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

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

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

Catching on up...New Braunfels, The Deli shows, and writing songs

I told you I'd stay vigilant, and Blake Olson didn't even have to remind me to do it.  Proud of myself? Maybe a little.  If I reach through the mush and music that are constantly moving around throughout my mind, I seem to recall promising to pick up where I left off, somewhere around the Deli shows a few weeks back.  Buckle your safety belts and rev up them engines, we're off to a rip rockin' start...

Actually, hang on.  Stop with all the engine revving, we may have to throw the old gal in reverse for a few minutes and back up a few. There were some days in between the Tavern on the Gruene jamtacular and the Deli gigs, most of which were spent at various bars and locales in and around New Braunfels.  I spent Monday night with Peaches and Rio at the cabin I have since dubbed the Songwriter's Compound, a place of magic and spiders that is ultimately conducive to getting things done, and by things I mean writing songs, making coffee, and tagging the walls with John Moreland quotes.  I would return to Songwriter Compound the following week, but slow the hell down, man.  We'll get there, I promise.

Songwriter Compound - View

Tuesday began with yet another fantastic bloody mary at the Black Whale pub in downtown New Braunfels with the dynamic duo of Rio Tripiano and Jon "Peaches" Schmig taking us around and showing us the best places to day drink in town.  Some of you may remember ole Peaches from his stint as merch dude/driver/road wrangler for we Damn Quails in the second and third year of our so called career.  He's currently in the employ of another little band you've probably heard of known as Uncle Damn Lucius.  If you don't know Rio Tripiano, he's a songwritin' guitar pickin' madman with a heart of gold and a hat full of well written songs and more than a few oversized rings on his fingers.  He's the current upstairs tenant of the Songwriter Compound and kind enough to let me crash his digs from time to time when I happen to be bumming around New Braunfels town.  We've had some pretty epic twitter moments in the weeks hence, which you can follow on our twitter account, of which I am the keeper, master, and commander. 

Rio Tripiano - Songwriter and Ring Bearer

Our ragtag crew started out with a bloody mary and some cigarettes on the front porch.  By a stroke of luck and a well timed text message, I was fortunate enough to engineer a meeting with my well traveled friend at the Whale. After a single beer, we decided we should all take a short walk up the street to Scores for a few more beers, jager bombs, and cigarettes we could smoke indoors.  I had a blast swapping stories, and after an all too fast few hours passed by, I slowly but surely bit back the hangover that had been chewing on me since I rolled out of bed that morning. Before you'd ever think it possible, afternoon had given way to early evening and previous obligations on WTF's (cute, right?) part required the parting of our ways.

We paid our tab at scores and made our way to that (nearly) last bastion of smoker's hope as well as one of the great live music venues of South Texas known as Billy's Ice House. Billy's was one of the first real venues we played when the Quails first began our forays into the Texas Music market just after the release of Down The Hatch. We've always been well received and well taken care of at Billy's and there's a lot to be said for a place that you can still smoke a cigarette on stage and play the damn guitar at the same time.  The drinks are cheap and the bar staff is top notch, and there's live music pert near every night of the week.  On this particular Tuesday, we got a chance to catch Kevin Galloway of Uncle Lucius playing an acoustic set, which was a treat to say the least. I've enjoyed crossing paths with Uncle Lucius from time to time over the past few years, most recently during Music Fest at Steamboat. They have phenomenal songs and a live show to match, but seeing Kevin perform in a stripped down environment with a cello for accompaniment was refreshing as hell and entertaining to boot. Twas a cosmic music made for the children of Aquarius, draped like a blanket of stars collapsing 'neath the light of a blood red killing moon.

After soaking up some songs and a little more jager, my buddy Rio was kind enough to drop me off at Gruene Hall so I could spend some time at one of my favorite places and get a little lost among the tourists and the regulars, not to mention watch a certain and particular beerslinger work some bar magic.  Gruene Hall is a magical place, and the songswap that was going on in the front portion was exceedingly excellent. I met a man from Michigan that was a big Turnpike Troubadours fan and was kind enough to give me a lift back over to Billy's so I could catch my buddies Kyle Reed and Nate Rodriguez swap some tunes before last call.  I was invited to play a few songs of my own, which I did, and eventually caught a ride back to Austin and crashed out at Blake's after a much needed and well deserved shower. 

