San Antonio native singer/songwriter Dennis Jay collaborates with some well known Austin musicians including multi-instrumentalist and music producer, Lloyd Maines, on his newest CD, Western & Country. While Jay’s high tenor vocals and yodeling deliver some emotional lyrics, Maines’ superb performances on steel guitar, as well as bass, percussion and spoons make the album memorable. Kudos too to locals Terri Hendrixon harmonica, Bukka Allen on piano and accordion, drummer William Mansell,Jimmie Scott Calhoun on upright bass, Howard T. Levine on lead guitar and Richard Bowden on fiddle and trumpet.
Since the 1980s, Jay has performed throughout Central Texas in honky-tonks and beer gardens, solo or with his Lonesome Town band. Together Jay and Maines co-wrote “Texas Skies Shining in a Cowgirl’s Eyes,” a lyrically sparse song that instrumentally conjures up the spirit of the late great Western Swing bandleader Bob Wills. Vocally, Jay performs best solo on banjo for a version of the folk music standard, “Streets of Laredo,” also known as “The Cowboy’s Lament.” Fans of classic country may enjoy Jay’s album infused with Mexican language and reminiscent of the late great crooners Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb and Lefty Frizzell.
For Paul Thorn, the lyrics he wrote together with Billy Maddox for his 10th album, Too Blessed to Be Stressed, stem from deep personal life lessons, professional musical influences and growing up a preacher’s son in the Deep South.
He wrote songs like “Don’t Let Nobody Rob You of Your Joy,” for his record released last August while seeking personal happiness in his day-to-day life.
“You may have a circle of friends and some of those friends are hard to be around and some of them make you wonder why they are your friends. You keep hanging around them, but they’re poison,” he said.
“They don’t lift you up; every opportunity they get they try to put you down. It’s not healthy to hang around people like that. That’s why that song is important. It’s just the truth. Life is short; you only get to live one time and while you’re here you don’t let nobody steal your joy.”
The Tupelo, Mississippi artist has chosen to take the high road in the known music universe, one somewhat beset with negativity, to deliver authentic “feel-good lyrics.” His songs promise to uplift even the most downtrodden concertgoers or mp3 fans.
Thorn, who performs over 150 shows a year, last performed in concert at The Roost in North Austin Nov. 23. He next performs in Austin April 11 when appears as part of the “In the Round” program at The Paramount Theater with Ruthie Foster and Joe Ely. They call themselves the Southern Troubadours.
His career blossomed after performing along with some musical heavyweights on a tribute album to Jackson Browne, entitled Looking into You, released last April. Thorn said he always liked Browne’s music, but had never met him before recording the song, “Doctor My Eyes.” Other contributing artists included Don Henley, Bonnie Raitt, David Lindley, and Bob Schneider, to name just a few.
In September Thorn met Browne backstage before presenting his song at the Americana Music Honors & Awards at the Ryman Auditorium in Tennessee.
Thorn admits that growing up in the same hometown as the iconic Elvis Presley had a huge impact on him musically as a kid. Yet over the years his career expanded to include several genres that explore all types of angles in the human experience.
“There are all kinds of records for different times in life. There are sad songs on some records about pain and all that kind of stuff, but I just wanted to make a record that made people feel better when they listen to it,” he said.
His father still preaches in the Church of God of Prophecy in Tupelo. The church’s followers provide the gifts of faith healing, prophecy and speaking in foreign tongues.
The song “Get a Healing” feels reminiscent of an evangelical tent revival service in the Deep South, complete with plenty of rhythmic clapping and catchy song lyrics.
The lyrics “you’ve got to get you a healing from the bottom of your heart/get you a healing that’s the only place to start/forgive all the people who have ever brought you harm/get yourself a healing with lovin’ from now on…”
Thorns fans will likely form emotional attachments to his music and lyrics without the benefit of any Pentecostal worship service.
“That song I think does heal somebody when they hear it,” he said.
