Sitting on the plane waiting to leave for the heart of Texas, we received word that we were to be delayed due to the occurrence of a 5.2 magnitude earthquake. For a hour I waited on that plane half-delirious from lack of sleep while they inspected the runways and control tower. Thank god, my mind was tired and thoughts of omens and curses didn’t start to wander across my brain.

I was on my way to see The Zero Boys rock Austin, Texas. But we had some business to attend first, and part of that involved a drive to Gruene, Texas to the Gruene Hall, The oldest continuously operating dance hall in Texas. A tin-roofed open shed virtually unchanged from when it was built in the late 1800’s, with a cedar tree filled courtyard and wood plank floor, Gruene Hall is probably just about the coolest venue I’ve ever been in. It was one of those places where you could feel the millions of souls that had loved and lived and danced and fought upon its uneven, ancient floors.

We get there just as Bobby Bare Jr. is opening up his set, and we get a little appetizer for the long weekend that lies ahead. Playing with just a drummer and bassist, Bobby is in fine voice and good rocking form as he always is. Running down a set heavy on material from his last Bloodshot album, The Longest Meow, BBJ is crackling with energy.



The minimal set-up made our boy work extra hard on the guitar, and songs like “Oh Wuh Oh” and “Motherfucker” – changed to “Mothersmuckers” due to the abundance of little kids in the crowd – provided a good picture of just how talented BBJ really is. Deftly moving from tender to psychedelic to flat out rawk to noisy space, Bobby is way under-noticed as a guitar player and when pushed to pull out the stops, he never disappoints.

This point is driven home when Son Volt’s resident albino guitarist, Chris Masterson jumped up to play along on “Borrow Your Cape.” Despite this song long having been a centerpiece of Bare Jr.’s shows, and despite Masterson having one of the baddest, custom-made big as Texas mother of Pearl inlaid guitars I’ve ever seen, the energy was cut in half.



Not to worry, it only lasted a song and when Bobby started the opening to “Terrible Sunrise,” singing “If you Talk any faster with food in your teeth / I swear to God I’m gonna call the police...” he was back in top form, filling the air of this historic place with good vibes and great music.

The next day we found our way to Austin’s Reggae Fest, a two-day event in a downtown park. Now, reggae isn’t normally something one would equate with Austin, once we got there it all made sense. Started by Dave Sprauer a few years ago, the festival has grown into a huge homegrown festival that may be one of the better organized and peopled festivals I’ve ever been to.

Sprauer, who has both strong Indiana AND Jamaican roots, and who owns Austin’s best hard-rock hang-out Trophy’s, was clearly pleased as he surveyed the mile + line of people that waited to get in. “This is the biggest day we’ve ever had already, and there looks like there’s as many people waiting to get in!”



As we ambled across the grounds, the strong stench of mary jane wafted everywhere intertwined with the funky reggae that poured from two stages. Everywhere you looked, people were grooving, lighting up and reaching into their coolers for another cold one. Good vibes ruled the day.

Good Vibes is something that Austin seems to thrive upon. Everywhere we went, we stumbled upon random concerts in one of the seemingly hundreds of city parks in the city all full of people with coolers and blankets and smiles. The cooler and a blanket mentality is rampant down here, with a myriad of natural wonders and a deceptively calm and serene atmosphere surrounding Austin, it is a good life.

But I didn’t come to Austin for the picnics and old dancehalls. I came to see The Zero Boys play Emo’s. In a town that was full of music, the room was fairly packed. By the time The Zero Boys dove in with “Vicious Circle” the room became a throbbing mass of falling bodies, beer and sweat. The band picked up on the energy right away and delivered a classic set of Zero Boys music to the slathering mass of freaks.



