True to the Roots (14 page)

Oh, Jesse Lee Jones could make it. It's a long way from lower Broadway to the Opry stage, which used to be just a few yards from Robert's Western World's back door. It's not as far, though, as it is from poverty and a broken home in Sao Paulo to relative stability in Nashville, doing exactly what he wants to do with his life.

This is a quintessential American success story, and perhaps the best explanation is a simple one.

"I can't imagine a man having a heart and not loving country music," Jones says with simple conviction.

Son of a Gypsy Songman

Austin, Texas I December 2003

The first impression of Django Walker is that he is a good kid, the kind who would instill pride in any father. The fact that his father happens to be Jerry Jeff Walker, a legendary figure in Texas music, only intensifies that sentiment.

The interview is scheduled to take place at an Austin bar where, unfortunately, the presence of a Longhorn basketball game on television has created a rather raucous atmosphere. "Gosh, I didn't even think about that," says Django, so we abruptly change plans and depart in his suv for a local Schlotzky's fast-food joint, where the lanky singer-songwriter proceeds to order up a hefty portion of the menu. It takes a lot of food to fuel Django's level of energy.

His father was, by his own description, "a gypsy songman" who migrated from his native upstate New York to the Florida Keys to New Orleans and to Los Angeles before finally settling in Austin. Nowadays Jerry Jeff Walker, in his sixties, is about as Texan as anyone not born there can be. Jerry Jeff often sings, to borrow from a phrase penned by singer songwriter Steven Fromholz, about "trying to recover from a misspent youth." Django bears the fruit of that attitude without having to experience firsthand the dangerous rites of passage his father went through. Jerry Jeff rolled out of New York with a guitar on his back and a thumb in the air.

The son's apprenticeship has been a bit more formal. Jerry Jeff sent Django to the Liverpool, England, music school founded by Paul McCartney. Django apparently learned both sets of lessons well. His song "Texas on My Mind" has become a rallying cry, although the most familiar version is from a singer who covered it, Pat Green. When Django and his band perform the song, it draws thunderous acclaim, but he always has to point out, politely, that he, not Green, actually wrote it.

Of Green, the bright, shining star who could propel others on to the national stage, Django says, "I think he's great. His business sense is unreal. That's one area where I've really learned a lot from him. He understands the business, and he's done it, and I hope he does pave the way for all of us. I couldn't think of a better guy doing it for us. He and [Cross Canadian] Ragweed are really clearing a path for us. There are no two better groups.

"There's no better guy than Pat, and there's no better group of guys than Ragweed."

Before a New Year's Eve performance in the heart of Austin's music district, Django slugs down Red Bull energy drinks, revealing a rather telling point. Django Walker doesn't even drink, let alone do the drugs that once fueled his father's headlong spree of musical mayhem. You wouldn't know it from a song, "College Life," he penned with friend Greg Combs. It's a crowd-pleaser, one that apparently reflects more the lives of the kids who populate Django's concerts than that of the singer. Or perhaps he's just growing up much more quickly than his father.

Asked about it, he says simply, "Nah, I just don't do that stuff anymore," and we leave it at that. He's hardly judgmental about it. His friends include dozens of unrepentant bohemians. Django and his band have blended seamlessly with a regular touring troupe of bands that cater to the college life: Stoney LaRue and the Organic Boogie Band, Wade Bowen and West 84, Cross Canadian Ragweed, Honeybrowne, Jason Boland and the Stragglers, Mike McClure Band, and others. It's not unusual to find at least two of them falling in together on the vast Texas country-rock frontier. There's plenty to observe if not to partake in.

"All the good writers have written about reality in their own way, you know," he says. "That's what makes an original song. That's what makes you the quality of artist that you are."

Perhaps the best example of all is his father, who has exerted guiding influence without actually taking the wheel.

