Ghostcar’s New CD Is Online Now 

By Ken Shimamoto 

http://www.reverbnation.com/ghostcar

http://www.myspace.com/ghostcardfw 

Maybe it’s true that nobody buys CDs anymore. That’s what Indian Casino Records honcho John Frum said when I interviewed him for a Fort Worth Weekly cover story awhile back. Dallas writer-muso Jeff Liles says that he’s trying to convince Bill Wisener of Bill’s Records fame to give away a CD with every vinyl record he sells. For the digital-only slaves, the iPod has become the weapon of choice, while the savvy labels are manufacturing vinyl again (in small runs) for those still infatuated with The Romance of the Artifact. 

Ghostcar’s leader-trumpeter Karl Poetschke is still talking about releasing a new CD, but he’s also made all of the tracks (which remain untitled except by number) available online: “Ghostcar 24,” “…21,” and “…16” can be streamed from the band’s Myspace page, while the other six tracks are downloadable from its page on the ReverbNation site. (They’re in good company; the pianist Vijay Iyer has all of his albums streaming in their entirety on his website, banking on enough serious listeners being willing to shell out for better-than-MP3 quality to make the enterprise worthwhile.) 

The band, which had been on hiatus while Poetschke – who now resides in Arizona -- was off playing on cruise ships and working as a wilderness guide in Alaska (really!), reconvened last weekend for a show at the Lounge in Deep Ellum. Bassist Chris Perdue has been taking care of family stuff, guitarist Daniel Huffman was on the road with the Polyphonic Spree last year, and force-of-nature drummer Clay Stinnett kept his chops up playing with blues and cover bands (not to mention PFFFFT!) before hooking up with ex-Baboon musos as The Boom Boom Box and playing their third show to 3,000 people, opening for the Toadies in Houston. 

Like Urizen, a band Caroline Collier profiled in the February 18th Weekly, Ghostcar is misunderstood. In Urizen’s case, I’ve often thought that the band’s own marketing might be holding them back from finding their “real” audience. While they bill themselves as black metal and have opened lots of Ridglea shows for touring Scandinavians, Urizen’s really an art project a la Devo – high concept and high yuk. (Maybe their recent foray into Denton will strike some chords with the black turtleneck wearers there.) In the same way, while Ghostcar gets tarred with the “jazz/improv” brush because of the trumpet, they’re really perfect fodder for shoegaze/trance listeners, with Huffman’s heavily processed guitar sounding like an entire orchestra at times and the Perdue-Stinnett engine room laying down a relentless groove. Now Poetschke is employing effects in a way that goes far beyond the ‘70s Miles comparisons he’s drawn since he was Sivad way, wa-a-ay back in ’97. 

Give the tracks a spin and then drop Karl a line. He’s looking for ideas to title the tracks.

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SZECHUAN 

By Ken Shimamoto 

There are certain places here in town where I’ve just been eating forever: Kincaid’s, Zeke’s, the Montgomery Street Café. Whenever we get in the mood for Chinese, it’s usually takeout from Szechuan  -- a spot that’s been doing business at 5712 Locke, just off Camp Bowie Blvd, for over 30 years now – that we’ll use to satisfy our hunger. 

When I was a teenager working my first job, I had my first adult experience of going out to appreciate a good meal when my best bud and I used to go out on payday and eat huge Chinese feasts: soup, appetizers, an entrée for each of us plus an extra one, all three of them to be shared between us. These days we tend to eat our Szechuan feast at our own kitchen table. We haven’t taken advantage of their takeout service yet, however. 

We always start out with Szechuan’s hot and sour soup, which is the best food I know of to clear up your head when you’re suffering upper respiratory distress, better even than Benito’s chicken soup. Our preferred appetizer is the fried scallops, served on a flavorful bed of bean sprouts and scallions. For entrees, we’ll choose between the moo shi pork (a favorite of mine since teenage days, with those paper-thin pancakes and black bean sauce) and the sesame chicken, which my sweetie swears that Szechuan does better than anybody. Pretty conventional and gringo-fied, perhaps, but it always hits the spot.

