Houston Marchman and The Contraband - Live Blind Nello Records

By William Michael Smith

	Like most native Texans, I've got cousins scattered out all across the lower 48 states. In particular, I've got a cousin my age who grew up in the same one-horse Texas town I did but who has now lived half her life in L.A. If she called me tonight and said, "Hey, Cuz, send me a CD of this Texas music I've been hearing about," I'd have any number of fine examples to choose from. But if I could only send her one CD to show her what it's all about, I'd have to send the new Houston Marchman CD, "Live." Why? For one thing, it's live and it's rowdy as a rodeo bronch, and if our new Texas OKOM (that's Our Kind Of Music for those unfamiliar with the acronym) is anything, it's a live, rowdy music made for a Saturday night crowd full of intent listeners and hat-wearin' boot-scooters. Add to the live element the fact that in Houston Marchman we have as fine a songwriter as there is in the genre and this 72-minute CD covers 17 of his strongest tunes. Marchman has another mark in his favor, a resonant, mellow Zen-cowboy, Steve Young kind of voice that seems to have been designed by God to sing four nights a week in a honky tonk and that could never be mistaken for anything but Texan. So take all of Marchman's personal pluses and couple them to his Contraband, some beer joint minstrels who understand how to fill a dance floor song after song, night after night and you've got the perfect example of what this "Texas thing" is. And how could I possibly send a CD that represents the "Texas thing" without making certain that the band featured a guitar player who could twang 'til hell freezes over and a steel guitarist who knows all the right licks and notes to make it all Western? Couldn't do it, just wouldn't be prudent. Add to the man, the songs, the voice, and the band the fact that "Live" has been recorded in two of our most venerable beer-drinkin', two-steppin', yee-hawin' establishments, Cheatham Street Warehouse in little San Marcos and the old White Elephant Saloon in Ft. Worth ("where the West begins") in the presence of a crowd of typically rowdy, hoopin'-and-hollerin,' enthusiastic Texas club crawlers. Capture that crowd reaction and combine it on tape with Marchman and the Contraband, and you can transport the magic of any Saturday night in Texas anywhere they are calling for exports. Marchman's material certainly recommends him for The Example status. A native of Meridian, Texas, Marchman seems to have been born with the Texas songwriter gene dominant. His songs never fail to have the requisite common touch (if there's one thing OKOM ain't, it ain't rich folks music). There isn't a song on "Live" that our oldest, saltiest old cowboys can't relate to because Marchman instinctively understands the traditions, the forms, and the audience. And although his songs are as truly Texas as big steers bawling on the prairie, he never takes the easy way (no Shiner-Bock-rhymes-with-Luckenbach, no tacos-rhymes-with-nachos, no I'm-a-drunk-frat-boy lyrics). No, Marchman's song stories are all as real as "How The West Was Won" and completely beer joint jukebox friendly. And while the sound is certainly not the same, there is a Hank Williams element to Marchman's songwriting. His songs are simple, they hit the common man right in his gut, they are as real as the dust on a pair of run-over-at-the-heels cowboy boots, and when they are about hurting, the feeling is there. No big over-blown, self-important poetic statements, just common language masterfully ordered into vivid, lifelike pictures. Marchman kicks the show off with one of his standards, 'South Texas Rain.' The radio personality announces the band with "Live from the Cheatham Street Warehouse," the crowd gives a yell and drummer Ken Tondre kicks it off with some quick rimshots. As the band picks up the tune with the steel guitar leading the way, you can close your eyes and see people leaving their tables and heading for the dance floor. Just another Saturday night in Texas. Here comes that mornin' light bustin' down my window pane Coffee's cold and there ain't no rides in this South Texas rain I don't know but I've been told gypsy's heart owns a lonesome soul To anyone gonna leave me cold in this South Texas rain Oh, Lord, where can I go, maybe down to Mexico Anywhere I can't complain about the South Texas rain Marchman has a strong voice and like Steve Young he can expertly use it to project the weariness and resignation of a man waiting for a ride in the rain. Without letting the applause die, Marchman jumps into 'Wichita Falls', a hard-driving, 'Don't Take Your Guns To Town' tale of woe sung from