Music

Recalling fond lost memories of the True Believers

Tonight at Antone's, the True Believers are reuniting and playing a gig with Los Lobos, just like the old days, except that the Troobs are headlining. Also, guitarist Javier Escovedo, who's apparently holding out for a Will and the Kill reunion, will not be there. (Charlie Sexton will fill in.) The theme of this $50-a-ticket benefit — aimed to help guitarist Jon Dee Graham pay medical expenses for his 6-year-old son, who's been diagnosed with a degenerative bone disease — is that both bands will play songs from the mid-'80s period during which they toured together. So let's not hear any requests for "Castanets."

In keeping with this '80s motif, I thought I'd write this piece using the same process I did back when I wrote for the Austin Enabler, but then I realized I'd probably have a heart attack and so instead I've dug up an old bio of the boys that I have no recollection of writing. It's good to know, however, that I was "basking in the sonic glow" way back when. My asides are in italics.

Deep breath. Here goes:

1998 AMERICAN-STATESMAN In November 1988, Alejandro Escovedo, left, and the other True Believers joined Jon Dee Graham on stage. Tonight, they'll do it again in a throwback benefit concert for Graham's son. The True Believers and Los Lobos play tonight at Antone's.

As a music columnist in Austin the past three years (wow, three whole years!), I have been ringside to watch all our heaviest hitters battle complacency. I've basked in the sonic glow of Joe Ely, Lou Ann Barton, the LeRoi Brothers, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Bill Carter, the Tycoons (Austin's greatest forgotten band), Stevie Ray Vaughan, Charlie Sexton, Omar and the Howlers, Evan Johns and the H-Bombs (looks like Corky's not going to have to pay for a beer for a while) and on and on. These bands could all raise the roof at a bomb shelter (what, you thought the simile stretches started just last week?), but each is expendable in our roots-rock-heavy scene. If, say, Joe Ely moved to Montana, Bill Carter could throw on some turquoise gabardine, hire some hot-shot guitarist and Bobby Keys and though it still wouldn't be Joe Ely, it wouldn't be so far off as to make you think about taking a Greyhound to Butte. (Heh, heh, he said "Butte.") Heck, the Big E is out on tour nine months out of the year and the rockabilly fillies still come out with their silver collar tips and pants tucked into vintage cowboy boots. There's no one, however, who can move into the True Believers' turf.

There's been talk about them just chucking the whole thing and starting over again, which would be tragedy along the lines of an American bald eagle committing suicide or Michael Jordan adopting a new religion that preaches that jumping is a sin. (C'mon people, where was the intervention?)

Who else can plug into dark and dangerous music as easily as lessors can wear its symbols? (Me: Nice. Editor: Huh?) Who else can make it feel like 5 a.m. in a town that shuts down at 2 a.m.? The True Believers can almost make you feel like shooting up the rent money while some skinny skirt trash in troll doll hair leans over the side of the bed throwing up loud enough to be almost heard over a cranked-up "Fun House." (Wow, I used to write like the Troobs played. Now I'm "By the Hand of the Father.") Is there another local band that can get you to even knock on that door?

Austin is a town where you can walk around late at night without fear. We've got girls in slit skirts and leopard scarf tops, just like the big cities do, but ours are not hard and jaded. If they wear a watch, the time is not always "blank you, blankhead." Our junkies are tan on the faces, arms and necks; just like golfers. This is a town that thinks there are two "n"s in "sinister," but that's all right. (Just the methamphetamine talking ... and talking.) We have the True Believers."

Hard to believe, isn't it, that I didn't get much bio work after this.