Still Gonzo After All These Years
Texan Songsmith Bob Livingston Is Bound For Athens, And Beyond
originally published January 10, 2007
Archetypal “cosmic cowboy” Bob Livingston doesn’t hail from L.A. or Nashville or Liverpool. The ever-involved guitarist-songwriter-goodwill ambassador does, however, come from a place with an almost-as-important musical legacy behind it: Lubbock, TX.
Livingston grew up a student of hometown boy-done-good Buddy Holly, and started playing guitar while still in high school. He made the acquaintance of fellow Lubbock songwriters Joe Ely, Jimmy Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock when they were first starting out as the original Flatlanders. For many years, he backed up outlaw singer-songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker in his Lost Gonzo Band, the most versatile Texan rock/ blues/ country group this side of the Sir Douglas Quintet. He played bass behind Ray Wylie Hubbard and Michael Martin Murphy and even had a hand in arranging the familiar theme song for television’s "Austin City Limits" (“London Homesick Blues” by Lost Gonzo bandmate Gary P. Nunn).
Livingston is also a world traveler and speaker who heads up Texas Music International, a nonprofit educational organization that has seen its curator participate in cultural exchange programs in locales like India and Pakistan. Currently, he’s gearing up for a string of solo appearances followed by another trip across the globe and a subsequent Lost Gonzo Band reunion. Flagpole caught up with Livingston via phone to chat about groovy Texas culture, legendary Austin songwriters, and his upcoming stop in Athens.
- Flagpole
- What are some of the memories you have of the late ‘60s, early ‘70s music scene in and around Austin? This was when you, the Flatlanders, Doug Sahm and Townes Van Zandt were starting to get some feet in the door.
- Bob Livingston
- Yeah, some of those guys are a little older than me, and when you’re a kid, those couple of years are everything. I started playing at a club there in town early on and I thought Joe Ely was just the coolest thing - like the Lubbock Dylan. I got a lot from watching him, actually. He would play solo and sit on his amplifier with his mic and guitar plugged in there. Then, he had a hi-hat cymbal and a harmonica, and was like this little one-man band. So, naturally, I had to go down to the pawnshop and get myself a hi-hat, too!
- Flagpole
- How did you wind up playing with Michael Martin Murphy during those days?
- Bob Livingston
- Well, I was living in Lubbock and going to tech school when the first draft lottery came along. I ended up getting number 309, left school the day after that and wound up in California.
- One day, I’m driving down the freeway and pick up this hitchhiker who says [Livingston assumes a thick Bavarian accent], “Thee only other Texan I knows is from Dallas. He is named Mike Murphy. He is a musician.” I said, “You’re kidding,” because I’d already known Murphy’s songs and had met him through Ray Wylie Hubbard’s old band Three Faces West. The same night I picked up that hitchhiker, Murphy calls me and invites me up.
- Sometime after that, my deal with Capitol had fallen through so I ended up playing bass with his band. The week after Murphy was signed to A&M, we packed up and went to Nashville to cut the Geronimo’s Cadillac album. Twenty-five songs in a day.
- Flagpole
- Where does this figure in with the Lost Gonzo Band pairing up with Jerry Jeff Walker?
- Bob Livingston
- Jerry Jeff hit town just about the same time Michael and I had moved to Austin, so I was playing with both of ‘em. Then we made the Jerry Jeff album with “Hill Country Rain,” “L.A. Freeway” and a bunch of others on it. It was just a first time for everything then. Geronimo’s Cadillac was, like, the first nationally released record to come out of Austin.
- Then, all of a sudden, Jerry Jeff starts recording. Most of us were around 20 years old and couldn’t believe we were out there making records. Eventually, I had to make a decision between the two. I went with Jerry Jeff shortly before we cut the Viva Terlingua album and that’s when the whole place really went stumpy!
- Flagpole
- You have some close connections to both the theme song from "Austin City Limits" and the program itself. Initially, what kind of impact did that show make on musicians in the area?
