Palo Duro Records

Article by John Goodspeed, Best in Texas

Annual migrations mark the change of seasons around the world. In California, spring wings in with the swallows at Mission San Juan Capistrano. In Texas, the sweltering summer rolls in like a thunderstorm on the first Two Ton Tuesday at Gruene Hall.

It’s a phenomenon rare even in a state where the passion for live music rages like teenage hormones at a sock hop.

For the uninitiated, Two Ton Tuesday is a cross between a sauna and an early Elvis concert.

For devotees, it’s a ton o’ fun, toetappin’ music at Texas’ oldest (and un-air-conditioned) dance hall, and that spirit is celebrated on Two Ton Tuesday Live From Gruene Hall, Palo Duro Records’ justreleased CD/DVD combo capturing the raw energy of one of the state’s best live bands so well that the sweat practically flies from the speakers.

“You can definitely feel the heat,” front man and rhythm guitarist Kevin Geil said, still bewildered that a gig on a nowhere night 11 years ago launched a trend heard round the world—and a career for the band Two Tons of Steel.

From the first Tuesday after Memorial Day through mid-August — Aug. 15 this year — upwards of 1,200 people pack the small hall and outdoor biergarten every week to gyrate to three hours of the quintet’s signature sound, a blend of uptempo roots rock and roots country they call “countrybilly.”

Office workers bolt early. College students cut night classes. Couples who met at a Two Ton Tuesday and later married celebrate anniversaries. Grandparents who caught to the original release of “Blue Suede Shoes” teach grandkids to dance to the standard’s Two Ton treatment. Women get tattoos illustrating Two Ton songs, such as “Havana Moon.” Swing dancers decked out in their finest ‘50s threads plan summers around it. Europeans book vacations so they can take a taste of Texas bragging rights, Two Ton Tuesday style, back home.

And those hot nights should be more than a little sweatier this summer, thanks to the band hooking up with Palo Duro Records, a growing, independent label.

Billing itself as “Country Music, Texas Spirit,” Palo Duro also teamed with other innovative acts such as The Derailers, Eleven Hundred Springs and Dale Watson to help them with airplay and record distribution coast to coast.

It clicked with Vegas, Two Tons’ first CD not on its own imprint, released about a year ago.

Before that, Geil would just mail copies out to a few radio stations, hope for the best and land a few spins.

This time, the title cut became a Top 5 hit on the Texas Music Chart while the album scored No. 7 on the national Americana chart and No. 1 on the Americana channels at both XM and Sirius satellite radio.

“Palo Duro made a huge difference,” Geil said. “We’re based in San Antonio, and we were pretty much an area band — Austin, Houston, Corpus Christi, and that was the radio play we got.

“Now we’re getting played on huge stations in Los Angeles and New York, and there’s even a station in Austin, MN, that was spinning ‘Vegas’ 65 times a week — stuff that we could never dreamed of doing on our own.

“That really got our name out there. It ain’t Elvis, but it ain’t bad.”

It helped, too, that “Vegas” was the best sounding of Two Tons’ albums, thanks to Lloyd Maines in the producer’s seat and the band’s maturity, which allowed them to rise to the occasion.

“It’s called ‘Two Tons’ for a reason — and not Kevin Geil,” Geil said. “They’re all top players, and they all bring so much. It’s unreal how much each one contributes to the sound and the style. “The members are almost irreplaceable,” Geil said – Grammy-winning Ric Ramirez slaps a towering standup bass like a heavyweight prizefighter, and Chris Dobbs pounds the drums mercilessly, as if they just made a pass at his girl.

Adding melodies with an eclectic, electric vibe are lead guitar flash Dennis Fallon and Denny Mathis, a member of the Texas Steel Guitar Player Hall of Fame, who cuts loose with stylish country improvisations tinged with jazz and sometimes Hawaiian sounds.

“Timing’s everything,” Geil said. “If it had happened three or four albums ago, when we were still producing ourselves, it wouldn’t have done as well as this. We’re real happy that Vegas was our first impression.”

