On a Saturday night in January, the Boiled Owl Tavern went country. Or at least that impression was created at the Magnolia Ave bar by enough cowboy-hatted people in the house, there presumably to catch the headlining set by local honkytonk band Cory Cross & The Burden. Most of them had settled in to be able to catch the openers, a band called Ghost Roper, and by the crowd’s quiet anticipation, I could tell fans of throwback country picked a pretty great show to go to. For 45 minutes, Ghost Roper captivated the crowd with their own version of ’70s country, playing a set of songs showcasing breezy high-desert harmonies borne on easygoing train beats.
Ghost Roper is the new project from songwriter Burette Douglas, best known for co-fronting The Cush, the long-running psych-rock band he formed in 2001. The Cush’s swirling, driving, effects-laden psychedelia might seem to inhabit the opposite side of the universe from Ghost Roper’s mellow C&W, but during the Cush’s 20-plus-year run, Douglas wrote and released some country-sounding songs in a project called the Lonestar Chain. Ghost Roper is not Douglas’ first country-music rodeo, in other words. It’s not actually that surprising that for a guy who’s played a lot of loud electric guitar over the past couple of decades, a band like Ghost Roper would be a lot closer to his own musical roots.
“I guess [country music] just kinda comes out of me, you know?” he said. “I mean, playing rock ’n’ roll music is fun. … I like the pedals and all of the cool things you can do with them, but over the years, no matter what I did, people always say it sounds ‘Southern.’ ”
Maybe it’s the unmistakable drawl of his voice. Douglas, 53, is a Texas native with a lot of formative memories soundtracked to classic country. “Some of my favorite country artists, I liked early on, you know, when I was a little kid, but in high school, it was all hair metal … and I just didn’t connect with any of that, and so I started watching [country music cable channel] CMT a lot more, and I got more into acoustic-guitar music. … I didn’t even like a lot of the country then, but that’s when Clint Black and Alan Jackson were coming out, and they called it ‘neotraditional country,’ and I liked them OK … and there was still a lot of stuff I connected with.”
Foster & Lloyd were a mid-to-late-’80s duo that made a big impact on Douglas. So was Steve Earle.
“Steve Earle was a big one, for me,” he said. “This girl in school had gotten a Steve Earle cassette from one of those tape clubs and didn’t like it. I had already seen the ‘Copperhead Road’ video, so I said, ‘I’ll take it.’ That was a gateway country album for me.”
Ghost Roper began a couple of years ago, Douglas said, when he “wrote this little batch of tunes” before realizing he wanted to “start putting a band together for them. I knew I needed a guitar slinger and somebody that can sing harmonies with me, so I reached out to Denver Williams for that, and then we just kind of started getting together once a week when we could for about a year, just working out the songs and getting tight on the harmonies and stuff.”
Once they had the basic arrangements, Douglas recruited his rhythm section, bassist Chuck Brown (Hotel Satellite, Telegraph Canyon, many other local bands) and drummer Mike Thorneberry (Mind Spiders, the Marked Men), who were both eager to join what Douglas described as a “cosmic country project.” Most recently, they added multi-instrumentalist Ben Hance on lap steel, keys, and guitar. “He’ll pretty much come play whichever shows he wants to and can make because he’s living down in Kerrville,” Douglas said.
The band played its first show last August, during a Lost in Sound event Douglas described as “hot as hell.” The Owl show was their fourth appearance, but given the professional chops of his band, they sounded like they’d been playing together for years. Their plan for the year is to self-produce and record an album, play some shows, and see what happens.
Ghost Roper’s next gig, opening for Ottoman Turks and Garret T. Capps & NASA Country at Tulips FTW next weekend, will be a “pretty big show, I think,” Douglas said, “but I just wanna make a good record first and let it breathe. I’m not gonna push too hard, you know? I just wanna let the music see if it has legs. You know, I’ve never played country music in Texas, and I know that’s a whole ’nother scene.”
Given how stoked the Owl crowd was when they were done, it seems like Ghost Roper is poised to make a whole ’nother scene of their own.
Ghost Roper
8pm Sat, Feb 28, w/Ottoman Turks and Garrett T. Capps & NASA Country at Tulips FTW, 112 St. Louis Av, Fort Worth. $18.
TulipsFTW.com.