Billy's Ice Jagerbomb

We headed back to Norman the following morning and began the process of preparing our collective livers for a legendary and unprecedented two night stand at the Deli.  If you've been following us for any amount of time, you know that the Deli is our home base of operations and the center of the musical universe as far as we're all concerned.  The Deli is where we learned how to play together, where we developed that all important and intangible mental connection that defines the way we fit together musically.  The Deli staff also happen to serve the most fantastic Jager Bomb on the face of the planet, and I definitely know my business when it comes to that particular beverage. I've been told it's the off brand energy drink on the gun that makes them so good, but I think the overall awesome vibe of the place has made its way into every single shot glass and big red cup. It comes out in every single drink served or beer poured, and the vibe is absolutely palpable.

Thursday night was magical, a full band acoustic set reminiscent of the old days when we took the stage every single Monday night with a rotating cast of Norman's finest players and blew the lid off the joint with gusto.  It also marked a first in the life of young Kevin "Haystack" Calhoun, the youngest and second most recent addition to the Quails lineup.  He's been playing with us almost a year now, but the fiddlin' wunderkind had never before taken the Deli stage with the band.  It was a helluva first show for him. 

The newest member of the band is one Mr Warren Field, a big bad mother of a bass player that used to play for Heater and also landed some awesome bass parts on Camille Harp's album. We love his ass, and the only reason I forgot to mention him in the first draft is because my brain no work good. 

The band fell into our old rhythm just like a good pair of worn in shoes,  comfortable and loose, but tight enough to keep the whole damn mess together. The lineup for the night included Stephen Baker, our insanely tasty saxophone player, Blake "Black Lemon" Lennon, guitarist/lap steel/mandolin extraordinaire, and none other than the goddamn magic man himself, Adam "Biggie" Rittenberry.  Biggie is one of my best friends and it's been a rough past year not having him to my left.  He is the most innately talented harmonica player I've ever seen or played with, and it was one of the happiest nights of music I've made in a long time. Our good friends Parker Milsap and Michael Rose, a musical powerhouse in their own right, were kind enough to stop by and play a few songs with us that damn near brought the walls down around the stage that Bob Moore built.  Those kids (and I say that because they're still young as shit and I seem to be getting older by the day) started out playing a few early sets on a few Monday nights and, due to the fact that they were a few years too young to be allowed entry if they weren't actually on stage, would wait outside the window on stage right and watch us rock and roll from the sidewalk until we could invite them in to guest on a few songs.  They used to set up lawn chairs and lounge around on the sidewalk, provided the weather was good, and it's really great to see them doing so well on the national circuit.  Little bastards even played the Ryman Auditorium a while back and we're proud to call them both compadres.   If you haven't seen them already, keep a big old open eye out for them.  

Biggie - Back in Action at the Deli

The Friday night show was great, but due to a family illness, Biggie wasn't able to make it out.  I also had a bunch of crazy guitar malfunctions that threw me for a loop and put a hitch in my musical step for a the first part of the night.  I was desperately wishing I could swap out several eyeballs for two. Luckily, my friend and favorite guitar player in the world Mr. Alan Orebaugh was kind enough to loan me one of his many amazing Telecasters with which to finish the set, and things turned around before the night was over.  After another nearly four hour set, the Deli had been thoroughly and once again rocked. 

The next day, we took off for Kansas City sans Gabriel Marshall, who had suffered a minor but painful injury and was unable to make the show because of it.  In typical Quails style, we made do with what we had, and instead of cancelling our first show at the Riot Room, we put Haystack on guitar and backup vocal duties and brought the house down to the cheers and applause of a nearly packed house.  I took some requests for Gabe songs and played my own effed up versions of them, which the crowd really seemed to enjoy.  We've actually toyed with the idea of a bizzaro set, in which I would perform Gabe songs and he would perform mine, but we've never actually gone through with it.  I've re-enabled comments on this blog, so if that sounds like something you'd like to see one of these fine days, make a little comment and let me know what you think.  Just don't post a bunch of dick jokes and drug references.  Or do, what do I care? Isn't that really the really real reason that Al Gore invented the internet in the first place?

