The Gourds, Longhorn Saloon, Ft Worth, June 27, 2009
It was about 3:00 or so Saturday afternoon when I called our friends in Ft Worth to cancel out on the evenings festivities. It really did look pretty hopeless at that point; stranded in a 7-11 parking lot off I-30 in Arlington, sweltering in the 100 degree heat, waiting for a tow truck to come and take our badly overheated car back home.
Then I suppose it was due to the angels intervening on our behalf but things all started coming together in our favor. The tow truck showed up hours before we were expecting it and got us home just in time for a neighbor to offer to loan us his car and just like that, it was on again!
So after all the high drama we still made it out to the Fort Worth Stockyards and got to the newly re-opened Longhorn Saloon plenty early enough to score a choice table.
It’s a very nice room, that Longhorn Saloon, with a couple of levels, three bars, reasonably good sound and it’s got a whole lot of history too. After Saturday night’s Gourds show, they can probably add another chapter

We had plenty of time to kill, so after a couple beers I wandered over to one of the guys who work the bar and asked who was opening the show… “Some band” he told me.
“Some band” turned out to be The Gourds’ own Kevin Russell, doing one of his all-too-elusive Shinyribs solo sets. There just can’t be a better way to start an evening of Texas’ best roots-dance-techno-jug musical amalgamation than with the folksy acoustic singer- yodeling poet-performance artist at the very heart of much of that music. He told funny little stories and sang songs straight from the fetid underbelly of what they’re calling “Americana” these days. It was kind of like a big fat bonus grub worm for all of us early birds, strong satisfying stuff.
You could pretty much feel the buzz in the room when The Gourds finally took the stage. That may or may not have had something to do with the girls who came by earlier passing out sample shots of way-too-sweet Southern Comfort and lime (it took another shot of real whiskey to clear the palate of that gawd-awful stuff). By then the crowd had filled out to a perfectly respectable but not at all uncomfortable size. You could easily walk through the dancers to the stage or see the band from your table and still feel like you were at the party that night.
They started things off fittingly enough with “Country Love,” the first track on their latest album, Haymaker! They brought the whole terrible arsenal… mandolin, banjo, tambourine, fiddle, accordion, guitars, keyboards and a set of drums that got a thoroughly rhythmic pounding by Keith Langford.
Now even on an off night the Gourds are better than 95 per cent of the live music you’re likely to find playing anywhere but on a good night they can be downright transcendental. This was no off night.
At first I thought maybe it was just me being all happy to be there and shit; but no, it was definitely them. Other people there confirmed that for me, I wasn’t just hearing things…voices were in key and strings were in sync and every note sounded exactly right. They did less of the between song banter than usual but more than made up for that by playing every damn thing they played just about perfect. As usual, it was a mix of old and new. (…and yeah, that describes the audience as well as the set list. Funny thing about even the most raucous Gourds shows… you never feel like the oldest guy in the room, even if you are).
The three primary Gourdian singer-songwriters, Russell, Jimmy Smith and Max Johnson did their usual song swap repertoire and even the songs I wouldn’t normally list as favorites were sounding great. I don’t even think I can point to any highlights. Everything sounded as good as I can imagine it should sound. The band was having as great a time as the crowd. It was like a shared delirium, which is how it should be.
One thing I’ve learned following these guys is that a good deal of that contagious musical delirium can be credited to red headed accordion slinging keyboard player Claude Bernard. Like everyone else in this hippiefied traveling tent show of an ensemble, he’s an essential element. And like all the others, when he’s on it always makes a big difference.
A question we had all pondered at some point that day, how would they pay tribute to the week’s biggest media saturated news event. They answered that in high style the very end of their four song encore- a straight up disco, note for note cover of “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough.” You could be forgiven for expecting a “Gin N Juice” treatment of that one, or for them to fuck it up somehow but, maybe out of respect or maybe just for the sheer hell of it, they kept it real with Kev singing the falsetto lead over Jimmy’s pounding bass and some authentic disco sounding keys by Claude. OK, so Max played a banjo but still.
They’re coming back to these parts in a couple months to play The Granada in Dallas and that’s another venue where they never fail to deliver the goods. And I’m pretty sure that one is gonna be a whole lot easier for me to get to.
We got your set lists here:

