School. Can you believe that so much of our lives are informed by who we were and what transpired then? I have been looking back again lately, maybe because Facebook makes all the eras mesh so seamlessly. When I was in school I loved to dance. Saturday night at Sam’s Burger Joint, I had the great good luck to see the Texas Tornados on their home turf in San Antonio. They were a joy, between Augie Meyers on keyboards and Flaco Jimenez on accordion, how can you have a bad time? And Shawn Sahm and the rest of the band do such a great job of keeping the spirit of Doug Sahm and Freddy Fender alive as well. I am always so taken with the multi-culturalism of the audiences there. White, Hispanic, African American, all enjoying the music together. On Saturday night, there was a woman dancing, wizened, wiry and yet somehow spry. She had a cane but was helped to the dance floor, where she held court without it all evening. At the end of the night, I asked her daughter how old she was, and she said, "92." God bless her.
Kevin Gordon is an East Nashville cat, by way of Louisiana. He is a natural resource, harnessing the energy of rocking and rolling instead of the sedentary life of poesy. I was so happy to make the booking with him during our Americana outreach. Our first time with Kevin, though I had been playing his music for years on the radio.
Kevin’s plan is to do a new album, Gloryland, in 2012, and he played us a new song, "Colfax," that I suspect will be on it. Peter Cooper of the Nashville Tennessean has said, "We'll empty your spit-valve for life if you find us anything more stunning than 'Colfax,' [Kevin Gordon's] undeniably superb song that could only have come from one mind, and from one person's experience. It's ostensibly about a kid in the marching band but winds up being about the heart of American darkness and the steel that it takes to move beyond." So here's "Colfax," from our recent Nashville stint.
-- Jessie Scott