Old Settler's Music Festival, 'Carmen,' Nick Lowe, Buddy Guy, Panic at the Disco

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Bluegrass/folk music

OLD SETTLER'S MUSIC FESTIVAL

Sometimes the best finish last.

Or in the case of the Old Settler's Music Festival at Driftwood over the weekend, the next to last. New Monsoon, a Dead Headish group from San Francisco, closed the fest again, but the last act to see for many was Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives band.

The hyperbole-driven name for this star's backup musicians is no lie. These country-before-Nashville-turned-pop artists play as if the '90s to the present never existed. And because Stuart is a godfather to instrumentalists (forget his stuck-in-the-'80s poofy 'do), this is a band that knows how to come together as equals. Even drummer Harry Stinson, with his high lonesome voice, came to the front of the stage to nail the gospel number "I'm Working on a Building" along with Stuart, guitarist Kenny Vaughan and bassist Brian Glenn.

Stuart honored himself by honoring the ghosts of Hank Williams and Johnny Cash as he told how the former wrote "I'm Blue, I'm Lonesome" with Bill Monroe in a dressing room and how the latter, his former boss and neighbor, reminded him of a crow. Stuart's song "Dark Bird," sung solo on mandolin, painted a poignant picture of the man who dressed in black but flew out "on the other side" as a white dove.

Despite some maudlin bird silhouettes on video, Stuart's sincerity rang true. His sense of fun within country's traditions shone through, be it a prison song, a train song or a surf guitar number.

Stuart even consented to an afternoon acoustic demo inside the Salt Lick Pavilion on the fest grounds. He wrapped that up, as he did for his Saturday night set, with Tom Petty's "Runnin' Down a Dream." This is indeed a nice guy who understands good music knows no audience or authorship bounds.

The Fest of Reasonable Proportions drew about 15,000 people over two days on lawn chairs and blankets fronting two stages along Onion Creek. They heard from bluegrass hall of famers and other performers masquerading at a bluegrass ball.

The fest started on a gorgeous afternoon with Belleville Outfit, a band of friends in their early 20s that is all of a year old. After moving to Austin from Spartanburg, S.C., the group smartly hired Austinite Phoebe Hunt, a fiddler and singer who puts sunshine in every song. With her invitations to the crowd to start dancing, Hunt and frontmen Rob Teter and Marshall Hood aptly spirited the Outfit through songs from their debut album, which contains a couple of the late Walter Hyatt's songs (Hood was the nephew of Hyatt's sideman Champ Hood and shared Hyatt's Spartanburg roots).

The smaller stage under greening pecans hosted Eliza Gilkyson, who sort of apologized for her downer opening of "The Party's Over" with a declaration that Friday was "the most beautiful day I've ever seen in Texas." And the Austin queen of songwriting from the heart has seen many spectacular springs before this, her inexplicably first time at Old Settler's.

Another newbie for the 21st year of the fest was Bettye LaVette, a '60s soul singer who all but disappeared until 2005's "I've Got My Own Hell to Raise," an album of songs by 10 equally strong women. Dressed in skinny black and heels to match, LaVette vamped up to her guitarist, sashayed a la Tina Turner, got down low on Lucinda Williams' "Joy," gave shoutouts to her classic hits and then sat cross-legged on the stage floor "for a senior citizen's moment" to sing Willie Nelson's "Somebody Pick Up My Pieces." It was a repertoire of resiliency to cherish.

Saturday afternoon featured some youth moments with 19-year-old Emily Elbert, a Dallas-area songstress who looks five years younger, and an Old Settler's favorite from Wimberley, Sarah Jarosz, who plays all things string when she's not in her 11th-grade classes. Elbert boasts a mature, appealing voice; her songwriting no doubt will spread beyond fireflies and sunshine as she makes her way through Berklee College of Music and life's experiences. Jarosz already seems prepared for modern bluegrass primetime, writing about "Left Home" feelings even before she's done that and scoring a standing ovation and shouts of "she's our girl."

Most of the traditional, masterful bluegrass at the fest this year was left to veterans Peter Rowan and Ralph Stanley. But what makes Old Settler's soar repeatedly is the organizers' willingness to put wings on the genre, from the gospel rock of the Jones Family Singers to the John-Paul-George harmonies of Beatlegras to the country command of Marty Stuart.

It's all fun on just two stages, with a relaxation factor double that of many bigger, better-known festivals.

— Ed Crowell

Opera

'CARMEN'

The audience buzz was high Friday night at Austin Lyric Opera's debut performance at the new Long Center for the Performing Arts, the first of four sold-out shows of Bizet's "Carmen."

A "Home Sweet Home" banner greeted a festive crowd as they climbed the stairs to Dell Hall, the much-anticipated new home stage for the 22-year-old opera company. But unfortunately that audience energy far exceeded the verve coming from the stage. Awkward stage directing and weak performances from the lead performers left this "Carmen" lackluster.

Thankfully, sharp conducting by music director Richard Buckley showed off the Long Center's sparkling acoustics and provided the performance's only real sizzle.

As Carmen, mezzo-soprano Beth Clayton lacked volume and a fullness of tone, never quite grabbing the pitch she needed during what should have been show-stopping arias. Tenor William Joyner, as Don Jose, likewise struggled with consistent delivery.