“That’s what I believe. When I sing that song live I’ve noticed that the crowd really sinks their teeth into it. They’re all out there and they all want to be healed of something; everybody’s ailing from something. They want to feel better whether it’s physically or emotionally. Everybody needs to get fixed. That’s what that song’s talkin’ about.”
Paul’s parents married when his mother, Earlene, was just 15 and his father, Wayne, was 17.
“It was a different time back then,” Thorn said. “They’ll put you in jail for that now.”
His parents for most of their lives have lived in a parsonage on church grounds. Thorn, born in 1964, has older twin sisters, Charlotte Kay and Deborah Faye.
“We were never rich, but we were never poor,” he said. “We never went without anything. We always had what we needed.”
As Paul recalls, the family lived a religious life — 24/seven. Somehow he never felt a burden growing up in a house surrounded by women while his father often sacrificed hours every day to parishioners.
When he advises fans to “Get You a Healing,” for both their bodies and their souls, he prescribes one simple rule with the lyrics “just let your lovin’ show.”
Though Thorn does not ascribe to any single dogma or religious theology; his spiritual message comes through loud and clear nonetheless.
On one of the songs on the album, “Old Stray Dogs & Jesus,” Thorn identifies with one of the lowest denominators in society. The song tells the story about a drug addict who finally seeks help and rehabilitation after his life bottoms out.
“That’s what makes it a positive song. I’m not perfect by any means. I’ve never been a drug addict, but I’ve known a lot of people who have been. I sort of combined stories to make that song,” he said.
“I surely don’t believe that when somebody’s in the clutches of addiction that they can quit by themselves. It’s really rare that they quit by themselves. The test really comes when they surrender and go to rehab. Those are the only ones that I’ve ever seen get better.”
The song’s lyrics “Why’s everybody judging me when the good book says judge not/old stray dogs and Jesus are all the friends I’ve got/I’ve never felt so lonely, I’ve never felt so blue/my world keeps getting smaller, it’s down to a chosen few” channels the thoughts of someone less fortunate.
“You can surrender to whatever you want to, but I chose Jesus because that’s the culture that I grew up in,” he said.
“I don’t think anybody knows for sure who God is because every culture just kind of provides their own design of what God is and they all believe they have it right. There’s nothing wrong with that. As humans we are really kind of arrogant to think that because it’s a big ‘ol world with a lot of people in it. None of us know too much.”
On stage, Thorn often expresses humility through words that soon sound and feel infectious.
“I pray to a higher power, but I don’t get up and proclaim to know what that higher power is,” he said.
Though he admits that his songwriting has been at times divinely inspired, he has borrowed professional insights from some fairly impressive musical peers.
A turning point in Thorn’s songwriting career followed his first cover performance of the 1981 hit song, “Don’t Let me Down Again,” written by Lindsey Buckingham, for Fleetwood Mack’s Live album. That’s when Thorn discovered the importance of creating “hooks” in songs.
“I like songs that you can hear the first time and remember them. That’s what a hook is – it hooks you and it keeps you singin’ along,” he said.
“I like to make my hooks be things that are helpful to people – things that can give them a little courage to move forward, like the title track ‘Too Blessed to be Stressed.’ We all need to realize that because if you weigh out your life in the balance, there’s probably more good than bad in it, though sometimes we dwell on the negative.”
He combines country and rhythm and blues in a seemingly new genre that speaks volumes of truth and self-awareness through the song, “I Backslide on Friday.” The “backslider” term represents for Christians someone who practices being good, but who lapses into bad habits for a brief period of time.
“One thing we humans consistently do is procrastinate. Whether it’s a new year’s resolution to quit eatin’ a honey bun late at night, or whether it’s a resolution to quit cheatin’ on your wife, or to quit drinkin’. Whatever we struggle with, we all seem to have a hard time followin’ through with our plans,” he said.
“I think every human does it.”
The song “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright” mesmerizes with the familiar and soothing words of promise as they transport the listener visually to a new ethereal place — on the back of a dragonfly.
Thorn also took a long hard look at consumerism and it’s impact on people when he wrote the song “Mediocrity is King.”