As usual, Paul and Vess played the crowd like a ancient violin, but, this being a musical town, most people in the crowd were flipping out whenever Tufty would hit one of his patented lightening speed bass runs. The “hits” – “Livin’ in the Eighties,” “Amphetamine Addiction” and “Civilization’s Dyin’” - sent the crowd into overdrive, but so did songs like “Forced Entry” and “Human Body.” Towards the end of the set, a truly spectacully fucked-up dude, emerged from the crowd and stood holding onto Tufty’s mike stand, singing way off-key and looking like death was minutes away. Tufty simply adjusted the mike for the guy and went over and stood next to Vess. Anybody can be a Zero Boy!



Everybody was a Zero Boy this evening. It never failed to amaze me when I see The Zero Boys play Indy and 3/4 the crowd is standing with their hands in their pockets like they’re looking at a museum exhibit. Emo’s was full of kids, older fanboys and frat boys who all knew all the words to every song and who make no bones about their love for the music. Fists pump, we all scream the words until we’re hoarse, we move as a single organism to the music.

After an hour + set the men of the Zero Boys left the stage, and Austin was having none of that. Paul’s mike was pulled into the crowd and various fans took turns politely asking The Zero Boys to please come back for one more song, please? People were jacked, with the look of a crowd that had just seen something really special. People were fighting over the setlists. Everybody was ripped, and nary a drunken asshole in sight.

Mahern and co. got back up and pulled out “Night Time.” With Mark Cutsinger and Tufty locking in the groove, the song exploded into a fuzzy garage freakout that left the crowd lusting for more. We stood outside Emo’s and watched all the kids come out. They were all talking about the show, with the faces of those who have just had a profound blissful spiritual experience. Once again something you NEVER see in Indianapolis.
Paul comes out and stands outside, visibly pleased with what just went down. “You know, Flounder,” he tells me, “when I told them that we where here 25 years ago, I didn’t tell them we had beer bottles thrown at us.” He smiles and says “I didn’t want to give ‘em any ideas!”

Next day, still reeling from the night before, we take a brunch at Threadgill’s, a local Austin legend and the club where Janis Joplin got her start. I’d eaten there in the past, and the perfect home cooking and old school ambience always called me back. This time around I was in for an unpleasant shock. Threadgills has undergone a complete renovation that has transformed it from a funky space to a corpo-american diner design.
And the food? Just a tiny step above Applebee’s. Definitely not the food that had brought me the bliss of Jesus in years past.



Another disturbing thing. Of course, there were pictures of Janis all over, it has always been that way at Threadgill’s. But at the barely mention of Joplin, our server goes off on a monotone spiel on Janis that lasts for 5 minutes and ends with an invitation to visit the “Janis” room on our way out. She does this all with the passion and conviction of a hostage on TV reading a statement with a gun to his head. So, of course we have to visit the “Janis” room. There was another waitress in there on break. She goes on about how this was where Janis “rested” in between shows. “Can’t you almost feel her presence?” she says and then launches into an almost verbatim recitation of our first waitress’ spiel. What happened to Threadgill’s? Who is brainwashing these poor women?

We spend the rest of the day visiting parks and celebrating 420. Evening time rolls around and I manage to talk my way into the Steve Malkmus show. Actually Melonshe did the talking, I just wrote a note and left it at the box office. True to Austin form, the show, at La Zona Rosa was nearly sold-out, even with a Cat Power show across town. The stench of Pot once again filled the air. Call it Texas Sage.

Perhaps inspired by what the crowd was smoking, Stephen Malkmus and his Jicks was in a full-on guitar frenzy. Opening with “Baby C’Mon” and continuing through the encore Malkmus fitted every song with a guitar journey that took us to far and exotic lands. Janet Weiss’ drumming was more fluid and relaxed then when I’d seen them here in Indy, and though he played more songs here, at La Zona Rosa, he played a longer show with fewer songs.

“Dragonfly Pie” and “Real Emotional Trash” in particular, were grand and epic, the kind of excursions usually reserved for Doug Martsch and J Mascis. Feedback and melody fought, loved and gave birth to more feedback and melody. At times you lost your bearings, but Weiss and bassist Joanna Bolme was always there to offer a foothold on reality. Awesome show, and an awesome way to say goodbye to Austin.

-–Jeff Napier
napierism@nuvo.net