1995 Dallas Observer Music Awards (Part I)

As though this were a classical recital, the audience remains completely still and quiet throughout the 40-minute set, transfixed by what they hear--Pendleton's scratchy, gorgeous voice surrounding each word like a warm blanket; Alan Hayslip's bass pouring out a beautiful melody; Bruce Alford shaking out the beat with hand-held percussion instruments; and the fragile music that comes from the two acoustic guitars. There's never been any question that Pendleton--her voice, her looks, her whole tougher-and-sweeter-than-you persona--is the star of Vibrolux, but on this day, one realizes that songs like "Volcano" and "Good Night Sleep" deserve co-headline billing. This is a band with a damned special frontwoman, but a band nonetheless.

With each passing day, there comes word that yet another major label is interested in Vibrolux; with each passing week, it seems they spend more time in Los Angeles on a label's tab, performing for crowds of A&R men and women eager to attach the band's name to a dotted line. This time last year, Capitol Records had forked over some money for the band to cut demos; shortly afterward, Capitol lost interest, then the band had a falling-out with management, and two band members departed. To those who had witnessed Pendleton's previous flirtations with major-label promise during her days in Princess Tex, it seemed just another inevitable let-down, the fate of the talented. To this day, the band--which has been together almost two years--has yet to release even a cassette of its material for public consumption, always waiting for the day when the perfect deal will come along.

Now, the cycle has begun anew, with almost every single major label pursuing Vibrolux with an unrequited passion: at a recent showcase in Los Angeles, representatives from Sony, Warner Bros., Virgin, A&M, Elektra, and so many other record companies were in the crowd, and just last week, the band flew back to the West Coast for another round of showcase performances. Whether this will again end with disappointing results or a shot at something bigger remains to be seen, but know this much: each night, when Kim Pendleton and her boys take the stage at a club near you, there is never a boring song or a wasted word or a wrong note. And you do not need some record company executive in California--or, for that matter, some writer in your own backyard--to validate the obvious.

--R.W.

COUNTRY & WESTERN
Cowboys and Indians

Down at the end of Industrial, past the drive-thru burger stands and the liquor stores and topless bars that exist today as they did 50 years ago, Bob Wills ran his Ranch House till it passed into the hands of Jack Ruby till it passed into the hands of Dewey Groom till it just passed. The place sits empty most nights, filled only occasionally with a biker swap meet or the rare second-tier blues concert; mostly, though, the Longhorn Ballroom just rots away slowly and imperceptibly, till it will someday vanish like every other great Dallas musical landmark that ever existed.

But the music created in that legendary joint--the amalgam of black big-band jazz and white honky-tonk country known as Western swing--still reverberates throughout this town (as the latest incarnation of the Light Crust Doughboys would attest). Between Tommy Morrell and His Time-Warp Tophands and those Doughboys (from which Bob Wills and Milton Brown sprang loose seven decades ago), Western swing hasn't died, not just yet.

Walk into Sons of Hermann Hall or Naomi's whenever Cowboys and Indians are performing and it's 1949 again--sax and steel guitar and upright bass and trombone providing the sound track to a time when Dallas reigned as country music's hot spot, when honky-tonk heaven had a 214 area code. Even when they're hi-di-hi-di-hoing through Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher."

Of the new breed of country traditionalists--those bands, such as Liberty Valance and the Cartwrights, that lean heavily on the legacy of men like George Jones and Hank Williams--Cowboys and Indians is perhaps the greatest anomaly: sounding like Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys backing Louis Jordan and His Timpani Five, theirs is a sound decidedly rooted in another era, and yet it hardly comes off as the stuff of nostalgia or homage. Rather, it is timeless--as swinging as Wills, as exciting as Jordan, jump-blues and R&B and jazz and country fused into one indestructible entity that encompasses the history of Texas music without burying it.

Erik Swanson (the Herculean trombone-playing front man with a classic voice) and guitarist Billy King originally envisioned Cowboys and Indians as a Western swing-rockabilly hybrid--swing played on an electric guitar, rock and roll on fiddle and steel guitar. But Cowboys and Indians, which has suffered through numerous personnel changes, has evolved over the past few years into a brassy small-big-band, driven as much by the horn section as by King's blazing guitar.

To listen to their soon-to-be-released album The Western Life is to recall both Wills' Tiffany Transcriptions (which features dozens of big-band standards, such as "Take the 'A' Train") and Jordan's "Five Guys Named Moe." It is surprising to discover that among 14 tracks on the record, only one--"I'm a Ding Dong Daddy," written in 1946 by Phil Baxter and recorded by both Louis Armstrong and Wills--is a cover, the rest being originals that sound instantly familiar and instantly classic. When Swanson sings "Big Man" ("Ya asked about my specs / Got an inch on ol' Big Tex") or "Indian Attack," he sounds at once blues and country; and Billy King's playing, sparse in places and fiery in others, fares well in comparison to Milton Brown's old sideman Bob Dunn or Eldon Shamblin, who defined Wills' sound for many a year.