In the secondary roles, soprano Barbara Divis, as Micaela, did manage more volume and flair. And as Escamallio, Luis Ledesma had a good tone and plenty of dramatic flourish. Alas it was some of the only dramatic action we saw. Stage director David Gately seemed to have given little structure or purpose to the movement during the crowd scenes, and principal characters lacked focus. This was a Carmen and Don Jose in love? It was hard to buy.

Perhaps the only star of the evening was the Dell Hall and its acoustics, amply celebrated by Buckley and the orchestra. Buckley drew a nuanced and shimmering sound from the pit that resulted in hearty cheers from the audience.

If this "Carmen" was underwhelming, at least Dell Hall and its sound continue to impress.

— Jeanne Claire Van Ryzin

'Carmen' continues at 7:30 p.m. today and Saturday. Dell Hall, Long Center, 701 W. Riverside Drive. $26-$175. 472-5992, www.austinlyricopera.org

Rock music

NICK LOWE

"People change," Nick Lowe declared in his opening number at Antone's last Friday, but he needn't have worried about explaining himself: Whatever hits his fan base might have taken when he forsook power pop for more subdued styles some years back, he was still able to fill the club with followers who knew more recent songs by heart.

Yes, they were delighted by the old stuff: Hits like "Cruel to Be Kind," "I Knew the Bride (When She Used to Rock & Roll)," and "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding" drew delighted applause — and some elicited audience sing-alongs that harmonized sweetly with the singer rather than drowning him out. But the wryly self-observational material of his newish album "At My Age" and its predecessor "The Convincer" also held the crowd rapt enough that chatter back at the bar was the exception, not the rule.

Lowe noted that he was "expanding my program" on this tour, singing more old favorites than usual in order to push a bonus-laden reissue of his 1978 LP "Jesus of Cool" (originally released in the U.S. as "Pure Pop for Now People"). Fans might have wished the promo agenda had included a budget for a touring band to flesh out some of the songs, but even by himself (opener Ron Sexsmith joined him for one encore number) Lowe worked the crowd with a charm that belied all the age-conscious self-deprecation of recent records.

— John DeFore

The blues

BUDDY GUY

A Buddy Guy set isn't so much a list of songs in the order in which they're to be played as much as it is a crooked stroll through blues and rock 'n' roll history. And the guy's been doing it that way for so long — he's north of 70 but appears to be holding up remarkably — he's virtually review-proof.

So it was Friday night at Stubb's. If you came to hear the blues legend's take on John Hiatt's "Feels Like Rain" or Wilson Pickett's "Mustang Sally," sorry. But if you came to hear what lots of folks in the know consider to be the greatest guitar player alive, it was a characteristic jaw-dropper of a night. Guy brought his showmanship, using a drum stick as a pick a couple of times and taking a long walk into the crowd, soloing all the while. But the grandstanding wouldn't mean much without his crazed and expressive skills on the guitar. (Jimi Hendrix reportedly used to cancel his own gigs to go catch Buddy Guy, and in the 2004 documentary "Lightning in a Bottle" there's a film clip of a very young Guy gigging with a worshipful-looking Hendrix at the front of the stage.)

Quiet one moment and shredding the next, Guy likes him some dynamic extremes, which might be something of a cliché, but it simply works. So the meander: Here comes a little "Hoochie Coochie Man," then "I Just Want to Make Love to You. (Guy backed Muddy Waters when Guy was a largely frustrated session man at Chess, where Leonard Chess famously called his style "(expletive) noise.") Then came a little John Lee Hooker, a little Clapton, a little "Voodoo Chile" and a raucously received shout-out to Stevie Ray Vaughan, with whom Guy shared a stage on the night Vaughan died.

So yeah, he does what he does. In an era when "virtuoso" gets affixed to undeserving subjects such as John Mayer, Buddy Guy is the real deal and then some. He might have grown up in Louisiana, but those chops are from outer space.

— Patrick Beach

Indie rock

PANIC AT THE DISCO

"The last time I was here, I couldn't legally drink," Panic at the Disco singer Brendon Urie said Saturday night to a sold-out crowd at Stubb's.

His audience knows what he's talking about — the average age seemed to range from just-out-of-college at one end and here-with-mom-or-dad at the other. At 33, I'm pretty sure I was the oldest person there who was not accompanying a minor.

This is what happens when a band of pop rockers breaks through to MTV. In four short years, Panic at the Disco has moved from being another garage band in the Nevada suburbs to a outta-nowhere Video of the Year winner at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards to headlining the annual Honda Civic tour. Previous headliners have included such 21st century rock staples as Blink-182, Incubus, Maroon 5 and Fall Out Boy.

The openers were similarly on point. Phantom Planet, the Hush Sound and Motion City Soundtrack all delivered solid, somewhat forgettable high-octane guitar rock. But never let it be said that fan service wasn't first in their minds. The openers set themselves up at tables near the merch booth, where they signed autographs and posed for pictures with dozens of (mostly) teenage girls. They all seemed like exceptionally nice boys.

Panic was greeted with the loudest screams and delivered something even the parents wouldn't find objectionable. With Urie's cleanly strummed Telecaster sitting on top of the mix, Panic's music seems to have less to do with modernist pop-punk songcraft as tightly constructed songs and more to do with classic rock such as Fall Out Boy. A little slower and stiffer and songs such as "We're So Starving" and "Nine in the Afternoon" could have been from a '60s rock album, a '70s power pop album, an '80s corporate rock record or a '90s bubble-grunge act. No wonder MTV loves them.

— Joe Gross