- Bob Livingston
- At that time, it was like a lot of pieces of the puzzle were starting to come together. Willie Nelson had just moved to town and the Armadillo was bringing some of the top acts in the world to Austin. Frank Zappa played there; Bruce Springsteen broke national shortly after playing there. When "Austin City Limits" came along, it was a syndicated show on a PBS channel that everybody with a TV could watch, which meant lots of exposure. It was strictly "Austin City Limits" at that time, too, because everybody on there lived in or had something big to do with Austin.
- These days it’s more like "Austin Outer Limits," but still a great program. They still use “London Homesick Blues” after all these years, too. Anywhere we play today with Jerry Jeff is filled with people who love that song and all the old ones like it. We’ll play these thrash rock-type clubs in New York where the soundman will come up and say, “I gotta turn the PA up for you guys louder than any other fuckin’ band! The people are singin’ and screamin’ so fuckin’ loud, I can’t even hear ya!”
- Flagpole
- Tell us about the work you do with Texas Music International and your travels abroad.
- Bob Livingston
- We’re a nonprofit organization. We do shows, school programs and things like that. Right now, we’re putting on a benefit show in Austin that’s a benefit to keep a bunch of new condos from being built on Town Lake.
- I do a lot of school shows for kids that don’t get a chance to see any music at all. We go in there with this wild group, perform and do a workshop and it just blows their minds. We’re working on a musical play now called Cowboys & Indians which features Indian and Texan musicians collaborating. We’re getting it ready for a trial run to see how things go.
- Of all the places I’ve been, India is about the furthest out. When I first got there, I met this guy who was a Fulbright Scholar and had this thing going on with the State Department. He told me that if I could convince the State Department that I was an expert on something, whether it’s hydroponics or country music, I could get a road gig going there. So, I go to talk to the State Department guy who proceeds to pull out a banjo. He smiled and said, “I’ve been waiting for you to walk through that door. You got the gig!”
- That was 1985 and, within a few years, I’d gone to Bangladesh, Nepal and other places playing with all these great musicians. My son and I are trying to put together a documentary right now of some of these travels.
- Flagpole
- Care to give us a preview of your Athens setlist?
- Bob Livingston
- It’ll be just me, solo. I might get one of these guys around here to come along and back me up. I’m looking forward to playing more down there in the Georgia area. I’ve been doing a lot of solo shows and house concerts lately, so there’s no telling what will happen!
WHO: Bob Livingston, Paul Reeves, Gary Pfaff
WHERE: Melting Point
WHEN: Wednesday, January 10, 8 p.m.
HOW MUCH: $5
Save The Scene!
Rediscovering And Preserving The Musical Treasures Of Athens' Past
originally published January 10, 2007
In 1988, for some reason that I can't recall, I decided I needed a reel-to-reel tape deck. I broached the subject with my neighbor Terry Melton, and he suggested that one could probably be found at a pawn shop. The next day, Terry and I set off on an all-day adventure, visiting every pawn shop in town. Terry tuned a lot of odd-brand guitars and I inspected a lot of junk stereo equipment, and although we had a large time, we went home empty-handed.
About a week later, I was at work at Normal News and a man came into the store. "Are you Dan?" he asked. "Terry told me that you're looking for a tape deck."
An hour later, he was back in the store with a reel-to-reel. "I thought I might as well throw these in on the deal," he said, setting a bag of reel-to-reel tapes on the counter. I glanced at the tapes and tried to keep a poker face as I read some of the labels: Mad Dog Melton & the Laughing Disaster, Dixie Grease, Chili Dreams, Normaltown Flyers, Phil and the Blanks, Gatemouth Brown… this was a treasure trove of my favorite Athens musicians from the '70s. The kind of stuff that got overlooked once R.E.M. and The B-52's delivered something different to the rest of the world. "I used to work at the Last Resort," he said, mentioning the early downtown club. "Most of these were recorded down there."
"What do you want for it?" I asked, pretending I knew what I was doing examining the tape deck.
"I'll take $20," he said.
