No Damn Clue
Blame It On Blaine's
Independent


by William Michael Smith

Blame it on Blaine's
When I can't find my car in the mornin'
Blame it on Blaine's
My old lady without a warnin'

Every respectable bar band needs a home base. Preferably a bar. No Damn Clue's home base just may be the ultimate West Texas bar. Or at least that's what it says on the matchbook covers at San Angelo's Blaine's Pub.

"Blaine's, the bar of your dreams."

Along with the football stadium and Zentner's Steak House, Blaine's Pub is the cultural center of San Angelo, Texas. Located downtown in a typical building from turn of the century Texas, Blaine's doesn't look like much from the outside. But within the walls on the weekends, Blaine's little crackerbox stage serves as home to some of the premier acts in the new Texas music. The walls are covered in press photos and posters, many with autographed messages to owner Blaine Martin. Some, like Pat Green's and Jack Ingram's, mention appreciation for Martin's help and support when these artists were struggling to make a name for themselves. There is a plaque in the wall onstage that simply states "The last place Jimmy Day ever played." I've never heard a musician say he didn't like to play at Blaine's. Go to Blaine's Pub on any Friday night and you'll know why they call it the wild, wild west.

Ask around San Angelo and you'll discover that Blaine's has a... well, a rowdy reputation. Where most clubs I'm familiar with prohibit patrons from standing on tables, it is standard operating procedure at Blaine's. In fact the bar sells T-shirts that proclaim, "I danced on the table at Blaine's Pub." Despite the fact that the Fire Marshall's certificate behind the bar says "Maximum Occupancy 99," I've been there on nights when the attendance was closer to 300 than to 99. It seems only fitting that San Angelo's best bar band should immortalize San Angelo's best music bar.

This isn't forced poeticism, no lyrics too contrived
Just the truth about a little San Angelo, Texas dive
It sits about a block there from the Tom Green County Jail
Just one step in a million on a drunkard's way to hell
You could say I know the proprietor, ol' Blaine's a friend of mine
And he don't make no pretensions 'bout what goes on inside

I've got nothing but respect for bar bands like San Angelo's No Damn Clue. For one thing, NDC has taken it beyond the usual bar band = cover band formula by writing their own material. For another, NDC isn't like a bunch of these we're-great-but-nobody-understands-what-we're-trying-to-do bands that can play their asses off in the garage or the back bedroom but never take the chance to load up and put it out there. No, NDC puts it out there three, four, five nights a week at bars and barbeque joints, cafes and carnivals, Elks Clubs, VFW halls and mini-malls, at biker parties, bakeries and bar mitzvahs.

We've been playin' every night in these old bars
Weddings, dances, banquets for the FFA
When the DJ spins my song -- it was worth it all along
And I really don't care what anybody thinks

Except for the occasional trip to Mexico or Austin, the rest of NDC's lyrics don't stray far from their home ground in San Angelo. It is obvious from NDC's lyrics that, like most West Texas folks, they've got their feet on the ground, are fairly satisfied with West Texas small town life, and have few illusions about the music business. Like any craftsmen, NDC would like a little recognition for good work and they'd like to see enough financial remuneration to stay above the poverty line and pay the bills on time. And if there's enough left over for some new guitar strings once in a while or an oil change every 3,000 miles, that would be gravy. They don't do it because they think the big break is just around the corner ­ hell, they're probably scared to death that it might be! They do it because they want to play.

Like any Texas bar band that plans to stay off food stamps, No Damn Clue ­ Morrison on rhythm guitar, David Engleman on lead guitar and piano, drummer Tony Blair, bassist John Boon and steel guitar badass Leon Langley - can do it all. They can rock, they can do country, they get the harmonica out and get bluesy, and, like any truly good Texas bar band, they have no concept whatsoever about folk music. They aren't out to save the world, and "sensitivity" and "political correctness" would definitely be a stretch they'd just as soon not make.