Mediocrity is “not good for you, but it’s easy, it doesn’t require much effort and it doesn’t require much expense,” he said.
He said the business world caters to the weakest link in the human population — a community of passive listeners, viewers and readers.
Thorn shares those views with his friend and filmmaker Mike Judge, who wrote and directed the 2005 movie, Idiocracy, staring Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph. Wilson plays the part of a man of average intelligence who after being transported 500 years into the future becomes the smartest human being on Earth.
Judge, of late, has been developing the hit HBO television series, Silicon Valley. Season two premieres April 10.
However, even Thorn admits to liking disco, though he doesn’t write in that genre.
He began writing the song, “This is a Real Goodbye,” after listening to Gloria Gaynor’s song, “I Will Survive.” Gaynor’s double platinum song released in 1978, but has since become an anthem for society’s underdogs.
“I always liked that song because it’s a song about being strong after a breakup and moving forward after your former relationship, so I wanted to write something that had the same sentiment,” he said.
“I made up a shuffle song that talks about finding happiness once someone’s gone. A lot of people have poisoned relationships. They may love them, but they’re getting treated like dirt. After a while you need to get enough of that and move on start fresh.”
The song, “What Kind of Roof do you Live Under?” makes listeners think about the relationships they share with the people with whom they choose to live.
“I know married people who are living their house together for one reason and that’s because their kids are still there,” he said.
“Instead of looking at your neighbors and pointin’ at them, we all need to examine our own lives and ask ourselves about the relationships going on inside the dwelling.”
The song, “No Place I’d Rather Be,” focuses on Thorn’s domestic life that he shares with his wife, Heather, and daughters Kit, 21, and Bella, 10.
“I enjoy my work, but nothing can compete with the enjoyment of being home,” he said. “Leaving them is a heavy price that I unfortunately have to pay.”
Meanwhile, bookings through June keep him far from home; recently Thorn entertained fans on the Sandy Beaches Cruise until Jan. 17.
Country singer, songwriter, actor, recording artist and producer Jimmie Dale Gilmore, plans to reunite with the other original band members from Americana roots band, The Flatlanders, including Butch Hancock and Joe Ely.
The Flatlanders will present a special concert at 8 p.m. Sept. 20 at the Paramount Theater in Austin.
It’s been nearly 40 years since Gilmore, Hancock and Ely, began jamming with Steve Wesson who played Autoharp and musical saw, Tony Pearson on mandolin and bassist Syl Rice, to become The Flatlanders.
In 1972 the band made their musical debut at the Kerrville Folk Festival and won the New Folk Singer/Songwriter Competition. That same year, the Armadillo Beer Garden opened in Austin and The Flatlanders performed during its entire first week.
“There were six of us originally in the Flatlanders, but only three of us continued with musical careers,” Gilmore said.
In 1974, Hancock and Ely began their solo careers before Gilmore participated in a spiritual group that was learning the art of meditation from Prem Rawat at his headquarters in Denver.
“I actually first became connected with one of his disciples in Austin. Then I went and lived in New Orleans for a short while before I went to Denver. I went to Denver because there was a large community of people who were studying with him (Rawat) there,” he said.
“It (Denver) was the place to study and practice meditation with that group. Early in my music career I had studied Eastern Philosophy. I first became interested in it in the ‘60s and from there, that was the spiritual journey that led me to Denver.”
He left that community in 1980 and returned to Austin. For a long time, he performed often at the Broken Spoke with his band. Success came to Gilmore slowly. He also had a steady gig every Wednesday night at Threadgill’s on South Lamar.
“That’s where I got to know a lot of Austin musicians,” Gilmore said. “I did it every week and we had different people sit in to play. Just like we did last night; it was a very similar thing. We had a big following. So that’s why this thing at El Mercado is nostalgic.”
Throughout the 1990s, the original members of The Flatlanders remained the best of friends in Austin, but they seldom performed together.
Ely enjoyed success in his solo career while Hancock and Gilmore toured together as a duet. Separately, Gilmore and Hancock also headlined their own bands.
