of 1996 Cowboy Mouth had their major label debue with Are You With Me on MCA records. That summer, I traveled to New Orleans with a good friend of mine to attend the CD Release party at the House of Blues. The show was sold out and we didn't have tickets, so we sat outside waiting for someone to sell us a ticket and finally found a scalper to sell us tickets at a premium. My friend had never seen the band, so he was skeptical if it was worth the effort, but we got our tickets and went in. That show was one of the most amazing, sweat drenched, screaming, dancing, and loud rock and roll shows I've ever seen. I've still got the faded, autographed, ticket stub for that show in the back of the jewel case for the Are You With Me CD. At one point that night, Fred climbed up on top of the speaker stack and then jupmed up to hang on to the outside of the balcony railing. He proceeded to sing and whip the audience into a frenzy all while precariously perched on the balcony railing overhanging the audience on the floor. It was a great show and my friend became a lifelong fan of the band.

So, fast forward 12 years or so to last Saturday night (10/11/08) and Cowboy Mouth was taking the stage as the first act to play at the new House of Blues. I've been really excited about the new venue and the show was a great reminder of that night 12 years ago. The current lineup of the band adds Regina Zernay (bass) and Jonathan Pretus (rhythm guitar). Without Paul's singer/songwriter personality, the band's sound has a noticeably harder edge. That said, Regina and JP are good additions to the band and seem to really enjoy putting on a good show. The band put on a great show that wrapped up right around 12:00 on Saturday night. They played many of the songs from their new album, Fearless, and many longtime favorites including Love of My Life, How do you Tell Someone, New Orleans, Jenny Says, Everybody Loves Jill, Easy, Joe Strummer, Voodoo Shop and All American Man (to name a few). To close out the evening, they played a hyper energized version of the Boss's Born to Run. For me, that was a great moment. One of my favorite bands, in great new venue, playing a classic song from one of my favorite artists.

It was a great way to kick off the new House of Blues. I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of concerts there. During the show, Fred said "I think we've found our new home in Houston!" I hope he's right.

Late to the Party...

OK, so, I know and admit that I am a little late to this party in blogger terms, but.... Have you heard about Vampire Weekend? I can't really say anything about them that hasn't already been said here, here, here or here. But, damn, I like the shit. Do yourself a favor and go buy this CD, right now.

Apparently I have nothing to say.

Well, I guess it's time for my annual blog update.

I don't really have much to say today, so you're just going to get links for a bunch of stuff that I'm enjoying at the moment:

1. One of the great stories of all time is the Brothers Karamazov. I've read bits and pieces of it many times, but have finally undertaken to read the whole thing.

2. French Press coffee is really hard to beat.

3. I loved the movie Once.

4. Radiohead in Rainbows is worth listening to.

5. I'm addicted to Super Mario Galaxy.

6. Six Word Memoirs are apparently all the rage. I guess mine would be... "Just one day at a time."

Rat Race

You can read all the self help books you like, but at the end of the day, it seems to me that happiness is somewhat contingent on whether or not the thing you do on a daily basis to earn a living is important to you. It also seems that we are working harder and harder for more stuff and are sacrificing time with our families and friends. Unfortunately, time is the one commodity that you can’t get back. You can always earn more money, you can’t buy more time.

Things I don't Understand - Part One

1. Twitter.

All the geeks are infatuated with Twitter. I can’t understand why. The basic premise is that you tell your “friends” what you are doing, right now, all the time. I’m typing a blog entry, I’m working, I’m going to the grocery store. Under no circumstances can I think of a reason why I’d want to tell the whole Internet about my every move. Furthermore, as little as I care about updating the world on my minute by minute information, I care EVEN LESS about reading what you are doing right this second. It's like the whole world has digital diarrhea.

