The Gourds Featured on Jambase.com
February 4, 2009, 12:00 am
The Gourds: Luddite Juice & Tex-Mex Miles
By: Dennis Cook
Things get wild at a Gourds show. Fiddle sawing, accordion flailin' and dust rising, one dodges elbows and wild, stompin' feet as one of Austin's finest shows you what real broadminded American musicians can do. I've never walked away from one of their gigs without a good-sized bruise somewhere on my body - and I've seen 'em about 15 times since they began in the mid-'90s. The music has to be pretty damn good to merit this sort of black 'n' blue loyalty, and without question, The Gourds are some of the finest roots music going, thickening their sound and sharpening their songwriting with each passing year.
Haymaker! (released January 20 on Yep Roc Records) is possibly the most succinct distillation of their charms yet, touching upon all the Tex-Mex, early rock, '70s country, Guthrie-like folk and other strains in their appealing blend. Comfortable in both high lonesome and down-and-dirty spaces, The Gourds are the ultimate house party band - except instead of "Wooly Bully" they're armed with an ever-growing mountain of great tunes. They've long struck me as the band Lowell George would have jumped ship from Little Feat to join. They write dance floor killers and dandy love songs, and the people wandering around their stories always feel so flesh and blood real that you want to buy them a round or two. They're also picker's pickers, the sort that can seem sloppy on casual inspection but listen closer and you realize they're REALLY good musicians, and every hiccup and stutter-step is there on purpose.
The lineup of Kevin "Shinyribs" Russell (vocals, mandolin, guitars, harmonica), Claude Bernard (accordion, keys, backing vocals), Jimmy Smith (vocals, bass, percussion, guitars, sound effects), Max Johnston (fiddle, lap steel, banjo, acoustic guitar, resonator slide, mandolin, vocals) and Keith Langford (drums, harmonica, vocals) has been together over a decade, growing as smooth and purely beautiful as a river stone. There's a terrifically unforced feel to The Gourds, as if they just poke a hole in themselves and the sound pours out. Obviously, there's huge skill in every aspect of their music but they make it look easy, which in turn makes the listener better able to do what comes naturally. Interpret that as you will.
JamBase had the distinct pleasure of picking Kevin Russell's brain about their new album, their inspirations and how they feel about covering "Gin And Juice" many years and drunkenly hooted frat boy requests later.
JamBase: "Haymaker" is a marvelous word. It has such energy and movement, even if you don't know its boxing origins. How'd you settle on it for the title of your latest album?
Kevin Russell: I think you captured the whole of it there. It is about energy and movement. That is what The Gourds are about musically. Our sound has such a big swirling flow to it. We are a great "combo" in the classic sense. We make a sound, all of us together, and a feel that is kinetic and vibrant. We seek to resonate like the skin on a drum or the reeds in the weeds along a river raging down hill. We are in motion and seeking the ocean.
JamBase: The Gourds have been described as Americana, country rock, roots music, and your Wikipedia entry says you play "American alternative country." I don't think any of these really nails it. I'd put you guys closer on the spectrum to Los Lobos or the Grateful Dead's wide embrace of all the cool strains of American popular music - blues, folk, jazz, country, rock. How do you describe what you do?
Kevin Russell: I agree with your assessment there. I am always making up strange, poetical strains to foster contemplation and understanding of what we are and what we do - Rag and Bone Pawn Shop Jalopy, Well Read Neck Rock, Surreal Stomp and Soul, Texas Song Ghetto Tonk. Alas, it is a fool's gambit. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal comes into play here, where reality changes as we observe it closer. If one focuses on one aspect of what we do that aspect begins to turn into another layer that may or may not fit neatly next to it. We are full of contradictions and superstitions and conflicts of culture and time. We love to mix all of the music, literature, pop culture and history we love into this bedlam's junk drawer. Maybe that is a term we could use right now for us - "Junk Drawer Sound."
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