11/29/2015

A month and change worth of ramble...

Before we get to this long awaited post, here's a brief opening note about it...

Much of this post was written upwards of a month ago or more.  To be honest, I can't remember when I started it.  It's pretty obvious that I was in a bad place when I hammered out most of these words, but since I left my laptop down at the Boohatcha while back, it's been quite some time since I worked on it.  There's not a lot of news in it, but there are some interesting stories and quips sandwiched between some sad sack bitching and moaning.  Ordinarily, I would start all over and leave it to an eternal and unfinished fate in the bowels of my drafts folder, but I'm sick of doing that.  I spend a lot of time coming up with some of this stuff only to throw it away like so many wads of notebook paper, but I don't throw it away because it isn't good...I throw it away because it's not always easy to confront the way I feel, and reading and re-reading and editing and re-reading my feelings often makes me sick of them.  Then I convince myself it isn't good so I can avoid said confrontation.  It's the very same thing that I feel adds to the strength of my songwriting.  Fullbright once told me that songwriting is a painful occupation for the sole fact that we experience our emotions and then force ourselves to re-experience and examine them to a point just shy of total insanity...and then we have to figure out an interesting and clever way to get those particular emotions across to another individual in 3 or 4 minutes worth of song. Anyway, self psychoanalysis session over.  Enjoy the post. -bw



If I were feeling more like myself as of late, I'd probably begin this post with some form of watered down half-apology in regards to my usual neglect of this randomly posted smattering of words. Then, I'd make some half-hearted promise that things will be different from now on in regards to my upkeep of this particular plot in the vast digital landscape that presently surrounds us. I would proceed to jump right on in to whatever thing or event might be going on or forthcoming, and I'd probably include some funny quips and descriptors about the way those things or events effect the trajectory and steer the course of my daily (nightly, really) life.  That's what I would do if I felt like myself. As it stands, I do not.  As a matter of cold, hard, undeniable fact, I can't remember the last time I even felt remotely akin to the person I used to think I might have been.  An uncomfortably foreign face stares back at me from any and every reflective surface I manage to walk by on any given day.  There are brief moments of clarity, moments when my visage seems ever so slightly more recognizable, but those moments are fleeting and fragile, few and far between. Most nights, I end up tottering around whatever venue or two-bit Texas town I happen to be frequenting with a big, dumb question mark hovering above my haggard head that tells the world around me that yes, in fact, I am as perpetually lost as I appear to be, and yes, I've almost come to terms with that fact. I've come as close as a man can without having the slightest insight as to his own tumultuous state of affairs.

Fuck this.

If I was an Emo kid, I'd be shedding tears in a graveyard and whining over pointless, poorly written lyrics about how pointless it is to try and find a point that was all moot to begin with.  So far, though, I'm not wearing makeup, sobbing along to some Sunny Day Real Estate, or trying to squeeze into a pair of jeans that are painfully and quite obviously too skinny for me, so I think it's safe to assume, dear reader, I remain (thankfully) no fucking Emo kid. Therefore, without further adieu (or bitchy rambling) we shall get this here hotdog wagon a-fuckin as my friend Adam Rittenberry would say.




Literally, that's the exact phrase he would most likely use, damn near down to the letter. I mention my friend and favorite harmonica player because I got to spend a substantial amount of time with him during the first week of this past October. Allow me to slowly and gently move you back through the  years, dear reader. Roughly three years if you want to get technical about it. This adventure will take us back to a time rife with excitement and awash in waves of optimistic uncertainty. The future was a wide open road that could have taken us absolutely anywhere, but actually only led us to this exact moment in time in which we currently reside.  It's a swath of the past that I find myself combing over and through more and more frequently as of late, partially in an effort to recapture the happiness and excitement that seemed to permeate those mythical years, and partially in an effort to learn from the missteps and mistakes that were made so as not to repeat them. I could spout off a few dozen different (and very adult-sounding) reasons that I'm sitting behind this desk, chain smoking Camel's in front of a flat panel monitor, and basking in the bitter-sweet limelight of yesteryear, but none of them would be wholly truthful.  The actual reason I'm digging through our first few raucous and rowdy years of being an honest-to-God full time touring rock and roll band is so I can remember what it feels like to look out on your future with unabashed, untarnished hope.  It's probably just me being a grumpy and slightly bitter human being, but hope has been in drastically short supply as of late.

 "What a whiny bitch!" he exclaimed to himself after a haphazard re-reading of the previous paragraphs.  I've also just taken about thirty minutes to start digging through ye olde social media sites in an effort to refresh my memory for what is most definitely going to be a far more expansive undertaking than i thought it would be.  However, just the random pics alone I've been pulling off of our facebook page from 2010/2011 have been enough to make me tear up a bit already. Througth those tears, I'm also laughing my ass off at the random Skinner Quotes, pictures, and bits of wisdom that Tiny bestowed upon me in those early years of being on the road.  Things like the following...
  • "I was hunkered down in the back of the van...you're always safe in the back of the van..." -from an audio file Mac sent me years ago of Tom recounting a tale about overindulgence in the eighties.
  • "It's a well oiled machine, aint it?" -following a forty-five minute adventure in which McClure was driving the MMB van haphazardly around the back roads of Missouri whilst we tried (and mostly failed) to follow his lead in a safe and basically legal manner.
  • "Well boys, time to take it on the road and root us up some ghosts!!" -during a conversation about our as-yet-unrealized dream of filming the pilot episode of Red Dirt Rockin' Ghost Hunters, a show in which various Red Dirt type artists go huntin' up ghosts, starring Tom Skinner as our resident spirit guide, medium, and expert consumer of fine fried eats. Unfortunately, time is an unrepentant and frigid mistress, and we're all her favorite whipping mice when it comes to our best laid plans.
A few horsemen of the Red Dirt Apocalypse. Chuck Dunlap, Randy Crouch, and Tiny Tom Skinner
Anyway.

Found a lot of fantastic stuff from our old Tweets about Tom.  I'm embedding them because they're incredible.  You're gonna like that!











That's not to mention the incredible gold on Tom's old Twitter account @nusofshu











Gloves are handy. Brief, true, and undeniably hilarious.

There we go.  Now I feel better. Sometimes, all it takes is a little time spent in reflection to calm the waters of the present enough to sail out into the vast and uncertain sea of the future. So off we sail...only, instead of into the future, we're going back to the past.  Eff you, future. And now, a brief interlude from the future.

I started this post quite some time ago, so if the tone seems a bit...two-toned, that's probably because it is.  Keep in mind, I have no control over where the movie begins or ends.  These blog's take substantial amounts of time and dedication, and sometimes I have to set them aside and let them breathe before I can muster the words with which to finish them.  Before I got all Twitter crazy (mainly because I finally figured out how to search through all of my old tweets and it distracted the shit out of me) I was attempting to get back around to some Biggie stories from the old days.  If my ramshackle idea of turning blog posts into pieces of book ever pans out, something tells me it's the Biggie chapters that will end up being the most popular.  I know they're going to be my favorites.




Looking back for the first time and trying to pinpoint the exact moment I met Adam Rittenberry, I'm honestly drawing a blank. I assume it was probably at the Deli, but chances are we had run into each other beforehand at some open mic type jam or other in or around the OKC metro area. I recall that he was under the employ of this Guy who, at that time, had a sponsorship with a local western outfitter. During those days, Biggie would wear these intensely western shirts with the snaps on 'em, a nice pair of boots, and occasionally a completely out-of-character-for-Biggie cowboy hat.  There are some pretty fantastic stories from that time in Biggie's life, most notably the last grouping of shows he played with said Guy (who I'm referring to as ambiguously as possible so nobody's feelings get hurt) before the entire band quit and had to make their way home in a most uncomfortable manner...but that's Biggie's tale to tell and I could hardly do it justice.  Let's just say there was a U-Haul, saran wrap, Vodka shortage, and a terribly long and bitter cold trip across half of the country before they made it back to yon Sooner State.  I can, however, tell this one...