inside the prison walls about a small town boy who leaves home and gets in big trouble in the big city. It is a tale real and true and Marchman delivers it with a matter-of-fact, look-you-in-the-eye aplomb that fatefully says "could it have worked out any other way?" As always, his imagery is spot-on. An oilfield town, a blood red sky, Way out here that sun takes a long time to die Just 17 when the highway called My mama said, "Boy, don't send me no tears Back to Wichita Falls." Marchman handles the utterly sad 'Buses in the Rain,' a love-gone-wrong-but-who-knows-why song de rigeur for any Texas honky tonk singer, as well as anyone in the cowboy singer business. I walked away from everything this evenin' Nothing was wrong, just time to roll And I pray to God she still ain't sittin' there thinkin' That I'm comin' back from the liquor store Hope she knows it's not that I didn't love her I hope she don't think I've gone insane Well maybe it's that I love the highway more Ridin' buses in the rain, Lord, how I hate to explain. Now that's cold, but it damn sure hits the emotional bullseye and is a blue-ribbon example of honky tonk poetry. 'Leavin' Dallas' is another love-didn't-work-out song reminiscent of Hank Williams' 'Mansion on the the Hill' but with a more sophisticated and involved plot. The song is sung from the point of view of a former lover who has followed a woman to Dallas. She's gotten married to a wealthy man with a big house in Highland Park, even "had her tattoo removed so she wouldn't embarrass him in front of his friends." The house has a high, solid fence around it and Marchman wonders whether the husband is "trying to keep her from slippin' out or me from slippin' back in." There's a lot of bravado until the chorus, when we see the singer's desperation revealed so clearly. Dallas, you're just a slow movin' river of aluminum and steel You took care of all I could deliver like a muddy road takes a wheel One last drag from a cheap cigar, hangin' out here in the wind Then Dallas I'm leavin' you for the very last time again. No Texas album is truly complete without a gunfighter outlaw song, and Marchman has carved his, 'Bill Longley,' straight from his family tree. Longley, who killed 32 men before being put to death in Giddings, Texas at the young age of 27, is portrayed as he was without any glamorization or redeeming trait except a craw full of Texas salt. Again Marchman's ability to pen powerful images is fully displayed. That he can turn out such natural but telling lyrics that ring absolutely true is uncanny. Whether he is distilling the outlaw's philosophy or portraying Death Row conversations, Marchman again sends the arrows of his songwriting muse straight to the center. On the chorus, it seems as though Marchman has climbed inside Longley's brain and come out with the absolute core of his evil. There's an evil wind blowin' 'cross the midnight, oh, so cold Another dead man's mother crying for a child who won't come home The only kind of law out here is a two-fanged claw You never trust nobody, push the weakest to the wall How brazen and unrepentant does Marchman see his distant outlaw relative? In two separate snatches of jailhouse conversation, Marchman paints an absolutely chilling portrait. In one, when Longley is told his "way of dying will be swinging at the end of a rope", the outlaw coolly replies, "It don't matter all that much, tell the Devil I'm hard to choke." After his capture and a death sentence is pronounced, although Longley is hours from eternity his attitude is as belligerent and cocky as ever. In that jail cell down in Giddings on the night before you died Said "Jailer, pull that rope real tight 'cause in the morning for Hell I ride." Even Marty Robbins didn't paint his gunfighters and desperados with this kind of vicious, unrepentant, sinister realism. Marchman has captured the essence of a Texas bad hombre as well as anyone ever has. 'Del Rio' is the tale of a man whose occasional gringo honeymoons to "the wrong side of Del Rio" eventually cause him to reevaluate his life and his values. By song's end, Marchman has quite cleverly turned the whole concept upside down and we find the man leaving a note on the table for his "money-loving" wife in San Antonio that says he's "tired of living on the wrong side of Del Rio." Our last vision is of the man heading across the Rio Grande River in his truck, and this time he's staying. On "Down the Road,' Marchman lets the band have it's head and if it weren't for Goerge Strait sideman Mike Daily's stellar steel guitar work, the song would sound like a roots rocker. But there is no escaping Daily's cold-steel, ain't-nothin'-but-Texas, classic