XL music

Five alive! Old is new again with these Austin musicians

Belleville Outfit, Ruby Jane, the Dedringers, Dustin Welch and the Fireants putting a fresh spin on tradition.

Monday, August 18, 2008

We love our Gourds, our Grupo, our Heybale!, our Bruce and Kelly and the like, but one of the best characteristics of the Austin music scene is the way it constantly regenerates itself. Everyone on the scene was a new kid in town at some point and they all came — Stevie Vaughan from Oak Cliff, Butch and Joe and Jimmie from Lubbock, Eliza Gilkyson from New Mexico, Willie Nelson from Nashville — for what was already here. The old is forever young.

Profiled here are five infusions of fresh blood, all in their 20s or younger, who are out to add to the rich tradition by doing it their way.

The Dedringers

By Michael Corcoran

Although only 22, Sean Faires and Jonny Burke of the Dedringers have been playing together for several years. But it wasn't until recently that the New Braunfels natives, who now live in Austin, realized that they actually first played music in unison in the third grade at Seele Elementary. "We didn't know each other back then, but we both played in the (40-member) Orff Ensemble," says Faires, who wrote and sings the title track of the new "Sweetheart of the Neighborhood," which has made Dedringers the sweethearts of the scene. "I was telling him about how I went to Dallas to play the xylophone when I was 9 and Jonny said, 'I was on that trip, too!' "

The two truly bonded musically when they were 14 and they started a folk duo to play the songs of Bob Dylan, Steve Earle, Townes Van Zandt and a few of their own. At 16, they trekked to Oklahoma to make a record that "everyone, at the time, told us sounded good," Faires says. He and Burke can't stand to listen to it today.

Produced in Lockhart by R.S. Field (Hayes Carll, Billy Joe Shaver), "Sweetheart" is a clearer picture of where Faires and Burke (who've never had a fulltime backup band) are today, with their rockin' riffs and rollin' yearn. KGSR has given the band a boost by adding "Institution," which sounds like early Wilco, to its playlist.

When the band first started playing out, some folks were hoping they sounded just like Jerry Garcia and company. Overhearing a club owner telling the band they needed a name, some drunk at the bar yelled out "Dead Ringers." It sounded fine to the duo, who didn't realize folks thought they were a Grateful Dead tribute band until they heard an inordinate number of requests for "Sugar Magnolia" and "Dark Star" one night. The "a" was history, though, to be fair, "Josephine" does sound like a Dead song sans noodling.

If the Ded boys could be accused of aping anyone, it would be the Rolling Stones, during their Gram Parsons association.

"When we went to New Braunfels High (Go Unicorns!) there was some pressure to play (a more current style), but we were raised on the old stuff," says Burke, one of the few kids from NB who never worked at Schlitterbahn (Faires did).

But while embracing classic rock and folk, Dedringers manager Mike Crowley (who manages Carll) knows that the old model of getting your music out there — via record labels — is as outdated as "Whasssup!" commercials. The band worked out a nifty deal with several record stores, including Waterloo, to offer free downloads of half of "Sweetheart of the Neighborhood," with a coupon allowing fans to buy the full, hold-it-in-your-sweaty-hands CD, for only $6.99. Six weeks into the program, more than 3,000 LP samplers have been loaded down.

"Our goal is to get people to come out to our shows," Burke says. "Having a record you're proud of is great, but it doesn't mean much if you can't pull it off live."

(The Dedringers' next scheduled Austin show is Sept. 6 at the Continental Club. www.myspace.com/thededringers)

Ruby Jane

By Michael Corcoran

The Austin music community is a village that has raised Charlie and Will Sexton, Warren Hood and Carrie Rodriguez, among others. In the last year the closeknit musical family has taken in 13-year-old fiddler Ruby Jane Smith, who regularly sits in with everyone from Willie Nelson and Asleep at the Wheel to Bob Schneider and the Scabs.

"I've got a lot of father figures," Ruby Jane says as she sits outside the RV that's home to her and her artist mother, JoBelle Smith. Besides her advanced skill on the violin, Ruby Jane seems older than 13, displaying a maturity you'd be lucky to find in high school seniors.

The plan last year was to drive across the country, from Pensacola, Fla., to San Diego, with home-schooled Ruby Jane playing fiddle wherever she could and JoBelle selling her arts and crafts.

When the mother and daughter hit Austin in September, they headed straight to the Continental Club, which JoBelle Smith used to visit on roadtrips from Dallas when she was a student at Southern Methodist University. Dale Watson was playing and he invited Ruby Jane, who always has her fiddle, onstage for a couple of songs.

That night the daughter asked her mother "Can we live here?" and they parked their Winnebago at the Pecan Grove Park on Barton Springs Road.

"It was the first day of the ACL Fest," says JoBelle Smith, who had raised Ruby Jane without a father in Columbus, Miss., where JoBelle's family was from. "We saw all these people walking down (Barton Springs Road) and wondered what all the commotion was about."

A year later, Ruby Jane will be playing ACL Fest, as a member of Asleep at the Wheel, whose frontman, Ray Benson, now manages her.

