Palo Duro Records

Although Live From the River Road Icehouse, Darryl Lee Rush’s sophomore effort, has been out for almost a year, a new video for the song “Lot” premiered last week at Trinity Hall in Mockingbird Station.

“Lot” is one of two studio recordings that appeared on the live album, and it may be the best song Rush has written. An ode to a woman accepting her lot in life while barely making ends meet, the song is just another example of Rush’s lyrical skill.

Rush’s debut, Llano Avenue, came out in 2006 and it is still one of the best collections of traditional country music to come out of Dallas in a decade. The live album seemed to be a holding pattern while Rush worked things out with his label, so let’s hope the video release will get things jump started and we can expect a lot more like “Lot” in the near future.

Review by Darryl Smyers

To view the “Lot” video, go to www.darrylleerush.com.

Popularity: 4% [?]

 2008 marks the 10 year anniversary for Dallas band 1100 springs.  That’s about 110 springs per year!  The band has recently released their latest cd, Country Jam, produced by Lloyd Maines, whose name is popping up everywhere as producer and player. The band is constantly working on its material live.  Last year included opening shows for ZZ Top and Willie Nelson, among others.  The band plays what they call a Texas brand of honky-tonk country.  Whatever it is, it’s fun. The band consists of Matt Hillyer-electric guitar and vocals; Steven F. Berg-bass; Danny Crelin- pedal steel guitar; Jordan W. Hendrix-fiddle; and Mark Reznicek on drums.  Lloyd Maines adds acoustic guitar and banjo as one of a number of guests on the disc.

The bands laid back fun style is demonstrated right out of the gate with “Texas Afternoon;” one guy’s bid to get the girl to run away with him for a Texas Afternoon.  Some nice accordion gives the tune a Tex/Mex spicing. The band picks it up for several faster tunes, including “Every Time I Get Close To You” and a great cover of “Rocket 88,” which adds some great sax and closes out the disc with a bang.

Sometimes bands try to slow things down and you wait impatiently for the next cut to start.  Not the case here. The bands slower numbers truly add to the disc here, highlighting the expressive voice of Matt Hillyer.  An especially nice slower number is “Nobody Told You About The Love.” The band pays homage to old time country with the classic sounding “Whose Heart Are You Breaking Tonight?” Great songs, great singing and playing and great production add up to a real winner!

by Don Zelazny

Popularity: 5% [?]

20th Annual Dallas Observer Music Awards

BEST BAND: Eleven Hundred Springs
BEST ALBUM: Eleven Hundred Springs, Country Jam
BEST COUNTRY/ROOTS ACT: Eleven Hundred Springs
BEST MALE VOCALIST: Matt Hillyer, Eleven Hundred Springs

By, Pete Freedman, Dallas Observer

To Listen… To Buy

To the 13 acts and artists that had the misfortune of being nominated into the same categories as Eleven Hundred Springs: Sorry. This was just Eleven Hundred Springs’ year. No hard feelings?

Armed with a pure sound, a widespread appeal, a deserved respect and throngs of loyal fans, the band won every single award it was nominated for—even tangentially. Bass player Steven F. Berg also won the Best DJ award for his work under the DJ Burlap moniker, and past Eleven Hundred Springs collaborators The Tejas Brothers too managed a tie in the Best New Act category.

So, yeah. Pull weight much?

With Country Jam to hang their hat on, though, this isn’t a surprise. Now, a few months after its release to critical acclaim, the disc’s still earning heavy rotation on KZPS-FM Lone Star 92.5, proving what so many around town have known for so long: When it comes to classic country music—the good stuff, as in: country done right, country done well, country done fun (and not cheesy, for crying out loud)—Eleven Hundred Springs is the cream of the crop, local or otherwise.

And Berg, frontman Matt Hillyer, pedal steel player Danny Crelin, fiddler Jordan W. Hendrix and drummer Mark Reznicek all seem astonishingly humble about it, just happy to be playing music for their ever-loyal fans, which they do constantly.

“There’s an old adage that says you’re only as good as your last show,” says Hillyer, who also takes home this year’s award for Best Male Vocalist, “and we play a lot of shows. I try not to look forward or back.”

Thing is: Looking back is exactly what Eleven Hundred Springs’ sound inspires. There’s an honesty to it all, a realness that inspires instant nostalgia, a genuine quality that transports its listeners into a slower, easier, gentler time and a place where the moonshine is served by the bucketful and everybody line-dances like a pro.

“People respond to country music because there’s a lot of truth to it,” Hillyer says. “And it’s simple too, one of the genres of music where you don’t have to be angry all the time.”

So does this signal a return to form for a genre that’s seen better days? You bet, says Hillyer. “Country music never went away. It’s just that it makes people feel good, and right now, people seem to appreciate that.”

As far as Eleven Hundred Springs’ abilities to elicit such a response, Hillyer credits the band’s latest lineup: “We all have our heads in the same place, and we’re in it to win it,” he says, laughing, “as cheesy as it sounds.”

Cheesy? Sure.

Accurate? Best Band, Best Album, Best Country/Roots Act and Best Male Vocalist resoundingly reply “yes.”

More…

Popularity: 6% [?]

Since its last album, Bandwagon (which I reviewed in this space on 18 November 2006), the Dallas-based Eleven Hundred Springs has shed three of its five members, leaving singer/electric-guitarist/songwriter Matt Hillyer and bassist Steve Berg to carry on with three replacements. The reliable, hard-working producer Lloyd Maines (who seems to have his hand in nearly every worthwhile indie country album released these days) is at the helm, itself a virtual seal of quality.

Maines is also among those filling out the sound (on acoustic guitar and banjo), along with Tim Alexander on keyboards and conjunto-accented accordion (misspelled “accordian” in the credits). Underrated country singer Heather Myles, who has released CDs on HighTone and Rounder but not recently, returns from silence to engage in some satisfying duet singing with Hillyer on his “I’ll Be Here for You,” sounding something like George Jones and Tammy Wynette in their prime.

Speaking of Jones, one of the two non-originals, “Don’t Stop the Music,” is an obscure gem from the pen of that immortal master. Hillyer delivers it with the properly earnest intensity. Jordan Hendrix’s fiddle and Danny Crelin’s pedal steel ensure that no one will doubt the action is playing out in a lowdown, blue-collar bar where emotions, sweet or bitter, tend toward the raw.

You don’t have to scrutinize the photographic evidence to discern that Eleven Hundred Springs is an assembly of mostly young guys. Clearly, though, they’ve been around long enough, touring the Texas circuit that Chris Thomas’s Palo Duro label so ably documents in its recordings, to know precisely what they’re doing. They’ve absorbed influences from hard-core honkytonk, rockabilly, hillbilly boogie and even (though less pronounced now than heretofore) California country-rock. The band’s mission is not to reinvent anything or to push any envelopes. It’s simply to carry forward an honorable tradition of Southwestern Saturday-night good-time music.

Though there’s no shortage of honkytonk preserved on record, at its core it’s performance entertainment meant to be experienced live in the natural habitat of bar and dance hall. It doesn’t always translate successfully to disc. I’ll bet Eleven Hundred Springs knocks ‘em out on stage. But the CD Country Jam also works on its own genially unpretentious terms, assisted in no small part by Hillyer’s solid songwriting and Maines’s assured studio presence.

Written by Jerome Clark�
�

Popularity: 7% [?]

MyFox Austin provides us a glimpse of Walt Wilkins and the Mystiquero’s KVET Live Music Series performance.

Click on the Photo to view a video on MyFox/Austin;

Popularity: 10% [?]

Watch Buzz Cason’s new video series online here!

Popularity: 14% [?]