Fine Line: July, 2008

What I meant to say was that I’m not the new co-owner of Club Dada. Sorry, I always get it confused.

Nope, really and truly it’s time for me to move on and pursue other things…like finding a damn decent paying job. It’s been real these past 8-years, but it’s time to let go.

Now scooch on over so’s the door don’t hit me in the ass on the way outta here…xxox

I know I’ve been teasing a big announcement…and for the 4 or 5 readers who still land here every once in awhile, and took the time to email me with questions, I figure now’s as good a time as any to spill the beans sooooooo…I’m the new co-owner of Club Dada….

1. Ryan Thomas Becker is my new favorite human on earth! (My kids aren’t particularly happy with this latest revelation, but they’ll be fine eventually – I told them already that they can’t stay on the top of my list for-like-ever.)

2. If I had one wish, I’d wish to have Chelsea Callahan’s hair.

Go. While you still can….

…is Pugs and Kelly? Has anyone seen, read or heard anything?

Tonight please join us live at The Double-Wide for the first in a series of live video streaming webcasts.

“Make Mine a Double” hosted by the divine Chelsea Callahan shall commence tonight at 7 pm. Among other surprises, our special guests for this eve are the fabtacular RTB2, and our very own Dallas Observer Music Editor, Pete Freedman. Cuz, ya know, like that whole Dallas Observer Music Awards showcase(s) all goes down tomorrow night on Lower Greenville. Careful where you park.

Pete will talk D.O. awards’n'stuff. RTB2 will talk about any damn thing they wanna.

We’d love to have you there hoisting a few with us, otherwise, please just come on back to The Fine Line and enjoy it wherever the hell you have a computer screen.

Details:

Make Mine a Double – A Live Webcast On The Fine Line
Friday, July 18th – 7 pm
The Double-Wide
Performing Live at The Double Wide:
The Breakfast Show / Nathan Singleton & his Sideshow Tragedy / RTB2
9 pm

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Speaking of the Dallas Observer Music Awards Showcase(s)

Saturday, July 19th
Billiard Bar
1920 Greenville Ave
7:00 – Holy Diver
8:00 – Carmen Rodgers
9:00 – Yells at Eels
10:00 – Spector 45
11:00 – Akkolyte
12:00 – Whiskey Folk Ramblers

The Cavern
1914 Greenville Ave
7:00 – The Frenz
8:00 – Hawatha Hurd
9:00 – Mitra
10:00 – Sean Kirkpatrick
11:00 – Florene
12:00 – Bridges & Blinking Lights

Gezellig
2010 Greenville Ave
7:00 – The Naptime Shake
8:00 – Snarky Puppy
9:00 – Inner City All-Stars
10:00 – Stumptone
11:00 – RTB2
12:00 – Big J & Schwa Cool Out
1:00 – Blixaboy

Stout
1924 Greenville Ave
7:00 – Vortexas
8:00 – Glen Reynolds
9:00 – Shibboleth
10:00 – The Slack
11:00 – Matthew & The Arrogant Sea
12:00 – Salim Nourallah & The Noise

Sugar Shack
1909 Greenville Ave
7:00 – 100 Damned Guns
8:00 – The BAcksliders
9:00 – Sydney Confirm
10:00 – Dove Hunter
11:00 – PPT
12:00 – Wild in The Streets

Hoops (and a search for the Truth) by Cottonmouth, Texas

Here’s wishing a big, smoochy, drooly, smoky, smashing birthday to my dearest friend, Jeffrey Liles…I love ya!

Colour Music Live at Good Records

Red Monroe Live at Good Records – Recorded by The Fine Line – 12/2006

The Theater Fire Live at Good Records – Recorded by The Fine Line – 12/2006

Rock Lottery 8
Intoduction by Colin Carter and The Trimester Five
Justin Wilson
Lars Larsen
Eric Deuce
Mauve Oed
Matt Thompson

Live Performance Audio – Recorded by The Fine Line

Rock Lottery 8
Sextricity
Ethan Hahn
Ben Burt
Wes Darrin
Dan Paul
Ineka Guerra

Live Performance Audio – Recorded by The Fine Line

Rock Lottery 8
Gaydolf Shitler
Chris Considine
Michael “Kerm” Rivas
Bryan VanDivier
Dylan Silvers
Buffi J.

Live Performance Audio – Recorded by The Fine Line

Rock Lottery 8
State and Local Authorities
Will Frenkel
Jon Teague
Chad Stockslager
Gregory Lange
Kody Jackson

Live Performance Audio – Recorded by The Fine Line

Tyler isn’t a’scared of clowns – unlike me…

Shanghai 5 Live at Lee Harvey’s – Halloween 2006

The Good Records (Good Latimer location) final boithday party interview with my darling Sam Machkovech…man, good Good Records times….