Parking

Are there times when you get disproportionately angry about something that doesn’t really matter? It happens with me in the car all the time. For example, this morning as I was pulling in to the parking garage at my office, a lady in a black Pontiac was wandering aimlessly looking for a parking place and was blocking part of the garage that I needed to turn into. Then, she drove down a parallel lane and pulled in front of me at a break in the lanes just as I was getting to the parking area where I always park. I got all pissed off for a minute or so wondering how she DARED drive in front of me in MY PARKING GARAGE. Who did she think she was? Of course at the time, I just barked in the car, “What in the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

She parked, and I drove past her and parked in my usual spot. The whole occurrence slowed me down by maybe two seconds. As I was getting out of my car, I thought to myself, that was a bit of an overreaction, wasn’t it. Was it really necessary that I get all bent out of shape just because some random person wasn’t following what I perceived to be proper protocol in the garage?

Yes. It was. Bitch.

Crossroads

Before I start – sorry this is so long, I guess I had a lot to say… I haven’t written about a show in a while, and I went to a great one last Friday that deserves a write up. I’ve been to a few in between that haven’t quite made the blog: Guster, The Fray, Willis Alan Ramsey, Dave Matthews Band, Ben Folds with the Houston Symphony. This is no reflection on the Legendaryness of any of those concerts, I just didn’t get around to writing about them. Ben Folds in particular was one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen, hands down. It didn’t hurt to be on the 3^rd row, center stage. But, that’s a story for another day. Friday night was Eric Clapton, with some very special guests and that’s what prompted me to write.

To start off with, we had shitty seats. Usually, I’m pretty good about scoring good tickets, this time, I spaced out. I had it on my calendar to buy tickets the morning they went on sale and missed the on sale time by about 45 minutes. Bad move. The result was that we were on the side of the stage on the last row. I was less than pleased. Given the seat locations, the show was going to have to be damned good or I was going to be pissed. It was damned good. Clapton sauntered out on to the stage at about 8:35 ish and started playing “Tell the Truth” from the Derek and the Dominoes, Layla album. The set was heavy on Derek and the Dominoes material and there is a good reason why. Once they started playing I noticed almost immediately that there was a young looking dude with a blond ponytail playing a mean slide guitar to Clapton’s right. I thought to myself, that looks a whole lot like Derek Trucks. Camera zooms in, sure enough it is Derek Trucks, guitar guru and member of the Allman Brothers Band. It’s only fitting that they play a lot of songs off of the Layla album, after all Duane Allman played on the original album and Derek Trucks is now playing in his spot with the Allman band.

There was another dude playing guitar on far stage right that I couldn’t get a good look at so I wondered who he was for a while. I remind you, we were like 10 miles from the stage so I couldn’t really see much detail at first. I finally get a good look at the guy and figure out that it is Doyle Bramhall II, a hell of a guitarist in his own right. Doyle has a long history with Eric, in fact I saw his band open up for Clapton at Reunion Arena in Dallas in May of 2001 on the Reptile tour. Doyle is a good guitar player and I have some automatic respect for the guy because of his father, a long time friend of Stevie Ray Vaughan.

The point of all of this is to say that between Clapton, Derek Trucks and Doyle Bramhall II, there was some serious firepower on that stage. I was particularly excited to see Trucks as I’ve heard so much about him, listened to a bit of his music, but never had the opportunity to see him live. I was really impressed. Funny thing though, the thing that struck me most about him was not his playing. He’s a great player, but I knew that already. The thing that impressed me was that his delivery is calm, cool and collected. No weird facial contortions or antics, none of the typical white guy mistakes of trying to look cool. The guy just listens and plays for all he’s worth, I really respect that. Don’t get me wrong, he wasn’t emotionally detached, in fact you could tell just by looking that he was totally dialed in. He just didn’t feel the need to prove it to anyone.

The set list overall was great. As I mentioned, the show started of with Tell the Truth, then into Key To The Highway, Got to Get Better in A Little While, Little Wing and Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad? After that, they toned it down a bit and did a semi acoustic set. Clapton has done this all three times I’ve seen him and I suspect he’s been doing it since the success of his Unplugged album in 1992. He started out this section of the show on his own with Driftin' Blues and then the rest of the band joined him for Outside Woman Blues, Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out and Running On Faith. I was particularly glad to hear Nobody Knows You and Running on Faith as those are two songs that I really like and have never heard him play live before. After that, the full band came back and they did Motherless Child, Little Queen of Spades, Further On Up The Road, Wonderful Tonight and finished up with the Derek and the Dominoes version of Layla. Amber was particularly excited about the last one as it is one of her all time favorite songs. Has to be the Derek and the Dominoes version though, not the acoustic version. The night could have ended there and I would have been a happy man, but it didn’t.