Spacedog himself, aka Bob Moore

One of the first nights I can recall hanging out with Biggie was at that musty old house of ill repute known as the Porthole at 39th and Portland in Oklahoma City.  Our galactic guide to the rock and roll cosmultiverse Mr. Bob Moore used to host an open mic/jam at that smoke-hazed shack on Tuesday or Wednesday nights.  At the time, I was working a day job as an Autocad Technician for a fairly reputable engineering firm and spending my nights playing music with the Nefarious Double Clutchers, a trio that consisted of myself, Buffalo Rogers, and my high school homie and former roommate Joel Tiberius Mosman, By day, I worked my 9 to 5 in a pair of slacks and walked on a cane, pointing and clicking for better pay than I'll likely ever make again, and by night I played with Buff and J-Bear at any jam or open mic that happened to be happening around town so as to hone our folky-type chops and maybe catch a paying gig or three while we were at it.

We three Double Clutchers met up with Biggie and Guy at the Porthole for Bob Moore's jam, drank a few beers, smoked a few left handed cigarettes out back on the smoking porch, and Double Clutched our way through a decent little set around about the midnight hour.  While we were jamming, swapping stories, and having the proverbial time, a short but stocky dude in his forties was at the bar getting shit-hammered on whatever poison he was picking that fateful eve.  After the set was over, we cased our instruments and walked out front in a group of both substantial number AND substantial median weight.  While we were shooting the shit with Bob in the parking lot out front of the bar, this short but stocky gentleman erupted through the front door, muttering obscenities to the night air and paying absolutely no attention to the huge group of huge dudes standing around and yakking about songs and folk music. This asshole stumbled past Buffalo's Town Car to his own vehicle parked in the next spot over, opened his rear driver's side door, produced a metal baseball bat from the back seat, and shattered Buffalo's passenger side windows...for absolutely no reason. When the initial shock wore off and we all realized the insanity of what had just happened in front of us, Buffalo just yelled "Hey, that's my fuckin' Town Car!!" and we all turned to rush this guy in hopes of tuning him up a bit and detaining him until the cops arrived.  In spite of his herculean level of intoxication, the sight of all six of us (minus Guy, who fled into the night like a frightened baby deer at the first sign of trouble) bearing down on him sobered him up enough to realize that he had made a pretty grave , grievous mistake and was about to receive a serious ass kicking if he didn't get in his car and speed away.  Biggie managed to both kick his car as he pulled off AND throw a flip flop at it, neither of which did a whole lot of good but certainly made him feel better.  After stashing an unregistered handgun, we called the cops, made the report, and went back to my old place on 37th and Penn for more left handed cigarettes and music. It was a single night among a few years worth of noteworthy nights, nights spent under the influence and over the top.  We were young and certain that our best years lay somewhere out in front of us, when we were smack dab in the middle of some of the best times I can recall.

Nefarious Double Clutchers at Sauced OKC c. 2009
I realize this post is all over the damn place, but I've been working on it in pieces for over a month and I'm getting a little sick of hammering out a few thousand words only to let them lie dormant in a dead draft on my Blogger dashboard, so I'm just going to leave it be and let you decide whether or not its worth the read.  Look forward to more stories from the old days, I promise I'll get to all of them eventually.  Until then, folks and folkettes, I'll see you on down the road.

Bryon White/TDQ
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8/26/2015

Blah Blah Blog...

I know it's been a bit. Much longer than I would have preferred to wait to type out another one of these little monsters, but life has a way of throwing you curve balls when you least expect to have to hit one of the tricky little bastards. Sometimes, you think you might be ABOUT to get thrown a curve ball, but then the spirit of old Dizzy Dean himself descends from on high, temporarily switches spirits with the man on the mound, and cooks up a good old fashioned Spaulding, Oklahoma-style Knuckle ball, right down the old chute and strange as crawfish flavored potato chips.  Instead of even ATTEMPTING a swing at the warbling ball, stumbling through the air like a vagabond on the tail end of a college-level bender, all you can do is fall to the ground and hope it doesn't drop down from the air and bean you hard enough to put you in some crazy Dead Zone type coma situation. In addition to damn near getting the shit knocked out of your face with a baseball (which truly has happened to me before and is most certainly NOT a pleasant experience) you now have lost ten years of your life, all of your friends have forgotten about you, and you've obtained the ability to see the future based on tactile response, but it's also driving you slowly but surely out of your goddamn mind.

Sigh.

It's fine.  I do so love our little hypothetical jags off into nonsense land from time to time.  I apologize for using that particular device so soon, but I'm still getting used to putting words in proper order while trying to maintain a cohesive line of thought. Every since Skinner shed his old monkey suit and the world as I knew it blew all of it's gaskets at the same time, I just haven't been able to hear the word machine like I usually do.  It tunes in from time to time, fades in and out like a weak radio station being slowly but surely swallowed up by a stronger signal.  I try and reach out for the bits that have been bobbing their way to the surface, but it isn't pretty.  As soon as I grab hold of an idea, my brain turns it loose in favor of worrying about things that are completely out of my control, which throws me off track, which results in shitty lines, which results in a most bitter and gut wrenching sense of frustration and apathetic melancholy.

 Apathetoly? Melanchetic? Fuck man...you see what I mean?  Stupid.  Senseless. Pointless.  There's so much happening that there's no narrowing down the important things.  They all just wash out with the bath water, one big wad of shitty self expression bound for a gravity fed sewer drain buried far beneath the streets of whatever city I happen to be flushing all-too-real lyrics down the crapper in.  So, since I can't write songs, I'm going to blather on and on and on about  how shitty things are and how lame everything is and Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, when will he shut the hell up??  

This is exactly what I'm trying to avoid.  So I'm going to talk about the Skinner show a bit.  Then probably something else.  Then I'll probably get frustrated and trash this whole damn thing just like I did the last three I wrote.  Fear not.  They weren't good.  At all. You didn't miss anything.



Skinner's memorial was an extremely fitting tribute to a an amazing human being and an even more amazing songwriter.  I scooped up Biggie from his most recent crash pad in OKC and we proceeded to drive a considerable distance out past Drumright into essentially the middle of nowhere.  There was virtually no light pollution, the stars were as bright as I can ever recall seeing them.  Skinner was EVERYWHERE.  It was exceptionally Law.  The Skinner face is on track to become one of the most easily recognized symbols among independent country-ish type Red Dirt & Texas country, and I think that's fine and damn dandy.  I hope the Skinner's decide to keep making and selling shirts and koozies and records and anything else they want with Tom's gloriously happy face all over every last bit of it.  It's so great to see those stickers pop up when we're out and about.  My favorites are the ones Mac used to stick over the baby koala's face on the Koala baby changing stations in a few random truck stops now and again. It's the same way with hearing his songs in random places at random times, a phenomenon which has occurred far more frequently over the past few months than it ever has before. I was in the Black Whale Pub for Scott Morgan's open mic Tuesday night show and heard a guy covering Blind Man.  Apparently his grandma was a huge Skinner fan, which I thought was an incredible vehicle by which to be introduced to Tom's music. I always seem to hear it right when I need it, which I'm damn grateful for, as it's sometimes the only thing that can bring me out of the recent mess of lows and instill within me that inner glory that comes from remembering a really great Tom Skinner joke and his own subsequent follow up laugh at whatever wise he'd just cracked.  King of the Jungle indeed...



I played Nickel's Worth of Difference with a pretty rockin' little put together group that included Bob Livingston on bass (legendary) Fullbright tickling the ivory's,  Biggie on harp, and Roger Ray on pedal steel.  I was emotional. It was thick. It was palpable. It was comforting.  It was a lot of things.  Our second tune was the Return of the Grievous Angel, a Tom Skinner favorite from the catalog of his hero Gram Parsons.  Back when we toured the Midwest with MMB on a fairly regular basis, this tune was in our setlist and usually got played damn near every night.  If he was feeling good, Tom would always be around to catch us play that good old song which we share a mutual inclination towards, and he always told us we "did a damn fine job with that one, boys!" in that rising crescendo and signature fall that only Tom Skinner's voice sounds like.  It's one of Biggie's favorite GP songs as well, and it was good to have him at my right. It was fantastic. I can't do it justice with words right now.  Maybe later.

We're on the road, in the van as I type and my body gets magically transported through space and time to the magical realm of Tupelo, Mississippi. Actually, Tupelo was yesterday.  Today is Athens, Georgia.  This little lapse in time brought to you by me getting frustrated at working on this for many hours off and on during the drive and only being this far into the blog...and skip ahead again to the end of the run, as I simply couldn't write anything that I felt was even close to entertaining enough to publish. So let me try and get back on some form of track with this smoldering catastrophe of a blog entry.