"I don't get nervous playing in front of big audiences," says the teenager, who's a bit of a ham. After all, she once performed in front of 60,000 people with Big & Rich on an ABC special coinciding with the CMA Awards and had a blast. Having debuted on the Grand Ole Opry at age 10, Ruby Jane was a fairly well-known prodigy in Nashville, where her fiddle instructor, Jim Brock, had been a top bluegrass sideman before he retired back to Mississippi.

"We were offered record deals," JoBelle says, "but there seemed to be a lot of pressure involved. Like, if Ruby Jane didn't sell a million records, she'd be dropped." The Smiths were also in talks about being the subject of a reality show on CMT, but that also didn't feel right.

"I just want to keep getting better," says Ruby Jane, who has her own band and bills her act as the Ruby Jane Show. She's been taking voice and guitar lessons and has started writing songs with Bill and Ruth Carter (Stevie Ray Vaughan's "Crossfire"). "My ultimate role model is Dolly Parton," says Ruby Jane, who started playing violin at age 2, after being transfixed by an Itzhak Perlman performance on PBS. "She a huge star, but she's also a great musician. I look at all the great songs she's written and I realize that I've got so much to learn."

And she and her mother feel that Austin, where sharing and nurturing trump clawing and competing, is the perfect place to study.

(Ruby Jane's next Austin show is Friday at Waterloo Ice House, 1106 W. 38th St. therubyjaneshow.com)

Dustin Welch

By Michael Corcoran

Musician parents will often unconditionally encourage their offspring who also take up songmanship, and the kids won't really know if they're that good or if the 'rents are getting their coddle on. But Dustin Welch can be sure that when his singer-songwriter father Kevin said he really liked the tune "Glorious Bounties," he truly did. After all, Kevin Welch originally thought he had written it.

"My dad had found the lyrics in a stack of papers, but he couldn't remember writing it," says Dustin, 27, the oldest of three.

Sometimes songs come in a dream and you write them down and go back to sleep. Kevin started working on a melody and played a part for Dustin, who said, "Hey, Dad, that's my song."

About a man who throws his life away — on earth and eternally — in a crime of passion, "Glorious Bounties" made its way to Kevin's 2001 "Millionaire" album. Dustin Welch's songs have also been recorded by Reckless Kelly and Micky and the Motorcars.

He arrived in Austin from Nashville two hours before 2006 became 2007 and soon got his band together. "We originally called it the House Band because we played at Momo's, where everyone in the band worked," says Welch (who survived a summer on the Warped Tour in 2006 playing punk banjo in the Scotch Greens). As the band readies its first album, produced by Mark Addison at Arie Studio in South Austin, it's going by just "Dustin Welch." In addition to the leader, who plays banjo, mandolin and guitar, and his singing sister Savannah, the band includes Drew Smith on rhythm guitar, Kyle Ellison (ex-Pariah) on electric guitar, Joe Beckham on bass, Trisha Keefer on fiddle and a rotating drum chair.

The sound is alternative country, with more of an old-timey element, as Welch is influenced not only by Nashville songwriters such as Malcolm Holcomb, Gary Nicholson and David Olney, but by ancient jug band music and Tin Pan Alley.

"Back in Nashville I was in a band called the Swindlers with Justin Earle (Steve's son) and some other musicians' kids and we were interested in going as far back as we could," he says.

Welch spent as much time researching Irving Berlin and W.C. Handy as he did listening to the jukeboxes on Broadway. The Swindlers were playing "Shine On Harvest Moon" when most other kids their age were getting into Neil Young's "Harvest." "That time really expanded the parameters of songwriting to me," Dustin Welch says.

Moving to Austin, with its wealth of musicians and passionate fans, has also helped the young man grow more than his sideburns. Playing Momo's every Monday night for more than a year has given him a feel for what the Austin scene is all about. "Nashville's great, but Austin feels like home."

(Dustin Welch's next scheduled Austin show is Aug. 29 at Momo's, 618 W. Sixth St. www.momosclub.com)

The Belleville Outfit

By Michael Hoinski

Serendipity is the seventh player in the Belleville Outfit, a six-piece comprising swing and roots virtuosos-in-training. Their first sign of good fortune, as relayed by acoustic guitarist Rob Teter: when the booker at MerleFest allowed the band to keep its spot in the 2007 lineup even though they weren't who she thought they were, the DesChamps Band, Teter's then-defunct group with fellow Outfitters Marshall Hood (electric guitarist) and Jeff Brown (upright bassist).

"I still, to this day, don't know why she still took us," Teter says, over a cup of coffee at Flipnotics, "but she did. You know, if you're playing at that festival, you've been playing for a couple years and your band is pretty tight and you've probably released a record."

The Belleville Outfit had but three rehearsals to its name, which is derived from a Django Reinhardt song. Still, things changed after that performance. The band felt legit. They decided to make a go of it. The going was rough.