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GLOBAL GALLERY NIGHT AT THE KIMBALL 

By Ken Shimamoto 

Fort Worth Independent School District’s World Languages department is partnering with the Kimball Art Museum to present an event that brings together language, art, and culture. It’s happening at the museum from 6 to 8pm on Friday, February 13th. 

Student tour guides will share their insights about Kimball masterpieces as they relate to their studies of French, Japanese, German, Latin, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, and American Sign Language. Display tables will provide information about World Languages classes. 

For more information, call FWISD Director of World Languages Carrie Harrington at 817-871-2518 or Kimball Education Coordinator Connie Hatchette at 817-332-8451, ext. 207.

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ARTS FIFTH AVENUE 

By Ken Shimamoto 

www.artsfifthavenue.com 

I suck at supporting worthwhile local arts venues as much as anyone. But it really gave me pause a few days ago when I saw the following disclaimer on Arts Fifth Avenue’s online events calendar: “All Events are pending on funding from the Arts Council of Fort Worth and Tarrant County.” I felt even more unease when I read the squib at the bottom of the page: “We have tried to serve our community the best we can - if we close it is not because we did not do our best.” That verbiage has since disappeared from the page, but it still made an impression. And they’re still not adverse to accepting donations via http://artsfifthavenue.com/donate.php. 

A5A (as their friends know them) – brainchild of dancer Gracey Tune (yes, sibling of Broadway’s Tommy) and percussionist Eddie Dunlap (ex-Master Cylinder and for 20+ years a mainstay of the Jubilee Theater’s pit band) – is not only the home of the Fifth Avenue Jazz Collective, LaFeet Tap Ensemble, and the Mondo Drummers, it’s a family-friendly, neighborhood-based arts outreach organization without peer in this here Town of Cow.  

The joint’s played host to a Django Reinhardt festival six years running. Just this month, they’ve got a “Jazzy Valentine’s” with the Jazz Collective and Melinda Allen skedded for the 14th and drama with SceneShop’s The Interrogation of Vince Bannon on the 28th. Monk tribute project “Thelonious” will be there on March 14th (I’ve gotta ask Joey Carter if they’re gonna play “Ruby My Dear”). And prodigal son Tommy Tune will be back in the Fort on May 25th to help celebrate A5A’s 20th annual National Tap Dance Day.

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Adapted by Lydia R. Diamond from the novel by Toni Morrison
Directed by Ed Smith

POP’S SAFARI ROOM 

By Ken Shimamoto 

www.popssafari.com 

My sweetie’s been out canvassing for a local charity and her travels have taken her to some old favorite spots in the heart of the West 7th construction. We hadn’t really been to Pop’s Safari Room a lot since she quit smoking a couple of years back, but we’ve always thought of Perry Tong’s cigar and wine bar cum restaurant at 2929 Morton as “the Wreck Room for more sophisticated and mature folks.” Don’t be put off by the iron grating on the front (which Perry says will be going the way of the “Cold Ass Beer” sign at fonky Fred’s just down the street once he figures out what kind of façade his new neighbors are going to have). Even if you’re a non-smoker (unless, of course, you’re a dyed-in-the-wool anti-tobacco nazi), there are good reasons to give Pop’s a whirl the next time you’re thinking about dining out.  

