MUSIC

Ascension again

17 years after a meteoric rise --- and a quick dissolution --- Sexton, Layton and Bramhall reunite for new CD, Clapton tour

By Joe Gross
AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Saturday, April 18, 2009

When musicians say, "Let's meet at a Starbucks for the interview," this picture comes to mind: a few students working on cups of coffee, some guys in suits trying to distinguish between "venti" and "grande," a mom or three.

Not so much with the Starbucks in Oak Hill at Texas 71 and U.S. 290, around where Austin creeps toward Bee Cave and your wallet suddenly feels that much lighter. The interior is a cross between standard Starbucks and high-end plastic surgeon's waiting room. There's a drive-through and a wonderful deck area that overlooks the area.

It feels like the last place in Austin before the hills, even if it looks like it was teleported in from Beverly Hills. It feels weirdly perfect as Arc Angels guitarist Charlie Sexton and drummer Chris Layton sit down on the deck to talk about the Arc Angels reunion. Not the couple-of-times-a-year live gigs the band has been doing regularly since they closed the first Austin City Limits Music Festival in 2002, but a real reunion.

The Arc Angels — Sexton, Layton and guitarist Doyle Bramhall II — are a full-time, fully functioning band again (citing the long touring schedule, original bassist Tommy Shannon amicably bowed out of this reunion; bass duties are being handled by Dave Monsey).

They played a few SXSW gigs, are finalizing a retrospective DVD for June release (complete with three new songs) and starting work on the band's first album in 17 years.

On Wednesday , the band plays the first of a three-night stand at the Continental Club before crisscrossing Europe for a month with Eric Clapton (with whom Bramhall has played second guitar since 2004).

Sexton, in black jacket and jeans, sunglasses firmly affixed to face, still looks every inch the gentleman rocker, even with a giant scab on his chin from recently getting beaned with a baseball at his son Marlon's 10th birthday party.

"We didn't have any catching gear, so I played catcher so none of the kids had to," Sexton says, lighting yet another cigarette. "One of the kids was a very good pitcher, really hard thrower. Which was fine except one batter tipped it off straight back at me. Another half-inch and I would be talking to you without teeth."

Layton laughs and bums a cigarette from Sexton: "I'm in total denial," he says about the cig, lighting up. He has the calm, friendly vibe of a guy who has seen every up and down the music business has to offer. And he has.

They both have. These are guys with families and commitments and other bands and other jobs. Right now, however, they are all Arc Angels.

Mutual respect

The Arc Angels story has been told many times, and their cultists know it cold. The band fell together in the early 1990s following the death of Stevie Ray Vaughan, the Double Trouble rhythm section teaming up with the much-younger Bramhall and Sexton, two white-hot lead guitarists and songwriters. All were using space at the Austin Rehearsal Center (ARC).

"I've know Charlie since he was 9 and Doyle since he was 10," Layton says. "I didn't even know that they knew one another."

The band's self-titled 1992 debut became an Austin classic and a minor smash, a mix of Austin blues rock and mainstream guitar pop.

"People have an impression of the band that it was footloose and fancy-free," Sexton says. "But a huge amount of hours were spent putting that record together, demos, and writing." The band seemed a mortal lock for stardom.

But the Angels fell to Earth in 1994, a victim of both near-overnight success and Bramhall's exploding heroin addiction.

"When the band fell apart, Doyle and I weren't the best of friends," Sexton says ruefully. "We'd known each other forever but came together as a band very swiftly."

After feelings had healed a bit and everyone's health was better, they started working together again in the mid-'90s; it's unwise to let go of that sort of chemistry.

"We would work on songs or he would write with my brother (songwriter Will Sexton) or (producer) Craig Ross," Sexton says. "We would inevitably end up recording together, be it demos or stuff that would end up on someone's album."

Bramhall tells much the same story by phone from L.A. a few days later. "It's pretty exciting," he says, obviously a little tired (10 a.m. is a bit early for musicians). "I think that it has that chemistry, that really innate Arc Angels sound. We've been in so many places and we're so much wiser as players now."

This is the funny part about Arc Angels: They are in some ways exactly where they were when they started the band. Both Sexton and Bramhall launched their careers around age 16, as prodigies poised for stardom. They ended up having weirdly parallel solo careers after the Angels imploded, their talents as sidemen finding purchase with '60s legends — Bramhall with Clapton, Sexton with Dylan from 1999 to 2002. Bramhall's appeared on a number of Clapton projects, Sexton on Dylan's "Love and Theft," one of the most well-regarded albums of our young century.

"There's so much respect between us we can actually use each others' idea in a way that's much more practical," Bramhall says. "We're all more open. We had all the potential back then."

'It's all real relaxed'

In 2007 and '08 Sexton found himself producing the compilation "A Brief History of the Blues." It was mostly old original recordings, but Sexton was able to shoehorn in Bramhall contributing a riveting "O Death" with Erykah Badu.

"Folks were like, 'Wow!' (over the song)" Sexton says. "We thought there's obviously something still there, and thought 'Let's just apply this creativity to the band.' "

"And the band sounds great," Layton adds. "In the original band, Tommy and I had developed such a unique rapport that the first time around was like sanding off rough edge for us. We were not all that movable in what we sounded like. This time it's all real relaxed, like falling into a pool."

"It's a weird thing we write," Bramhall says, "It's somehow more of a pop thing in the sense of Beatles or Stones. That's just what we seem to do together. Now, our wells have just gotten deeper, and I don't see us running out of things to say as a band."

For Sexton, this is a chance to get back to publicly performing music he's written; much of the past decade has been spent in the producer role, including Lucinda Williams' "Essence," Edie Brickell's "Volcano" and Jon Dee Graham's "Great Battle."

"I have literally a pile of songs that Doyle and I have worked on," Sexton says. They've been recording all over the place, some at Sexton's home studio, some at Wire Recording and some this summer at Spoon drummer Jim Eno's studio Public Hi-Fi."

"There was always something that was unfinished about Arc Angels," Bramhall says. "Now, we're all friends and can follow it up."

After all, this is what these guys do better than they do anything else.

"I've always been a lifer kinda guy," Layton says.

"Yes, that's exactly it," Sexton says. "Everyone in this band is a lifer. Some people can be in a band and decide to design shoes or microchips and can focus all of that creative energy on something else. That's not us."

jgross@statesman.com; 912-5926