I Love Fort Worth Fort Worth's Entertainment Guide

“ANGELS IN AMERICA” AT FORT WORTH OPERA 

fwopera.org

morelifetexas.com

fwcac.com 

By Ken Shimamoto 

Fort Worth’s very own opera company – one of the 14 oldest in the United States -- was started over coffee one morning in 1946 by three “ladies who lunch,” two of whom happened to be ex-opera singers. Legendary diva Lily Pons gave her farewell performance in Fort Worth’s 1962 production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, which also provided Placido Domingo with his first major operatic role in America.  

This year’s spring festival, which runs from May 16th to June 8th, includes a revival of Lucia (May 25th and 30th and June 7th) alongside Puccini’s Turandot, (May 24th and June 1st and 6th) and two modern works: the American Carlisle Floyd’s Of Mice and Men (May 31st and June 8th), based on John Steinbeck’s classic Depression-era novel, and Hungarian composer Peter Eotvos’ Angels In America (May 16th, 18th, 24th, 28th, and 31st, and June 4th and 7th), adapted from Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play depicting the impact of AIDS on a diverse group of New Yorkers during the Reagan ‘80s. 

Angels In America is being presented in conjunction with More Life: The Art and Science of AIDS, a collaboration of more than 45 arts, science and educational organizations (including the Opera and the Fort’s three AIDS service agencies) to increase AIDS knowledge awareness in our community between May 10th and June 8th. The group takes its name from a declaration by Angels In America’s protagonist in the opera’s climactic scene.  

The composer and his librettist, Mari Mezel, condensed the original seven-hour, two-part play down to two and a half hours, focusing less on the political and social ramifications of the crisis and more on the struggles of its characters: the infected Prior and his boyfriend Louis, who leaves him; closeted Joe, his Valium-addicted wife, Harper, and his Mormon mother, Hannah; McCarthy-era figure Roy Cohn (who has AID but denies it, saying he has cancer) and his nurse, Belize. The music features the use of six synthesizers, played by two keyboardists, and the singers wear microphones to allow their voices to blend with the electronic sounds. This is only the second American performance of the opera, and the first by a major professional company. 

Angels In America will be presented at the Scott Theatre in the Fort Worth Community Arts Center. Single tickets start at $17, with half-price seats available for students and military members with ID. Student rush pricing for Angels is $5 for any available seat, starting 30 minutes before curtain. Call 817-731-0726 or visit www.fwopera.org online.

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FREDFEST 

www.fredstexascafe.com 

By Ken Shimamoto 

An annual spring event here in the Fort – like Gallery Night, Main Street Arts Festival, Mayfest, and hailstorms – Fredfest has gone through some changes over the years, as has its venue, Fred’s Texas Café. I remember years gone by when the entertainment included a bunch of dudes sitting around on lawn chairs, pickin’ and grinnin’. Since Lee Allen started booking the talent a couple of years ago, the two-day-long, eclectic music bash on Fred’s patio AKA “The Fort” has become increasingly professional (and no less of a gas). 

Fred’s still offers the best burger in the Fort, for my dollars, and Outlaw Chef Terry Chandler’s specials continue to kick much ass. But changes to the Wild West Side haven’t passed the 30-year-old, family-run business by. I remember thinking “There goes the neighborhood” when the credit card machine first appeared, and when the Frednecks painted over their “Coldass Beer” sign. There have been numerous upgrades to the physical plant, some necessitated by not one but two fires within a year: bye-bye, fonky flyers; so long, warped picnic table. Over the past few months, the wrecking balls have been flying all along West 7th Street, and the terrain surrounding Fred’s now looks like a moonscape, the vista dominated by the cranes that have become the signature sight around downtown. Perhaps anticipating complaints from the yups who’ll people this brave new world (kinda like the ones that shut down open-air live music in the area around 6th Street and Red River in Austin), Fred’s will be enclosing their patio this summer, making thisun the very last al fresco Fredfest. 

Over two days, a whopping 17 bands will grace the stage at “The Fort.” Saturday’s card starts at 1pm with Lafayette, LA-based acoustic bluesman Marty Christian, followed by Southern rock jamband the Rambin Brothers. The 3pm slot belongs to South Side faves the Panther City Bandits – kind of a cross between the Dropkick Murphys and Springsteen – followed by eclectic axe-slinger Darrin Kobetich’s bluegrass outfit, the Blackland River Devils. If you dig Texas singer songwriters, you’ll wanna be there between 5 and 7pm to catch consecutive sets by idiosyncratic original Scott Copeland and “Raz on the Braz” host Terry Razor. Closing the show Saturday are the first two installments of the “Matt Hembree Weekend.” The versatile bassist plays in a bunch of bands, and three of them will be playing at Fredfest. At 7pm, it’s smart pop-rockers Goodwin (who finally released their sophomore disc 2 this year), while at 8pm, Fort Worth institution Pablo & the Hemphill 7 will take the stage for a two-hour reggae romp. 

