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Happy
Days, Wednesday, 15th September, 1999
Ray Wylie Hubbard, Lloyd Maines, Terri Hendrix |
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 The Messengers |
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| Ray Wylie Hubbard, Lloyd Maines and Terri Hendrix are on the road for a short European tour taking in Holland, Belgium and London. Bringing their art to small venues to those who know good music when they hear it. | ||||||
| Happy Days is a small bar in Den Haag (the Hague to we Brits) where Joanna Serraris is beginning to establish an acoustic concert series for musicians both unsung and lauded to the rafters. Recent gigs have included Rosie Flores and Stacey Earle. Richard Dobson will be coming next in November. | ||||||
 The soundcheck |
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| Wednesday nights gig was an end to end corker. The artists sold the bar out and delivered the kind of sets that you are likely to talk about long after the event. The musicians came from Texas. The audience for Happy Days is drawn from as far afield as Amsterdam and Brussels tonight. It was only raining outside but inside the audience and musicians whipped up a storm together. | ||||||
| The venue is small, maybe 60 or 70 so here tonight. Happy Days is a long bar leading from the door down to where it widens out into a lounge area. Here around the fireplace the musicians have gathered their instruments. The audience are packed in around them back to the walls. The soundman finds some room for his equipment in one corner. | ||||||
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Terri Hendrix/Lloyd Maines
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| Terri Hendrix and Lloyd Maines took the floor at 8.00pm. Lloyd Maines, the big, affable Texan who is a musical ambassador for the State of Texas, whose name on the credits on countless CDs you could take to the bank. Terri Hendrix's name became familiar through Internet postings over the last few months. They've all said this blonde haired lady from Texas is the business. She is. | ||||||
| Together the duo rocked. The music as I heard it was anchored in kicking Django jazz inspired rhythms with lots of traditional gospel and folk flavours. Like a plateful of enchiladas and rice. They performed what Terri Hendrix explained was 'an old Carter Family song, Motherless Children' and a version of Old Joe Clark that burst at the corners. | ||||||
| First thing that hits you is the power of Terri Hendrix's voice, the control. Then the stomping chords these two cook up between them. How can you describe what Lloyd Maines can do with an instrument in his hands? The chords these two were hitting were like a springboard to him and he just reeled off the licks like a gunslinger ripping tin cans off a corral fence. This whole set flew from end to end. | ||||||
| Largely the songs came from Terri Hendrix's Wilory Farm album, Flowers, Wallet, Love Like This, The Know How and the one that nearly ripped the roof off, Wind Me Up. | ||||||
| The death defying leap that the pair made on Wind Me Up was awesome. They just kinda held hands and went for it. As fast as Lloyd Maines was ripping out riffs on his dobro, Terri was scat singing in unison and counterpoint. The free fall was so damn fast I wondered how they might pull the ripchord and bring the show to a stop. They did. The audience went apeshit. | ||||||
| Joanna Serraris audience here are something else. They have come from all over, Amsterdam and Belgium I think she said to me. And they are so enthusiastic for the performers. You get the feeling that you are part of an extended family. Joanna's daughter Jodie is helping with fetching drinks and Jessica is sat along the bar selling the artists CDs. | ||||||
| This gig confirms that the spirit of great music can be built anywhere given the commitment and a community of like minded souls. | ||||||
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Ray Wylie Hubbard/Terri Hendrix/Lloyd
Maines
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| Ray Wylie wandered up onto the floor in a loose fitting white shirt over his faded jeans and wearing as all Texas musicians do, pretty much as a trademark, a pair of cowboy boots. Terri Hendrix switched to playing mandolin, Lloyd Maines moved to the pedal steel and Ray Wylie plugged in an acoustic Martin D28. They were all grouped around the fireplace and the audience warmed their hearts to them. | ||||||
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Lotsa folks had been listening to these dangerous spirits the night before but no matter how many times you see Ray Wylie Hubbard play he'll have another take on it, another way of saying it or playing it. His set went all over. As dark and damn beautiful as ever. His voice so unhurried, hung like cigar smoke and cut like a good Tequilla, the man is a poet and a joker of the first order. |
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The songs all peppered with stories. Woven in the spirit of Townes, that knack of combining songs around stories and vice versa. And Ray Wylie's a master of both. To be sat in this room tonight while he sang was just a sheer bloody delight. There ought to be a law against Lloyd Maines playing pedal steel so sweet as that. Terri Hendrix's support vocals invoked tears and Ray Wylie just went from profound to pisstake. |
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Jeez they did Crimson Kings, Without Love, Loco Gringos, Last Train to Amsterdam, Dust of the Chase, Heaven Is Not A Place To Go, Just to Hold You and it just got better and better. The audience singalongs were tremendous on She Sang Amazing Grace and Rock-a-billy-rock. |
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I just fell over when Ray Wylie introduced Dust of the Chase and said 'All the worst outlaws come from Oklahoma, like Pretty Boy Floyd and Jimmy LaFave' and then Lloyd Maines just leaned back as relaxed as he might be taking a suck on a big cigar and he smoked that steel. |
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The final four songs just simply topped the entire evening. Ray Wylie sang The Messenger. Originally from his Loco Gringos Lament album, the new version from the latest album Crusades of the Restless Knights now tips its hat to Townes Van Zandt with a beautiful line dedicated to one of the greatest rock and roll gypsies of them all. |
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| This is the kind of song that has you in some kind of awe at his artistry at conveying the ways of the highway kind. The harmony vocals of Terri Hendrix just stun you, Lloyd Maine's steel work underpins the lilt of this song that smacks of campfires and cantina's lit by candlelight. And in that gentle Texas burr Ray Wylie Hubbard sings: | ||||||
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| It was appropriate that Ray Wylie would then allude to the great Texas songwriters who he felt were his guiding lights, he notes Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark and Billy Joe Shaver. Then he just falls into Townes Snowin' On Raton. Terri Hendrix's voice melted me. Whispered like the wind up on the Raton pass. Lloyd Maines can create atmosphere that is second to none. And he did it to my neck hairs on this one. | ||||||
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| Ray Wylie stands there in his cowboy boots and ragged beard and lives the part. Probably my favourite Townes song sung in a tiny bar to an audience right up for it. | ||||||
| Butch Hancock's Bluebird followed and they all flew on this one and the atmosphere was electric in here. It was like being on a guided tour of the great music that comes out of Texas. Joanna Serraris got the musicians back for one final song, a second encore. Lloyd Maines suggested a song to Ray Wylie. 'Ok, we'll do it if you want to,' said Ray Wylie to Lloyd Maines, 'but you folks got to help me sing it . . .' | ||||||
| Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother took off like a rocket. Folks singing the song line for line, the sheer energy that came back at the musicians when they got to the first chorus pretty nearly blew them right back into the fireplace. It closed in fine rabble rousing fashion. | ||||||
| I read Joanna's comment list the next morning and it overflowed with people saying that Happy Days was the place and Ray Wylie was the business. I added my own in capital letters. BRILLIANT. | ||||||
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Mike
Plumbley
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Special thanks to the Serraris family for hospitality, superb food and music. To Rolf from the Townes list for helping me prop the bar up and for the opportunity to sit in the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam and consider the art of Van Gogh, Van Zandt, Ray Wylie, Lloyd Maines and Terri Hendrix. |