We had a blowout somewhere in NC.


The show at the Blue Canoe in Tupelo was well attended, and the crowd was in exceptionally high spirits by the time we kicked off the set.  By the end of the show, there were more than a few folks that probably should have taken cabs home but everyone seemed to have a good time.  We loaded up and headed out that night with Haystack at the wheel who proceeded to drive us all the way through his favorite football team's home state of Alabama (Roll Tide I believe he'd say) until we finally ended up in Athens, GA at the Lumpkin Street Station.

#LandOfTheFyst


It was my first time in Athens, so I spent a good part of the day with my headphones on, alternating between the "Cell" audiobook by Stephen King and every single John Moreland song available on Google Play...the mention of which should be accompanied with an aside...

Streaming Digital Music services are essentially slaughtering the concept of making money off of selling your music.  Last I checked, each time someone plays a song from our album on any one of these digital streaming sights, the financial compensation that we are awarded usually amounts to somewhere around an eight or a tenth of a penny.  Yes, that's correct.  If you could physically slice a penny into eight or ten different pieces, we would get one of said slivers for each song streamed. Since it's barely even possible to physically slice a penny into so many pieces without some extremely complicated machinery, I think that's bullshit. However, it's the way of the world and there's absolutely nothing that you or I or Taylor Swift can do to stop it.  Being a band that's reasonably low down on the national totem pole, if we tell these streaming sites to kiss our asses, their give-a-shit meter doesn't even register a slight twitch.  They don't care.  Why?  Because we aren't worth diddly compared to the mega stars and the giants with their platinum records and platinum visa cards.  So yes, I do subscribe to a streaming music service.  I can listen to damn near anything I want at any given time of the day or night, and since me musical interests are quite varied, it's a really good deal for me. I'm resolved to the fact that we'll make our money on our records by selling them at shows and that's simply how it's going to be.  Even since the release of Down the Hatch nearly four years ago, the industry has undergone substantial changes that have dramatically effected where our revenue stream comes from and how fast it's flowing, but the one thing that's not going to change is our performances.  We've always been a band that survived on touring, and that's how we're always going to survive. So do I feel guilty about being a member of a streaming subscription music site?  Fuck no, I don't.  It's awesome. Anyway...



NOW.  I'm sitting in Ira Cavendar's trailer at Big Steve's Lost and Found campground on the Guadalupe river.  We finsihed the show in Athens, drove on  to Valdosta, Georgia, (where we rocked hard and drank free whiskey) then to our three dates in North Carolina.  The guys at Lucky's Burger and Tap in Ashboro were fantastic as always and we had a nearly full house for most of the evening.  In spite of their self-deprecating decor (the place is plastered with "celebrity" quotes about how terrible the burgers are) the food is great and we always get properly taken care of.  Had a nice hotel and ended up playing songs with Haystack and Chief in the van until the wee hours of the morning. From there it was on to Belmont for the "Between Two Rivers" Music Festival.  There were a whole slew of North Carolina fans that made it out to this show.  It was a very relaxed vibe, lots of folks in lawn chairs with stiff drinks and enjoying the show.  There was a VIP tent with an open bar, a decent bbq trailer, and some really kind people that took great care of us.  It was in said VIP tent that I experienced a true first in my reasonably well-lived 32 years on this earth...

I finally met another B-r-y-o-n in real life.  Other than my dad, I've never met another person with the same rare spelling of my first name.  Oddly enough, his last name was Collier, my grandmother's maiden name on my dad's side, also spelled the same.  We're currently looking into any and all possibilities that we're related somewhere down the line, but so far it looks like one giant coincidence.  We jawed about people calling us Byron, the pitfalls of being in the media, and the strangly unique personalities and characteristics shared amongst Bryons/Bryans/and Brians.It was enlightening and an odd stroke of coincidence that someone who shares the spelling of my first name also ended up being a huge Quails fan.  Whodathunkit? Finally, we headed on to the last stop of the run, Uncle Buck's All American Pub and Grub in Salisbury, NC

Buck Salutes


If you haven't kept up with any of our previous east coast/southern runs, allow me to introduce you to Uncle Buck.  Uncle Buck is a one eyed, bad ass former combat veteran that is the owner and proprietor of Uncle Buck's All American Pub and Grub, a venue which currently sits way up at the top of the list of places I truly enjoy performing.  The first time we ever played in North Carolina, we got a call a few days into the run from our booking agent who informed us that this random bar owner (Uncle Buck) had sent a message to our Damn Quails facebook page offering food, moonshine, some gas money, and a place to crash in his "Man Cave" for the evening if we could see fit to work his bar into our already tightly packed tour schedule.  As we have a taste for adventure AND moonshine, we decided we'd give it a shot, regardless of the possibility that "Uncle Buck" could be some kind of mass-band-murderer attempting to lure another seven victims into some kind of underground torture cave.  Luckily, he and his wife Judy turned out to be two of the coolest and most hospitable souls on God's green earth.  This is our third time playing Uncle Buck's and we'll be playing there for as long as we're still playing music.  We drove in Saturday night after the Between Two River's Music Festival and stayed at Buck and Judy's new place on High Rock Lake.  We spent the next day eating breakfast burritos, sampling some of Buck's new moonshine flavors (Strawberry and Plum being personal favorites) swimming, fishing, and enjoying Buck and Judy's company.  It was a much needed lull in the hectic seven days straight of touring, and the show that night was attended by a select group of true fans that truly and honestly cared about the music we were making.  It was a perfect show to finish out the run and we left in the same state we always do...bellies full and smiles on our faces.  Thanks Buck and Judy, you guys do so much for the bands that you host and your bar is a shining example of a truly fantastic place to perform.

Roots and Branches with Ray Wylie Hubbard


After riding in the van from Salisbury, NC all the way to my place in Shawnee, I proceeded to unpack, repack, shower, change, and head towards New Braunfels for a radio spot on Roots and Branches with Ray Wylie Hubbard.  It was a phenomenal night of music and talking about songwriting and I had a blast getting to hang with an Okie icon of his stature and good taste. Tomorrow I'll head to Plano for Matt Hillyer's live radio broadcast, then I'm taking a night and hanging with McClure down in the old Boohatch.  We've got some songs to hash out and knives to wield and I'm looking forward to checking out for a day.  After that, its our record release show in OKC at Wormy Dog on Saturday August 29th, followed by the release at Gruene Hall Sept 4th, Eagle Mountain Lake at Boondocks on Sept 5th, hosting unhappy hour at Cheatham Street Warehouse (sans a Canadian-bound Charlie Stout) and then leaving for a few weeks to head up North and back East.  Be sure and call your local stations and request "Just a Little While".  It all helps.  Thanks for suffering through this post.  More to come






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7/13/2015

Tom Skinner...

There are times when it feels like my good fortune will spring everlasting.  It's usually about that time that everything goes absolutely and terribly awry, like someone ripped the rug right out from under my feet, rolled it up good and tight, and beat my heavy heart to death with it.  Murphy's Law picked last week to set a rusted out example of just how little control I have over the circumstances that unfold around me and the personal and emotional havoc that those circumstances can (and eventually will) wreak. That being said, every single thing that went horribly wrong in my life over the last week all pale in comparison to the exclamation point of the passing on of one of my heroes.

Tom Skinner is the reason you're reading these words I'm writing.  When Mike McClure first started tossing around the idea of starting his own record label, he turned to his friend Tiny Tom for advice and suggestions for the group that would be the first to make their mark upon his roster.  The Damn Quails was the first name out of his magnificently mustachioed mouth, and Mike respected Tom's opinion enough to turn a serious ear on the music we were making at the time, music that would eventually become Down The Hatch.  It was in that moment that this entire whirlwind began, and without Tom Skinner, you would most likely never have heard any of the songs on that album. Gabriel and I would probably still be playing three guaranteed weekly gigs in the OKC/Norman area, supplemented by the occasional weekend wedding or tractor pull, and you faithful fan types would be left with a musical landscape entirely devoid of we Damn Quails. What follows is a rough (and likely rambling) account of how I came to know Tom Skinner and some of the batshit insanity that we would eventually get each other into along the twisting highways of America and inside the bars that dot the whiskey soaked landscape that we inhabit.