Sunday, the tunes resume at 1pm with Tarantula Pants, an outfit that includes a couple of Fred’s staff in its lineup. Darrin Kobetich plays a solo set at 2pm, followed by Soulever Lift (imagine a less metallic Living Colour). Next up is Impulse of Will, the former Wednesday night Wreck Room jamcats, now holding it down at Fred’s and Lola’s, followed at 5pm by Haltom City’s pride, the mighty Me-Thinks, whose frontguy Ray Liberio is also doing double duty in Hembree’s other other band, proto-punk obsessives Stoogeaphilia (along with your humble narrator o’ events). In between will be Proud Warrior, an outfit led by Fort Worth Weekly scribe Caroline Collier and featuring another muso who’s playing three Fredfest sets, Scott Vernon. Besides playing bass with Proud Warrior, Scott’s fronting reconstituted ska-rockers Sally Majestic at 8pm, then backing acoustic magician Daniel Katsuk (back home after a sojourn in Colorado) to close the show. 

The $5 cover (to be donated to a charity unspecified as I write this) gets you a head spinning mix of tunes, just a taste of the galaxy of talent that is the Fort. Go check it out so that after they’ve finished building North Dallas on West 7th Street, you can tell all the newbs that you were there Way Back When.

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TEXAS BALLET THEATER  

texasballettheater.org 

By Ken Shimamoto 

When I was a snotnose, I used to roll my eyes white upward every time my sister wanted to watch the ballet on TV. The stuff just didn’t move me. Then when my middle daughter was in her early teens, as part of my duty as a good parent to expose my kids to culcha, I took her to see The Nutcracker one Christmas and was muy impressed by the strength and grace of the dancers. The sheer athleticism of the spectacle, seen up close and personal, won me over. 

Wouldn’t ya know it, besides having world-class museums and a great symphony, the Fort is also home to the Texas Ballet Theater – a professional company with dancers from Brazil, Chile, Italy, Ukraine, and all over the United States. Founded by Margot Dean in 1961, professional since 1984, the company has been led by artistic director Ben Stevenson, O.B.E., since 2003. Besides performing at the Bass Hall, Dallas’ Majestic Theatre and the Music Hall at Fair Park, the group also operates the Texas Ballet Theater School, offering instruction in ballet, jazz, and modern dance at campuses in Dallas and Fort Worth. The troupe’s special matinee performances give thousands of schoolchildren the opportunity to experience live ballet. Through its City Dance program, 250 students receive weekly ballet classes for an entire school year and attend performances of The Nutcracker and Cinderella.  

Artistic director Stevenson is the only non-Chinese to serve as an honorary faculty member of the Beijing Dance Academy and the Shenyang Conservatory of Music, and it’s through this connection that Texas Ballet Theater will perform at the China Shanghai International Arts Festival this fall. In Shanghai, the Texans -- including Andre Silva and Lonnie Weeks, who brought home silver and bronze medals from last year’s Shanghai International Ballet Competition -- will dance the full-length ballet Cleopatra for a TV audience of over 500 million. Sponsorship of the trip by American Airlines and DFW International Airport is designed to promote leisure travel to the Metromess from China,  which is now permitted under a memorandum of agreement signed by the U.S. and Chinese governments in December 2007. 

Stevenson, a former principal dancer with the London Festival Ballet, choreographed his first ballet, The Sleeping Beauty, for Dame Margot Fonteyn. His Dracula, set to the music of Franz Liszt, runs this weekend (April 18-20) at the Bass Hall. Performances are at 8pm Friday, 2pm and 8pm Saturday, and 2pm Sunday. Tickets start at $18 (for upper gallery) for Saturday’s matinee and $24 for all other performances.

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HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE CHAT ROOM 

www.myspace.com/thechatroompub 

By Ken Shimamoto 

I loved the Wreck Room. It was my living room, three miles away from home. My sweetie ‘n’ I had our wedding reception there. I played shows with Stoogeaphilia there my last two birthdays. We even published a book about it. (The second printing was probably an ill-advised act of hubris, but it gave me lotsa copies to drunkenly push on people during the closing week.) Since it closed, I’ve felt kinda like a stateless person. When I ran into Kenny Smith at Malone’s (an incident recounted in my bar roundup a few weeks back) and he asked me, “So, where are you drinking these days?” the real answer was, “At home.” 

Good news: I no longer feel like a stateless person. I think we might have found our spot. And as much as we love Brian Forella, Carl Pack, and Andre Edmonson, it’s not Lola’s. Don’t get me wrong: I see great merit to Spune Productions’ policy of bringing Gypsy Tea Room-level marquee talent to the Fort. If I can see a band like, say, Dengue Fever without having to drive to Dallas, that’s a bonusburger. Why, their website is even updated frequently (although the sign outside still says 6th Street Live). But as great as the sound and staging there have become with Andre’s continual improvements (for he’s a great production manager, is he), Lola’s definitely doesn’t feel like my living room. Now, the Moon has the same sorta neighborhood bar-with-music-policy vibe we like, and since Chris Maunder moved his stage, it feels even more like a rawk room. Problem is, the Berry Street location means that ‘twixt September and May, it’s gonna be full of obnoxious TCU frat daddies – the kinda folks I didn’t like being around even when I was young, stupid, and drunk. 

