Western Swing & Texas (and Other Punchy Thoughts) - VI.

VI.

Inside Floore’s is a shrine. Its steel rafters hold the wares of cowboy’s past, boots and hats wired and hanging like juke joint mistletoe. The cinderblock walls match the exterior’s olive green coating and hold the room’s history and character. It’s difficult to remain present as framed reminders impose reverie. Past frequenters; Willie Nelson, George Jones, Tammy Wynette, Ray Price, Merle Haggard. Some autographed, all holding a warped glare from beer signs shone in their direction. A faint gleam on a pencil sketch of John Wayne, a show poster of BB King and yet another image of Willie, this one suggesting his presidency. In red paint directly on the wall $100 FINE FOR FIGHTING - its lack of finesse seemingly rushed, possibly as emergency mitigation to deter violence or a notice for guaranteed cash flow. Texas flags, cattle skulls, depictions of the last supper, kerosene cans, bull horns, lamps, saddles, lariets, amulets, knick-knacks. Whiteboards: “I NEVER GET LOST EVERYONE TELLS ME WHERE TO GO” “THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS WRONG HERE” “ITS NOT WHAT YOUR EATING THAT CAUSES ULCERS ITS WHAT IS EATING YOU” “HOW DO YOU EXPECT US TO RAISE CATTLE WHEN YOU ARE SHOOTING THE BULL CONSISTENTLY”. Robert Earl Keen, Randy Rogers, Chris Knight, Gary P Nunn, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Dale Watson, Charley Crockett, Sunny Sweeney, Kathryn Legendre, Mark Chesnutt, Paul Cauthen, Todd Snider, Colter Wall, Mike & The Moonpies.

I swing a chair out from under two tables pushed together, a Couple with their back to the stage as its only occupants. They inform me everything is saved. I thank them for letting me know and mention I’ll move once their company arrives. Clearly they are uncomfortable with my response however an entitlement to the final remaining eight seats in the house has me conjuring up a narrative that they never receive resistance. He stares at me while I pull out my notebook and consider an impromptu sketch, really rattle the cage.

$100 FINE FOR FIGHTING

Show opener, Triston Marez is into a set of mid-tempo, distortion rich ballads. The unclipped strings off the headstock of his guitar shaking like spider legs as his band’s energy is in full attack mode. He remains poised behind the mic, black felt hat slightly tilted. Another gained up guitar solo finishes as he questions if we don’t mind him playing some country music for us tonight. I’m patient as he continues to sing, pockets in the crowd join at full volume. Songs written for clear attempts to attain broad spectrum radio play, a handful of lyrics snag my attention.

The Moonpies are scattered through the room. Frontman, Mike Harmeier comes in and out of the side door, a couple beers in hand, he’s passed a stratocaster as he sets his drinks down on a road case. As Triston finishes his set, Mike gives his support and follows him out the door, stage left. I thank the Couple at the table for their company, still without their guests. He nods. I leave my post to hang by the soundboard.

Aside from tagging along with Beau during the video shoot last time I was in Austin, I saw The Moonpies that same week at Sam’s Town Point in a last minute pseudo-secret show - a social media post and a first come first serve basis. It’s cliché to go hotly off about how much “better” a band is live than on recording as that’s my expectation but I was treated to a completely different experience that night at Sam’s. Unable to remember if any songs to appear on Cheap Silver… were being sussed out a year ago, I can can however vividly recall the melodic interplay among band members and the swagger of Mike. Some kind of jovial confidence that comes off as intended - a flex of ability and steeped in humility.

A room has lifted from their seats to congregate against the stage. Aside from the sound technician, I’m joined beside the booth by another listener towering a foot and a half above the crown of my hat, cocking his head quick to the side and giving a snap out the side of his mouth as much to say here we go, son, Moonpie time.

The band plugs in to a modest hum throughout the room as if everybody knows what’s to come. Midlevel “alright, boys”, one-off hand claps, single foot stomps, and an ever increasing group rocking back and forth as if moving into position for a long haul dash. Similar vibes as a locker room before hitting the ice but with the added celebration of bottles clinking against each other before downing their contents. Buddy beside me, as a complete stranger slaps his hand on my shoulder and gives me a quick and bonding full body shake, three bottles of lonestar in one hand tied up in the spaces between his fingers. We’re in this one together.

“I think I’ll buy us all a round

We can toast the cheapest silver

That high and lonesome sound…”

All the heads in front of me, in perfect syncopation, drop in with the band.

Harmeier’s voice is mixed dead-on from entry. I’m jealous of his tone and have been since I was first introduced to it - both vocally and instrumentally. Caitlin Rutherford, accents an R&B off-lick on his telecaster, Zachary Moulton echoes it on the pedal steel. As Harmeier bends a half tone into the chorus of “Cheap Silver” I know the symphony will not be missed. In album order, Moulton leads the band into “You Look Good In Neon” and a room pairs up. Bassist, Omar Oyoque, is casting spells. He’s playing in the pocket and singing sans microphone - in fun, eyes clearly locked on someone singing back to him, half-squint, smiling, subtly grooving his head side to side - it’s show and dammit, it works. I’m as upset that I didn’t write this song as I am overwhelmed by its refinement and intricacy. I have chills and sing along with the harmony. It’s impossible not to. Where the symphony would pad the first half of the last chorus, Harmeier plays a slow phase before Kyle Ponder brings us back in with a long squared build-up.