Although I know I had seen him several times at various shows at the infamous Blue Door in Oklahoma City, the first time I met Tom Skinner in the flesh was in Okemah, Oklahoma at The Woody Guthrie Folk Festival some eight or ten years ago, back when I was still an awkward solo somekinda folk artist that was really bad at telling stories and mediocre at best at writing songs.  I say we met at Woodyfest, but anyone familiar with the situation knows that the only place to see Tom perform during the mid to latter years of the festival was among the vines and the peacocks at the now-defunct Grape Ranch south of Okemah. I never have been quite sure of the actual reason that Tom was blacklisted from the festival in the first place, but I do know that, whatever the reason, it was fucking bullshit. The owners of the Grape Ranch apparently knew that too, so they saw fit to give Tom a stage, a PA system, a large canvas tent, and free reign over who could and would perform there during the week of the festival.  It was my very favorite part of Woodyfest as it gave guys like Gabriel and I the chance to play our songs for a good sized crowd of festival goers in spite of NOT being included in the actual festival lineup. Until the very recent past, it was incredibly difficult for any up and coming Oklahoman artists to get booked on to the festival proper, but Skinner's tent was a songwriter's haven where all who performed were welcomed and personally encouraged by a man who's lyrical prowess puts mine to shame and who's ego was absolutely non-existent.  Tiny always had a kind word when you got off the stage, and not just a "great job, man!" slap on the back type of kind word. He made it a point to remember a particular line that grabbed him just right, or a chord change that was catchy and out of the normal 1-4-5 box, and tell you how much he dug what you had done and, most importantly,  why he dug it.  Those little motivational Skinner-isms guided my songwriting in the direction that it's still heading in today.  Not only was I on cloud nine from the compliment, but I had a new and intensely valuable piece of information through which I was able to extrapolate several of my little tricks and mannerisms that I still use today.  Whether he believed it or not, Tom was as much a songwriting teacher as he was a songwriter, I never saw him stand in front of a podium and give a lecture on the benefits of proper metaphorical technique or poetic devices, but the parts of my writing that he picked out and fed back to me were absolutely essential to my growth and transition form amateur dabbler to semi-professional songwriter. He taught all of us songwriters to eat our vegetables so we could grow up to be almost as big and strong as he was.  Tiny was his nickname, but his spirit and his gumption were as big as life and twice as beautiful. 



When I said Tom Skinner was the reason you're reading these words I'm currently cobbling together, I was absolutely not fucking with you. Try not to get dizzy when the edges of the screen do that bleary transition indicative of an impending flashback and follow me to the wild and wonderful final evening of the year of our Lord, 2010.  

Circumstances had led me to an old roadside bar in my hometown of Shawnee, Oklahoma wherein I planned to ring in the fancy New Year and simultaneously take in my first Mike McClure Band show.  I hadn't even met old Wacky Mac at that point and was completely unaware of his future aspirations of starting a record label. I was just a songwriter that showed up to shake hands with Skinner, swap a few stories, and watch him play the hell out of some bass lines with his mouth open. We spent twenty minutes shooting the shit about which group of bar patrons were most likely to fight one another, the stuff we got for Christmas, and the most discreet locations on the premises to safely burn one without getting busted.  

(I so could have used you last Thursday, Tom)

After said burning, we talked about the Quails and how excited Tiny was about our prospects for the future.  He told me I was a great writer.  I'm pretty sure I turned as red as a new stop sign while and began hovering a few inches off the floor at hearing such kind words from a man whose opinion on that most revered and sacred subject of songwriting I held (and hold still) in the highest regard.  Tom said he liked my sense of meter and lyrical phrasing.  Actually, what he REALLY said was, "You're good at fitting them long words into some short spots!" which is far and away better than my watered down and technical interpretation.  I'm not sure I ever flat out told him how much his kindness meant to me and how deeply I took to heart each word of wisdom that he ever spoke while I was within earshot.  Looking back on last night and this morning, I desperately wish that I would have.



Tom was the kind of guy to give praise freely when praise was deserved, but when it came to receiving his own well deserved praise, he reverted to his usual "aw shucks, it ain't really nothing" attitude, which we all know was borne of his natural, humble nature.  He never considered himself a legend, just a man that was lucky enough to do something he loved for a living and to roll hard as hell whilst he did so.  But we all knew what he was, how much certainty and confidence he had when it came to his words, and we all envied his ability to pull songs out of the thin, blue air like he was pulling fish out of the Illinois River with Jesus Christ himself  holding the net and baiting the lines.

During the first few years that the 598 Recordings label was in existence, the Quails played all kinds of shows at venues of various levels of ill repute with (yep, you guessed it) The Mike McClure band. We all got used to having Tom Skinner as the hilarious, racy grandpa character in our little road family while we were out and about. Out on the road we most certainly were. One of my very favorite Skinner stories happened on our first runout to the Midwest after a gig in Joplin, Missouri.

The first time we played Joplin, Biggie and I had the realization that our hotel was a reasonably short and easily driveable distance from the Devil's Promenade, a lonely and desolate stretch of gravel and some blacktop that runs along the Oklhaoma/Missouri border and is most notably known for playing host to The Hornet Spook Light.  "What the hell is a Spook Light?" you're probably asking yourselves.  The answer is "an inexplicable light of unknown origin" that's been seen bobbing and floating along the Devil's Promenade since way back in the 1800's. As we're no slouches when it comes to high quality documentary film entertainment, Biggie and I had seen a few tidbits about the Spook Light before on various cable shows, so we decided to ask the desk clerk at our hotel if he could point us in the proper direction of said spooky light.  The poor kid behind the desk was being a really good sport considering the two sweaty, weird-question-asking-asses in his lobby at 3 a.m, and he was kind enough to write down directions for us, including a rudimentary map because we were definitely rocking the "big time stoner that can barely read anything, especially your handwriting" vibe.  



After making a fortuitous stop at the gas station across the street, Biggie procured a half gallon of blues juice (That's 100 Proof Tvarski Vodka decanted into a clear plastic water bottle to those of you unfamiliar with the man himself and his tactics) and we headed off into the night in a ridiculously inappropriate Hummer H2 (worst touring vehicle EVER) following the bellboy's directions to the squiggly line and letter.  After making the last of nearly a dozen dark turns onto roads in various states of decay and repair, we found ourselves alone on one of the most desolate four or  five mile stretches of road I've ever seen, which is really saying something coming from a born and bred central Okie.  For a half mile (give or take) we drove through an uncannily dark forest,, thick with Elm and Black Jack trees before we finally emerged from the trees in a clearing at the top of the first hill.  From that hill, Biggie and I sat in astounded wonder at the small, flickering ball of yellowish light that was roaming through the ditches of the road a little less than a mile ahead of  us. We questioned our understandably bleary eyeballs at first, but the light was most defynytly real (and quyte Fyst, I might add) and, as we would soon find out, possessed of some sort of intelligence and/or ingrained sense of self preservation.  We gunned the Hummer and took off down that first major hill on the Devil's Promenade and headed directly towards the Hornet Spook light.  When we got within a quarter mile, though, the Hornet Spooklight vanished.  Upon topping the second hill and putting the car in park, the light reappeared at the crest of the next hill and continued to bob and weave around until we tried to approach it again, with the exact same result.  Finally, at the top of the third hill, we parked the car and waited, but the light was nowhere to be seen.  Biggie exited the vehicle to make his penis cry into the dirt while I waited in the driver's seat, and as soon as the little light re-appeared down the road, the engine died without warning or indication.  I started to get a tit bit freaked out at the possibility of being stranded on the Devil's Promenade at 4 a.m. with naught but most of a fifth of vodka, my favorite harmonica player, and that freaky ass bouncy ghost light.  I tried the ignition a few times to no avail, but after a few seconds of warding off the bad juju, the Hummer started right up as if it hadn't just died in the fuck middle of nowhere for no apparent good reason.  It was at this point I believed I had enough of the Hornet Spooklight, but that was not exactly the case. On the drive back to the hotel, Biggie and I discussed the fact that NOBODY was going to believe us and that we should gather a witness or two and force them to come and check out this freaky ass Hornet Spooklight. We wanted to have plenty of folks in a position to back up our encounter in the years to come when the tale would be told and re-told due to its insanity and greatness.  We pulled up to the loading area out front of the hotel, and who should be sitting at the computer in the lobby, drinking a cup of coffee and fumbling around on his Facebook, but Tiny Tom Skinner himself.  He was wide awake at 4 a.m. with some sort of vending machine Cinnabon knock off in one hand, clicking and clacking away at the keyboards in between taking large bites of pastry with the other.  We gathered Tom Skinner and collected Gabriel Marshall and headed back out to the Devil's Promenade.  Tom and Gabriel were admittedly skeptical right up to the point when the light showed itself a mile or so down the road at the crest of the next hill.  When we finally accepted what we were seeing as real,  we were four guys in awe of  a thing that none of us (or the Army Corps of Engineers) had any logical explanation or frame of reference for.  I parked the Hummer in the middle of the Devil's Promenade and we lined up on the pavement and watched the Spook Light do its dance across the street, occasionally blinking out only to show up on the other side of the road or off in the distance in one of the nearby fields.  Tiny said it was most assuredly the strangest thing he had ever witnessed in his life, and I remember feeling warm and fuzzy inside that I could show Tom Skinner, the man who's seen it all twice and got both T-shirts, something he had ever seen before. Something tells me if he had seen something stranger in the years between our spooky adventures outside of Joplin and his passing away last night, Skinner would have already called me up, given, me directions to the whereabouts of said creepy thing, and insisted I take a gander for myself.  