The place we’ve been going is the Chat Room at 1263 West Magnolia in the historic Fairmount district – home to hip havens like Spiral Diner and Panther City Bicycles, not to mention Benito’s (my favorite place on Earth to eat), King Tut, and Nona Tatta’s (where we haven’t eaten yet but intend to once we can fabricate an occasion to do so). I first visited the neighborhood in the early ‘90s to fall by the veterans’ center there when I got out of the service, and a decade later, I used to rehearse there with Nathan Brown in Dave Karnes’ apartment on Adams Street in what I generally think of as “the Theater Fire house.” I recently learned that back when what’s now the Chat Room was still known as Club Nowhere, future Me-Thinks Ray Liberio and Sir Marlin Von Bungy used to live in what’s now Don and Aprell Feagin’s place. Lately you can tell that there are some development dollars flowing into the ‘hood; there are fewer empty storefronts and one can only hope that the strong neighborhood association will forestall 7th Street-like gentrification/yuppification. 

I first set foot in the Chat last Halloween, when the Great Tyrant was playing and there were as many people on the patio outside as there were in the tee-tiny room inside. I was reminded of revisiting the Continental Club in Austin 25 years after I used to go there to hear the Explosives play and thinking, “How did those big times ever fit in this tiny room?” There’s no stage and the P.A. is minimal, but the crowd is hip and the vibe is right. (When Stoogeaphilia played our first show there, I was surprised that more of “the kids” seemed to know the music than they did at the Black Dog or even El Wreck. And that night was the first time I’ve ever had anyone in Fort Worth wanna talk to me about Glenn Branca.) 

Chat Room owners Brad Hensarling and Brandin Lea are both musos who’ve toured nationally (with John Lamonica and Flickerstick, respectively) and so know first-hand how much bands appreciate a house that treats them well (a Wreck Room calling card in the old days, by the way). The Chat started out its forays into live music a coupla years ago with Cadillac Fraf, who’s still a regular there as a patron and performer. The Panther City Bandits cut their teeth there, and the room’s also a home base for the Tony Ferraro mafia of bands (Eaton Lake Tonics/Scene Girls/RTB2/etc.) – possibly because Tony shares digs with Ben Rogers, one of several former CD Warehouse employees around town who know me from when I spent a few years liquidating my collection to pay child support, buy food, etc. Ben books bands for the Chat – a mix of locals and touring indie acts -- and makes sure the trains run on time during shows there. My sweetie calls him “the Andre Edmonson of Magnolia Avenue,” and with good reason – he, too is a great production manager (and publicist). Ben and soundman Eric Ortiz do an outstanding job with limited resources. 

But the Chat Room staff don’t just treat bands well; they treat everyone well. It’s been frequently remarked upon that every Chat Room bartender will introduce him/herself, ask you your name, and then use it a la Starbucks. Sure, it’s a customer service technique, but I like consideration that includes the observation of little social rituals like, um, greeting people and using heir names. And service at the Chat is always gracious, even when they’re slammed. (Incongruous in a rawk dump? Maybe. And I’ll admit that I miss getting yelled at by Carl Pack, but then again, you can’t get that anywhere anymore.) There’s a neighborhood-spot sense of ease about the place. Billy Wilson has even moved his Thursday night Lost watching parties there. I just confirmed my birthday Stoogeshow with Ben. This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

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Transient Songs’ Plantation To Your Youth 

www.indiancasinorecords.com/TransientSongs.aspx 

By Ken Shimamoto 

One of my favorite revolving crap games in the incestuous universe of Fort Worth music is the infamous Haltom City-Riverside crew – a mob of miscreants now in their mid-30s, most of whom attended Haltom or Boswell High Schools, and many of whom play in bands that partied and jammed at the storied Warehouse #58 in the weed grown wilds of Haltom City, at least until unscrupulous bahstids burglarized the place in the spring of 2007, absconding with an estimated $40K in vintage gear. (Thieves, if you’re reading this, I hope your eyeballs fall out.)   

Most illustrious among ‘em are the mighty Me-Thinks, the H.C.’s answer to Motorhead (even though most of ‘em reside in, um, Oakhurst these days). The crew also includes Shotgun Messenger, an ‘80s metal/Southern boogie-inspahrd mob with previous incarnations as the Riverside Ramblers and Mullet Malicia; Barrel Delux, a twisted take on Americana whose frontman Mike Bandy has been playing second guitar in the Me-Thinks the past couple of years; multi-instrumentalist Sean French of the Theater Fire and ex-Blood of the Sun/current Slick Lady 6 axeman Richard Hurley. 