Pop’s menu covers the whole waterfront, from affordable to opulent. Appetizers range from $1.95 for small nachos to $13 for escargot. Most burgers and sandwiches are $8, while dinner entrees top out at $30. Chef Richard Wilkes, an affable expat Lawn Guylander by way of Philadelphia, the Culinary Institute of America, and Duce, prepares a menu loaded with subtle, complex flavors. In a mood for seafood (as I often am) on a recent visit, I chowed down on the ahi tuna and shrimp combination – the delectable smokiness of the lemon and white wine-seared tuna offset by the sweetness of a wasabi cream sauce – while she had an equally tasty pan-seared salmon. Both came with perfectly seasoned and still-crunchy carrots (we’re definitely advocates of veggies that haven’t had all the nutrients cooked out of ‘em). Next time there’s an occasion, we might go for the mahi rocafella and crab cakes (since she’s a crab cake fanatic). While we’re usually swillers of cheap Bordeaux or Aussie shiraz, our server recommended a nice, well-rated red that complemented our meal perfectly.  

The dining room doubles as the house wine cellar, and our dinner was briefly interrupted by the sommelier flipping on the overhead light to retrieve some bottles for a large party (on this particular night, Pop’s was playing host to a dinner for the Navy from the JRB, and Perry’s always been a favorite of the base’s Marine contingent, based on his possible relationship to a pre-Revolutionary Connecticut publican who was a favorite of the early Leathernecks). Overall, though, service was gracious, and the whole experience left one with a warm, fuzzy glow. 

Oh, and they’ve got specials, too: Monday night it’s a $1.50 for a Lone Star longneck, Miller, Coors, or Bud light, and a five spot gets you a sirloin burger with fries. There are free wine tastings on Tuesday nights, while Wednesday evenings, it’s Aussie Wildflower Merlot or Chardonnay for $2.95 a glass, $6.99 a bottle, or $69.99 a case. And there’s live music Thursday through Saturday nights; Sumter Bruton and Mike Price will be bluesing it up there on Friday, November 21st.

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Hungover With Chuck

Okay, so yeah it’s a week into the month and yes I am finally getting around to doing this. What can I say, my choices were sit at the keyboard and write or go out to the lake and drink for a few days, so here we are a week into October...
After reading Velton's piece Barflies on a Budget it made me think back how many times have I woke up broke and hungover? What's worse is over the course of my drunken evening I had made plans for the next day with god knows how many people to do several things all of which I had non sufficient funds to participate. So I am going to throw everyone a bone that very little people know about. Sundays only during football season Rick O'Sheas opens @ Noon for football. They have been doing this for about five years now during football season, but this is not the miracle. Danny Baran sets up the sweetest hotdog bar. Want a chicagodog, its there. Chili cheese dog? Yup and plenty of combinations in between. This is still not the miracle. Hotdogs are $1. You read that correctly, if you are Cartman that's a hundred pennies of Kyle's money you can roll around in or getcha a dog and watch some football. All that and they have $2.50 domestics on Sundays. You can even live the High Life and go cheaper. The miracle is this. You wake up on a Sunday morning hungover and starving with maybe $20 in your pocket, they've got you covered for your football-watching afternoon. Need a place for you and your friends to watch the game and you don't have money or time for "brunch?" They've got you covered... Food, beer, and football. Rick O'Sheas has the Sunday ticket to boot so those pesky out of region games are there for you. There, I did my good deed for the month, now I must go back out to my cave and ponder the election. Gotta get pretty hammered to vote at all in this one and it will be interesting to see who I voted for once I have sobered up. For more info on Rick O'Sheas check out www.rickosheaspub.com
If you have a place that you go to nurse your hangover I am very interested in hearing about it. Don't leave the house and have a recipe that cures what ails ya? I would love to hear that too. Email me crbecknell@yahoo.com

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THE PIT BARBEQUE
It's Time For Some Good Ol' R&B!