I want to take a second and thank each and every one of you for having the patience and constitution to make it this far into this particularly special blog post, not to mention the outpouring of memories, pictures, videos, and songs that were posted to the various social media sites during the night.  I love looking through my news feed and seeing a few dozen tiny Skinner faces looking back at mine.  I love the sense of camaraderie among the younger generations of songwriters rising through the ranks, something Tom talked about a few times in interviews over the years.   I love how that sense of togetherness didn't have to be taught to us, merely led by the brightly shining example of those badass guys that came before us. 

We followed the example of guys like Tom Skinner, Randy Crouch, Greg Jacobs, Bob Childers, Rick Reiley, Bob Moore, Steve Ripley, and all of the others that walked down Woody's road when we were barely twinkles in our father's eyes.  We soaked up the way they moved when they were on stage, how they cued whatever group of musicians that happened to be playing with them using nothing more than a high foot stomp or a nearly imperceptible nod of the head.  We listened to the words they sang and how they sang them, borrowed from their inflections, and did our best to incorporate the really special elements of their collective styles into an amalgamation all our own rather than blatantly trying to rip them off.  I love that Tom Skinner was proud enough of us to remind the naysayers and bitching brayers, those close minded asses that are convinced of the younger generation's ineptitude while being blind to their actual work and achievements, that there are still good people making good music in the world. They just have to have to take the time to go out to a bar, catch a show, shut their collective mouths for a few minutes, and listen for it.  We all let Skinner carry that bright, burning torch in his mighty hand until around 9pm last night, when he finally let himself slow down and entrusted that flame to all of us that do our damndest to carry on his good work.  We are a haggard bunch, still rough around the edges and just rebellious enough to do our own thing in the present while still holding tight to the lessons of the past. It's a history taught to us via a thousand stories that we'll never tire of telling and never allow to die, so long as there's still someone around to listen to us tell them.  We'll tell them over and over, until time takes our youth, our voices, and eventually our bodies away from us, and all we have left are the words and melodies and marks they left on the people of this world.  It is in our own songs that we must place our faith, and through that faith, we become the stoned immaculate architects of our own immortality.  Tom was not the first man ever to write a song, but God damned if he didn't make us believe that he could have been.  He was our mentor and our friend, our father and our brother, and the yard stick against which we will measure the quality of our work until all our work is one day done. 



Tom...

We'll do our best to always try and measure up to your stellar example, and eventually we will all die trying.  We are better human beings for having known you, and that's a gift that can be neither bought nor sold, only given freely from one friend to another.  Thank you for that.  And everything else. You will be missed.  You already are.

-BW

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4/03/2015

Tracking Week One and other such happenings

Alright folks and folkettes, here's the entry that a lot of you have been waiting for and I'm beyond happy to be awake on a Hill Country morning,  staring out from the roost at the Songwriter Compound, and typing out these words for your tender little eyes to read.  It's been almost three and a half years since we released "Down The Hatch" to the public and I had nearly forgotten the level of excitement and hubbub that comes along with making a record.

Guitar parts at 12th Street sound

The first time I ever recorded any of my own music was waaaaay back in a time when rock and roll was in the midst of its tumble down from the glory days of the Seattle grunge rock scene in the mid 90's, a time known as the late 90's.  Bands like Puddle of Mudd, Limp Bizkit, and Korn dominated the t-shirt space in high school hallways across America and music on the radio was already in the middle of a cycle somewhere between bad and worse.  In 1999, I was a spry young thing with spikey bleach blonde hair and a fire engine red Dodge ram that got me from point A to point B with a few amplifiers in the bed and a pretty rippin' stereo system that was constantly blaring out everything from Nirvana to the The Band with equal audio fervor.  Three of my best friends and I formed a garage band we called Image, a name that was neither catchy nor descriptive, but we had some of our own songs and could rock the hell out of them if called upon to do so.  I worked part time as a bus boy at a Mexican restaurant in my hometown of Shawnee, Oklahoma, and one of the waiters that I worked with was a fellow named Steve Petree.  Steve, his brother, and cousin had a few different successful bands over the years, the most popular of which was the Shiny Toy Guns.  Our little group paid Steve a hundred dollars to record two songs in the Petree basement and we ended up selling them on CD-R's with our named scrawled across the front in sharpie AND on actual tapes which I spent hours dubbing by hand on my old silver jambox with the dual tape deck.  Digital recording was still in its toddler-hood and hadn't reached the "everyone has a portable studio stuck inside their smart phone" level of accessibility yet, so having a song of your own that someone else could put in their CD player and jam out to was still pretty fucking sweet.  It wasn't long after recording the Image songs that I began toying around with my Dell laptop and a program called Cakewalk that I eventually used to record a five song solo acoustic EP of my original folk tunes.  This is the same medium I eventually used to record my punk band "The Mr. Shannons" and a few various solo efforts between then and now.  Nowadays, recording your own material with a reasonably professional level of quality is as easy as placing a damn phone call, which has flooded the internet with demo songs of people trying their best to "make it". This overly saturated environment makes it tough to get noticed among the masses, prompting many bands to use their image or some other kind of tricksy marketing ploy to get noticed.  The only sure fire way to make your record rise among the flotsam and jetsam is to write good songs and flesh out a body of work that people simply cannot ignore.

The Mr. Shannons c.2000 in Chris Van Dyne's bedroom where we practiced the rock

Down The Hatch was that record for us.  In a time of increasingly sped up release schedules, for a band to wait three and a half years between albums is akin to career suicide.  If you're familiar with the reasons why it took us so long to make our second record, congratulations.  You've been paying attention.  If you're not, I am legally forbidden from giving you the details around the situation, but I can say it involved some legalities over Down the Hatch and was a supreme pain in our collective quail asses.  It's over now.  Thank jeebus.  However, since the songs and the record as a whole were so good, Down The Hatch continues to sell well online and at shows and the longevity of that record speaks volumes about its content. I still get a smile on my face when I read a twitter post about someone driving somewhere with Down the Hatch as their soundtrack, and we've been truly blessed that people are still discovering and connecting with that album.

In February we announced our Kickstarter campaign to raise money for the recording and production of our second release, a process that took a lot more hard work than I ever imagined it would. We spent the entire thirty days from kickoff to deadline calling, emailing, text messaging, and sending carrier pigeons to every single person or entity we've ever come in contact with to spread the word and raise a record breaking $50,000 in a single month so we could make the record we wanted to make with absolutely no one telling us how the fuck to make it.  I know every band likes to think they have the greatest fans in the world, but Quail fans rallied behind us when we needed them and they put their faith (and their wallets) in the hands of a few dudes from Norman that play pretty good music. So our fans are the best as far as we're concerned.  Wanna fight about it??  Me either. By the time all was said and done, we raised more than $54,000 with which to record, produce, package, and promote our new record, which is BATSHIT crazy and amazing at the same time.  The morning that I woke up and realized we were most definitely going to reach our goal was possibly the most relief I've ever felt in a single moment and I can't thank you all enough for your undying support for what we're trying to do.

