Click HERE to Hear “Be My Valentine (On Christmas)”: www.glennabell.com
Hey, Everybody. Happy Holidays! In the afterglow of my East Coast performances last week, it feels good to be home again, sitting here enjoying the familiar Gulf Coast breeze in the sunshine on the front porch of my age-old wood frame house at the edge of downtown Houston, writing to you and listening to Odetta’s last Christmas recording—what an amazing voice that has always inspired me.
Last weekend, the show at Hill Country BBQ on W. 26 in Manhattan was a great success. The NYC-based theatrical production team, There Goes The Trolley, did a terrific job staging it, and we had so much fun! I ended up making an impromptu radio appearance on WLVR in beautiful Bethlehem, PA the following afternoon, and thoroughly enjoyed being on the air with host, The Hairless Hippy! That evening I opened for a tried and true songwriter/storyteller who goes all the way back to the Greenwich Village scene, Roy Bookbinder, at Godfrey Daniels Theater, a venue I always look forward to visiting because it is one of the last authentic listening rooms in the nation with exquisite acoustics and a talented, experienced sound engineer who is always on top of it all. I was flattered when the proprietor admired my performance after telling me that she has an affinity for Texas artists. She said that she was impressed by how I harness the energy of a room.
On Sunday (December 4) at 4:30, I’ll be singing Willie Nelson’s “The Family Bible” (a song he sold for fifty dollars before he hit it big!) at the Continental Club here in Houston with John Evans on guitar, emulating the recording that we did for the Sugar Hill Studios House of Hits music compilation/book by Andy Bradley and Roger Wood that was recently released through the University of Texas Press:
"Sugar Hill's roster boasts luminary artists, including Lightnin' Hopkins, George Jones, Willie Nelson, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Junior Parker, Clifton Chenier, Sir Douglas Quintet, 13th Floor Elevators, Freddy Fender, Doug Sahm, Ray Benson, Guy Clark, Lucinda Williams, Beyoncé and Destiny's Child. The legacy of Sugar Hill Recording Studios is now documented in House of Hits: The Story of Houston's Gold Star/Sugar Hill Recording Studios (University of Texas Press 2010), which chronicles the growth and changes in the recording industry spanning Sugar Hill's seven decades of making Texas music history."
I know I felt as if I were a part of history the first time I sat there singing and playing on that same gold star where the Big Bopper recorded “Chantilly Lace.” And I hope that those of you in Houston will help us commemorate such a historic occasion by showing up at the Continental Club for this big event, recognizing 70 years of music making at the oldest continuously operating recording studio in the Southwest. All of the details are on the calendar page at www.glennabell.com
Y’all come!