By Velton Hayworth

That's right, ribs and beer, and maybe some rhythm and blues depending on the night. After years as a waitress Sammie Gathings purchased The Pit from the previous owner in 1948. The Pit was family owned and operated until a few years back when Robert Gathings (Sammie's son) decided to get out of the BBQ business and become a landlord. Since that time we have seen many restaurants come and go including BBQ, Mexican food, and a bistro--all different owners, all failed. Robert eventually got tired of being a rent collector and decided to reopen The Pit and start serving all the original family recipes.  Aaaaah, lucky me!  Now my belly is filled with melt-in-your-mouth ribs (voted best ribs by Fort Worth Weekly) on a regular basis.  One thing that is not original is the newly constructed outdoor music stage--generously donated by the Teaugue Lumber Company, and the perfect addition for enjoying the beautiful Texas fall. The music flows five nights a week, including a Tuesday night jam session, and varies from rock to country to blues to R & B and rockabilly. There is never a cover at The Pit, so come on out and grab some ribs and homemade onion rings and chase them with a cold beer on the patio. Don't like beer? You're in luck.  The Pit has a great wine selection; just bring your own cheese plate.  And by the way The Pit is currently looking for bands for October and November. If you are interested call 817.332.7488 between 2 – 5 pm and ask for Brandon.

702 North Henderson Street / Jacksboro Highway / Fort Worth, Texas 76107

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MY 30 YEARS IN THE FORT 

By Ken Shimamoto 

Lately, life seems to be full of reminders that “You’ve lived a long time.” It’s been ten years now since doctors and cops started looking like children to me. Next month, it’ll be 30 years since I first came to Fort Worth, to open a record store on Camp Bowie Blvd. (As the cliché goes, “I wasn’t born here, but I got here as fast as I could.”) A lot has changed since then. My first weekend here, I went to the Albertson’s on Camp Bowie to buy a dozen eggs and a frying pan. The cashier told me, “I can sell you the eggs, but not the frying pan.” Since then, they’ve repealed the blue laws here, but you still can’t buy beer or wine at the market until after noon on Sundays. 

The first place I lived in Fort Worth was a red brick apartment complex on Winthrop, in the shadow of Ridglea Bank. Since then, those have been torn down and replaced by public housing. My apartment looked like it had formerly been two apartments; although ridiculously small, it had seven rooms. I had a mattress and a wooden crate I used as a night table. Talk about your “Seven Rooms of Gloom!” I remember walking from there to the Ridglea Theater through freezing rain to see, um, Superman. 

On New Year’s Eve 1978, I was driving to Dallas when an ice storm started, the kind where the water freezes as it hits your windshield and it’s impossible to melt with your windshield defroster. As I crept along I-30 at a snail’s pace with my head out the window trying to see, it occurred to me that a friend and coworker who’d come with me from Dallas to open the store lived nearby. I exited at Merrick Street and made my way to Stuart’s crib, the bottom floor of an old (vintage 1911) house at the corner of Collinwood and Sanguinet (now replaced by condos). I wound up staying there until I left for Austin the following summer, sleeping in the unheated porch in my rated-to-20-below down sleeping bag. Saturday mornings, we used to check to see if any drunks from the Showdown had plowed through the hedges outside. 

When I got back from various misadventures in Austin and Colorado in February 1980, I moved into a duplex on Templeton, off 5th Street near University, just down the street from what’s now Gallery 414. It had gas heaters I was afraid to use, so when it was cold, I’d get in bed wearing every stitch of clothing I owned and shiver myself to sleep. When it got hot, there was no AC and the windows were painted shut. If Dan Lightner hadn’t brought me an electric fan, I’d have died. As it was, I’d sit in front of the fan until I’d sweated out nearly every molecule of moisture from my system, then I’d walk three blocks to 7-Eleven to buy more cigarettes, Gatorade, and beer. 

The two guys who lived on the other side of the duplex were truck drivers and were always offering me stuff they’d stolen. One night I heard the guy who lived in the house on the other side, who’d apparently run afoul of some merciless people, pleading for his life. The next day, he and his family had vanished without a trace. I finally moved out when I came back from a trip to Austin and the toilet started shooting water out of the tank. Because I was too stupid to know how to turn off the water and my landlady said she’d send her son to deal with it “later,” I got in my car and went to spend the night at the Rio Motel on Camp Bowie.  