Me and SaMach Live at the Final Good Records Paartaaay On Good Latimer

What’s so crazy about the videos below is that they were all shot with a sort of semi-decent Canon digital camera. Not a video camera, just a regular camera.

I remember the Mayor’s speech particularly, cuz I was sidled up next to the Channel 8,5,4,11 huge video camera guys who laughed at me and my little Canon camera on a crappy-ass tripod….still, so many really great memories…

Ten Hands Live at Club Dada – Recorded by The Fine Line – 7.30.06

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Camille Cortinas Live at Travis Hopper’s House – Recorded by The Fine Line – 7/2006

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Travis Hopper Live in His Living Room – Recorded by The Fine Line – 7/2006

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Voot Cha Index Live at Good Records – Recorded by The Fine Line – 8/2006

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Eastwood Live in Their Living Room – Recorded by The Fine Line – 8/2006

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Remember when they started that Deep Ellum shuttle?

Mayor Laura Miller Launches the Deep Ellum Shuttle – Recorded by The Fine Line – 9/2006

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White Ghost Shivers Live at Sons of Hermann – Recorded by The Fine Line – 8/2006

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DJ EZ Eddie D Spins at the Darkside Lounge – Recorded by The Fine Line – 9/2006

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Jenn Nabb & Danny Balis Sing Gram Parsons – Recorded at Club Dada by The Fine Line – 9/2006

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This one is still a huge FLL favorite.

Andrea Grimes Live at Club Dada – Recorded by The Fine Line – 9/2006

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I remember actually leaving my car in a no parking zone to rush in to get video of this song…and Carter was there…shit…

Sorta Live at Good Records – Recorded by The Fine Line – 9/2006

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Pink Nasty Live at Good Records – Recorded by The Fine Line – 9/2006

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Smile Smile Live at Good Records (Part of the Quick PodQast Series) – Recorded by The Fine Line – 10/2006

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Is there an announcement coming? Yep. Before that, though, lemme just remember the past few years fondly, just humor me…m’kay?

Saboteur Live at the Double-Wide – Recorded by The Fine Line – 6/25/2006

Astronautalis Live at Good Records – Recorded by The Fine Line – May of 2006

Laura Palmer Live at the Double-Wide – Poorly Recorded by The Fine Line

The Strange Boys Live at the Double-Wide – Recorded by The Fine Line (2006)

Pinebox Serenade Live at the Double-Wide – Recorded by The Fine Line – 2006

Handclaps & Harmonies Live at Club Dada – Recorded by The Fine Line – 2006

Kinky Friedman Speaks at the 2006 Fry Street Fair – Recorded by The Fine Line

The Theater Fire Live at Good Records – Recorded by The Fine Line – 2006

The Chemistry Set Live at Hailey’s – Recorded by The Fine Line – 2006

Couple of Joyful Sinners’ Tunes (RIP)

The Original Old Days…

“Severe Mercy”

Hunter Hauk has a nice interview with one of my musical heroes, Steven Collins in today’s Quick. I love Quick. I know when I go there it’ll be upbeat, positive and entertaining…not so easy to find these days.

The dissolution of the Collins’ marriage was heartbreaking, even for me. They seemed to have been one of those couples that would just sorta stick for life. You can still hear the heartbreak and pain in Steven’s lyrics and even in the interview with Hunter. I feel his pain, I do indeed….

Things have changed for Steven Collins.

Three years ago, the Dallas-raised frontman for the band Deadman was living in McGregor, Texas, with his wife and bandmate Sherilyn. The couple was running a recording studio and enjoying critical acclaim for the haunting, rootsy folk of its second CD, Our Eternal Ghosts.

Today, the 35-year-old singer/songwriter lives in a two-story house in Austin. He still has his studio; he still has Deadman. But he doesn’t have Sherilyn. And while he won’t talk much about their split, new album Severe Mercy says enough.

Mercy, released last week to online music stores, is filled with stark, melodic stories of heartbreak and loss.

Collins says these songs will serve as a sonic link between what Deadman was when Sherilyn was involved and what it’ll be with a new lineup of musicians he’s found to work on the next album….READ IT ALL.

Look for more video and in-depth talk with Steven Collins towards the end of the month…

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Even during the summer, I don’t much like goin’ out to shows on weeknights. Old habit, I guess. Or just that I’m old. But tonight is one ginormous exception. I’m, not only going out, I’m taking the whole FLL video crap wit’me. Live webcast? Maybe.