After I got back to OKC on Sunday, I loaded up my luxury sedan with a guitar and a few changes of clothes and headed on back down to New Braunfels.  I made a beeline for Gruene Hall and spent a few hours drinking cold Budweiser in a perspiring bottle and marveling at the dedication and work ethic of the best beerslinger at the oldest dancehall in Texas.  It was gospel Sunday and the band was on fire for both Jesus and song, a fire which was fed by mimosas. 6 point beer, and the fervor of a good sized crowd for a Sunday afternoon.   I've always felt that playing music, especially with a band, to be akin to the feeling that most people get when they attend church.  It's an ethereal connection shared by a group of players, one that perpetuates itself through the crowd like a grass fire and eventually feeds right back to the band, creating a loop of energy that feeds off itself until the last beat gets dropped and the last beer goes crashing into the bottom of the barrel. 

After a few post shift beers, we spent the remainder of the night at Tavern on the Gruene, making new acquaintances and conversing in between casual bar games and re-ordering beverages.  Sunday night gave way to Monday morning, and I headed out to the Songwriter Compound and spent the evening listening to John Moreland tunes and enjoying the solitude and siren song of the river rolling on down towards the ocean. 

Rare occasions of collaboration aside, songwriting is an intensely personal and quiet occupation.  It's been years since I was able to sit by myself in a peaceful and low key locale and just let the words and music come pouring out of me.  I spent the entire day Monday just chasing down lines and melody, following them down whatever path they decided to choose and reining them back in towards the main path whenever they strayed too far.  Ideas began to take shape, and before the week was out, I had several ideas and two completed, solid songs.  There is no substitute for silence and solace when it comes to writing songs.  You can sit around at coffee shops with your head buried in your lyric book, you can navigate your vehicle whilst tossing ideas back and forth in your mind, but when it comes to actually getting a little work done, a place that's free of distraction and outside influence is key.  I had forgotten that, but it didn't take a whole lot of time to reacquaint myself with the idea.

Monday night is mine.  You can't have it.

This, dear valued and trusted reader, is where this particular entry gets the axe.  I'll continue playing catch up until we can finally rejoin the present somewhere in the next week or so.  There's still quite a bit between hee and thee, so keep your eyes peeled for the next riveting chapter of this here blog I'm writing.  Catch you on down the road,

Bryon White/TDQ

Welcome Back to The Party

I know it's been forever, so I'll start off (as usual) by apologizing for letting this most useful and viable line of communication dry up.  I am the least organized and most scatterbrained person I know, and seeing as I've always been the only person around to remind myself to type up a new blog every week, the new blog inevitably does not get finished if it even gets started at all.  It is for that very reason that I'm transferring that particular responsibility to Blake Olson, our most organized and patriotic tour manager.  So Blake, if you're reading this, remind me to do another blog a week from today.  Not today as in the day you're reading it, but the day in which it was published, which I can only assume will be added on to the eventual posting via some tiny robot that's programmed to accomplish that task.

This past weekend was a phenomenal grouping of days that contained two gigs, both of which were uniquely marvelous in their own special ways. Let's start with Friday and work our way kicking and screaming through the weekend.  Sound good?  Ok then, now we're making some freaking progress.

 Friday night was a free show at Gruene Hall.  You know, Gruene Hall.  It's arguably the most famous venue in the entire nation-state of Texas. Shit man, John Damn Travolta filmed part of Michael there.  If you're one of the few people reading this that actually find themselves baffled about the existence of Gruene Hall and don't appreciate my sarcasm on the point, just click the words "Gruene Hall" and ye shall be mystically transported along the waves and wires of the information superhighway you call the internets and I call a cluster-fuck of "information" to the homepage of the hall itself.  If you've never been, I recommend taking an afternoon or evening out of your busy schedule, driving to New Braunfels, and ordering the coldest beer you'll ever have from the pretty girl behind the bar.  Even if there's no show going on, the place has a distinct air of history about it. Sit down, take a breath, drink a beer, and revel in the history smoked into the walls around you. 

 

At this point in our side bar about Gruene Hall, I'm going to take the approach of the old "pick your own adventure" books from my youth and allow you to calmly and carefully choose your own path at this point, giving this story a bit of a personal touch.  So, if you're NOT a smoker, continue your adventure by reading passage A located below.  If you ARE a smoker, climb on down to passage B (located just south of passage A) and see how your story ends up.  If you're really REALLY adventurous, traverse on down all the way to passage C...but I don't recommend that way, brave explorer.

Passage A

Sit down, take a breath, drink a beer, and revel in the history smoked into the walls around you. 