Intense. Relief.


If you've been keeping up with our touring schedule over the past few years, you may have noticed quite a few shows opening up for that little fraternal band from Idaho known as Reckless Kelly.  All of the Braun brothers have been extremely generous to we Damn Quails.  We played one spot away from Reckless at the Braun Brothers Reunion Festival back in 2012, a spot that put us in front of thousands of people on one of the most scenically beautiful stages we've ever had the pleasure of rocking.  Micky and the Motorcars have taken us out on several runs, and even let it slide when we unintentionally consumed Gary Braun's entire bottle of birthday whiskey in Austin at Antone's a few years back.  We replaced it, of course...and then drank another half of the bottle just so Gary would know we'd been there and that we loved him enough to do so. When the time came around to make this record, Reckless' guitarist and resident tone wizard David Abeyta expressed an interest in producing the record with us, and sitting here on the other side of the tracking process, we couldn't have made a better choice for a producer.  Dave has an incredible sense of conceptualization when it comes to songs, especially the few we hadn't spent as much time working up in a live setting.  Most of the tunes that we ended up recording have been in our live rotation for the better part of the past year, but there were a couple that we hadn't been playing on the reg that Dave was able to bring out the best in when it came time to lay them down.  Kevin Szymanski provided engineering duties as well as a fair amount of comic relief on the gag reel end of things.  Thanks to his quick hand, most of the hilarity was captured in all its brilliance and randomly looped into the playback for our comic enjoyment. Kevin has worked with everyone from the Foo Fighters to John Hiatt and a slew of folks in between and is also some kind mad genius Protools savant on the console.  Between Kevin and Dave, the quality of the tones were fierce and pleasantly varied.  We saw every song as a way to get a new kind of sound, something to set the tracks apart and give them each a unique color that still manages to vibe from track to track.  Dave wasn't afraid to try out different instrumental arrangements of the songs, often times sticking old Haystack on banjo instead of fiddle on a song he's only ever played fiddle to.  Things like that open your eyes to new ways of bringing out certain rhythms or syncopation within the tunes where they may have been lost otherwise, changing them in fundamental but fantastic ways.  The studio is THE place to get creative, to mess around with a song a few different ways and see which way works best.  You get an infinite amount of chances to get it right, and finding the proper cut of a tune can be the difference between an average track and an unforgettable one.
Dave says it's a numero uno.  
Speaking of vibe...

I've always wanted the opportunity to track a record live.  When you have a band like ours that lives and dies by our performances, everyone playing together is the natural order of things.  Tracking parts individually and building them piece by piece can work well too, but we've been playing so many shows together over the past few years that it feels far more natural for everyone to play together and maintain that live sensibility over the course of the recording.  Everyone gets their own headphone mix, you dial it in just the way you like it, and you play the damn songs.  Easy enough, really.  There may be a few fixes that need to be made and there are always a few overdubs to spice things up, but five guys playing songs together is essentially what you're going to hear when this record finally hits your car stereo or (oh my god) your turntable.  It's been one of my lifelong dreams to have an album on vinyl, and for those of you that bought in on the kickstarter, thank you from the bottom of my heart.  I can't wait to put on a Quails record for the first time and watch it spin around the table like I've watched all of my favorite records spin around and around so many times.

I feel like vibe is the ultimate hallmark of any great record.  If you can listen to an album and get that sense of being in the room with the people playing whatever music you're listening to, then great vibe hath been achieved, currying much favor with the gods of Inspirado.  Those intangible connections are what make the difference between a good album and a fucking awesome one.  Our little buddy John Calvin Abney (affectionately known in the twitterverse as Funkid) is a masterful creator and weaver of vibe on his own records.  His newest release Better Luck is incredibly vibey and a fantastic record which you should own.  If you get a chance, though,  dig back through his catalog on Bandcamp and check out the Empty Candles album.  It's a hauntingly good collection of seven songs recorded on a tape deck at his old house in Tulsa with a couple of good mics and a whole lot of internal struggle and strife.  It's not a happy record, nor is it poppy or uplifting, but the method of recording and the performances he went with absolutely serve and augment the material itself. Nothing is at odds with anything else and the emotion is so palpable you practically have to wipe the tear drops out of your stereo system. Empty Candles pays a little bit of homage to one of mine and John's favorite artists, the maestro of melancholy himself Mr. Elliott Smith.  Another great example of a record that's vibey as fuck and amazing to boot is by another John from Tulsa and one of my favorite songwriters making music today.  John Moreland albums bleed vibe like a stabbed harmonica player outside of a midnight motel, and I think his last release In the Throes should be a staple of any good record collection.  It's a perfect example of the tone and attitude of a recording reflecting the heart and soul of the songs being recorded.  If you haven't heard either of these guys, follow the magic links and buy some of their material.  It's fucking good.  You won't regret it.  If you do, I'll personally come to your house and vandalize the piss out of it.  Maybe that'll teach you to have regrets, hmm?

John Calvin Abney a.k.a. Funkid on pedal steel at Mule Barn in Justin TX


I won't really vandalize your house. Don't go telling people "He said he was going to destroy my property if I didn't agree with him!" and make me look like some kind of hoodlum or rapscallion.  Not cool, dude. Anyway, back to OUR record...

Due to the fact that we're still a touring band and still struggling to survive, we didn't have the luxury of taking two weeks off to hole ourselves up in the studio.  People gots ta eat, and it costs money to eat, and there aint no money if you don't get out and play shows.  We broke the recording process up over two weeks, tracked Monday through Thursday, and hit the road on the weekends to keep the lights on back home.  Week one was mainly reserved for full band tracking, and we spent those first four days just playing the songs together and trying out different instrumentation for each tune.  We'd take a few shots at a song, then put Haystack on a different instrument, maybe switch up electrics for acoustics or vice versa, and take it again just to see if the song wasn't better served played with a different setup.  Huge props to our little multi-instrumentalist wunderkind Kevin "Haystack" Foster for being such a good sport during the whole process.  We really put him through the ringer and he played the shit out of whatever he was asked whenever he was asked to play it.  He also nailed his high harmony parts and proved himself to be an indispensable part of this band.  Warren Field has effectively grabbed our groove by the proverbial ball sack and, between him and Thomas Young, our rhythm section parts are solid as an old oak tree with pockets as deep as the Marianas Trench.
Those first four days proved that our hard work in the live setting over the last few years has paid off in spades.

Control Room at 12th Street Sound


We finished off the full band tracking by day four and headed out for a gig-packed weekend including a rompin show with Midnight River Choir at the Redneck Country Club (an amazing venue outside of Houston) followed by a double header Saturday in College Station and Tomball.  Our buddy Joe Biggs from Infowars.com accompanied us on our weekend travels and made sure we were properly stocked with stickers and supplements from the Infowars swag cache. He even got up during Me and the Whiskey and nailed a rock and roll scream that was metal as fuck.  Joe is a helluva guy and an even better drinking partner, so keep an eye out for the buff dude in the Molon Labe hat and say hi.  He's a patriot and a half and a truly fearless journalist with stories out the wazoo.  Saturday, we headed to College Station and played a private fraternity party at 2pm for the Fiji's that they so kindly purchased during our Kickstarter campaign.  Those kids were a hoot and super big fans of our music, and even though I was almost maimed and disfigured by a fluorescent black light bulb that fell from the ceiling and shattered when it hit my microphone, we had a great time partying with and performing for them.  After the set, we loaded out with a quickness and headed towards Tomball where we had a makeup show scheduled at Mainstreet Crossing due to the Ice-pocalypse in Fort Worth the weekend prior. The show was effectively rocked and we made our way back towards Austin to start week two.

Damn Midnight River Quail Choir at Redneck Country Club


 By the time I got back to Austin on Sunday night, the weeks worth of recording and the weekend worth of shows were starting to catch up to me both physically and mentally.  The weather in south Texas this year has been sporadic at best, and the constant change in pressure and temperature wreaked nine different kinds of havoc on my body.  My sinuses have always been notoriously sensitive to changes in the weather, and by Sunday I was congested and my throat felt like someone had poured a hot gravel road down the back of my tongue.  I made my way back to New Braunfels and spent a very happy Sunday in the company of a beautiful and interesting woman, drinking one of my favorite Bloody Mary's from the Pheonix Saloon, playing darts and drinking ice cold beer at Scores, and taking turns listening to and telling each other stories.  All day long.  It was the height of relaxation and successfully recharged my batteries enough to ensure I was properly prepared to tackle week two at 12th Street Sound.