A key player in this convoluted mess is John Frum, a guitarist-singer-songwriter who’s resided in Seattle for the past decade or so, whose new EP with his “hermetic project” Transient Songs will be the ultimate subject of this screed. A shadowy figure who takes his nom de roque from a mythic World War II GI worshipped by South Pacific cargo cultists, the West Virginia-born Frum is rumored to be the alter ego of Jack Bensonhurst, honcho of Indian Casino Records, the label that released the Me-Thinks epochal Make Mine A Double E.P. on an unsuspecting world last year and has been trying to recoup its investment ever since. In the ‘90s, Frum fronted Hasslehorse, a long-lived H.C. indie band that released a CD, The Chicken Factory, in 1996 and might well have been the first band ever to play at the late, lamented Wreck Room (depending whose story you believe; Woodeye and the Gideons have also claimed that distinction). 

Frum’s co-conspirators in Hasslehorse were singer-guitarist Vinny Pimentel, bassist Ratsamy Pathammavong, and drummer Ray Liberio. Ray had previously played with Frum in the H.C. bands Jon Doe and Father Sprout. After The Chicken Factory was recorded, Chris Lundy AKA Sir Marlin Murray Von Bungy, a veteran of more bands than you’d care to shake a stick at, was added on keyboards, possibly because Ray’s mom Audrey (who’d played piano on the record) wasn’t available for live gigs. 

Inevitably – for every band is hardwired to self-destruct -- Hasslehorse drifted apart, Vinny and Rat joining ex-Dragworm Bandy in Hell Damn Crap, which in the fullness of time became Barrel Delux, while Frum, Ray and Marlin started a weekly routine of meeting up at the warehouse to write and record songs on Frum’s 4-track. Initially dubbed The Pine Barons, until they learned that a barbershop quartet had the name first, they were then called Custom Blare, adding Will Risinger (who’d played with Marlin in the Beauty Mutants and Wizbang) on drums so they could play live. It was in response to a Custom Blare recording that a FW Weekly scribe blasted Frum’s “septic Prince Albert vocals.” When Frum decamped for Seattle, Ray and Marlin simply swapped guitar and bass duties and voila: the Me-Thinks! 

Up in the land of Microsoft, Starbucks, and flannel shirts, Frum’s initial attempts to recapture the communal music-making ethos of his misspent youth proved futile, so he withdrew into the seclusion of his home recording studio. He and Ray have recorded a few tracks there as The Pungent Sound during Ray’s annual Washington visits, some results of which -- including the legendary “Murder and Sushi” -- have sadly been lost in various computer crashes. At the rate they’re going, they’ll have an EP done by the middle of the next decade. In the meantime, Frum’s struck up a similar musical partnership with multi-instrumentalist Jimmy Andrews, and the duo has recorded five songs under the rubric Transient Songs, which come to us on shiny silver disc in the form of Plantation To Your Youth. 

It seems wholly appropriate that this music should originate in the PacNW, where garage psychedelia never seems to go out of fashion. I could namecheck a buncha ‘90s indie rock “influences,” relevant only because that’s the time period when Frum got his music wings, but at the end of the day, doesn’t this kind of thing always come down to Syd Barrett, Neil Young, and ’69 Lou Reed (not to mention Revolver)? The expat Texan’s “septic” years are behind him, and he’s gained some vocal dynamism, as well as learning to employ judicious reverb and F/X to achieve an optimal spaciness. Guitar-wise, Frum favors dense layers of thick-textured axe architecture – electric, acoustic, and slide – that you can get lost in. At their most lysergic, Frum’s constructions recall the Montana-based “psychedelic collective” Donovan’s Brain. The tracks are jam-packed with sonic detail, but not in a way that seems cluttered or overproduced. 

Frum allows that back in Hasslehorse daze, he was still a “developing” songwriter, and thinks his new work is his best. We’re inclined to agree. “Greenwood Backyards” is a mere sketch of a song, like the title track on Stumptone’s newie Gravity Finally Released, but it sets the mood for what’s to follow. “Plantation To Your Youth” jangles like the Byrds on steroids and human growth hormone, recalling early misbehavior in lines like “You tore up the place / And you replaced / Your self-esteem / With drugs and a new face.” (Could this be an allusion to Mercury Rev’s Yerself Is Steam, one wonders? In places, Frum’s singing has the same bewildered-child quality as Mercury Rev’s Jonathan Donahue.) 

“Southern City Saturdays” opens with crystalline arpeggios as Frum’s wastrel narrator reveals a capacity for regret: “You’ve got a heart that just won’t quit / And I’ve got a head so full of shit / Spending all my time at the bottom of the cup / All the precious time I could have spent with you” before the anthemic chorus paints a cityscape with some lovely images (“bicycle girls and drunks on the pier…I can hear your heartbeat from here”), culminating in a soaring instrumental bridge. “Locust Shells” is a 30something ditch-traveler’s rumination on roads not taken, rendered in grand Floydian style and boasting a muscular fuzzed-out solo, leading into a pretty major-7th outro.  