The set of music on their debut CD, mostly written by Morrison and Engleman, is full of wry and earthy small town stories of loves gone wrong, road trips, drunken mistakes, gringo honeymoons, law enforcement encounters and good ole boy humor and philosophy set to roots rock and alt-country strains. There is even a story about the son of a local funeral parlor owner who cruises San Angelo's Beauregard Avenue strip trying to pick up girls in a hearse.

He'd just keep smilin' as he looked 'em over
Smilin' til he'd made his choice
Then he'd point to the sign on the side of his hearse
And he'd say in his sweetest voice

"I want your body, I can make you smile
I can put the flush back on your cheeks if you'll come with me a while
If you're feelin' dead, I can make you come alive
I want your body, want to go for a ride?"

Don't get the idea that NDC's lyrics are all light and humorous though. There are plenty of catchy lines and deep thoughts, like those in Engleman's pensive "Hazy", where Engleman sings, "Sometimes I over-confess/I run out of words to rhyme with 'you're gone'" and "you get to feelin' so much older when you're livin' on a runnin' tab."

Morrison has written two interesting Latin-tinged travelogues of a gringo vacation to Guanajuato and a flaky song called "Pontotoc," the tale of a fictional San Angelo traveling band called Jimmy Dean and The Double Pickers which is instrumentally along the lines of the Rolling Stones "Dead Flowers" and includes a two-minute talking interlude where Morrison shows his droll, understated, self-deprecating stand-up comic side.

"There is no Jimmy Dean and The Doublepickers, I just thought it was a ridiculously funny name for a band. Up until about a year ago, we were a 6-to-10 piece Phish-style jam band with horns and lots of percussion. When we'd pull into a new place to play, especially one with a lot of "anti-country" looking types, I always liked to open up with an old Willie or Jerry Jeff tune and introduce ourselves as Jimmy Dean and The Doublepickers just to see how many people I could piss off. For some sick reason, I think stunts like that are funny, kind of an envelope-pushing thing."

Or a bar band thing?

However the song came into being, the simple but wonderful hook in the chorus is what makes this little song about the tiny town of Pontotoc (on the road between San Angelo and Austin) a minor but unforgettable Texas anthem to those lucky enough to have heard it.

On that Greyhound tour bus
They were headed for a big show down in Austin
By the time they saw that little green sign
They were piss drunk again

They were piss drunk in Pontotoc
Drinkin' Lone Star and Shiner Bock
They were piss drunk in Pontotoc again

The bottom line for a bar band is keeping the audience happy, keeping them entertained and engaged ­ and drinking. For reasons of modesty we suspect, No Damn Clue has hidden its best bar song on Track 77. Usually hidden tracks are throwaway songs, but no song with lines this good can be considered a throwaway song. This song alone is worth the price of this album, no matter what they are charging for it.

It's been way too long since I've written a decent song
So I thought I'd call her up and let her piss me off
I used to say that she was good for nothin'
Now I know that that's not true
The truth be known she was my inspiration
I believe in giving credit where it's due

You know I never had a single thing to bitch about at all
Til I met her
And bitterness just writes a better song

So many first CD's have a forced sterility and lack of spontaneity, usually the product of too many takes and too much tinkering in striving for a perfect sound in some vain hope of making The Big Impression. NDC sidestepped that bear trap by recording live at Blaine's Pub over a three-night engagement. Like the best bar bands, NDC gets it right on Blame It On Blaine's, but not too right. Forget about technical excellence and big-city, cooler-than-everyone pretentiousness. Blame It On Blaine's is a bar band record made in a bar by a competent bar band for the kind of people who like bars and bar bands. What comes through is heart and good feeling. Blame it on Blaine's.

* Blame It On Blaine's can be purchased at www.nodamnclue.com There are also some pictures of these West Texas pretty boys that you're daughters will want to download and print and thumb tack on the walls over their beds next to their In Synch and Backstreet Boys' posters.






Contact William Michael Smith at: wms-at-rockzilla.net

 
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