I think that about wraps up this particular entry, I'll get to week two in a couple of days.  Thanks so much to all of you that read this blog and keep up with our adventures.  Check out www.thedamnquailsband.com, see where we're going to be playing, and come catch a show.  We've incorporated most all of the songs from the new record into the live set, so you can get your own sneak preview if you can make it out.  Good times guaranteed.  Catch you on down the road,

Bryon White/TDQ














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4/01/2015

Rough Tracking, Half of a Show, and one really long tangent about songwriting.

Dude, I'm getting serious points for keeping up with this thing as well as I have.  I keep trying to get us caught up to the present, but the inherent nature of writing a blog that keeps up with your travels, trials, and tribulations, is that I will never be completely caught up.  Were I ever to find myself completely caught up, all I would have to say is..."doing this or doing that" and that's what the damn Twitter is for.

Now where did we leave off during our last story time, children?  Troll under the bridge?  Lost in the woods?  Lets go with lost in the woods, which wouldn't be altogether inaccurate.  I spent the remainder of the week leading up to Valentine's day mostly locked away in the cabin, writing songs and trying like a madman to raise some cash for the Kickstarter campaign.  I spent a little time with my friend, but most of my days and nights were spent pacing around, occasionally picking up a guitar to strum a few wayward parts, and scribbling down the good bits of the torrential downpour of words that were flash flooding my mind.  I was rewarded for my efforts with not one but TWO good and completed songs, which I've been playing in various situations over the past few weeks and have decided that they're both tunes I'll continue to play.  I doubt either will make it onto the new record, but it's good to know there's a few waiting in the wings, all dressed up and fancy and ready to take the stage.  The days I spent alone at Rio's cabin were magical and I've been fortunate enough to spend more time there since. I'm still amazed at the increase in productivity that physical isolation and a little time out to shoot tortillas with a bb gun can provide.

Ira taking aim at a tennis ball or a golden bell hanging in the trees below the Songwriter Compound

Wednesday of that week, I left the isolation of the Songwriter's Compound and headed down to Austin for a day's worth of pre-production tracking at David Abeyta's place in Austin.  The residence is positively gorgeous and possesses one of the most fantastic front porch views I've ever seen in Texas.  We drank some coffee and tracked vocal and acoustic guitar parts for most of my tunes that are going on the new record.  I'm laying down a few by some of my good friends and fellow songwriters, including this John Moreland tune called Nobody Gives a Damn About Songs Anymore and Oklahoma Blue by my pal Buffalo Rogers. When we finished working, I was able to take a half hour, drink some fine bourbon, and get to know a little more about Dave.  Not only is his career impressive as hell, he's also a super down to earth guy whose sense of humor is as sick and twisted as our own.  He has a musical sensibility that reminds me a little bit of Jeff Lynn, just great hooky parts with substance that accentuate the song instead of drowning it out in one way or another. I spent a little time getting to know his wife and boy and I headed on back towards New Braunfels. I proceeded to toss back a few Jagerbombs at Billy's due to some frustration over current events and made my way safely back to the compound and passed out until the next day, when it was highway time again.

Thursday night was an early but rockin' show at good old Fat Daddy's in Mansfield, TX.  Fat Daddy's was the site of our first appearance on the Justin Frazell Texas Red Dirt Roads show, but this night was simply for us to set up and do our thing.  We plugged the Kickstarter like mad, ate some fantastic food, drank a few cold beers, and rocked our way through a 90 minute set in no time.  After we got done, I took off for my old pal and cigarette savior Uncle Steve Warner's house to throw some darts. If you've been to many Quail shows around the Fort Worth metro area, chances are you've either seen or met Uncle Steve.  He's the badass with the straw hat, tinted aviator shades, and an open button down shirt, usually handing one of us a cigarette eight or nine times during a set.  There's a reason for this, and that reason will become clear to you after your peepers drop down a line and read the ridiculously entertaining yarn that I'm about to spin for you. I mean, not just you.  There are other people that read this blog, you know, possibly even at this exact same moment in time that you're reading it.  Maybe one of those people has his or her own blog about an impending space alien robopocalypse or some such cool shit like that, and you're missing out on it by reading about our adventures with Uncle Steve.

I'm just kidding.  If someone DID have such a blog, I would already have read and shared the bejeesus out of it by now.  Story...

The precedent was set many many moons ago (probably four years give or take) when myself, Gabriel Marshall, Adam "Biggie" Rittenberry, and my sister KierstonWhite loaded our instruments and implements of destruction into a piece of shit white GMC Safari, our first touring vehicle which we affectionately named Dan the Van, and took off towards the Regency Folk Festival at Alton and Sue Watsons place right around the corner from the Regency Suspension bridge.  If you've never been to Regency, Texas, I am not at all surprised. There's really no town to speak of, just the bridge and a few cabins and the Watson homestead. If you ever find yourself fifty miles from the middle of nowhere and you're near the San Saba river, it's a place that's worth checking out. The township is populated by Alton, Sue, and their pack of ten or twelve wolves (not all of them are complete wolf, but all of them are definitely some wolf)  which Alton has established and maintained dominance over by physically fighting one or more of them on an almost daily basis.  Because of Alton's necessary and nigh constant struggle to maintain his alpha male status within the social strata of the pack, I can (and often do) honestly say that, on one occasion during my thirty two years and seven or so months of sucking air on this planet, I have actually witnessed a graying, long haired hippie ball up his hand into a fyst, haul back, and punch a fucking wolf in the face.  It was quite surreal, so much so that I had to confer with Biggie to ensure that what I had just witnessed had actually happened, and that the mystery cocktail in my Styrofoam cup had not implanted some kind of absolutely believable and totally kick ass hallucination in my mind just to keep things interesting and fresh up there in my brain parts.   Alton is such a badass that this isn't really a problem for him, more like a game or something that he plays with his life EVERY SINGLE DAY. 



The festival is a three day ordeal that hosts some of the great singer/songwriters of the south Texas scene, and this particular year I recall Mark Allan Atwood, Bill Lewis, Joel Melton, Susan Herndon, the impeccable Tiny Tom Skinner, and a few other noteworthy types in attendance.  Being the unprepared and essentially useless musician type human beings that we were (and essentially still are) none of us thought it prudent to buy a few extra packs of smokes to ensure we at least made it through the second damn afternoon of a three day festival. Since our foresight failed us, we were out of smokes by about noon on Saturday.  Our set was moved around a little bit as Tiny Tom Skinner (who also happened to be placing a cigarette order for us at our behest) was running late, meaning he wouldn't arrive until the very end of our set if he arrived before we'd finished at all.  This would simply not do as the Quails are known for our predisposition towards smoking and playing music at the same time and we were outside with no Non-Smoking laws to get in the way of our habit.  Finally, we take the stage sans cigarettes and begin the arduous task of playing an outdoor gig without a pack of smokes.  After some bitching about our situation and the fact that we could do nothing about it, before us appeared a man, nay, a warrior of unbending intent holding a fresh pack of Marlboro Special light cigarettes and offering them to us free of charge.  He may have lived to regret that as I still tend to bum a smoke or two from Steve every time he's around, and I know for a fact that he gave us at least a few pack's worth during the festival.  Every since that day, I've been running into Uncle Steve once every few months when we get near his place out in Decatur.  We smoke, we drink, we throw darts.



Uncle Steve story complete.  Now I feel like you know the man less than half as well as I do, but your'e well on your way to being able to pick him out of a lineup or crowd at a gig and listening to the incredible stories and tales that come randomly flying out of his mouth. Stories are the currency of the constant traveler and a most viable commodity to songwriters since we get to take bits and pieces of them and sprinkle them around the work like pixie dust.  People ask me questions about songwriting from time to time, and I am most definitely willing and somewhat able to speak on the process as it pertains to my own writing. I'm considering hammering out a series of posts on the subject, but I've attempted a few in the past that I never could quite seem to bring together in a cohesive and entertaining manner, but maybe I've done growed up some since then.