So I get this email from this dude, Larry, a few weeks back. He wanted to suggest an upcoming show at the Double-Wide with a kid on his roster, Christopher Denny. Okay Lar, I’ll bite….and a big ol’ bite I took. I mean the kid toured with my beloved Avett Brothers, so he couldn’t be all bad, right? Precisely.

Christopher Denny, whose self-titled debut album was released last month, is the oldest twenty-two year old on the planet. He seems to have come of age sometime in the ’30s or ’40s, in the numberless dusty small towns and on the single-lane highways of the American interior, in the company of an itinerant cohort of men whose shoes were soled with cardboard but whose hearts were tender, and who were buoyed along in the margins of society by bad times and good love and the ability to turn all it into a song….

…There is one reason Chris Denny gets away with all this, and that is Chris Denny’s voice. Though it, too, sounds like it belongs to a sun-dried sharecropper in a WPA photograph, it is anachronistically vital, as though that sharecropper were young and hale and retouched in Technicolor. It has something of Jimmie Dale Gilmore’s high-wire whine and Roy Orbison’s throaty moan, but it is not exactly like either of those. It is sometimes like being licked and sometimes like being strangled. It is both smooth and peppery, wave and particle. It is impossible not to orient yourself to it, like a pole. He exerts over it a preternatural control: Here it is clenched and mournful, holed up in the center of his skull, here it is lean and elastic, here so thin the light shines through it. He makes it sound effortless, but there is heat coming off of it; his high notes are cauterizing….

Now here’s the deal. It gets better….check out the evening’s scoopage below and make plans to attend. It’s gon’begreat…

Tuesday, July 15th
Double-Wide
Christopher Denny & the Old Soles / Collin Herring / Beauxregard
Sweet, sweet Heaven of a show
9 pm – Be there, or be a dumbass

PS – Larry also hipped me to the fact that The Avett Brothers recently signed with Columbia Records. Gawd, I hope that’s a good thing.

So when I went to pick up my (still broken) car from the local repair shop, I somehow fell into a conversation with the guy workin’ the desk. I dunno how it came up, but the conversation of Deep Ellum did. He talked about how much he and his wife love going down there for dinner and sometimes a show. He talked about how all the other repair guys lived out north (which is where we were) and knew nothing whatsoever about Deep Ellum.

Then, somehow, our conversation turned to scooters and he said that his in-laws live in Deep Ellum and ride their Honda Scooters all over the place. “Really? How cool!” was my response. He then asked me if I had heard of his father-in-law, Arvel Jernigan. Heh….REALLY small world sometimes. Whodathunk I’d meet Arvel’s son-in-law at a Firestone in far North Dallas.

Now it’s off for a nice 8-24 hours at the dealership….wheeeeeeeeee…

I’m so pissed off right now. My car is a 2007. My air-conditioner has gone out a grand total of 5 times since I got it last year. It’s been out again for about 2-weeks, but every time I take it to the dealership, they are “way too busy” to fix it that same day. Today I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I opted for a local repair shop. The guy said it shouldn’t take too long. So I walked about a half mile to Target, walked back and the car was still sitting in the exact spot, where I parked it. I asked the guy what was up and he said the only person who could fix it was at lunch.

Now it’s 4:30, the car ain’t fixed and the shop closes in 30 minutes. I’m supposed to get a confessional out of Mount Righteous and webcast the entire SPACE/The Melissas show tonight….but I ain’t got a damn car.

…sigh…

…I’d try to make my way to Deep Ellum on the scooter, but I’m too a’scared to go that far yet….where’s that boy-child, perhaps I can con him into a ride…oh wait, I forgot…he has a life…sigh…

Pete tol’ me he was gonna be on Pugs-n-Kelly (Live 105.3) next Friday, but I just heard he’s gonna be on it…like…now.

Tune in, he’s talkin’ Dallas Observer Music Awards and stuff…only BDH is sittin’ in for P&K.

Aaaaah, ’tis turnin’ out to be a totally terrific mornin’. My first read of the day was Jesse Hughey’s delightful review of one of my favorite bands, Beauxregard.

…Beauxregard’s music is also more than the sum of its parts. Its songs are well-crafted without being formulaic, satisfying without being predictable…Rejoice in the splendor.

Of course he be talkin’ ’bout When Balloons Were Sleeves. If the album is anything even close to their live performances, then I’ll take ten.

Read it.

Go see ‘em live and getcherown damn copy…

Tuesday, July 15th
Double Wide
Beauxregard / Chris Denny / The Old Soles / Collin Herring

Friday, July 18th
Lola’s
Beauxregard / Dada Discoteque (formerly MC Router) / Rivercrest Yacht Club / Hack & Slashers

….speaking of Beauxregard and MC Router…enjoy…