The next day, I got off work and went back to the apartment. My landlady’s son apparently still hadn’t been there, because water was still shooting out of the toilet and the place was like a swamp. I threw all my worldly possessions in the trunk of my car (I could still do that back then) and headed for another motel, on Las Vegas Trail this time. I wound up moving into an apartment in the 2800 block of the LVT and when I got my license suspended for a DUI, my future ex-wife would come from her parents’ house in Benbrook and pick me up on the way to the store on Camp Bowie where we both worked.  

The guy in the apartment next door used to beat the shit out of his girlfriend. One night I was going downstairs to use the phone and encountered the two of them on the landing, where he was in the process of throwing out all of her clothes. She kept throwing dimes at me and telling me to call the police. 

I remember the day John Lennon was shot: I woke myself up by spilling a glass of water on my head just as the radio kicked on with the story of his murder. On the way out of the complex that morning, we noticed that someone had burned the apartment office during the night. 

We eventually moved into a house on West Gambrell near Seminary Drive. We lived there until the company I was working for (another record chain) moved me to Memphis to open yet another store. Things went south there fast and I got shitcanned after somebody hit the till on my shift and the manager needed someone to blame. We wound up staying at my future ex’s in Benbrook until I enlisted in the Air Force, figuring that our first baby was on the way in six months and we were going to need medical insurance. My future ex moved in with her grandparents, who lived on Southwest Blvd near the Weatherford traffic circle, and I went off to basic training, tech school, and Korea. 

Two of my children were born in the hospital at Carswell, which is now a women’s prison. I got home when our oldest was eleven months old and she walked for the first time a week later. The first night I was “back in the world,” I carried her outside to show her the moon and she said, “Moon.” We wound up living in a little shitbox house off 377, between the Weatherford traffic circle and Benbrook. The people next door raised goats. One day, a balloonist set down in the field of what’s now Leonard 6th Grade Center and all the neighborhood kids got a thrill out of running down there to check it out. 

After Carswell, I was stationed in Abilene and Louisiana for a few years, but when we came back, we wound up living in a house in Benbrook that was built on top of a landfill and had a lot of foundation problems. The neighborhood was notorious for it, in fact.  

When my future ex and I split up, I moved into an apartment near our old house off 377 that I called “Hell.” I’d sit at home when I wasn’t working, drinking whiskey and listening to the couple upstairs having noisy sex. When I used to go running in the neighborhood, I’d find used syringes and burnt spoons on a nearby corner. My ex’s best friend lived in the same complex and had her car bombed once. Eventually the noisy-sex couple moved out and were replaced by a guy who introduced himself to me by saying, “I’m not a child molester.” He used to like singing along with his Whitney Houston records at 3 in the morning. When I’d go up to complain, he’d be extra super double respectful, then as soon as he couldn’t see me (literally two seconds later), I’d hear him muttering, “Fuck you, motherfucker.” Then there was the time the scary Viet vet guy with the crossbow had a face-off with the guy across the way with the shotgun while I was on my way back from the laundry room. Good times. 

I moved from there into what my daughter called the “divorced dad apartments” in Benbrook, also off 377. The landlord was a large animal veterinarian who used to take care of Nolan Ryan’s horses. His office was right next door. One night a hog was giving birth and it sounded like a slaughterhouse. The lady next door was an LPN who was always giving me fruit and hamster cages. The kid who lived with his mom downstairs was always practicing Soundgarden’s “Spoon Man” on the bass. I retaliated by practicing Captain Beefheart solo guitar pieces. In the summertime, there was a snow cone place in the parking lot across the street where I used to take my kids. 

In 1997, my middle daughter found me another duplex in Benbrook, which coincidentally happened to be next door to her then-best friend, and she moved in with me a couple of years after that. We had two cats and a cat box that smelled, my wife now says, “like the Earth’s entire supply of ammonia.” That was the place where, while scribing for the FW Weekly after getting shitcanned from my high-dollar corporate gig at RadioShack, my daughter says I put on 40 pounds “because you spent a year sitting on your ass 25 feet from the refrigerator.”  