"We drove in two cars," Teter continues, "and we had the bass strapped to the roof on one of the cars. This was before Phoebe was even there." Teter turns to fiddler Phoebe Hunt, who rounds out the band with pianist Connor Forsyth and drummer Jon Konya (the guys are all 21; Hunt is 24). "You didn't have to bear the brunt of that."

Shortly thereafter, another sign the planets were aligned presented itself in the form of a MerleFest-goer who gifted them his Ford Econoline van. "He's like, 'It just sits in my driveway; you can have it,' " Teter says. "So we got it and it lasted a year."

By then it didn't really matter. The group could afford to make payments on a new van thanks to a steady stream of gigs in the southwest, out west and at SXSW, in support of their February debut "Wanderin'." The album features multi-part harmonies and breakdown soloing, and projects the White Ghost Shivers without the schtick but with an added feel-good country and folk high. Teter, whose voice recalls Harry Connick's on "Somebody Like You" and "Caroline," splits time on vocals with Hunt, whose strong-willed numbers include Peggy Lee's "It's a Good Day."

"She kind of reminds me a little bit of Jessica Rabbit," Hunt says. "She was sexy, seductive and, you know, hot — and she had a wonderful voice. It's nice to see women that strong onstage."

Hunt is a past recipient of the Daniel Pearl Memorial Violin, a hand-me-down violin commemorating the life and death of the journalist who bridged cultural gaps with his fiddling. She's the first of three consecutive Austinites, followed by Ruby Jane and Ian Stewart (of the Fireants), to have the award bestowed upon her.

Homage also relates to the Belleville Outfit's predecessor, the DesChamps Band. Hood started that project as a tribute to the '70s Americana group Uncle Walt's Band, following the death of his uncle, Champ Hood, who had played in the trio with Walter Hyatt and David Ball, and later with Lyle Lovett and Toni Price.

Now that the Belleville Outfit's talent has transcended its luck — what with a recent opening slot for Lovett, a forthcoming ACL Fest appearance and recognition by "A Prairie Home Companion" as one of 20 talented twentysomethings — you'd think Teter's neighbor would be more impressed.

"I've met James McMurtry a couple times," Teter says," "and just, you know, said, 'I live across the street and I play in this band,' and he's all, 'Oh, I've heard of that.' And that's pretty much the extent of our conversation."

(The Belleville Outfit is on tour; its next scheduled Austin show is Sept. 6 at Threadgill's South, 301 W. Riverside Drive. www.bellevilleoutfit.com)

The Fireants

By Michael Hoinski

"Play it again and I'll punch you in," says Danny, the engineer.

Fireants guitarist Zeke Jarmon, whom Danny called out for a lackadaisical solo on the instrumental "Hinterland," looks back at him quizzically — as do his bandmates — from the other side of the glass separating the live room from the control room in the Tequila Mockingbird studio.

"They don't know what you mean, Danny," says Deborah Stewart, mom to singer and violin/mandolin player Ian Stewart, and head cheerleader of the sizzling jam band comprising five high-schoolers who effectively channel bluegrass, jazz, and rock.

Danny explains to them he can cut the original solo and paste it with a new one. All they have to do is pick up right before the fork in the road. On the next take Zeke realizes his potential. The control room seems pleased.

"He plays it different every time, so he never knows what he's going to do," Zeke's mom says.

"Yeah, but Zeke has moments of brilliance," Deborah Stewart counters.

Zeke and Ian, along with pianist Steven Campbell, bassist Rebecca Pledger and drummer Victor Ziolkowski, are recording cuts for their debut album. There are lyrical numbers too, including a cover of bluegrass icon Jimmy Martin's "Hold Whatcha Got" and working-title originals "Emily Dee," about "a lost love," and "The Deuce is Loose," about "having a good time."

The band honed its chops at Natural Ear Music School — save for Victor, who learned by osmosis listening to and watching videos of Keith Moon, the Who's gonzo drummer — and coalesced out of an affinity for the String Cheese Incident and Edgar Winter, among others. The Fireants' rise includes an award-winning set at last year's Old Settler's Festival and opening slots for Bob Schneider.

Rebecca considers this band a major step up from her last one. "They were really good," she says of the previous group, which also teamed her with all boys, "but they were all very short, and I was like a monster onstage. It was funny. At least these guys are tall."

Ian says the album will borrow from roots music old and new. As the current holder of the Daniel Pearl Memorial Violin, a real-deal violin passed down each year to a different student at the Mark O'Connor String Camp as a way to spread the deceased journalist's spirit of unity through words and music, Ian's somewhat obligated to the genre.

"It's kind of a heavy burden, really," he says of the accolade. "It took me a while to accept it. Like, I felt like I didn't really deserve it. Then I came to realize that it wasn't, you know, about the player, really, but it was more about, like, passing music along to other people."

Zeke and Steven see playing that high lonesome sound differently, as a way to surprise people who blindly write them off as a "kid" band.

"I think it works to our advantage," Zeke says.

Adds Steven, "People don't expect what they get."

(The Fireants' next Austin show is at 9 p.m. Friday at Threadgill's North, 6416 N. Lamar Blvd. threadgills.com)