Sales are better, crowds are bigger and Two Tons’ music is getting on more Palo Duro CDs, such as their “Car Seat” on the compilation Texas Unplugged alongside The Derailers, Rusty Wier, Johnny Bush and Dale Watson, and the upcoming Viva Terlingua tribute recorded live at Luckenbach.

Bookings are booming, too, with the quintet heading to Riverbend before upwards of 80,000 people in Chattanooga, TN, with Sugarland, Hank Williams Jr. and Los Lonely Boys.

Then there’s the October jaunt to Norway for the Lillehammer Festival, one of the biggest jazz/roots music celebrations in Europe.

Not to mention the live DVD in the Gruene Hall package – it won the Gold Remi Award for best stage performance at the 39th annual WorldFest International Film Festival last month in Houston. Or the first video, released in May, of the director’s cut of “Your Kiss.”

“Not only are they one of the best live bands I’ve seen in any genre, they
represent the most fun I’ve ever had at Gruene Hall — and I’ve played
there about a hundred times so that’s saying a lot,” said Monte Warden,
who co-wrote “Your Kiss.”

“I love what they do. I love how true they are to roots music,” said Warden, an Austin singer/songwriter steeped in rockabilly, honky-tonk and roots music. He first won fame in the late 1980s with his band The Wagoneers and co-wrote the George Strait hit “Desperately” with Bruce Robison before hitting more licks with Travis Tritt and others.

“I’ve been to Two Ton Tuesday more times than you’ve had hot meals, and my 17-year-old son Van is without a doubt their biggest fan. He thinks everything Two Tons does is the best,” he said. “We always make sure Van gets three to four Two Ton Tuesdays a summer.”
Warden recalls seeing the band in the early days, playing for four or five people in a club.

“Now they pack Gruene Hall on a Tuesday, all summer — that’s a good testimony to building your following one fan at a time.”

Those fans were few and far between when Geil, Fallon and Ramirez, who shared a love of Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins, formed a rockabilly trio called The Dead Crickets in 1991 to honor – sort of – the late rock pioneer Buddy Holly and his band The Crickets.

Playing about once a month in clubs around San Antonio, they eventually hit Gruene Hall and landed the now famous Tuesday gig in 1995.

A member of the real Crickets thought Geil’s band should find another name. He didn’t have to look far — just out his window at his lavender and white 1956 Cadillac Coup de Ville.

Not long before, a flat tire had forced him to pull off Broadway into a Firestone store, where he was told to wait for 45 minutes.

“I said, ‘Man, it’s going flat and if you don’t get it off the ground you won’t be able to move it — that’s two tons of steel out there.’ ”

Then he wrote the song and named the band after it.

Along with their name, their music evolved, too. Geil wrote most of the songs, swerving off the rockabilly road to collide with more lyrical heart and soul than that primitive form of rock. Their refined sound set them apart from bands serving tasteless retro rehash. Along with such original tunes as “Vegas,” “Havana Moon” and “Unglued,” Two Tons put the metal to the pedal with their own stamp on such rockabilly standards as “Ice Cream Man” and “Red Hot.” And dishing out fresh interpretations of tunes as varied as “Secret Agent Man” and “I Wanna Be Sedated” — their current single. This punk rock tune from The Ramones gets a loopy country groove.

Things really didn’t start clicking until about four years ago, when the band signed with booking agent Davis McLarty Agency.

More than their range expanded.

Soon Two Tons found themselves in diverse places, becoming regulars at the Opry Parties and the Grand Ole Opry. They played in a dance hall documentary at Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame and in another at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin.

While Two Ton Tuesdays keep the band anchored in Texas through the summer except for some fast planes to gigs around the county, they’re planning to expand after August.

For now, though, it’s Geil’s “Two Tons” chant — where he yells like a cheerleader on the intro to the live album’s first cut, “Diddly Daddy,” and the audience responds enthusiastically.

As Geil screamed between songs at last year’s first Two Ton Tuesday, “It’s no longer Memorial Day that kicks off summer — it’s Two Ton Tuesday!”

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 1st, 2006 at 1:35 pm and is filed under Daily Buzz, Events, Two Tons of Steel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.