The titled track from their 2015 record amidst the setting of Floores pops me into a quick transcendence; “Mockingbird” reminding me of heading into the Kennedy Bar with my Dad on a Friday night as a kid, my brother and I playing pool and still attending elementary school. No sooner I’m out of the memory, the universe delivers some synchronicity and Mike sings: “I’m always scratching on the eight-ball” - “Miss Fortune”, another cut from Cheap Silver and Solid Country Gold. Oyoque tears through “Things Ain’t Like They Used To Be” with a bass line that boasts his ability before we are given our first breath of space in the set. Harmeier seems to touch base with each member individually, they tune, they drink beer.

He returns to center stage.

“How come he couldn’t get it on the radio?” he asks the crowd, in an introduction to a song written by Byron Black, older brother to famed Texan Clint Black. “If You Wanna Fool Around” is as well crafted as the Moonpies’ execution of it. The set continues with force, “Gettin’ High At Home”, “Puttin’ It Down”, “Sunday,” and “Road Crew”. A new ranchy looking character appears, and has brought a washtub bass up behind Oyoque consisting of an upside down plastic tub directly on the floor and a single wire fixed from its ridge upwards to the top of a sawed off hockey stick which acts as the “neck” of the instrument. His rhythmic pluck of the homemade instrument is as much show for the crowd as excitement for him. Rutherford alleviates Harmeier of his vocal duties and grooves into Jerry Reed’s “Amos Moses”. Fat pocket.

“HERE COMES AMOS...”

Rutherford’s stage presence balances Oyoque’s high energy similar to AC/DC’s Young brothers; with Malcolm holding the fort down while Angus delivers flash. Rutherford is nonchalant, vital and classy - a snow white collared snap shirt and silverbelly hat.

I walk to the back of the room to get myself a water as Harmeier introduces “Country Music’s Dead”. The music video was shot in an empty Floores. I wandered around Helotes that day while Beau was cast as the lonely over served patron, myself, almost missing my ride out as I too was over served the night before, sleeping in the parking lot outside The Hard Luck Lounge and gasping for air as I woke suffocating in a sealed unit baking in the 10 A.M. Texas sun. Moments from crossing over I found a hot bottle of water to revive myself.

Water in hand and self-possessed I pass the sound board and continue to the front to get a feel for the thick of the energy. Adam Odor, whom I’ve spent the last four days with at Yellow Dog Studios is standing off-stage in a slow sway. Alongside his cameo in “Country Music’s Dead” he wears more than one hat with the Moonpies as past bassist and current producer and manager. I find a spot a couple feet away from Rutherford, Adam is lost in the slow jams of “Never Leaving Texas” and “Beaches of Biloxi”. Hearing the latter for the first time over a year ago at Sam’s, I danced all night, stranger after stranger.

The beaches of Biloxi got the best of me again

On that damn river boat the dealers always win

And I'm gonna lose her to the tables and the gin

The beaches of Biloxi got the best of me again

To…

Well she moved herself up to Nashville

And I got you fellas to thank

Willie and Merle, I'm lookin' at you

I'm talkin' about you, Hank

How could you take her just like you were picking a rose?

Damn Strait, damn Hank, damn Jones

And…

Down to Steak Night at the Prairie Rose

A cover band from 10 to close

And my old man sittin' right there next to me

They got the ballgame on the big TV

A beer for him, a coke for me

He raised his bottle to the band, he'd turn to say:

"I'm gonna see you up there someday

Now, I’m getting danced around.

I found a tranquility among this bustle. In an arguably perfect setting I’m watching a group whose presence and output has been impossible not to study; the detail and intricacy from writing and performance to branding and image. Their attention given is undeniable and the formula is radical authenticity - not as “Country” or “Texas” but as Artists. And whether it is Harmeier, himself, as the sole visionary or an equal input from all members - it doesn’t matter - we are given a legacy project that is unapologetic. I appreciate the depth of understanding that Mike and The Moonpies bring in order to package country music so well, they occupy their own space in a regional lineage because of it. Every box is checked. That’s the fun of it. But, that’s only one layer.

The band is delivered a round of shots. They toast Floores. More songs.

With or without the London Symphony Orchestra every song from Cheap Silver and Solid Country Gold stands on their own two feet, yet, “Danger” misses them the most. Regardless, its backbeat sends the room into a pulsing. Seven days ago I was tearing through South Dakota in the middle of the night with Harmeier’s phased out stratocaster getting me through to dawn and now it’s contributing to a sense of surrealness. As The Moonpies’ set ends with “We’re Gone” from Steak Night at The Prairie Rose and finally the title track from The Real Country I am slowly coming back to the here and now.

I can feel my 4:30 AM wake-up call begin the familiar onset of lethargy as the stage lights start to bend. The band moves off stage before being summoned to return for the final track on Cheap Silver and Solid Country Gold, the conceptually expedient Jerry Jeff Walker cover, “London Homesick Blues”. Adam joins his old bandmates as Oyoque passes him the bass guitar and moves over to pedal steel, Moulton retires for the evening. One final cover, “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way” and the stage lights go out.

I lift my water and toast the band.