While I sold off all my records, books, and musical equipment to pay my child support, I subsisted on a diet of peanut butter sandwiches, hotdogs, tortilla chips and Albertson’s pico de gallo. My children knew I was seeing my wife even before I introduced her to them because suddenly, there was fresh food in my refrigerator. At first, she was known to them as “The Fresh Food Lady.” While I was on the road with Nathan Brown in 2003, she, my daughter, and my daughter’s best friend cleaned and decorated the carport. When I got back, it was the homiest I’d felt in years. 

We moved into our current home in Arlington Heights in the spring of 2004 and were married in 2005. We like our neighborhood a lot and plan to stay here for the rest of our lives. Anytime there have been big changes in my life – when I got out of the service, when I got divorced, when I lost my job – people I grew up with in New York have asked me, “So, when are you coming back?” I tell them, “You must be out of your mind! This is home now.” And it is. I’ve spent more than half of my life here. So there.

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JAZZ BY THE BOULEVARD 

By Ken Shimamoto 

fortworthjazz.com 

You’ve gotta hand it to the smiling folks at Camp Bowie District, Inc., producers of that annual late-September event, Jazz By the Boulevard. Each year since its inception, the fest has grown in scale and scope, attracting marquee talent -- usually in more of a smoove “jazz” vein than some of us would like, but that’s just crabbing. Having large dollar sponsors like Cadillac, Coors, and, um, Chesapeake Energy can’t hurt. Oh, and by the way – it’s free. The weather this weekend promises to be favorable, too – sunny with highs in the mid-80s. Yeah! 

Friday night’s headliner is Buddy Guy, almost the last of the great Chicago bluesmen, who’s graced stages like Caravan of Dreams’ and Main Street Arts Festival’s in years gone by. He hits at 9:45pm, preceded by flautist Dave Valentin, who’s known for a string of albs on GRP. The act I’m more interested in hearing, though, hits at 6:30pm: tenor saxophonist Mario Cruz, a Fort Worth native just returned from the Big Apple who threatened to blow the roof off Sardines during Johnny Case’s recent 25th anniversary bash there. 

Saturday’s headliner, guitarist Lee Ritenour, is considerably less interesting to this crusty old curmudgeon than the act that precedes him (at 7:45pm): Nawlins expat Adonis Rose’s Fort Worth Jazz Orchestra, with guest artist, trumpeter Randy Brecker (who’s played rock in Dreams and funk in the Brecker Brothers with his late sibling Michael on tenor; I saw him back in ’74 when he was part of guitarist Larry Coryell’s fusion band Eleventh House). You might wanna show up earlier, though, to catch guitar-slinging rancher Tom Reynolds and moonlighting FW Symphony bassist Paul Unger doing their Django-inspahrd thang (12:30pm); the always-entertaining Mondo Drummers (1:30pm); and the aggregation of local “usual suspects” that gigs under the rubric Fifth Avenue Jazz Collective (4:30pm). 

On Sunday, alto saxophonist David Sanborn (whose tone is prolly etched on the synapses of anyone who watched Saturday Night Live and/or Late Night with David Letterman in the ‘80s. (He also hosted the worthwhile Night Music show in the ‘90s.) After the fest shuts down at 8pm, hardcore jazz aficionados can take a couple of hours to grab something to eat (maybe at Sardines?) before meandering over to Lola’s at 6th Street and Foch, where Dave Karnes and his crew will be holding forth, or the Scat Jazz Lounge downtown, where Quamon Fowler (whose quartet plays Jazz By the Boulevard at 3pm) hosts a jam.

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CURLY’S CUSTARD 

By Ken Shimamoto 

It’s that time of year again, when triple-digit temperatures (even long after sunset) give way to something a little more tol’able. Kids are back in school, football season’s just starting, and my sweetie ‘n’ I can revive our custom of perambulating around Arlington Heights, enjoying the cool of the evening. 