All of the self-doubt of the previous songs gives way to acceptance on the climactic “Living With Decay,” as Frum digs into the ringing chords, savoring them the same way his protagonist savors his own life: “How would you like to go / Back to our old home / Where people are sick and getting old and dying / And being born.” It’s “A Rake’s Progress” in five songs and under 20 minutes. 

With Plantation at the manufacturer and available online for streaming or download, Indian Casino has releases in the pipe from Barrel Delux and Sean French’s creepy-folk project Eyes, Wings, and Many Other Things: proof positive that you can keep your bad habits (and your old friends) well into your 30s. The H.C.-Riverside crew wouldn’t have it any other way.

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THE FORT WORTH BURRITO PROJECT BENEFIT AT FRED’S 

www.myspace.com/fortworthburritoproject 

By Ken Shimamoto 

A number of years ago, when my children were still small, we were walking downtown when we a homeless man approached and asked me for money. I refused him and we walked on. After awhile, my oldest asked, “But Dad, how would you feel if that man died because we didn’t help him?” 

A few years after that, when my middle child was in high school, she and one of her ‘zine-scribing friends used to interview homeless people downtown. “We’ll only do it together, in public places where there are lots of other people around,” she promised me. She was very upset when she read in the paper about the homeless dude who got kicked to death outside Ripley Arnold Housing Project. 

I hope my children always stay as compassionate as they were at young ages. 

Yesterday, I played with Stoogeaphilia at a benefit show for the Fort Worth Burrito Project at Fred’s Texas Café.  The Burrito Project is a crew of local folks who meet up at 2pm every Sunday in the Trinity Park shelter house (West 7th and Stayton). From there, they disperse on bikes and in trucks to distribute home-cooked burritos, bottled water, second-hand clothes and (a big favorite) new socks to homeless people around the downtown area. They’ve been doing it since January and while the cat that got the ball rolling has moved to Dallas (where he’s started another burrito project), their mission statement stresses that “there is no burrito project headquarters or leader or the need for one.” They’re not into personal recognition, just doing what they do. It’s DIY-ismo at its best.  

It’s also no surprise that fonky Fred’s was hosting one stage of this benefit (the others were at 1919 Hemphill and the Bronx Zoo). After all, the Chandler family has been cooking turkey dinners for the homeless every Christmas for years now, and their annual Fredfest has raised money for the Tarrant Area Food Bank. 

We got there in time to catch the tail end of the set by a girl ‘n’ boy duo of Mansfield teens that go by the unwieldy moniker Hands for Bad Habits. Their Myspace thingy says that they “don’t expect to go far, just to have some fun while we’re still kids,” which seems like a fine idea. Wizard o’ sound Andre Edmonson was running the board, which is always a good thing. 

Next up were literate whiteboy rappers the Rivercrest Yacht Club, whose remix of Carey Wolff’s “Untold Stories” I’d heard a few months back. The ex-Woodeye frontman stopped by on his way to tend bar at Malone’s, so he happened to be in the house when the RYC boyzzz played his song – a first. The Yacht Club, consisting of  DJMCDDS (a guy in a gorilla mask), Generic (aka FW Weekly scribe Eric Griffey), and Heffminster de la Roca, wowed the crowd with Beastie Boys-like antics while dropping rhymes like “I’m feeling amorous / So uncap the cameras.” 

The little Stoogeband continued its trail of destruction by blowing a driver on one of Andre’s speaker columns, causing it to smoke and require replacement (sorry, Dre), and played a set that was guaranteed 70% Stooges material (actually more than that, because we had to drop one tune for time’s sake) plus Dead Boys “What Love Is” (which we like real much since breaking it in at the Chat Room 3.9.2008) and Sir Steffin’s guitar tour de force on Television (not Telephone, Linda)’s “Marquee Moon.” For the record, the T-shirts of the day were Dengue Fever, Johnny Thunders, Roxy Music For Your Pleasure, and Clash London Calling. 

Watching Fish Fry Bingo’s set of, um, nouveau hillbilly tuneage, I realized I’d seen them before, at the terminal location of the Black Dog Tavern (RIP). A high point of the day was watching a friend’s kids dancing to their jams (at one point, the two-year-old took off in the direction of the stage, with his mom in hot pursuit).  

Some folks are ambivalent about street feeding (on the “give a man a fish…” theory), and I’d heard than an earlier attempt to do something along similar lines wound up getting shut down by the FWPD. I asked one of the Burrito Project folks if they were getting hassled by the cops. She said, “No, we never have been. There was a police car there last weekend, but I think he was just looking out for us.” Fort Worth’s a different town than it was in the ‘80s.  

Myself, I’m just impressed that someone is actually doing something, on an ongoing basis, to address the needs of the hungry homeless in this town. It’s like a lot of things I’ve been seeing and hearing lately that have been giving me HOPE, and opening my eyes to the idea that “our community” is as big or as small as we want to make it.

