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If you are from West Texas but are now stuck in Houston or Dallas or another of our burgeoning cosmopolitan Tejas super-metropolises, there is nothing quite like the feeling of being back out in God's country, where the people are friendly and open and traffic is non-existent, where the air is pure, the heat is bearable and the vistas are grand. It only gets better if you happen to be sitting in the front row at Blaine's Pub in San Angelo listening to some loudass neo-hippie-cowboy band with the amps up to 12 blasting out a souped-up version of Commander Cody's "Down To Seeds and Stems Again" and the entire audience is singing along in full voice. I am. The floor is covered in empty peanut hulls, I've got a cold Coors longneck in my hand and my wife has just doubled the length of my leash for this one special night. There is a 60/40 relationship between nubile college girls and off-duty topless dancers out on a tear on the one hand and cowboy-hatted, snuff-dippin,' boot-wearin' good ole boys willing to make damn sure the girls don't go away untorn on the other.
One of the beautiful things about Texas is you never know where or when an unlikely looking band of hot pickers is going to surface. It is almost 9 p.m., the sun has just set, and San Angelo band No Damn Clue is in the midst of the release party for their first album, "Blame It On Blaine's." The local citizenry have turned out in force to support four of their own and the fellows in NDC are working hard and sounding good. Working their way through every song on the album and in front of their home crowd, NDC is pulling out all the stops. "You know, I told the guys when we walked in here tonight 'this looks like a Snoop Dogg crowd'," NDC leader Darren Morrison hollers and the crowd goes berserk. And Snoop Dogg they do, reviving a rendition of The Gourds' version of Snoop's "Gin and Juice" played in a campy country funk style guaranteed to put a grin on your face and a hip in your hop. Then, just to make sure it gets really crazy, they segue out of Snoop into Waylon's "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?" A dozen young ladies are up on the tables by this juncture. And the night is still young and relatively uninebriated. Morrison steps back after all his exertions, lights a cigarette and lets lead guitarist David Engleman take the spotlight. "This is a song off our yet to be recorded rock and roll album," he grins and the band breaks into one of those hard-driving roots-rocking bar anthems that all Texas bar bands who expect to feed their children regularly learn to play blind-folded. Using his cigarette like a cool prop, Morrison cups his harmonica and blows smoke and notes all over through the little room. To properly close out the set, they do the song that every one of their fans has been waiting patiently for, "Blame It On Blaine's." Morrison fills the number with his imitations of club owner Blaine Martin's frog-in-the-throat clichés like "I'm always ready, just like baloney." It's an inside joke, but everyone present is an insider. Martin is sitting at a table with a group of friends back near the bar and he is all grins. And with that the set is over. "Y'all get ready for Mark David Manders," Morrison intones and begins to tear down his gear. ********************* Twenty minutes later Manders' guitarist appears on stage and begins to tune his instruments. The crowd of college kids around us begins to chant: "Mark David Manders, Mark David Manders, Mark David Manders." Manders is still at the Inn of the Concho, but that doesn't stop the chanting. I sit at the front table interviewing Darren Morrison about No Damn Clue. "So do you guys all work?" "Nah, man, between the four of us we might work 8 hours a week. We just play." "So you've got lots of gigs lined up?" "Well, next week we're in Llano, then Eastland, then we've got Odessa and McCamey. Man, that's gonna be great. We're doing a meet for the Coyotes bike club of Odessa Friday night in Odessa, then we're playing their party in McCamey on Saturday. All those crazy biker chicks, man, this ought to be a helluva lotta fun." Oh, no doubt. Around 10:30, other Manders band members begin to tune and sound check and the chanting gets louder still. A few people have already climbed up onto tables in anticipation of the onset of serious fun. Standing room only isn't even beginning to describe seating conditions. If you need to go to the restroom, you'd better plan on starting that direction early.
Manders steps up to the microphone as the audience screams. "Every time we get to Blaine's it feels just like we've come home. I love this place. Thanks for having us here again, San Angelo." The band breaks hard into Manders' recent hit single "Black Jack Road" and the fun riot is at full tilt. There are females on virtually every table in the bar except the one where Martin and his party are sitting. By the third song, "Long Gone to Austin," even some guys have gotten up on tables. People are still coming through the front door but there is nowhere for them to go, so they don't. They are packed in like cattle in a trailer. After the band works its way through a highly electrified Bob Wills medley, two girls holler out a request: "Boys From Oklahoma." Manders shrugs and says, "I don't know it. Y'all want to come up and sing it?" Do they? Why, hell, yes! Manders' band confers momentarily, then launches into the Cross Canadian Ragweed song while the girls sing. Most of those in the crowd sing along at the top of their lungs "them boys from Oklahoma roll their joints all wrong, too damn skinny, too damn long" in one of those rare Zen honky tonk moments. I think again how great it is to be back in West Texas. The second set begins with a blasting version of "Ann Marie" which incites 3 young ladies to jump up onto the bandstand rail and dance precariously. When the band segues into their one word instrumental sing-along, "Beer," it seems as if every person in the club has two beers and they shake them up and spew them skyward, at the band, at the ceiling, at each other. It is raining beer and the band plays on, although by the end of the first stanza they and their instruments are thoroughly soaked. Around 12:30, I've had enough fun for one night and leave for the motel, knowing I'll need all my strength and a partially clear head for Day 2 of the Mark David Manders Trans-Texas Tour. Tomorrow we cross The Border. **************************** As often happens in West Texas, I awake with a mighty hunger rather than a hangover. A lot of folks don't know it, but if you like "American food," San Angelo is a great place to find it. You want steak for breakfast? How thick? I am on my way to an eatery I know where they serve up a slice of ham a half inch thick and as big as your plate with your eggs when I see a little place called Bobo's Kitchen. Something tells me to U-turn and am I glad I did. We grab some high-backed seats at the counter and coffee is quickly in front of us. There is a Korean lady (Bobo) manning the grill and she is working like a dog at huge plates of breakfast. I opt for two eggs, sausage, hash browns and biscuits. Being something of a cook myself, I can tell those hash browns aren't from any frozen pre-packaged box. They've been shredded this very morning. She drowns them in butter she has melted in an old pot-metal coffee pot, flips them once, lays the sausage on the grill and cracks two brown-shelled eggs. She reaches into a basket and pulls out a giant biscuit, cuts it in half, smears it with butter and drops it face down on the grill to warm. That biscuit is homemade too, and it has plenty of that buttermilk taste like good biscuits should. Four dollars later, I am ready for Mexico. We lounge in the sun by the pool until it is time to meet at Blaine's at noon and say our goodbyes and head south. A couple of Blaine's employees are taking the day off and are traveling with us to Mexico for the night. We stop at Jarrisco's in Sonora for some burritos to go and picnic by the roadside as oilfield trucks roar past. It is 100 degrees, but in the shade with the breeze blowing and the low humidity we're quite comfortable. South of Sonora we hit a detour sign (a stretch of Highway 277 is closed) so we take a 60-mile detour and roar into Del Rio at 85 miles per hour around 4 p.m. The border crossing is uneventful.