Now take a few calm, collected moments and breathe the fresh air of a truly historical structure in a truly historic area of south Texas.  Everything turned out okay here, and there's no second hand smoke to contend with the oxygen so desperately trying to make its way into your lungs. Tip your beerslinger, check out some pictures nailed up on the 137 year old wooden walls, and go home safe in the knowledge that you experienced a true piece of Texas history without even having to get your hands dirty.  Your adventure is over, and it was just fine.

Passage B

 Sit down, take a breath, drink a beer, and revel in the history smoked into the walls around you.

Now, take a moment to quietly curse the fact that modern day bureaucracy and laws have finally completely and totally encroached upon your God given right as a man (or woman) in America to light up a cigarette and smoke it in a bar. And this is not just any bar, mind you.  This is Gruene Fucking Hall, the original Texas dance hall, a structure in which literally millions upon millions of cigarettes have been lit up and smoked down over the past CENTURY with the fervor and fury of an addict hot on the heels of a sweet, sweet fix.  There is absolutely no denying how authentically incredible the entire place feels, and all you want is to be able to light up a smoke like the cowboys of old and smoke it to the filter while you sip your own beer at your own table next to the actual woodburning stove that keeps the bar area the perfect temperature when it's uncharacteristically frigid outside.  Rise from your table, brave adventurer, and head on around through the wooden door that takes you out of the bar and on to the ancient planks that make up the Gruene Hall dance floor. Walk around a bit, maybe cough up a few quarters for a game of 8 ball and put down a rack in a place that has most assuredly seen its fair share of skull trauma from pool cue fights.  Actually, screw it.  Head out the back door and smoke a damn cigarette in the open air of the Texas night.  Relish each and every single slow puff and drag, deposit your butt in the nearest ash can or card board box full of empty beer bottles, tip your incredible beerslinger, and head on home. Your adventure ends here, fairly similar to the non smokers, only we had more fun together AND we got to smoke.  Plus there was almost a pool cue fight...remember that?  Man that was awesome.

Passage C

Sit down, take a breath, drink a beer, and revel in the history smoked into the walls around you.

You just had to risk it, didn't you.  Even after the warming, you decided to skip on down to old passage C and see if maybe, just maybe, fortune and glory awaited you at the end of your quest. You rise from your table, blatantly disregarding the well deserved tip that you neglected to give your incredible beerslinger, and make a beeline towards the stage, hoping to take a selfie of your face in front of the mysterious and fabled "Willie Door" rumored to exist somewhere in the vicinity of the men's room.  You notice a loose board behind some old sound equipment, so why not just reach on up there and give it a pull? As you do, a wayward road case shifts and crushes your puny adventurers body against the 137 year old wooden planks of the floor.  As your vision goes dark, you can't help but recall the words of your helpful yet foreboding narrator and the unheeded warning that would have saved your life had you simply listened.  You die penniless and glory-less outside of the Gruene Hall men's room, mostly because you were a dick and forgot to tip your beerslinger.

So Gruene Hall provided us with yet another tremendous sized crowd of intensely focused and courteous show goers.  Every time we play the hall, several distinct groups of radically righteous fans turn out in droves, sit quietly at their seats, and hang on every word we say and every note we play.  It's the kind of crowd that laughs at all of your jokes (even the lame-ass ones) and pays such close attention that you could swear the world outside had completely ceased to exist and you, the artist, have finally become the thing that all artists secretly and subconsciously want to become...the absolute center of someones universe for three and a half minutes.  It's a world in which you can do no wrong, where all of the petty problems and conflicts that muddy up your daily life get sent to the backburner and you become somebody else entirely. A person both capable of performing miraculous feats of rock and roll and worthy of the abilities and so called talents used to perform them.  As a group of guys that choose to make a career out of playing the songs that they write in front of people that actually pay to watch them do it, we count ourselves lucky that we're even allowed inside a place like Gruene Hall with an instrument in our hands, let alone paid to make music with it. 

After the Gruene Hall show, we loaded up and headed over to a private and rather cozy establishment known as the Farr Barr to pursue further musical enlightenment from libations and fellowship.  In other words, we drank more and played more songs.  Blake's buddy has transformed a functional but rather boring old garage into his very own private speakeasy, complete with a fancy antique wooden bar with glass cabinet, Golden Tee machine, and a Gadsden flag hanging proudly on the wall.  On the wall opposite the Golden Tee machine sits an 80's model soda vending machine, stocked full of Lonestar beer that only costs a quarter. If you're broke as hell and don't have your own quarter, there's a Crown Royal bag full of them hanging from the side of the machine next to the quarter slot that you can borrow from.  The Farr Barr is a traveling musician's paradise, a place where you can drink all night and play songs as loudly and drunkenly as you want without fear of reproach or reprisal from anyone.  Plus they have a huge freakin' dog.