Click Here For A Few Burrito Project Fundraiser Photos
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A JOURNEY THROUGH THE PAST WITH A FORT WORTH JAZZ INSITUTION 

By Ken Shimamoto 

Approaching the 25th anniversary of his long-running gig at Sardines Ristorante Italiano, where he’s performed six nights a week since 1983, the prolific jazz pianist Jhon Kahsen, AKA Johnny Case -- who’s been recording and releasing his own music since 1969 -- has good reason to be contemplating the past.  

My mother says that she’s never alone because all the people that made her who she is are with her all the time. Case/Kahsen seems to view his own musical history in the same light. As he writes in the liner notes to one of a trio of new discs -- one of which is available now and the other two of which are due for release in September to coincide with his Sardines anniversary – Johnny’s recording efforts were originally intended to document the work of collaborators whose work would otherwise have gone unrecorded. He embraces and celebrates his own origins in western swing and country music as much as he does his avant-garde and modern classical influences. 

Letting first things be first, Four Roses Suite: A Blend is Johnny’s “remix album,” if you like, a sampling from over 20 releases which he edited into a single 45-minute track. Over its course, you’ll hear straight ahead trio blowing; steel guitar jazz and western swing featuring steelmeisters Tom Morrell, Maurice Anderson, and Chuck Caldwell; hot jazz violin by Buddy Wallis; ruminative solo pieces by Johnny and his 7-string guitarist brother Jerry Case; and a setting of the closing speech from the controversial French dramatist Jean Genet’s play The Maids, sung by operatic soprano Donna Thompson -- a sonority that Alban Berg fan Johnny also included in his “Peace and Justice Suite” Love’s Bitter Rage in 2005.  

When I profiled Johnny for the FW Weekly a few seasons back, one story that didn’t make the editorial cut went a long way, I thought, to illustrating the relationship between veteran musos like Case and the many younger cats that he’s mentored and fostered over the years. It concerns Byron Gordon, bassist on Johnny’s Waiting for the Moment and Love’s Bitter Rage CDs, who’s probably better known for his work with the rock band Calhoun. Years ago, while majoring in classical performance at TCU, Byron was also a busboy at Sardines. At that time, the late Charles Scott was Johnny’s regular bassist, and towards the end of his life, Charles went through a period when he was experiencing equipment problems – first with his amplifier, then with his bass. Johnny recalls that a very diffident and respectful Byron offered to bring first his amp, then his own instrument up to the restaurant and left them on the stand for “Mr. Scott” to use.  

One day, Byron hesitantly approached Johnny and asked if he could sit in on a tune; Johnny agreed, and within three or four bars, he heard “that thing” that he looks for in a bassist. When Charles’ health declined to the point where he was unable to make the gig, Johnny called Byron to sub, and Gordon ultimately took over the gig when the elder musician passed. “I’ll do it,” Johnny remembers Byron saying, “but I wish Mr. Scott was playing instead of me.” Both men are heard to good advantage in the Four Roses Suite. 

Of the 14 tunes included in the mashup, ten are Case originals. Inasmuch as most of the material he plays on his Sardines sets comes from his extensive knowledge of jazz and Tin Pan Alley standards (and indeed, of any music he’s encountered in the course of 60 years on the planet), it’s easy to forget that composition is also an important part of his artistry. Special mention also needs to be made of Jerry Case’s playing. While Jerry’s fretwork might lack the flamboyance of a Clint Strong, Tom Reynolds, or Paul Metzger, he comes from an older school of guitarissimo where players would try to wow each other with new chord inversions rather than hot licks. Country fiddler turned symphony geek turned rocker Reggie Rueffer once demonstrated a similar attitude during a listening session at his house, when he ripped a Stefane Grappelli record off the turntable with a dismissive, “He’s just doing tricks!” and replaced it with a more satisfying Svend Amundsen side. (Perhaps Sam Walker is the closest analog to Jerry on the current Fort Worth scene.) 

Johnny’s compositional acumen and Jerry’s guitaring come to the fore on Texas Sunset Suite, a set of western swing-inspired Case originals (with one cover – guitarist Jimmy Bryant’s “Bryant’s Bounce”) that serves as a kind of memorial for frequent Case collaborator Tom Morrell, who left the planet last January 29th.  

Texas Sunset Suite is, in Case’s words, “jazz influenced by a bastardized form of jazz.” Western swing was born in 1930, when Milton Brown and Bob Wills teamed up as the Aladdin Laddies (later the Light Crust Doughboys) over the airwaves of WBAP, right here in Fort Worth. (For a good read, check out Duncan MacLean’s Lone Star Swing, a Scottish enthusiast’s account of a journey through Texas in search of the music’s “true meaning.”) Basically jazz wearing a cowboy hat, western swing was dance music without a drummer, with fiddles and steel guitars as its dominant solo voices, and it enjoyed tremendous popularity through the ‘30s and ‘40s. By the time the Case brothers arrived on the set in 1963, the music’s popularity had waned, although it enjoyed a somewhat resurgence with the early ‘70s arrival of still-active revivalists Asleep At the Wheel. Unlike AATW, Case writes, “Wolf” Morrell never considered the music “retro.” Starting in 1995, Morrell released 16 volumes of western swing under the rubric How the West Was Swung. (Thanks to my former bandmate Frank Logan, himself the son of a western swing fiddler, for letting me hear the first couple of those when they were new.) 