honky tonk playing and the honky tonk tradition that it exemplifies and defends. Lead guitarist John Garrett takes his turn and showers the crowd with a torrent of hot licks from his Telecaster and all is right in the world of honky tonk once again. This cut demonstrates the abandon and instrumental excitement that is both possible and "legal" within the wide boundaries of the "Texas music thing." Marchman digs down deep for the tragic 'Caleb,' full of images and tragedies common to any small Texas town. Subject and plot-wise 'Caleb' is reminiscent of Chris Knight's 'William' or Steve Earle's 'Tanneytown,' and Marchman doesn't pull any punches in painting a picture of how rough and destructive it was growing up in his home, Bosque County, Texas. The song is a noir tale about a boyhood friend named Caleb who 'grew up poor and hard on the Bosque County line, made him do a full day's work by the time that he was nine." With no mother and a drunken father, Caleb's moral compass is destroyed. By the time Caleb turned 18 he was 6 foot 3 and hard He was tired of workin' at the Dairy Queen, mowin' them people's yards Them boys come down from Dallas, like ghosts he could not see But he could smell them every night cookin' down methamphetamine Caleb learned a lesson, go ahead and learn it young The only thing he'd ever get, get it with a gun Caleb falls in with a wild girl, the dope dealing gets heavy, the money rolls in, guns are always around, and the DEA shows up. No need to spoil the ending of this little musical movie, but this is small town Texas and in these kinds of stories there aren't any heros and there are no "good guys," so there is no happy ending. Another outstanding, poetic track is the street-hardened 'Hank's Angel.' Lots of songwriters have written Hank songs, most dealing with encounters with Hank's ghost or recalling Williams' tragic end. But Marchman spent six years in the songwriting jungles of Nashville and his Hank song has caught the rotten underbelly side of the Music City as well as anyone since Kinky Friedman recorded his incredible indictment, 'Nashville Casualty and Life.' The dream so clear in the mornin' light will blind you at midnight Til the angels and devils look same, leaves you with nothing but the rain But if I had Hank's angels with them lips of sweet morphine Get me stoned down in Hank's Cadillac, drive us both down to New Year's Eve But I'm wasted on these city streets and rank strangers stand unkind Where the only place I find an angel is a bottle at a time. On and on Marchman and his crack cowboy band (Ken Tondre on drums, bassist Rick Calvert, twangin' John Garrett on lead guitar, and Mike Daily on steel) go, pounding out one two-step shuffle after another, essentially covering the entirety of Marchman's two previous studio albums, "Leavin' Dallas" and "Trying For Home." The well drawn poetic images and smart, perfectly crafted lines keep pouring forth from someplace deep inside Houston Marchman, a place most of us can never find in ourselves anymore, if we ever could. He works his way to his two signature songs, the white trash philosophy lesson, 'Adios, Baby,' and his epic comic commentary ("said it's about money, boy, money in the bank, country ain't in to no existential angst") on the country music industry, 'Viet Nashville.' And finally the music fades, the crowds scream for more, and it's past time for last call, time to close down the honky tonks. And as the CD player quits blinking and the silence fills the room, if you are truly a Texan all you want to do is grab another bottle of the High Life and press the play button again. Or get up and get your boots on and point your car toward a dimly lit beer joint with a dance floor and a bandstand. Sure, I could send my cousin Max Stalling if I wanted one of our finest examples of a songwriter. Or I could send her Mark David Manders' "Chili Pepper Sunset" to demonstrate the fiddling,' dancehall, this-ain't-Nashville energy our modern Texas troubadours can generate. Cooder Graw's live "Segundo" could fill the bill. But after carefully weighing all the factors, I'd have to send Marchman's latest Blind Nello effort, "Live." With his songs, his voice, and his band, in my opinion "Live" is as Texas as it gets all the way around. The complete package, ready for export. * You know your cousins in Miles City, Montana and Pontiac, Michigan, Grants, New Mexico and Buffalo, New York need a strong dose of Texicana, so get out your credit card and web yourself on over to www.houstonmarchman.com where Texas is for sale and ready for export. Contact William Michael Smith at: wms-at-rockzilla.net

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