"He and my mother both are always around, and when I do something, they're kind of there, and I have to tell them, you know, that sometimes you have to learn by your mistakes," Django says. "That's how life goes, and you don't get anywhere unless you dip your foot in the water. They're always sitting around saying 'You might not want to do that' or 'That's not the way your father made it to where he is.' My dad took a very unique path.

"We've had our scuffles. My dad and I still butt heads to this day. He has his way of doing something, but it's a different time, and I have my way of doing something. He has a way that he wants music to sound, and I have a way that I want music to sound. We're influenced by completely different people. We sort of butt heads, but we have to be lenient of each other. You have to listen to him because he didn't get to where he was because he's dumb. He's very smart. He did it his way, and he butted heads, but he made it, and he was sort of the leader of people with this attitude, with this grassroots mentality."

Jerry Jeff Walker famously rejected the musical establishment, with the considerable assistance of his business-savvy wife, Susan. They founded Tried & True Music, which successfully markets the music to an intensely loyal core of fans, many of whom have been listening almost religiously to Jerry Jeff for decades. Most of them grew up with him. When he was wild and young, they were too. Now he's older and wiser, and they are too. As a result, the fans relate to the music as much as they ever did.

"He can say [to Nashville or New York or LA], 'I don't have to do things your way,'" says Django. "'I have this fan base. I play around the whole country, just like everybody else. I have a great life, and I did it all independently. I did it all by networking and building fans.' A lot of artists today use him as an example. Nobody goes out shopping for major-label deals anymore."

The Django Walker shows are long and raucous. The singer's level of energy is almost maniacal. He sometimes comes across onstage as a big old goofy kid, hopping up and down as he hammers his electric guitar and assumes the defiant pose of the young and unencumbered. He's impossible not to like.

The road agrees with him, and his heart is in the right place.

"You build friendships with fans in this business," he says. "One time—well, maybe not just one time, but this particular one time—we got in a bind. We didn't have our live CD that we recorded at the Firehouse, this bar in Houston, and we didn't have it. We lost it. We called this fan of ours and said, 'Hey, man, you got any copies of it?' He said yeah, and he overnighted it to us. It's just a friendship that you build through music. They come to all these shows, they're there, and they're supporting you 100 percent, no matter what. You always try to give something back to them because I think the fans are the real reason you're out there and that you stay out there playing music. We love music, and we love to play music.

"Every band that we play with, there's at least one or two guys in every band that I stay in touch with when we get off the road. . . . I've grown up around musicians. A handshake and a minute of conversation are priceless. There's something about meeting somebody. When you meet somebody, you begin to pick up their personality. Meeting somebody carries a lot more weight than autographs, in my eyes. When you meet somebody that you really like and they're a great person, you will remember that for the rest of your life. You'll lose an autograph, maybe, but you'll remember that meeting for the rest of your life. I met Paul McCartney, and he was the nicest guy I've ever met. For someone to be that level and be that humble, I will never forget that."

Django's life hasn't notably changed yet. His fame is modest and easily monitored. But because of who he is, he knows the drill. He understands what's ahead, and while, like most musicians, he yearns for fame and adulation, he is suitably wary of its implications.

"You have to adapt to the way that fame has remade you, and it sucks," he says. "Look at Michael Jackson. He has to close a mall in London to go shopping. You get bigger, and, you know, I think your friends start to dwindle away. When you get so big, you start hanging out with a different crew, and I think that crew's fake.
It's fake
. It's very
fake
.

"They're only there for the thick, and when the thin parts come, that's when you find who your true friends are."

Jerry Jeff Walker wrote songs about spending the night in a New Orleans jail with a song-and-dance man ["Mr. Bojangles"], hitchhiking with a likable rogue ["Stoney"], hanging out with cowboy philosopher Hondo Crouch in Luckenbach, and simple little friendships with a maker of cowboy boots ["Charlie Dunn"] and cowboy hats ["Manny's Hat Song"]. The great man's son is already building his own catalog of stories from the road. It's a different age, but there is a definite resonance between the generations.