I took a deep breath and handed him a $20 bill. I wouldn't have batted an eye about giving him $100 for those tapes. When I got home, I couldn't get any sound out of the reel-to-reel, but I put the tapes in a box for safe keeping and considered it the best deal I ever made.
This past July, I was rocking out while fixing breakfast. The cassette tape that had my feet moving was a Mad Dog Melton & the Laughing Disaster tape that was a copy of a copy of a copy. It wasn't a very high-quality tape, but it was my only recording of the band. Halfway through the track "Room to Room," my kitchen boom box ate the tape.
I was heartbroken; I had no idea where I had even gotten the tape in the first place. The handwriting of the songs was mine, so I figured that I'd copied somebody else's tape, but I couldn't for the life of me remember whose. I called Terry and he didn't hesitate. "Brad Herring's got the tapes," he said. I've known Brad all my life. He was a townie before everybody knew being a townie was cool. He got dual citizenship as a Normaltownie when he moved to the now-demolished Prince Rondavel Apartments in the early '70s. It was during this time that he - along with Dr. Richard Lanier and Harold Kelley - started recording music shows at the Hedges.
Brad Herring
Brad Herring now operates a shop called Cosmic Debris in the shopping center at 50 Gaines School Rd., where he sells used records and the stereo equipment that plays them. Every day for the next couple of weeks, I kept telling myself that I would go talk to Brad "tomorrow," but I kept putting it off. Then on Aug. 9, 2006, Terry Melton died.
The night after Terry's funeral, I called Brad Herring. He told me that he'd picked up a reel-to-reel at a yard sale a little more than a year ago, and that he been working with some of the old tapes.
The next day, I drove out to Cosmic Debris and Brad gave me two CDs. One was of Dixie Grease's final show, and the other was a performance by Elmo Pruitt featuring Don Allgood, both recorded in 1975 at The Hedges. Terry Melton, Brian Burke, Don Allgood, Jay Smith, Greg Veale, Cal Hale, Clarence Young and Carl Vipperman: the old gang.
I listened to the two CDs over and over. They were special. Dixie Grease was Terry's last full-time band, and this was their last show. I was particularly pleased to hear something with Jay Smith playing guitar.
Brad put together the Elmo Pruitt CD featuring Don Allgood's vocals following Don's own death about seven months ago. Jay Smith and Carl Vipperman's guitar work defines Southern rock, with a heavy dosing of Don's R&B style over everything.
Several days later, after I already had these two discs memorized, I went back out to Brad's and handed him my bag of old tapes that I'd had for 18 years and gotten from that fateful exchange at Normal News. I'd never even heard them. He got excited looking at them; he'd originally recorded half of them, but like so many over the years, the original tapes had gotten away from him.
He handed me three CDs that he'd just finished working on the day before. It was Terry Melton & the Laughing Disaster's Can the Band Get Another Tray of Beer?, Volumes 1, 2 and 3. They came, for the most part, from some cassettes that Bill Thornton had brought by. They were recorded at the Hedges in 1973, and Brad figures they were made by Dr. Richard. The band included Terry, Randall Bramblett, Brian Burke, Davis Causey, Cleon Nalley and Moi Harris. Terry provided the rock and roll edge; Randall furnished great originals and Cleon kicked in with an occasional country change of pace. Their musical prowess had impressed me at the time, and I was only 22 years old. I raced home and cranked up the stereo. These are good recordings. It's three months after I first picked up the CDs, and I still can't hear enough of these three discs.
In the meantime, other recordings from old Athens have joined them. I visit Cosmic Debris at least once a week and Brad is still going full speed ahead, determined to preserve this music that he loves so much. There's Cat Music. There's another (and better) Dixie Grease. Elmo Pruitt with Eric Quinsey Tate. And also Metal Melton, a band fronted by Terry with Davis Causey doing some particularly wild guitar work. Another Laughing Disaster. Cleon Nalley's terrific solo recordings. Arch Pearson's "Rust and Cracked Glass." The river of music just keeps on flowing.