A steel player booked for the date was unable to make the sessions, so it’s left to the Case brothers and a rhythm section to evoke the spirit of the music without the sounds of either of its signature instruments. Mark Abbott on bass and Billy English on drums are more straightforward timekeepers than the teams that usually accompany Johnny; for comparison’s sake, dig the disc’s final track, “Crudscraper Blues,” a Love’s Bitter Rage session outtake (excerpted in the Four Roses Suite) with Byron Gordon on bass and Joey Carter on drums. Similarly, the chord voicings the pianist employs here generally seem brighter and less abstracted than we’re used to hearing from him. The lovely country ballad “Drifting Back” is especially fine; here and elsewhere, Jerry Case plays with great warmth and sensitivity. His blues-drenched, octave-enhanced solos are a particular treat, evocative of ‘50s Blue Note Records mainstays like Kenny Burrell and Grant Green.  

Last but far from least, Strays…and Other Songs is a trio date with busy bassist Jeremy Hull (whose multitudinous rock/jazz/country/Latin activities would require a paragraph of their own just to enumerate) and Daniel Tcheco, the most ebulliently assertive percussionist Johnny’s ever worked with. Sometimes at Sardines, Danny’s Elvinesque energy threatens to overflow off the bandstand and propel the whole room into orbit.  

The selection of tunes here pays tribute to music Johnny remembers from his earliest days as a musician and beyond: “I do not forget the music that meant something special to me in my early years as it is part of my total musicality,” he writes.  Thus, Jerry Goldsmith and Pete Rugolo’s “Three Stars Will Shine Tonight” will be recognizable to listeners of a certain age as the theme from the old Dr. Kildare TV show, while “Ten High” (here credited to pianist-bandleader Elliott Lawrence) is a theme Case originally heard on a transcription disc of a radio show marking the tenth anniversary of the U.S. Air Force’s Continental Air Command. “I Want To Be With You Always” is a Latin arrangement of an early ‘50s country hit penned by Lefty Frizzell.  “Dewey Dex” weds a 12-bar Dexter Gordon blues line with a middle eight Johnny composed in honor of a Dex admirer, the late Fort Worth tenorman Dewey Redman, while “One Bud Left to Blossom” grafts 16 bars composed by Case onto another 16 he originally heard on a homemade recording by violinist Buddy Wallis. 

The CD’s final track, “From Where Strays Never Call Home,” is an example of the totally improvised music you could hear at Sardines now-defunct Avant-Garde Tuesdays between August 2006 and March 2008. The interplay between the three musos here is near telepathic, and the music’s impact is visceral and stunning. I realize this is the third time in a week I’ve written something crabbing about free jazz’s continuing pariah status here in the Fort, but whatthehell. If you never made it out for one of the evenings, you really missed out. If you ask Johnny, maybe he’ll burn you a copy of Toby Guinn’s recording of the very first one, which featured Chicago percussionist Joshua Manchester. 

Three new Johnny Case CDs in one week is almost too much goodness to hope for. You’ll have to wait until September to hear most of this music, but the wait will be worthwhile. The FW Weekly was correct to induct Johnny into its Fort Worth Music Hall of Fame’s inaugural 2004 class, but I’m of the opinion that his best work is being done in the now. Check him out any night except Monday at Sardines; you owe it to yourself. 

Web Resources: 

Johnny Case/Jhon Kahsen -- www.myspace.com/johnnycase

Western Swing -- http://www.yodaslair.com/dumboozle/western/westdex.html

Tom Morrell -- http://www.westernswing.net/morrell/

Audio excerpt from Joshua Manchester’s recording of Sardines first avant garde evening: http://odeo.com/audio/1706593/view

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PPT’s Denglish 

myspace.com/ppt3 

By Ken Shimamoto 

Since we last heard from ‘em, on last year’s Tres Monos In Love, the three rappers-producers-conceptualists-nutballs in PPT – Pikahsso, Picnictyme, and Tahiti, to give ‘em their names – have toured nationally, garnered praise from mass-market rags like SPIN, and been voted “Best Hip Hop Artist” in the 2007 Dallas Observer music awards. Clearly poised for mass-ass acceptance ‘n’ success on an Outkast/Gnarls Barkley level, they’ve followed up with Denglish, a concept album whose curious title is based on a mashup of  “Dallas” and “English,” filled with music that, in similar fashion, conflates hip-hop and Britpop signifiers.  

