An eclectic Americana band that’s only been playing together for about a year impressed the crowd and the judges at the Texas Music Showdown with Brett Dillon last night at the White Elephant Saloon in the Fort Worth Stockyards.
The Troubaderos beat out the rocking Blu Swayze band and the rawbones rodeo sound of Eric Beatty in Week 3 of the competition.
I’ve served as a judge frequently ever since the Texas Music Showdown began six years ago, and the Troubaderos are among the more interesting bands I’ve seen competing. They’re not really country or rock, but a mixture of sounds that veer between roots, indie rock, folk, blues, whatever. Music is always hard to explain. You just got to hear it for yourself.
You can catch The Troubaderos at 9 pm Friday at Filthy McNasty’s in the Stockyards.
I ran into Stockyards minstrel Brad Hines at the saloon and got a kick out of his new hairdo, which I dubbed The Dutchboy. It’s a cross between Tom Petty and that guy in “No Country For Old Men.”
By the way, that’s Hines’ bassist Louis Wright in the photo with him. Wright plays a mean six-string bass, and he’s also a champion-caliber Diet Coke drinker. He totes around a mug the size of a pony keg, and he keeps it filled with Diet Coke. He said he got in the habit of carrying a huge mug with him when he was playing three-hour gigs in steamy New Orleans without a break. Sometimes the long period of time combined with the mass quantity of soft drink led to the inevitable.
“I’d say, ‘play the pee song,’ which was ‘American Pie,’ ” he recalled. That song’s long, slow opening section doesn’t require a bass part, giving Wright a few minutes to sprint to the john.
Anything else in that mug?
Wright said he only drank booze one time in his life — it was back in college and it made him so horribly ill that he has never tried a drop of alcohol since.