“There’s this intertwining of many people; there’s so much history. I’ve been playing for such a long time and I’ve done a lot of different things,” Gilmore said.
From January through April of this year, Gilmore teamed up most Monday nights to perform with Christine Albert and David Carroll at El Mercado South in Austin for weekly nostalgic and musical trips down memory lane.
Newcomers luckily stumbled upon the unofficial Austin venue during the South-by-Southwest Music, Film and Interactive Festival, (SXSW) March 7-16.
However, members of the three-piece combo had performed acoustic folk music and familiar ballads every week for a year and a half, billed as “Mystery Monday.” The name stems from their tradition of inviting surprise musical guests to sit in on stage.
The show during SXSW didn’t disappoint patrons, either new nor regular, while they munched tostada chips dipped in spicy homemade-style salsa, ate their fill of Mexican combination plates, and drank foreign ale fermented south of the border or top shelf margaritas.
Albert and Carroll regularly perform only two sets on stage every week. Occasionally, guitarist/harmonica player and singer/songwriter Butch Hancock hosts the show with guest appearances that change week-to-week.
“We had a good thing there every week,” Gilmore said. “It’s been really great – consistently amazing.”
March 10, the mystery guests included Austin’s acoustic and electric mandolinist/composer Paul Glasse and legendary rockabilly guitarist Bill Kirchen, aka: “the Titan of the Telecaster.” Kirchen served as a member of the musical outlaw group, Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen from 1967 through the 1970s.
Albert closes her show with a moving rendition of the Southern Gospel song, “I’ll Fly Away,” written in 1929 by Albert E. Brumley. She sings it as a tribute to friend and former band mate, the late Austin guitarist, singer and songwriter, Sarah Elizabeth Campbell.
The duo performed it at their final show together last December just before cancer took Campbell’s life.
Gilmore and his wife, Janet, used to show up regularly at El Mercado South as fans of the Albert and Campbell show. Often Gilmore sat in to play a few tunes with the two who have been his good friends for years.
In January, Albert asked Gilmore to join her on stage once a week, to keep the show going at El Mercado South. Their combined circle of friends remained otherwise unbroken and has intertwined with multiple members of local bands.
Albert used to sing in Gilmore’s band in the 1980s with her husband, Chris Gage, and both toured with him. Later, Albert and Gage also produced albums of their own.
Gilmore has enjoyed at least two musical careers – one as a member of The Flatlanders in the early 1970s and another as a headliner act from the 1990s through the 2000s.
The Amarillo native grew up in Lubbock and attended Texas Tech University for a short time. Gilmore has known Hancock since they both attended Atkins Junior High and Monterrey High School together in Lubbock.
In 1964 Gilmore met guitarist and singer/songwriter Joe Ely who also was born in Amarillo and they share musical connections that cemented their life-long bond.
“Buddy Holly’s father, L.O., financed a demo recording (tape) for me and so I put a band together. The place we hung out and practiced at, was owned by Tommy Nickel and so was band came to be called the ‘T. Nickel House Band.’ We hung out at T. Nickel’s house, so as a joke we called it that. It sounded like a nightclub or something,” Gilmore said. “Some people thought the name was a drug reference, but it wasn’t.”
That band never did become famous. The T Nickel House Band included: guitarists Gilmore, Ely, John X. Reed, and Jesse “Guitar” Taylor, as well as drummer T.J. McFarland.
“John X. Reed and I came to Austin together,” Gilmore said. “We didn’t move here, but we visited and played in town. The very first place John and I ever played together in Austin was at Threadgill’s.”
Gilmore also played in Angela Strehli’s band, Sunnyland Special, in the late 1960s long before her name became associated with Marcia Ball, Lou Ann Barton, Sue Foley and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Strehli’s Sunnyland Special included Gilmore, Lewis Cowdrey, Taylor and McFarland.
