True to the Roots (23 page)

Two-Night Stand

Charlotte, North Carolina I march 2005

On a NASCAR off-weekend I travel to the Neighborhood Theatre, about an hour and a half away, for consecutive concerts. The theater is located in what's known locally as the NoDa [North Davidson Street] Arts District. It's a formerly rundown area now brimming with art galleries, coffeehouses, and other shops. Over the years I've attended dozens of concerts at the renovated movie house to see artists like Jerry Jeff Walker, Robert Earl Keen, Billy Joe Shaver, and some who don't even have three names.

Buddy Miller is a favorite of mine. He's the most unassuming of artists, not to mention one of the more talented. For many years Miller has played lead guitar for his close friend Emmylou Harris, who is at least indirectly responsible for the title of his latest CD,
Universal United House of Prayer
. The cover is a black-and-white photograph of an actual house of worship, shown beneath a cloudy sky, located in a rundown neighborhood of Nashville next to an automobile repair shop. After completing work on the album, Miller sent a copy to Emmylou, accompanied by a Xerox copy of the cover photo.

"The label [New West] liked the record, but they weren't sold on the title or the cover photo," Miller says. "I figured I'd just let it go. You know, I figured they were the experts, and it wasn't something to quibble about."

In a conversation with Harris, however, he let slip in passing the news that the title was apparently about to be changed. This did not sit well with her, so she made a call to the label, after which the original title and evocative photograph were restored.

"I went back to the church and found it boarded up," says Miller. "I guess in Nashville, you don't have the opportunity to go worship while your car is being fixed anymore."

Miller, often accompanied by his wife and songwriting collaborator, Julie, goes it alone this time, with a three-piece band backing him. He arrives onstage wearing a faded cap, his gray, shoulder-length hair cascading out of the back like a mountain waterfall. Almost every song is previewed by a low-key, rambling dialogue that is charming for its very lack of direction. He nonetheless apologizes repeatedly for his streams of consciousness.

The band works well together despite the fact that the bassist, Denny Bixby, is on loan from Rodney Crowell. A recent birth in the family of Byron House created the gap that Bixby adroitly fills. The friendship between Miller and his jack-of-all-trades, Phil Madeira (on organ, accordion, lap steel, and guitar), and drummer Bryan Owings is obvious as they exchange private quips during the entire concert.

"My voice is trashed," says Miller, "so I'll call it character."

Worn or not, Miller's voice is nothing if not strong and distinctive. In terms of plaintiveness he's kind of a male alternative to Lucinda Williams. I haven't heard a voice as distincttive since the relatively brief prime of Vern Gosdin's career. It's a take-no-prisoners voice, and since Miller doesn't sound like a thousand other singers, it's probably an acquired taste for some listeners. There's a lot of blues and soul there, but most of the songs are hard-core traditional country. Many of the songs are the creative work of Miller and his wife, but the concert also includes samplings of Mark Heard, the Louvin Brothers, Bob Dylan, Tom T. Hall, Jim Lauderdale, and, near the end, Hank Williams, who never sang "You Win Again" any better.

Twice nominated for a Grammy Award, Miller seems blissfully unaware—and if not, then ambivalent—about his own considerable talents. Although he won a Grammy neither time, he takes pleasure in telling the audience that one of the losses was to Bob Dylan. The most memorable aspect of the Grammy ceremonies just completed, he says, was the fact that the food "was so beyond anything you can imagine."

"I'm one of those guys who can't tune and talk at the same time," he says during one of the between-songs monologues. "Actually, I can't tune . . . and I can't talk."

The lead-in act, by the way, is a pleasant surprise. Miller produced Bill Mallonee's CD
Audible Sigh
, and Mallonee, who lives in Athens, Georgia, performs for about an hour, accompanying himself with guitar and harmonica, before Miller's band joins him for a couple of songs at the end.

