Well on their way When you consider the direction that contemporary gospel music has been moving recently–draining away any grit or unpredictable emotion and substituting danceable grooves and appealing production–it’s little wonder that one of the biggest gospel acts, the vocal septet Take 6, makes its headquarters in Nashville, the…

Native sounds Tribal Fires various artists Earthbeat!/Rhino Records Mirabal Mirabal Warner Brothers Records The concept of Native American music covers a lot of ground. Anyone who’s traveled much through the American West–particularly if on a tour of state and national parks–is familiar with the authentic bone-flute-drums-and-chanting albums that are constantly…

For less than the ages Certified Funky 2 Professor D and the Playschool D-Funk At certain population levels, people start to cluster their dwellings together; then they build walled villages, then big cities. Like roads and aqueducts, bands like Professor D and the Playschool come about when there are a…

Gregory Slavins is alert and attentive, even intense, behind the piano at Sambuca restaurant in Deep Ellum, but he’s not constricted by his creativity like some virtuosos. Around him, the pre-Christmas swirl of drinks and dinner turn, especially warm in the holiday glow; most people listen to conversation–or blather–not the…

One of the good things about the howling, whirling, all-ingesting mouth of the pop-culture machine is that as it strips the surroundings bare of anything that might prove useful–septuplets, people who are afraid to love, cigar-smoking dogs–it does occasionally stir up some pretty neat stuff from olden times. Here are…

Local musicians had one thing going for them this year: With the national music scene cruelly besieged by market forces, there was less difference between local and national in 1997 than ever before. Radish was the focal point of a fevered bidding war in 1996, with label execs renting cars…

How do you experience a year? Can a person ever shed his innate subjectivity and perceive or appreciate something on a different level than he would a warm, fuzzy sweater, a pork chop, or a long car trip? It doesn’t really matter; nobody’s going to pay me to write about…

Brian Houser has quite a view from his workplace; his job as a carpenter, responsible for maintaining the aptly named Texas Giant roller coaster at Six Flags, can take him up to 143 feet in the air. You can’t see both Dallas’ and Fort Worth’s skylines at once, like you…

The original Motor City Madman Mitch Ryder–one of the best, if not the authentic, white-boy soul belter and architect of the high-energy “Detroit sound” –has made more comebacks than a boomerang. His early fame was built with the Detroit Wheels upon classics like 1965’s “Jenny Take a Ride!” (actually a…

Finally in front Transplanting Elaine Summers Loosegroove Records Pete Droge and his band the Sinners offered up one of the best releases of 1996 in Find a Door, an album of slightly skewed rock. Helping out was the potent voice of Elaine Summers, who also played guitar with the group…

Q and the Black Martin Q and the Black Martin Moondog Records Challenging and confounding the listener is a dangerous path: You might be as weighty as Bone Machine-era Tom Waits, yes, but you could also end up as annoying as faux-lounge act Toledo. Like the above, Q and the…

Christmas is a time for gentle reflection on good times past–and perhaps even the wiping away of a nostalgic tear, so the cover of Honkey-Tonk Holidays (Christmas in Deep Noellum) is particularly poignant: now-passed nightspot Naomi’s, all aglow with Christmas lights, early-’50s Chevy truck parked in front. Issuing label Big…

The chorus is delivered with a sing-songy cadence that sounds almost like a nursery rhyme; the voice, accompanied by mandolin and acoustic guitar, is so utterly country in its inflections, it could pass for backwoods–sharp and nasal: alleluia curse the wind i don’t break and i don’t bend and i…

“Catfish and the blues were born together,” declares L.R. “T.C.” Deere, owner of the five-location Top Cat seafood restaurant chain. A bit incongruous behind the cash register of his downtown location (505 N. Griffin, right across from the bus station) in his sharply creased shirt, necktie, and braces, Deere is…

Let us now praise local bands It’s been a veritable roller coaster of a year for the Old 97’s: big-name attention, major-label foofaraw, and the derision of Whiskeytown’s resident know-it-all and professional butthead David Ryan Adams (what is that guy’s problem?). Now the shameless 97’s have bamboozled another poor boob…

It’s been looking a lot like Christmas here in the office since about July, when the first “seasonal” albums began arriving, presaging a time when the people of the world–or at least those who aren’t Muslims, Jews, Jains, Bahais, animists, cargo cultists, Druids, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, or born-again pagans–celebrate the…

Imagine Rod Serling walking out of the soundstage and into the pool of light cast by a single spotlight. “Submitted for your approval,” he says in that authoritative way that jogs our collective TV memories. “A portrait of a young woman who wants nothing more than to sing, and who…

Hank’s back Hank Thompson and Friends Hank Thompson Curb Records It took over 30 years, but country music has caught up with Hank Thompson. Thompson–a longstanding force who, with his Brazos Valley Boys, revolutionized postwar country music by blending Western Swing with honky-tonk–has been something of an anachronism since the…

Spin magazine’s just-released Underground USA (Vintage, $14) is subtitled “An insider’s guide to live music, cheap eats, dive bars, thrift stores, and deviant fun in America’s top music cities.” According to the introduction written by Craig Marks, Spin’s executive editor, the 20 cities listed all “share at least one thing…

There is restlessness about Keli Vaughan. It shows up in the way she uses her hands to accent her conversation, and it’s scattered through her transcontinental history, which has seen her traveling to India, China, Europe, and Great Britain. There is inquisitiveness as well: it’s there in her clear blue…

There’s no lack of props for hometown-girl-done-good Erykah Badu, who sang, danced, and rapped around town for years before heading to New York and making it big at the tender age of 26. There’s nothing green or tender about her mixture of old-school R&B and New Jack riddims, however, or…

Odds ‘n’ sods Songs of the Hawaiian Cowboy (Na Mele O Paniolo) Various artists Warner Brothers Western Most people think of Hawaii as a lush, tropical place and cowboys as working in the arid vastness of the Texas plains, but the Hawaiian cattle industry has a rich heritage of native…