"We had to drive one night from El Paso to Houston to get to a Pat Green show [at the Woodlands], where we were the opening act," recalls Django. "We drove overnight. We got in at about six o'clock in the morning. We walk in the hotel to take showers and stuff, and there were these people who'd just gotten married, and they were going to the show the next day, and there were a bunch of their friends, and they were playing guitars there in the hotel. And I just said, 'Well, I'm just going to stay up,' so I stayed up and played guitar with these people. Like two years later, they came up and said, 'Hey, man, you remember me,' and I said, 'Yeah, man,' we stayed up all night playing guitar. It was such a weird moment. We walk in after staying up all night, and then I wind up staying up and playing music with people who are going to come see us play.

"You just remember things like that."

He admires fellow Texans like Green, Jack Ingram, and Cody Canada [of Cross Canadian Ragweed] and learns something from them all.

"Jack [Ingram] lays it all on the stage," he says. "I saw him open up for Charlie Robison. Robison had, like, a seven-piece band. Jack just walked out there with four guys, and Jack put on so much better a show. He just left it all out there."

Of Canada he says: "He's just a rocker. He's the guy who has the cool shirts and the cool belt buckles and the hair and the rocking out. He has the stage presence and the view.

"Everyone else in the band is great. Grady [Cross] is a great guy. Once you sit down in a quiet place with him, he's really cool. Jeremy [Plato], the bass player, is kind of the shy, soft-spoken guy. Randy [Ragsdale] is kind of the kid, they guy who plays the jokes, and everybody plays jokes on Randy. It's really neat, and they're a great group."

What Django Walker lacks is
his own
niche. He remains a bit lost amid the glorious battle of the bands in Austin and beyond. He toured Texas and Oklahoma in 2003 with Bowen and LaRue, in what was envisioned as a glorious triumvirate of emerging talent, and learned a few hard lessons.

"It went terrible, as far as crowds coming out and actually watching," Django says. "The shows were amazing as far as hanging out with Stoney and all the bands and Wade and everybody in that group. It was the most unreal thing, and the shows were absolutely unreal. We thought that people would be interested: three good bands playing in a city full of music. A city like Dallas, where Pat Green can come in and do twenty thousand or [Cross Canadian] Ragweed can come in and do six thousand, we're sitting there saying, 'Well, we're three bands. Why can't we come in and do four hundred?'

"We just had the wrong mentality. You don't just jump in the fire. You don't know."

Dad could have told him that. Dad would also have to grudgingly concede, though, that a man has to make his own mistakes.

Six Days on the Road

Texas I march 2003

From the Broken Spoke on South Lamar Street in Austin to the Ridgelea Theatre in Fort Worth, another road trip provides the opportunity to immerse myself in the rich country music scene of the Lone Star State.

Here's why the music in Texas is superior, at least from one perspective, to what is available in Nashville, Tennessee. Texas music is all about
performing
; in Nashville it's about
recording
. In Texas the auditoriums, dance halls, and honky-tonks provide sustenance to hundreds of singers and bands. In Nashville session musicians labor skillfully but in seclusion for years until the lucky ones finally sign that elusive record contract. Then the record company sends a singer or a band out on the road, and no one knows what to do there.

Austin is the capital of both the music and the state, but weekend nights in the Dallas-Forth Worth metroplex provide enough live-music options to confound even the most discerning consumer.

I can't say I regret it, though. On Saturday night, in Fort
Worth, I opt for the Ridgelea, where the Derailers put their latest CD,
Genuine
, on public display. I can't think of anyone truer to the roots of country music than the Derailers, with their "retro" tributes to the honky-tonk shuffles of the sixties and the much-loved Bakersfield sound of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard. Everything about this album is great, but watching the Derailers in person is greater. The band defines the term
tight
. The new album features mostly the band's own compositions but with significant input from the likes of Jim Lauderdale and, yes, Buck Owens.