When I walk out into the cold night air, I get sidetracked on the way to my truck by the sound of music being played nearby. I head in the direction of the sound and find a couple of young men set up in the grass, one with an electric guitar and the other on drums, in front of a small specialty shop. After listening to a couple of Hank Williams Jr. standards, I put a couple of bills in the guitar case. They outnumber the audience two to one at this point since several people leave as I arrive in the yard. For a few moments I pick up a spare guitar and strum it, although an electric guitar is alien to me, not to mention trying to play it with a stiff pick (
plectrum
, I believe, is the formal term).

It's hard to embarrass oneself in a group of three people, but I'm doing it, so I put the guitar up, chat for a while, and then they indulge me by letting me sing a few verses of Hall's "The Year That Clayton Delaney Died." I fumble the lyrics several times, so they let me acquit myself with another simple standard, Harlan Howard's "Pick Me Up on Your Way Down." That's enough to send me on my late-night way with enough adrenaline flowing to make it home safely.

I get my nephew to accompany me the following night after he discovers that Charlie Robison's song "El Cerrito Place" is currently being featured on Country Music Television. Once we arrive in NoDa, we queue up until the doors open, at which time we walk into the arena to mark our seats, then, with a plastic band safely fastened around our right wrists, we walk back outside to window-shop at the various galleries and antique shops. The first sign that something is slightly amiss occurs when two women in line with us inform me that they have never heard of Robison, that they are "huge fans" of Paul Thorn (the opening act), and that they have come all the way from Virginia to see Thorn.

My nephew, Ray Phillips, does not share my political views, and he smells liberals almost immediately when we start walking around. He seems as confused and mystified by the existence of affluent liberals as I am by working-class conservatives.

I've heard of the Paul Thorn Band, but I've never heard a single one of his songs. All I know about him is that some members of an online message group are really big fans. Based on these recommendations, I await his concert with some enthusiasm. I'm not disappointed. Thorn is about as far from country as anyone in these pages, but he's the kind of artist who springs, powerful and unrepentant, from charismatic religion. It comes as no surprise when Thorn tells the audience that he has a father who is a Church of God preacher and an uncle who is a pimp. He says his father taught him about God and his Uncle Merle taught him about women, and off we go on that tantalizing Jimmy Swaggart/Jerry Lee Lewis slippery slope.

Some of Thorn's songs could've been sung by Marvin Gaye or Al Green. Some are rock. Some are rhythm and blues. Some are just blues. Precious little could be categorized as country. The music is satisfying, though, and full of humor and occasionally even wide-eyed innocence. The be-tween-song monologues are priceless. Thorn tells about how he and his honey used to sit around the trailer, eat bacon and Miracle Whip sandwiches, and procreate while watching Jerry Springer. He misses watching her prance around in her purple thong, he says, but the breakup was his fault.

"I cheated on her," Thorn says, "and she cheated on me, and pretty soon we was having us a cheat-a-thon."

One of his songs is about "Joanie the Jehovah's Witness Stripper." There's a little something that's demeaning about watching this throng of Thorn fans rollicking at one zany song after another. Thorn sings about his life—of that I have little doubt—but to those around me who have taken up most of the seats in the front rows, it's almost like slumming. Most of these people arrived in BMWs and Lexus SUVs. It's easy for them to look at Thorn as being some kind of musical version of
The Beverly Hillbillies'
Jethro Bodine, and that's selling him and his background fairly short. But I guess it's a living.

After a break, most of which is dominated by Thorn fans streaming to the exits, Charlie Robison arrives onstage to a crowd grown sparse and quiet. A couple of drunks seem to exist to block my view. One carries a sixteen-ounce can of Budweiser that he repeatedly hoists with one hand while signaling the stage with the two-fingered "Hook 'em Horns" gesture familiar to University of Texas fans.

Bud Man does everything but climb up on the stage. Ro-bison, who has experienced limited mainstream success with three stellar studio albums in a row, mentions with a somewhat sheepish tone that the video is number seven on the cmt charts and encourages fans to vote for it online. He's uncomfortable with self-promotion, though, and he acquits himself a bit by saying, "Besides, I'm tired of watching Kenny Chesney frolicking on the beach all goddamned day."