I am by no means an expert, and in fact hover somewhere barely over the line between "amateur that has some good words and knows how to put them together" and "not quite professional but good enough to make a slim living on the words that come out of my own brain", but I feel like I've spent enough time around people whom I consider to be masterful songwriters that I've picked up at least a tidbit of something from each one of them.  As far as age and years of experience goes, I'm still just a puppy, wagging his tail and playing fetch in the shadows of guys like Rick Reiley, Tom Skinner, Bob Childers, Ellis Paul, Don Conoscenti, and Bob Moore.  I've heard all of them perform, owned all of their records I could get my hands on, but most importantly, I've listened to them all tell stories out back of venues or in smoke choked parked cars.  My songwriting forefathers grew up in a time before all of the technological advancements that the younger generations have all grown absolutely dependent upon for survival. I was lucky enough to experience high school without all the internet and social media overload that exists today.  My first cellphone was a Nokia brick that I didn't get until I was eighteen years old, and even then I only turned it on when I needed to make a call.  There was no one getting upset if I didn't immediately answer it, and text messaging was positively the last method of contact you used to get in touch with someone.  Instead of watching some drunken asshat pummel themselves in the nuts on youtube or making up Gary Busey meme captions at the bar, you either put a quarter (yes, an actual metal quarter that played an actual copy of an actual record housed within the box, and if the song you wanted to hear wasn't on a disc or a record inside that box, you were actually fucked) in the juke and asked a pretty girl to dance or you bought someone a beer and listened to them fucking talk.  Nine times out of ten, if you ply someone with a single alcoholic beverage and a pleasant and friendly disposition, the person you're talking to will tell you some shit that you've never heard before in your life.  Nowadays, its getting tougher to even get people to open up and share those tiny tidbits of hilarity with a total stranger.  It's easier to bury your head in a glowing square and play Candy Fuckabout or Angry Pricks than it is to exchange a few words with a bar mate about the proper regional pronunciation of the word pecan and how or why you say it the way you do.  Songwriters want to find the oddest, most world weary soul in the room and try and get some kind of inkling as to the events and experiences that landed them on that stool.  Very rarely will you get an entire song out of it, and sometimes you don't get anything out of it except a few minutes of killed time between soundcheck and downbeat, but you would be amazed at the tidbits and phrases that your subconscious mind holds onto.  Sometimes these little jewels make their way out of the end of a pen onto your paper, becoming lyrical mainstays that knock around in your catalog forever. Give it a shot sometime, you might just meet your own Uncle Steve and end up digging out a well of brand new stories that arise from the crazy shit you end up getting into together.  Maybe your Uncle Steve will have a notebook full of excuses written by the various characters that frequent his Dart Palace, which may be one of the funniest collections of folkways and colloquialisms ever written and collected in a place in which darts are thrown. Mine does.



Social media and technology have entirely changed the face of the entertainment business over the past few decades, and I'm not trying to knock what is arguably the most important business tool in the belt of budding entertainers trying to make a little money doing what they love.  Staying connected and being available is totally essential to attain any kind of success in the modern era, and its a huge part of my job to keep folks like you in the know about shows and news and the erratic happenings of my daily routine.  That being said, you can have all the electronic prowess in the world and a billion people on social media ready to hang on your every word, but none of that means diddly squat if you don't have a solid catalog of your own songs that you're confident in.  I spent over a decade playing with a few different bands, everything from searingly fast punk rock to soft and sad folk ballads to two step-inspiring honkeytonk music, and when I look back on the songs I wrote in the early years of my career, there's quite a bit of cringing over this line or that line or a poor choice in melody or meter or blah blah blahv.  From the chair I'm sitting in now, some of my words and phrasings seem childish and choppy and my subject matter feels unoriginal and cliche.  At the time, though, I spent weeks and months working my ass off to mold and craft the best song I possibly could.  My tool belt was substantially lighter in those days because I simply hadn't done enough living to accumulate the implements required to say what I wanted to say in the manner in which I wanted to say it. Regardless of how I feel about my early material from where I sit today, at the time I was confident enough in those songs to record and perform them, which led to more performances, more drunken tale spinning with strangers, and eventually, better songs. There is something to be said for natural talent, but the only way to get better at writing songs is to write more songs. Over time, words start coming together more naturally and your vision gets a little more cohesive and clear with every tune you tackle.

Writing has always been the most effective outlet for dealing with my emotions, but it also caused me a great deal of frustration for a lot of years.  The physical act of putting pen to paper and pulling words out of thin blue air is far more effective at calming my internal strife than any anti-depressant or barbiturate I've ever ingested. Before I ever thought about making any kind of living off of my words, writing was something I did solely for myself and the preservation of my own sanity.  After I realized that there were people in the world that actually got paid cash money to play songs they made up themselves,  I was sold and certain that songwriter would one day become my sole occupation. At the very instant that certainty turned into a goal, writing songs changed forever.  Once I made the decision and to use songs as the core and basis of my professional (and mostly personal) life, then I stared to realize that people would eventually hear those songs, and hopefully they would hear them over and over and over and over, which inherently forces you to put more thought into the work you're doing. The frustration stems from a disconnect between knowing precisely what you're trying to convey in your mind and not being able to get that feeling across in a way that doesn't royally suck.

Poetic, no?

Cheesy lyrics imparting child like misconceptions about love that's never truly been experienced do not a good song make.  For some reason, that seems like all you can do for the first year or two, occasionally augmented by an angry rock and roll song about being angry...probably over some chick.  You write them, you throw them away or work them out until they're the best you can do, and you move on to the next one.  Before long, you'll notice a line or two that really seems to work well, and you start to see a few smiles and chuckles when that line comes out of your mouth.  Those are the great lines, the ones people can't help but sing along to and have a noticeable emotional response so deep that it's written all over their faces.  You start to recognize those lines and where they fit within the rise and fall of the tune, and how you can lead up to and away from them with subtlety and grace. The power of a great line can be stripped of its glory like Superman wearing krypton jockey shorts if the lines around it are sub par. Words have to serve the phrases they make up, phrases serve the lines, lines serve the verses, verses serve the chorus, and the bridge ties the room together like a good, soft area rug.

The more comfortable you get with songwriting, the frustrations over your inadequacies start to become excitement at overcoming them, and you start to look for challenges to keep yourself on your toes.  I even made a game out of it complete with a points and rewards system. If I can jam a six syllable word into a space where it has no business fitting, and I can do it without sounding like I'm trying to work a miracle, I give myself 100 points and take a pull off the Malibu rum while I pat myself on the back.  Interesting rhyme schemes fetch anywhere from 75 to 300 points depending on difficulty of the rhyme and overall weirdness.  There's a song of mine we're putting on the album called "Faster Than You'd Think" in which I managed to write all the pieces of the chessboard into the bridge section. That earned me 400 points and a Cuban cigar I found in my trunk.  Stupid things like that make me a better writer and keep me attached to and more personally vested in the songs I'm working on. It's not something that most people are even going to notice, let alone be impressed by, but if one of my songwriter friends that I respect gets a kick out of one of my stupid challenges, it makes the whole thing worthwhile to me.



Where was I?  You know, I don't rightly recall. So much has happened since I started this particular entry that there seems like a whirlwind of information that I need to catch you all up on.  I've been doing my best to maintain a sort of chronological ebb and flow to this blog, but being in the studio is creatively exhausting and makes it difficult to want to sit down and write more words after a long day of making a kick ass record out of the words you've already written.  At the time I'm finishing this entry, we've actually completed all of our and are now just waiting for the mixes to start rolling in so we can get artwork and physical production started. It's only going to be a few more months before this album is mastered, packaged, and on its way to your front door.  My next post will be a recap of the studio madness that's been going on with plenty of pics and visual aids to keep your little blog reading minds limber and active.  Thanks a ton for reading this bullshit, I look at the stats and feel I should say hello to some of you folks out there in the international community.  I'm not sure who our one fan in China is, but I hope the things I say either make some form of sense in Chinese or are exceptionally funny to read.  Looks like quite a bit of traffic from Russia, France, even a few from the Phillipines and Qatar as well, so howdy to all you folks from across the big ocean.  If you out of town types ever make it down to south Texas, I'll buy the first round of beers at Gruene Hall and practice some cross cultural bonding over some cold oat sodas and the fine company of a pretty beer slinger. Comments are enabled, so sound off and let me know how you came across this blog.  Catch you on down the road.

Bryon White/TDQ
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