Shinyribs*
Devil SongSea Of Galilee
Church On Fire<
Never
Horny Toad Blues
Fisherman’s Friend
Poor People’s Store
Crown Out
When The Cat’s Outside
Country Cool
Buy You A Drink
(T-Pain)
Gourds
Country Love
Shreveport
Dying Of The Pines
Trampled By The Sun
Mister Betty
Red Letter Day
Blanket Show
Pill Bug Blues
Roll & Tumble
Blankets
Layin Around The House
Thurman
Pine Island Bayou
TTT Gas
Omaha (Billy Joe Shaver)
New Dues
Luddite Juice
Lower 48

Encore

Promenade
My Name Is Jorge
El Paso
Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough (Michael Jackson)

*Thanks, Steve!

Photo by jitter

Co-front man, Kev Russell, puts together his best four-punch yet with "Shake the Chandelier," "Pill Bug Blues," "Education Song," and the long-awaited CD appearance of the quintessential Gourds song "Hooky Junk." This doesn’t include two more traditional Russell songs, the more traditional-type Russell song "Burn the Honeysuckle," and a sort-of first, the slow-waltzy "Our Patriarch.&quot Russell is prone to sometimes overuse references to food and blood, but he keeps those references to a modicum in this latest effort, which may be the band’s first commercially successful CD. Russell, who may have been able to give Jimmy Swaggart a run for his money as a southern evangelist had he not chosen the music path, preaches tolerance in “Those That Know – The Education Song.”

Jimmy Smith steps further out front, with more originals, passion, and charming eccentricity. The Gourds, known for their image-creating, story-lacking, stream of consciousness lyrics, change things up with a slightly different writing style on some Heavy Ornamental songs. Smith’s “My Roommate” is the best example of keeping the quirk while adding substance. Instead of a catchy hook line without equally compelling verses, “My Roommate” paints five vivid vignettes into a charming tale most can relate to on some level.

Although the Gourds often seem under-promoted and aimed slightly off course of the credit and respect they deserve, the plan seems to be coming together. The Gourds are still not afraid to include profanity and references to illegal drugs, not to shock, but because those words are what the songs are about – the image is real. The Gourds have a huge tightly-knit fan club that follows the band across the country through its Yahoo group Cucurbitaceae (the scientific name for the gourd family). Several of the group’s members came to Austin the first week of February to catch four Austin and one Houston show in five days. What the hard-core fans are finding at each show, are a growing number of younger fans who know the lyrics as well or better than they do. Someone said that I make Gourds’ fans sound like a cult.; Again, the image is real. However, the cult is growing and as long as the band intentionally goes its own way with its music, an ever growing cult-like following isn’t necessarily a bad thing – see Grateful Dead.

The Gourds, classified Americana by many, have once again changed their sound, making the band once again unclassifiable. Russell now plays electric guitar on many songs. Max Johnston plays lead with the lap steel. Johnston, who doesn’t have a lead vocal track on the CD, puts in his finest performance with some of the sweetest string licks on not only the lap steel but the mandolin, dobro, fiddle, banjo, and guitar.Claude Bernard brings it with not only the accordion, but a melodic keyboard. On previous CDs, many songs not suited to the accordion left Bernard’s impressive talents out of the mix. The new keyboard sound makes the frequent comparisons to Doug Sahm and Augie Meyers even more apparent. At one of the CD release shows at Austin’s Continental Club, a group of fans gathered in the back noting that the Gourds were rocking the joint with a newfound thunderous electric sound.

The band’s vibe reaches from its home state Texas to New York and Montana without missing a beat. Part of that reason may be the beat itself from drummer Keith Langford, who somehow keeps this group, seemingly headed in four different directions on an even keel.

Much too often categorized as “swampbilly”, the Gourds are much more and less than that. Their music has always been fun.  Now it rocks as well.

- Doc Fisher

Doc Fisher is a sometimes musician living in Austin, Texas, frequenting the bars and clubs that feature many of the SlackerCountry artists. He has a journalism degree from UT-Austin and lived in Austin during early 70s, returning again full-time in 2001.