A favored destination on these jaunts is Curly’s Custard, located at the southeast corner of the intersection of Camp Bowie, Clover Lane, and Crestline. (The street address is 4017 Camp Bowie.) Curly’s has been a neighborhood institution since 2002, in the same way as Blue Bonnet Bakery and Kincaid’s are. Their website hasn’t been updated in a couple of menu/façade changes, but you don’t need to see a menu to know what’s good. 

Curly’s “concretes” are like gelato or other high-end ice cream, without all the business of having someone manipulating it with their hands (the appeal of which I never got). You can get ‘em with fruit, nuts, or candy whipped in (like a Dairy Queen Blizzard on steroids), or in a sundae (my favorite is Death By Chocolate), but generally, a small (“kid’s”) portion is sufficient for we, as my sweetie ‘n’ I aren’t generally big dessert eaters. 

There are a few hot items on the menu as well, the 800-pound gorilla of which is the noble Hebrew National frank (best hot dogs in the world, made from 100% kosher beef). My sweetie likes hers with sauerkraut (the German Dog), while I prefer mine with just yellow mustard and diced onions. I haven’t mustered (heh heh) the courage to try a chili dog yet, because the seating is all on picnic tables and wooden benches, sans utensils, and I’m the kind of hot dog eater who tends to wind up wearing most of the chili. 

(Fondest Curly’s memory: Getting caught in a spring shower after ordering a couple of dogs, which we wound up consuming under the awning at The Look, which formerly had the location now occupied by Winslow’s.) 

The other reason to go to Curly’s is to observe the folks there, from the fresh-faced teens behind the counter to the neighborhood folks, young ‘n’ old, who congregate in the little patch of green in front of the service windows. (There’s a drive thru on the other side, but you’d be missing the best part of the experience.)

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FWSO PLAYS MAHLER 

By Ken Shimamoto 

www.fwsymphony.org 

Last year’s first installment of its three-year “Mahler Cycle” represented a high-water mark of sorts for Miguel Harth-Bedoya’s Fort Worth Symphony. One symphony muso remarked that the orchestra’s perfomance of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony was “the best we’ve ever played.” Perhaps that’s part of the reason why, while orchestras around the country are cutting back, the FWSO is actually adding chairs. 

This week, they perform the second installment, starting on Thursday with “The Man Behind the Music,” a multimedia evening presented by Prof. Carol Reynolds featuring selections from Mahler’s vocal works sung by mezzo-soprano Susanne Mentzner. The orchestra performs Mahler’s Sixth (“Tragic”) Symphony on Friday, his Seventh Symphony on Saturday, and Second (“Resurrection”) Symphony (with Mentzner, soprano Jessica Rivera, and the Southwestern Seminary Master Chorale under the direction of David Thye) on Sunday. 

Single tickets start at $15 and are available online or by calling 817-665-6100. If you can’t make it to the Bass Hall, WRR 101.1FM will broadcast (and stream) Friday’s performance starting at 7:30pm.

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Kerry Dean’s El Heladero 

By Ken Shimamoto 

http://www.elheladero.com/ 

Coming off the peak of Darth Vato’s latest ‘n’ best ceedee Oh No, We’re Doing Great!, inspahrd by the biz model if not the music of Radiohead’s In Rainbows, DV frontman Kerry Dean booked a coupla days at Dallas’ Skyline Studios and laid down some song ideas he’d been kicking around for a few years. He’s made the 11 tracks of El Heladero (that’s “the ice cream man” en ingles) downloadable for free online, although physical copies are available for $12, and you’re welcome to donate to Kerry’s next project via Paypal if you dig it. While I’m hardly an early technology adopter and remain highly enamored of The Romance of the Artifact, I do notice that I’m downloading enough music lately that it’s become a commonplace occurrence – an idea whose time has come.  