Of course the band came back for an encore. First up was a great version of Cocaine. Always a crowd pleaser. He’s done that song every time I’ve seen him perform (May 1998 – Superdome, New Orleans, 2001 – Reliant Arena, Dallas and 2007 – Toyota Center, Houston.) As expected the crowd was happy with that choice. The second song of the encore was where it got really interesting. Before they started to play, a fourth guitar player walked out onto the stage. I immediately recognized Robert Cray before he started off and they played Crossroads. It was un-fucking-believable. They tore up Crossroads with Clapton and Cray sharing the mike and trading licks at one point. Too cool. It takes some serious balls to bring Robert Cray on your tour and have him come out for one freaking song. I would have loved for him to stay out there longer, but I guess that would diminish the shock value.

Overall, great show. It was a treat to see Clapton as always. Trucks and Bramhall are great additions to the lineup and having Robert Cray come out was the proverbial icing on the cake. Well done. Which leads me to my final point. One thing I really respect about Clapton is that he’s not afraid to share the stage. By bringing along and highlighting Cray, Trucks and Bramhall he is really exposing those guys to an audience that might not otherwise hear of them. As much as I respect Robert Cray, he can’t sell out a stadium on his own. Clapton gives them the venue, the exposure and time in front of the audience that will prove a real boost to the younger guys in particular. I hope to see all of them come to town again soon.

PS – the audience was actually not very annoying last night. Although I did see a few people that needed to back off of the cervezas and quit wearing dorky loafers.

Resistance

I like books. I read a lot of them. Right now I’m in the middle of about 10 different books. Yes, I know, I have attention span issues. Right now I’m 40 pages from the end of “the Historian” by Elizabeth Kostova. It’s a cool book about vampires, Dracula, and history. Long fucker though…almost 700 pages. Sam made me buy it. We were at the local Barnes & Noble and he thought that I should buy it, just because he was. I acquiesced and am now almost finished with the book. It’s been a great read. Of course Sam hasn’t even started it yet. Jackass.

I’ve recently completed “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield. Great book. It’s about giving yourself a kick in the ass to get things done. Well, to really work on the things that are important to you. We all have them I think. The desire to write a book/novel, start a business, start a creative enterprise, become a painter, become a musician, run a marathon, or simply to make your life about something bigger than getting up and going to a job every day.

The War of Art talks about what keeps us from doing those things that are important to us. Pressfield calls it Resistance. “Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.” Pressfield goes on to say, “You know, Hitler wanted to be an artist. At eighteen he took his inheritance, seven hundred kronen, and moved to Vienna to live and study. He applied to the Academy of Fine Arts and later to the School of Architecture. Ever see one of his paintings? Neither have I. Resistance beat him. Call it overstatement but I’ll say it anyway: it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas.”

I, fortunately or unfortunately (I can’t figure out which), am prone to these lofty goals and ideas. It seems like every few months I come up with a new one. Write a funny book about law school, write a book of essays, write an essay, become a better musician, transcribe and do an arrangement of one of my mother’s songs, record a CD, start a record label, start a music camp with special programs for underprivileged kids, go to seminary, complete a ½ Ironman, climb some giant mountain, eat better, run daily...

How many of those goals have I completed? You guessed it – 0, none, zip. I’ve gotten a damned good start on some of them. I started a great essay about the intersection of humanity and technology. Did I ever finish it? No, in fact I lost the draft. I have half of my business plan drafted for my record label, potential artists, industry help, but… The list goes on. I start but can’t seem to complete these ideas, goals and dreams. I guess that when I encounter Resistance I don’t push myself through it, rather I find the next great idea that I want to be a part of.

So why write this? Maybe if I acknowledge that I am prone to falter when I encounter Resistance I can beat it. So – here is my line in the sand. I will pick a goal and finish it. The record label will go forward. It may not be a success, but I will give it my best effort. I will not succumb to Resistance again.