Tweedy still promises that someday he'd like to produce a Bobby Patterson album with Wilco or the Smog as his backing band, and Patterson would like nothing better. Patterson even has a couple of photos of Tweedy's 3-year-old son, Spencer, on the wall of his home. And maybe working with Tweedy is just the thing to help his comeback, stalled in neutral three years after it began. Patterson's latest album, I'd Rather Eat Soup, came out at the end of 1998 without a sound, but a reissue of The Storyteller--packaged with five unreleased cuts--has already garnered a handful of positive reviews. Unfortunately, since the album was re-released in England, it doesn't help Patterson here. Not that it matters much to Patterson. He just loves being involved with music, whether it's his own or someone else's.
This is the originator, not the imitator, Soul 73 KKDA! Ain't no up and down, we're all around. We're like a straight line. Take a licking and keep on ticking. I'm trying to get over this morning before I go under, and if I go under, I'll be trying to get over. I'm drinking from my own well this morning. This is the real thing, not the wannabe. I gotta mix these electronics up in here with these ebonics. I'll be right back! I'ma be doing some crying in the streets in a minute!
So here Bobby Patterson is--more than 30 years after his first gig, 20 years after he gave it up, sitting in KKDA-AM's unassuming studio nestled in a quiet neighborhood in Grand Prairie. Here he is--spinning records by musicians he used to share stages with, some still remembered, others long forgotten. This isn't the conclusion for him, just the beginning of another chapter in a story that never seems to end.
He hasn't given up on making music yet, and he probably never will. At the moment, he's trying to set up a few dates in Europe, do a little promotion for The Storyteller's reissue. And he's already beginning to work on a new album, a straight-ahead blues record featuring Patterson performing the songs he wrote for other musicians but never recorded himself. The working title is I Think I'll Sing My Own Songs. But if this does happen to be the last stop for Patterson, well, that suits him just fine.
"This keeps me in touch with the music and everything," Patterson says, lowering his voice into the low rumble he uses off the air, a tone that almost betrays his age. "It's something like a little advantage sometimes, when I know most of these people that I'm playing, like I told Hyman. He said, 'You know a lot of these artists.' I said, 'Man, I know just about all of 'em--the dead ones and the living ones.' It's nice to know the music that you're playing and be familiar with it. You got a lot of people playing this music that's not familiar with it. Me? I love this music."
Bobby Patterson performs on March 12 at the Longhorn Ballroom with Bobby Blue Bland as part of The Dirty Rat Blues Festival and Birthday Bash.
Scene, heard
On April 20, Reverend Horton Heat will reunite with Sub Pop Records, the label responsible for 1991's Smoke 'em if You Got 'em and 1993's The Full-Custom Gospel Sounds of... Sub Pop will issue Holy Roller, a 24-song best-of that will also include songs from the band's three albums for Interscope Records (1994's Liquor in the Front, 1996's It's Martini Time, and last year's Space Heater). The disc will mirror the band's recent setlist and, in addition, feature two unreleased songs: "Bath-water Blues" and the band's rendition of the Johnny Cash classic "Folsom Prison Blues." The Rev covering The Man in Black--never thought that would happen. But it's no more unlikely than the Rev's song "Big Red Rocket of Love" appearing in the current Mazda Miata TV commercial. That song's about a car? Damn...
Because he doesn't have enough to do, James "Big Bucks" Burnett has begun putting on what he likes to call the Variety Nightmare on a semi-regular basis at Club Dada. Bucks--or as he's known around here, the Volares frontman--likes to call it the "early-show extravaganza that is changing the way Dallas ignores music," and a hearty hahaha to that. Hey, smells like old-school reunion time (or roses) to us: Last Wednesday's show featured an appearance from ex-Potatoes bassist Hubert Winnubust and other reformed spuds, and March 24's show will mark the debut of The Darlies--or the brand-new band from ex-Trees frontman Pat McKanna. Nobody disappears for long in this town. Nobody...
According to John Dufilho--the Bedwetter who records all by his lonesome under the name The Deathray Davies--there will soon enough be a CD version of The Deathray's debut Drink With the Grown-Ups and Listen to the Jazz. Dufilho, who will play the Barley House on Friday and then South by Southwest with a real band that includes Legendary Crystal Chandelier's Peter Schmidt, says the disc should be available in a few weeks. Hey, we only have a six-song tape (which includes "Jesus Loves Mike D."), and it's already one of our favorite records of the year.
Send Street Beat your scalped Toadies tickets to rwilonsky@dallasobserver.com.