Saturday morning, we avoided a rather substantial pile of someone's vomit on the way to the vehicles and hit the road caravan style with the Sprinter leading the charge while Blake and I followed in his truck.  After the three hour long and intensely nauseating drive from New Braunfels, we decided to stop off for some important supplies at the local tobacco shop, which we were told was "right by the Hastings" by a different friend of Blake's familiar with the area.  We retrieved our sundries from the shop and asked the clerk there if he knew where the La Quinta Inn was located.  "Sure" he said. "It's just over on the other side of the Hastings."  Fan...tastic. I finally started to understand that the little swatch of downtown Brownwood that we were hanging out in was basically the only bastion of civilized society for dozens of miles in all directions around us, and that the Hastings (being the biggest store around) was apparently the most easily recognizable monument in town.  We all took a few hours to enjoy the reasonable La Quinta accommodations as they were a head and shoulders above the kinds of places we're normally used to staying at, then headed to load in at Waylon and Ray's.

From the outside, Waylon and Ray's looks a lot like most any of the older buildings that make up the eerily quiet downtown area in Brownwood, Texas.  We loaded our gear in through an unassuming door that led right onto the massive stage positioned on the second level of what turned out to be a three tiered space.  The dance floor area was an entire level below the stage, creating an effect like playing in a balcony for all the tiny people dancing and twirling around down below.  We had a great turnout for our first time playing in town, so we celebrated with a few more libations and a relatively comfortable bed to pass out in at the La Quinta. 

The next day, the Sprinter containing Warren (bass) and Kevin "Haystack" Foster (fiddlin' wunderkind) headed north for Oklahoma while Gabe, Tom and myself went on back to Austin for a pre-pre-production meeting and Bloody Mary's at Casino El Camino on Sixth Street.  After consuming the bulk of a bloody mary adorned with  accoutrement the likes of a fried taquito, a Swedish meatball, a mammoth sized stick of celery, assorted Mediterranean olives, a martini onion, and a few pieces of pickled okra, I split off from the fellas and took an unforgettable stroll down Sixth Street in the company of a highly enlightened and well traveled friend I became acquainted with over the weekend via a gloriously random series of completely unrelated events, which began with my sneaking in to the Shovels and Rope show in OKC the previous week and ended in the yellow sunlight on Sixth Street a few hundred miles to the south. We drank draft beer at the Jackelope in between spats of laughter and a half dozen or so trips out to the sidewalk, where we could smoke our filthy cigarettes a safe distance away from the clean-living trendies and civilized social networkers of the younger generation of Austinites.  We ended our parlay on a high note and I spent the rest of the evening frequenting various Super Bowl parties around town and at Blake's apartment complex, eating party food and drinking Pina Colada flavored frozen wine pouches before passing out early.

Monday morning, the three of us headed to south Austin and met Dave Abeyta at a rehearsal space called...well...Space, actually. For those of you non-musical types that don't know much or even anything at all about the process of recording an album, I shall proceed to explain the process of pre-production using terms and phrases that even the layman can easily understand.   This is going to be part one in my series of short but informative articles entitled...

The Layman's Guide to Making a Damn Record

 Lesson 1: Pre-Production

Pre-production is getting together a few dudes (or chicks) that think they're ready to record a new album, putting them in a small room together with the record producer, and playing a selection of new songs they think they will eventually want to completely track out and put on an album. Then you feed all of them some fajita tacos, crack open a few tall boys, and  go on about your day. It's really a way to make sure your songs are put together properly before you start spending cash on an expensive studio that you can afford for any longer than humanly possible.  Lesson 1 complete. Moving on...

For those of you that don't know, Dave Abeyta is the mad tone scientist that plays lead guitar for none other than that older generation of Braun boys collectively known as Reckless Kelly.  He's also our producer for the second record and one helluva dude to boot.  Gabe and I sat down with Tom playing brushes and snare and went through all the new material that could potentially end up on the album.  It was a real load off to actually be sitting in a room and physically working on a record again.  Being in the studio is something I have always really enjoyed and even though it was pre-production, I still felt like we had accomplished quite a bit in a small amount of time, most of which didn't even pertain to the job.  Dave has a lot of fantastic ideas for the direction and overall vibe of the songs, which are right in line with the way we've been performing and evolving them over the past year and change.  It's going to be good.  Really good.