The Robisons of Bandera, Texas, represent quite a contrast in styles. It's hard to believe that Charlie and Bruce Robison are brothers. One similarity is that both married well. Charlie's wife, Emily Robison, is one of the Dixie Chicks. Bruce's wife, Kelly Willis, is a phenomenal vocal talent who is inexplicably underappreciated outside the borders of the Lone Star State.

Charlie Robison calls brother Bruce "the greatest songwriter on earth," and while there might be a bit of familial bias in that, Bruce concedes, "The main thing that I make money from is songwriting." He wrote "Lonely Too" (Lee Ann Womack), "Travelin' Soldier" (Dixie Chicks), and "Angry All the Time" (Tim McGraw). Bruce Robison's most familiar tune, at least among those heard on radio, is "What Would Willie Do?" a whimsical ode to Willie Nelson. Another notable song is "Wrapped," which was the title song of his own album and was covered by his wife on her critically acclaimed 1999 CD
What I Deserve
.

Bruce is laid-back, with a vocal style that somehow reminds me of Don Williams. Charlie is out there on the rock edge of country. Charlie's show is full of crowd-pleasers like "Barlight" (a nursery rhyme for grownups), "Sunset Boulevard," "My Hometown," "Desperate Times," and "The Wedding Song." The last was released on his
Step Right Up
CD as a duet with the Chicks' Natalie Maines. In concert

Charlie sometimes recruits audience members to sing the female part.

Irony defines Charlie Robison. Why else would there be a song called "Life of the Party" on his 2001 album
Step Right Up
but no such song on his album called
Life of the Party
, which came out three years earlier?

It's a great show but a strange one. I've seen Robison play to raucous, beer-chugging Texas crowds, and it's no inconvenience to me that this audience has only two obvious drunks in it, although I would prefer that those two were not blocking my view of the stage. One, by the way, eventually gets escorted out. Robison watches with good humor and notes that he's played to rowdy audiences and he's played to sedate ones, but rarely has he played to such a polarized one as this.

The whole atmosphere is kind of weird. For one thing, the throng of Robison fans is situated mostly in a low balcony, or really more of a platform, to the left of the stage. That's because the prime seats have now been vacated by departing Paul Thorn fans and, presumably, the Robison fans are either too comfortable or too drunk to move. The beer stand is in easy access to the fans watching from the platform. It could be that there are dozens of rowdy fans over there. I can't see because of a barrier at the front. The only drunk I can see is Bud Man, sloshing beer around and dancing like a goose on Quaaludes.

Despite all this, Robison and his really tight band carry on for an hour and a half, performing brilliantly on a night when they could be excused if they cut out early.

Ray, my nephew, is convinced that everyone in Charlotte is a lunatic, but he'll be in college soon and will learn that it's really true of everyone, uh, everywhere.

The Ones That Got Away

March 2005

Jerry Jeff Walker is the artist most responsible for my love of this music. When I was young and wild, he was too, and now I'm older and wiser, and so is he. I relate to his music as much now as ever. I've watched him in concert dozens of times, dating back to the late 1970s, when I was in college. I've seen him alone, just sitting by himself onstage with his guitar, and with his band, the Gonzo Compadres being the current incarnation, in almost every possible setting. I've seen Walker outdoors and indoors, in rundown clubs and upscale opera houses, at music festivals and small-town honky-tonks, and from Texas to Florida to Virginia. I read his book, bought a DVD of a live performance, and bought every record, cassette, eight-track, and CD I could get my hands on.

I've seen Jerry Jeff ornery, thoughtful, rowdy, and sentimental. For all that, I've only spoken to him twice, once when he autographed a copy of his
Cowboy Boots and Bathing Suits
CD and, in October 2004, when I intercepted him as he trudged across the street, carrying his guitar case, from the Newberry [South Carolina] Opera House to the Hampton Inn, where he was staying.

He had left everything on the stage that night and looked tired. It's the only time I ever saw him when he looked his age, which is amazing in itself, since he has apparently outlived his well-documented demons and fought them to at least a draw. I didn't have the heart that night to ask for an interview, but I told him I was writing a book, that I'd been a fan for decades, and that I wanted to set up an interview for later that year when I'd be coming to Austin.