Julia and the West Texas Waltz

by Alberta Moraine

Three Texan singer-songwriter-guitar players got together with a rhythm section and a lead guitarist and called themselves The Flatlanders. The three front-men grew up a few blocks from each other in Lubbock, Texas (but they only found this out as adults). Each of them - Joe Ely, Jimmy Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock - has a solo career, but judging from a late set I witnessed the other night, they seem to enjoy playing together so much that they'll keep the Flatlanders going as well.

Each of them talked to the audience, winningly. Butch Hancock recalled the day on his father's tractor when he realized that in second gear at two-thirds throttle, the tractor played in the key of G. From then on, the days spent slowly going around fields became harmonica practice and songwriting time. (He pointed out that if you are working on a tractor all day, 90% of your work has been done by the time you begin to move.)

Introducing the Fort Worth Shuffle, Jimmy Dale Gilmore painted this picture for the audience: Imagine you are dancing the Texas Two-Step with the perfect partner on a huge hardwood dance floor, with kegs of beer lined up across the back wall. That's the ideal setting for the song, he explained.

This is a band I prefer to see live. Their records are never as good - possibly because so much of the music is so very basic - a few chords, simple song structure, traditional instrumentation, conventional vocal harmonies. On stage, however, the character of the players and singers, their trademark off-balance seven-measure song verses and choruses, the higher intensity of live performing to an appreciative crowd all add up to some real excitement and happy enjoyment. These are first-rate entertainers. That is no secret: The audience waited for twenty minutes or more, shivering outdoors in a rainstorm, to be seated in a full house. Which reminds me of this Lubbock childhood reminiscence: they'd speed away on their bikes, following the DDT truck, which came around to spray for mosquitos three days after each rainfall. Their objective: to stay in the cloud of insecticide the longest. (And they are still standing.)

Among the lovely moments was this line: "All the streetlights on Main Street know my shadow." In the longwinded West Texas Waltz, an early stanza rhymes the French cars "Renaults" with "waltz," and a later one goes: "only two things are better than milkshakes and malts, and one of them's dancing to the West Texas Waltz." You gotta love them for that. And of course there was Joe Ely's couplet: "Came here from Jerusalem where things is lookin' bad. Gimme a ride to heaven - I need to see my dad" (uttered to the songwriter by a hitchhiking Jesus.)

Joe, Jimmy Dale, and Butch are veterans of the road - they have probably been working at this for 25 years or more. And when Gilmore mentioned they have a song in the soundtrack to the movie The Horse Whisperer, I detected a grin on his face - the face of a person made suddenly more comfortable by a new surge of royalty checks. (Nick Lowe is a great example of this welcome phenomenon. His What's so Funny about Peace Love and Understanding was in the soundtrack to My Bodyguard, and that's all it took to change his life permanently.)

One of the last songs in their generous (two-hour) set was a new beauty from Butch Hancock, called Julia. A repeating melody, sung to the one-word title, is so simple yet so hook-y - from an ascending arpeggiated minor II chord to the tonic. Absolutely lovely. There is a rumor of a new recording to be released soon. If it's got Julia on it, I'll buy it, in spite of what I said about their being so much better live. If the Flatlanders pay your town a visit, give them a listen. And if you are fortunate enough to live near a dance floor with a stage they'll be playing from, wear your best dancing shoes and bring that perfect partner, for a night to remember.

About our Correspondent:

Alberta Moraine was born in Texas but has never been to Lubbock.