Perhaps inspahrd by Gnarls Barkley’s Abbey Road sesh, PPT’s members adopt faux Brit accents – even when they’re claiming their hometown, as on “Dallas Got That Soul,” “God Save the ‘D,’” and “Dallas Lady,” which features the immortal line “conspiracy love on the grassy knoll” -- and alter egos: Seth Wayne Garphunkel, C.L. Pasio the Third, and Professor Magnus Pyke. (Dunno ‘bout the provenance of the other two, but Dr. Magnus Pike was a real-life Brit egghead, eccentric, and media figure who played the mad scientist in Thomas Dolby’s “She Blinded Me With Science” vid.)  The album’s artwork is very Beatles Yellow Submarine-referential, with the three monkeys from Tres Monos In Love peeking out from behind PPT’s cartoon images, and Big D done up like a Daisy Age Swinging London. The short film on the accompanying DVD is shot in B&W in the manner of A Hard Day’s Night and features a dastardly villain (played by Chomsky guitarist Glen Reynolds, whose evil axework is all over the CD), complete with evil accomplice, and a silly musical number. 

They would have done better to 86 the accents, which tend to come and go the way they did with that kid in your high school play, but the mannerism doesn’t detract from the quality of the songcraft, which is what’s really happenin’ here. After introducing the concept, PPT hits hard ‘n’ fast with three showcases of their signature strengths that are as good as the best songs from Tres Monos – “Dallas Got Soul”’s loping Dirty South groove, “Who’s That Girl?”’s nod to ‘80s Gap Band synth-funk, and “Jubilee (Til the Sunlight)”’s bustin’ out old-school ebullience. Then the weirdness begins. “Save It for Another Day” sounds like Bell Biv Devoe woulda if Ray Davies had been their lyricist. On “Love Crimes,” guest vocalist Cory Watson (from Idol Records stable mates Black Tie Dynasty) does a convincing job of evoking the heyday of Anglo depresso-rock in the form of Morrissey, Ian Curtis, and that dude from the Human League. “American Weirdo,” with Reynolds’ super-compressed acoustic mixed high, mashes up Sgt. Pepper’s music hall pastiche with a Fab Four “yeah yeah yeah” chorus. And “God Save the ‘D’” hits like Sir Nose D’ Voidoffunk in A Night At the Opera. 

For all their wiggy bits, PPT prove themselves to be basically a reality-based crew with “Daydream,” the album’s best lyric, which casts a disapproving eye on a fella with his head stuck in the clouds (or where the sun don’t shine): “You’re wasting all your time / With all your silly dreams / There’s work to be done.” And they save the best for last, closing Denglish with “To Me Mum,” Tahiti’s heartfelt addition to the canon of hip-hop mom songs (Tahiti’s late mother, a special education teacher, woulda been mighty proud of her son when he performed at the Black History Month assembly of a school for medically fragile, multi-disabled kids here in the Fort back in February), and “Coming Back,” a touring muso’s hymn to home. No sophomore slump here. Myself, I’m ready to see these guys on the Saturday morning cartoons like the Jackson 5, or better still, with a weekly sitcom like the Monkees. Hell, Pikahsso’s even got a wool hat…

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Shirley Clarke’s Ornette: Made In America DVD 

http://www.synergeticpress.com/video.html 

By Ken Shimamoto 

When I met Mike Watt at SXSW a few years back and told him I was from Fort Worth, he immediately exclaimed “Caravan of Dreams!” I had to tell the ex-Minuteman .....Click Here To Read More

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Wes Race’s Cryptic Whalin’! 

www.thecoolgroove.com/wesrace.html

By Ken Shimamoto 

A few years back, when I briefly played second guitar for Lady Pearl’s B.T.A. Band, subbing for a muso who was also a schoolteacher and so used to like to miss the ..... Click Here To Read More

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IF THEY BUILD IT, YOU WILL COME

www.fwcats.com

By Ken Shimamoto

I love the American myth of baseball. I love it much more, in fact, than I love watching any games, which are .....Click Here To Read More

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WHERE EVERYBODY KNOWS YOUR NAME 

By Ken Shimamoto 

You and me, we'll start something up. A bar, maybe. Two Irish kids from Brooklyn, how could we not have a bar? Green beer for St. Paddy's Day, free hot dogs for Monday Night Football. Think about it. Old fashioned jukebox sitting in the corner… Click Here To Read More
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ALL THE FORT’S A STAGE 

By Ken Shimamoto 

Caught Jubilee Theatre’s production of Romulus Linney’s A Lesson Before Dying last weekend – first time I’d been out to the tradition-rich downtown theater this season. There were a lot of..... Click Here To Read More

The Great Tyrant’s “Candy Canes”/”Walking Through the Walls” 

myspace.com/thegreattyrant 

By Ken Shimamoto 

We saw tears trickle down his cheeks and fall on the keys, which, though wet, were now struck in a strongly dissonant chord. At the same time he opened his mouth Click Here To Read More
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THE STATE OF JAZZ IN THE FORT 

By Ken Shimamoto
 
These days, the opportunities to hear live jazz in Fort Worth are more plentiful than they’ve been in quite a few seasons. Back in the ‘80s, world-class jazzers like Cowtown native.......Click Here To Read More

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