I guess the Athens music scene is something different to everyone. I've been an active listener for more than 40 years, and have enjoyed a lot of different types of music, but for me that early '70s scene will always be the best.
The Mustache and the Hedges. The Laughing Disaster, Dixie Grease, Elmo Pruitt, Moondance, Easy Roscoe, Labyrinth, the Acme Blues Band and Silent Partner. So much music that I thought was lost, so many stories that need to be remembered and told.
My friend Terry Melton never did any studio recording, but I now have seven excellent CDs featuring him in my collection, with more on the way. Terry would love it.
Finding Equilibrium
Kill Gordon's New Album Sees The Band Balancing Energetic Performing And Restrained Recording
originally published January 10, 2007
Andrew Radford
Kill Gordon
“I want the song to make people feel how I felt when I wrote it and when we wrote it,” says Kyle Gordon, frontman and namesake of the indie/ garage rock outfit Kill Gordon, of the 11 tracks on the band’s forthcoming self-titled album. Set for release in late January, Kill Gordon is the Atlanta trio’s first full-length and first experience recording in a professional studio setting. Gordon, bassist Cyrus Shahmir and drummer Daniel Brett spent three days laying down all of the live tracks and subsequently came in over six weekends to do all of the overdubs. The result is a cohesive, dirty and sometimes mellow collection of rock-and-roll tunes that will serve as a better introduction for Kill Gordon than the two EPs the band previously released.
The time in the studio proved beneficial for the band, as it not only helped Gordon improve his vocal skills, but it also allowed the guys an opportunity to experiment with and delve deeper into the songs in their attempt to uncover Kill Gordon’s defining style - though it didn’t quite work out that way. “I still feel like we haven’t found exactly how we should sound on record yet,” admits Gordon. “I love this record. I’m very proud of what we’re putting out now and I like the first EP, too. But I still feel like we haven’t found our sound yet.”
The band Kill Gordon traces its roots to back to Gordon’s earlier forays in local acts like The Booze, and his decision to start playing his own music once he found his voice. Truth is, he'd been writing songs for a while but could never find anyone to sing them the way he wanted to. Once he was able to perform them himself, he bolted from his previous group and ventured out on his own. Never wanting to be a solo artist, Gordon quickly snatched up Shahmir and the two hit it off instantly. One of the first songs they wrote together was “Lips,” a track that has made its way to the new record. Gordon and Shahmir had originally enlisted another drummer before Brett joined the group.
Shahmir had moved to Atlanta from New York with a disenchanted outlook on the music scene up North; he was pleasantly surprised by what he found waiting for him in the South. “Down here, people actually respond and go to shows and hang out and go see music,” he observes. “I’ve always been drawn to that. And down here, [the music scene] is so much more rich. It seems authentic.”
Because of Gordon’s prior involvement in the Atlanta music scene, Kill Gordon had little difficulty finding its niche or drawing crowds in. And what has kept the crowds coming back for more is the trio’s emotionally chaotic live show that aims to present a unique experience each time around. The guys naturally get excited when they perform, though due to a couple of close calls, they’ve had to consciously tone things down a bit. Says Gordon, “I’m at a point now with the music to where when we play live, I’m kind of trying to restrict that raw emotion a little bit.”
Unlike the members of bands who decline to watch themselves on video, the guys in Kill Gordon equate the task with doing their homework. It helps them pick up on what not to do (rather than just trying to make sure they look “cool” all the time) and has helped calm the jitters that used to run rampant before a show. With their experience has come a sense of calmness about performing live. “Now we’re at a place where I don’t worry about much of anything,” Gordon declares. “I feel we’ve been doing this long enough to where whether I feel like we had a good show or not, people are gonna dig it because I never really think we do that good. But of course we do. All it takes is for me to see 10 seconds of a video clip of us playing to be like, ‘Oh, I would like that if I saw that.’” Many Atlanta and Athens concertgoers seem to share the same sentiment.
WHO: Kill Gordon, Sovus Radio, All the Saints
WHERE: Go Bar
WHEN: Friday, January 12
HOW MUCH: $5
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