Wednesday, July 16: 9 pm EST/8 pm CST
Songs and Stories Straight from Texas
Click this link to listen online:
http://www.wildmansteve.com/LISTENNOW!.html
Hey, Everybody! Today, I’m sitting alone in my beloved old white wood-frame house here in the familiar solitude of the changing little barrio at the edge of the big city, listening to two new songs that I recorded Monday at historic Sugar Hill Studios with “the mad scientist,” John Evans, on backing guitars and “the maestro,” Andy Bradley, on the board, and I can hardly wait for you to hear them! One is called “Christmas is Coming,” and the other is titled “Tonight (Graduation Song),” and they both sound great! Thanks to everybody who’s been writing and calling, wanting to know when the new album will be available. I have not forgotten you! The record should be ready for release in early 2015, and I do plan to catch up on correspondence!
But in the meantime, for a real “taste of Texas,” you might like to tune in tonight to hear my radio co-hosting debut, recorded for broadcast before a live audience, at the fifth annual Big Kev Roots Rock Revolution Radiothon in March. Kev (who is the music director and an on-air personality at WLVR radio in Pennsylvania) has been hosting around forty well-known Texas/Americana acts in a week-long line up in Austin during SXSW for more than a decade, and I was flattered that he offered me a chance to select and co-host a four hour slotthis year at a lovely venue called Opa! right next door to the good old Horseshoe Lounge where the locals hang on Lamar at Oltorf.
What a day it was! I called my portion of the showcase “Songs and Stories Straight from Texas,” and kicking it off was Texas History Lee Powell from the Monday p.m. drive-time show on KNON radio in Dallas; followed by Austin-based honky-tonk troubadour, Billy Eli and band whom I discovered when they were on tour last winter via New Hampshire radio; the edgy Chris Knudson who used to do shows with me at Cosmos Café back in Houston but now is carving out a life of music in Austin; and headliner, Ray Benson (Asleep at the Wheel) whom, by the way, I happened to catch the other night in a made-for-TV Christmas movie called Angels Sing (2013), set in Austin and featuring a cast of folks I know, some of whom have been guests in Kev’s showcases, including Marcia Ball, Dale Watson, Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, and Ray Benson who plays a bartender at a “saloon” where Willie decides to “cheer up” Harry Connick, Jr. who’s new to town. The saloon was the Salt Lick!! (That is funny, if you know Austin and if you know “Hollywood.”)
Last but not least, I’m booking shows in Nashville for the Fall and really looking forward to getting back to Music City. I am also feeling pretty excited about making my Blues singing debut in Austin next Wednesdayevening at the Gypsy Lounge on Sixth Street with the Nashville-based band, Scissormen, fronted by Gibson-endorsed bandleader and music critic, Ted Drozdowski, with a repertoire that I really love – I’ll be singing a great Muddy Waters standard, Rolling and Tumbling, that I recorded last month at the magical little studio in the quaint New Jersey township where Tony Soprano lived, just across the river from the Big Apple!
Y’all come!