The La Macirena Club, about 8 blocks from the bridge, has the stage set up on their extensive patio area. The first thing I notice is the mountain of speakers. Plenty of P.A. The second thing I notice is $2 Dos Equis. Heath Tolleson and The Orange County Band from Lubbock take the stage around 9 p.m. and give a 1 hour set of roots rock and Texicana that is well received by the crowd of 20-somethings that is slowly growing. Mike McClure of The Great Divide, who is producing Tolleson's new record, joins the band for several numbers and the music gets as hot as that thick dusky air on the patio. There is a quick equipment change and a brief sound check and Manders takes the stage. The Macirena management is leaving nothing to chance they have a policeman posted at either side of the stage to keep back any stage crashers who might confuse Manders with Mick Jagger or Pat Green. The crowd has grown to around 250 by this time and they are ready to party. It is obvious from the start that Manders is charged up and ready for this show. Like any band that has played four nights in succession, there is a real tightness and intensity in Manders' show as he works his way through his most popular material. The rhythm section - Jeremy Yeager on drums, James Michael Randorff (Gary P. Nunn, Brigitte London) on bass is moving in practiced unison while soloists Jeremy Watkins (fiddle) and Lance Smith (guitar) take off on some extended jams, working and building their solos off each other. Manders allows the set to build up excitement, then he hears a request hollered and simmers the pace down for a little slow dancing with tunes like "Mountain of Gold" or "The Fiddle Plays." During an extended Bob Wills medley with Watkins taking over the singing duties, Manders surprises the audience by getting Amanda Brown (Vince Vance and the Valiants) up to sing some female answering parts on "Milk Cow Blues" and the crowd loves it. This girl can really belt it out. The crowd screams out for the "Beer" song, but while the band scorches its way through the tune, this crowd proves it just can't measure up to Blaine's when it comes to beer spewing, although one drunk young lady drops her bottle in the middle of the dance floor and it shatters. Nobody cares. Lately Manders has been closing his shows with a loud, raucous, rocking version of Rusty Weir's "Don't It Make You Want to Dance." The band really cooks on this one, getting the whole crowd worked up and leaving them screaming for more with a false stop followed by an intense final jam as Manders leaves the stage. Oklahoma's The Great Divide doesn't wait long to serve notice that they've come to rock. I hadn't seen Divide play since 1999 and I was amazed at how much more professional and polished they'd become. There is nothing "country" about their show except a few hats. From the first note, they just take off like a rocket. Mike McClure's voice keeps getting better and he really knows how to use it. The area in front of the stage, which had been the domain of dancers during the Manders set, fills with standing onlookers who react mightily to each song Divide blares out. All too soon it is over. We catch a taxi and head for the bridge. For $22 I am defensively driven through the U.S. Customs checkpoint (complete with hungry German shepherd) in a well-preserved 1975 Chevy Impala and deposited at the Ramada Inn Del Rio where my air-conditioner faithfully waits to serve. If Texas Music is your thing, with a bit of planning you just can't do a better honky tonk vacation than a Blaine's Pub and Ciudad Acuna weekend. * Blaine's Pub www.blainespub.com
will have Jack Ingram with Macon Greyson opening August 31. Sounds
like a good way to spend a weekend. Also check out www.nodamnclue.com
just because these guys are way cool. |
By the time I finish my first
beer, I deduce that atmospheric conditions and the zodiac signs
are definitely conducive to a perfect honky tonk night. And we
are still only on the opening band. I look across the street
and see a '70s Fleetwood Cadillac with a 5 foot wide set of polished
longhorns on the hood protruding onto the sidewalk from the garage
of Better Bail Bonds and know we have a safety net nearby.
Manders comes in
through the front door and you'd think Elvis and Jim Morrison
had just entered the building. Blaine Martin is onstage talking
to Manders and, as if it is all part of the master plan (it is),
a waitress appears with six shots of tequila. Blaine hands them
around, toasts the band and they all down the shots. And without
further adieu, Blaine croaks into the microphone, "Give
it up for Mark David Manders."
We head for Ma Crosby's, long
known as the finest eatery in Ciudad Acuna. Having had burritos
for lunch, I order a fresh filet of Lake Amistad bass cooked
in butter and covered in boiled shrimp while a guy on organ plays
everything from "Blue Eyes Cryin' In the Rain" to "In
The Mood" to the theme from Dr. Zhivago. That'll be six
dollars, thank you.
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