The story of Darth Vato is really the story of Kerry Dean’s developing the courage to be himself – a rather sweet-natured, whimsical soul – onstage and in the toons he writes, rather than some other, “edgier” character that the audience might find more interesting. The risk and danger inherent in this undertaking was manifested in a solo acoustic show at the Moon a few years back where he wound up horizontal garrruuunnnk onstage (alcohol: the shy guy’s social lubricant…or not). He’s been getting closer with each DV release, though, and finally, with Oh No’s hidden track (a cover of the Standells’ garage grunt classic “Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White”), a live solo rendering of the Minutemen’s “History Lesson, Part II” at their Lola’s CD release show, and this record, I think he’s there. 

With the exception of a coupla tracks his pal Daniel Hardaway decorated with deft ‘n’ sly trumpet solo wonderment (straight-up mariachi blare on the title track, Louis Armstrong on acid on “Locked and Ready”), Kerry carries the whole show here all by his lonesome. If some of the tracks seem like sketches of songs waiting to be fleshed out, that’s almost the point: he wants you to see the lines in his design. And showing off his chops as a riddim guitarist (dig the instrumental “Todo Un Poco”). Stylistically, these songs don’t differ much from what his band usually lays down, but he’s imagining more believable characters (the street vendor in the title track, the partner in a relationship gone south in “Everything Went Wrong”) and writing more heartfelt confessionals (“Put On Your Red Dress” and the emo surfer’s suicide note “The New Wave,” which just might be the best thing he’s written). While Darth Vato remain the party band of choice for inebriated frat daddies, the big lug up front’s got heart aplenty, and he’s not afraid to show it.

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Kavin.’s Acoustic Church’s Westward 

By Ken Shimamoto 

www.myspace.com/kavinallenson 

Kavin Allenson’s a guitarist from Burleson who hit the boards in 1998 after 25 years of playing, was a semi-finalist in a B.W. Stevenson songwriting contest in 2000, played in an acoustic Pink Floyd tribute band (!) with Glenn Milam from 2001-2004, and released a CD, Texas Tonefreak, in 2006. Since then, he’s pulled tight with estimable Fort Worth axe-slingers like Darrin Kobetich and Bill Pohl (their next three-way collision takes place at Hip Pocket Theatre on September 7th). Back in February, he took part in the RPM Challenge, writing and recording an album in a month. The result is Westward. 

Kavin’s saturated with classic rock influences – the Eat A Peach-era Allman Brothers in particular come to mind, listening to the spacey layers of leisurely, melodic guitars – and the masterwork of Leo Kottke (sometimes very literally; listen to “John’s Rag” and tell me which song off 6 and 12-String Guitar it reminds you of). The opening “Hippolyte” showcases his strengths – rolling fingerpicked patterns on a crystalline-textured acoustic, supporting a lilting slide line that recalls the pedal steel part from Thunderclap Newman’s “Hollywood Dream” (if anyone in the 817 remembers thatun).  

The title track has Kavin singing in a serviceable guitar player’s voice over interlocking guitar parts like Duane ‘n’ Dicky might have played, except for the flanging. (Full disclosure – he gave me a songwriting credit for part of the lyrics.) The Indian-flavored “Climbin’” (with percussion accompaniment from Phil Waite) has the same rhythmic feel as Darrin Kobetich’s “Playing In the Hedges,” but wedded to a lighter harmonic palette. The solo guitar piece “Eulogy: February 5th” is somber and lovely. 

Things start to get really interesting with the next couple of tracks. I’m not even certain how the sounds on “Sunwind” were generated – something to do with a slide, perhaps -- but they create a lysergic sci-fi atmosphere that’s quite striking. “DrumznBass” is a showcase for drummer Waite and bassist Eric Allenson, with Kavin presumably providing the weird electro-F/X. Finally, “Runnin’ Out of Time” is a down ‘n’ dirty blues with