With preproduction over in the mid afternoon, it was time for Tom to get some much earned and needed sleep for his early flight in the am back to his wife and kiddo and Gabe and I to signal our old pal and former merch guy Peaches for a ride down to New Braunfels. We hit up some of that good old North Carolina Moonshine we picked up a few East Coast tours back and rode down to the hill country to catch up with several of our old New Braunfels pals at Tavern on the Gruene, including quite a few of them Midnight River Choir boys and a whole slew of others, most of which are pictured below.  Helluva night that continued on into the morning with a good old after hours jam on the river.

I'll pick up on the Deli weekend and Kansas City in the next installation of this newly reignited blog you're a readin'. A final note...

Some of you know about the difficulties we've had as a band over the past few years, and for those of you that don't, I can't really talk about much of it.  Suffice it to say that circumstances beyond our control were the reason our new record has taken so long to come to full and final fruition, but those circumstances are behind us. If you're a follower of we Quails on any of our various social media outlets, then you're probably already aware of our Kickstarter campaign to raise money to record, release, and promote the second record.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, head over to www.thedamnquailsband.com and check out the short video of us explaining how badly we want to make this record for our fans.  If you're able to help, there are a ton of really great incentive packages, including stuff like a luncheon with the band, a copy of the album on vinyl with autographs, a custom song written by yours truly about whatever you like, private shows, house concerts, and lots of other stuff.  You will get your moneys worth, whatever you decide to contribute. The way the work has gone so far and the songs that we're choosing to record are solid as a rock and it's going to be a record you'll want to have been a part of.  Even if you've got 10 bucks to pre-order the digital download, every little bit helps.  If you know someone that digs live music and hasn't heard of us, burn them a copy of Down the Hatch and inform them of our plight.  Our fans are the greatest on the planet and we can't survive as a band without each and every one of you, and your fantastical word of mouth capabilities are staggeringly awesome.  We're down to 8 days and we could really use your help.  Thanks so much for all you do, catch you on down the road.

Bryon White/TDQ

 

I try...

And try and try and try to keep this blog current. I always fail and for that I apologize. However, on the plus side, I've  been working on finishing up a whole slew of new tunes for the upcoming record. 

I know. I know. We've been talking about recording the damn thing for a year and so far all we have is a rough track or two. Fear not, faithful Quail-ites. This week we're heading back down the Boohatch with everyone's favorite badass Wacky Macky Mike McClure. If you've been out to a show over the past 6 or 8 months, you've probably heard a few of the new ones. You definitely haven't heard them all and I'm stoked beyond belief to get back in a studio environment and make some fucking music.  

(Update)

I started this post a few days before we started recording. That's one of the reasons this blog gets delayed as much as it does: I can't ever finalize anything. I've got drafts out the wazoo. Anyway...

As I type away on my damn iPhone, we're already 2 days into sessions for the new album. I can honestly say that I've missed the excitement that comes from shaping ideas into tracks and making the songs permanent and real (in my own humble opinion) and the things we have down so far are coming along splendidly. Ben the intern is getting his first taste of life down in the old Boohatch and he's been a great sport so far. Ben also mixed our forthcoming Live at Third Coast record and he's quite the talented dude. Myself and the rest of the band can't wait to put some new music in your collective ears, iPhones, and car stereos. Apologies that it's taken so long, things don't always happen the way you want them to. Thanks for all your support in coming to shows and telling your friends about us and buying the merch from our store, which is conveniently located over at www.thedamnquailsBAND.com. Mostly, thanks for giving a damn about the words we write and the songs we sing and the way we play them. You're all saints in our eyes. 

Next Wednesday (Jan 22nd) I'll be doing a rare solo gig in South Texas at Yoakum Gin and Feed in Yoakum, Texas. Show starts at 8 and I'm going to spend a few hours playing some Damn Quails songs and talking to the crowd. Show starts at 8pm if you or anyone you know might dig such a thing. Then the whole covey is playing Grand Stafford Theater in Bryan, TX Thurs Jan 23rd, Cheatham Street Warehouse in San Marcos Fri Jan 24th, and Moore's Store in Ben a Wheeler Sat Jan 25th. Hope to see everyone out and about. Thanks for listening. 

Bryon White/TDQ