Opening night Aug. 7, 1970, Gilmore performed with his band, The Hub City Movers, at the Armadillo World Headquarters, once located at 525 and 1/2 Barton Springs Road. His band had been the last house band to perform during that same summer at The Vulcan Gas Company, then located at 316 Congress Avenue.
“I was involved in folk music, with folk musicians and rock musicians, and also blues musicians and country musicians. I was connected with so many different groups of people,” Gilmore said.
Ely and Gilmore have stayed connected throughout the years since meeting in Lubbock.
“We were actually fans of each other; we used to go hear each other play,” Gilmore said. “We met playing at little dives and coffee houses and boot leg joints in Lubbock. Lubbock was dry, so any place that had any kind of night life was usually illegal.”
In Lubbock, Gilmore and Ely found a group of creative friends who shared similar interests.
“He’s (Ely) been one of the treasures of my life,” Gilmore said. “There were plenty of other Bohemian, creative people from Lubbock who kind of banded together in that period.”
Gilmore and his friends shared common interests including philosophy.
“For me, philosophy and spirituality have always intermingled. That’s always been part of my deep interests. I was never ever what you might call ‘religious.’”
Fans in the audience at El Mercado South span years of Gilmore’s, Hancock’s and Albert’s careers.
“There are so many good friends in my background. The really wonderful thing about this ‘Mystery Monday’ gig is I’ve been able to play with a lot of people that I used to play with regularly. It’s a reunion kind of thing – really beautiful.”
In the break between the band’s two song sets, two of Gilmore’s friends, a San Francisco-based and country folk duo, known as Wildwood, performed. The duo consists of Desiree Wattis, a Virginia coal miner’s granddaughter, and Avery Hellman, the grand-daughter of the late Warren Hellman, founder of the famous Hardly Strictly Blue Grass Festival of San Francisco — a festival that drew 650,000 people last year.
“Warren Hellman and I actually made a record together, but that’s a whole and completely different story in itself,” Gilmore said. “It was a totally unexpected thing that happened. We had become personal friends ten years ago in the course of the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. We shared a love of bluegrass and old-time music.”
Gilmore joined Hellman’s seven-piece old-time music group that called themselves The Wronglers and recorded a 2011 album, “Heirloom Music.” They toured one season all over the country, fulfilling one of Hellman’s life-long dreams during the last year of his life.
As part of the show March 10, Gilmore performed one of the songs that The Wronglers used to play, a country standard made famous by the Carter Family, “I’m Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes.”
Heidi Clare, the original vocalist/fiddle player for the Wrongler’s. She acted as tour manager for Wildwood all during SXSW and at El Mercado South that Monday night during the girls’ performance.
“I’ve become acquainted with the whole (Hellman) family and we had done a couple of songs together at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festivals, so that’s how I invited them to the show that night,” Gilmore said.
Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel also scheduled the Wildwood girls to open their show at the Rattle Inn March 11.
For three months ever Monday night, several threads of Gilmore’s past often came together at El Mercado South to connect him to multiple people all in one place at the same time.
Glasse performed on the first album Gilmore ever recorded as a solo artist, “Fair and Square,” released in 1988. A number of local musicians performed on that album produced by Ely and released by High Tone Records. Gilmore enjoyed success with the album’s hit single, “White Freight Liner Blues.”
Gage toured with Gilmore nationwide beginning in 1993 and continuing throughout the mid-1990s.
In 1991 Gilmore released “After Awhile” on Nonesuch Records, produced by Stephen Bruton, who had played guitar with Kris Kristofferson and then Bonnie Raitt. Kristofferson recently released Bruton’s “The Road To Austin,” 73-minute documentary, that screened during the SXSW Film Festival March 10. Bruton died in 2009. Gilmore does not appear in Bruton’s documentary because the late musician and filmmaker scheduled filming the same day that Gilmore attended his son Colin’s wedding.
Emory Gordy, Elvis’ former bass player produced Gilmore’s hit solo album, Spinning Around the Sun, in 1993. Three years later, Gilmore recorded Braver Newer World, released on the Elektra label and produced by legendary Grammy winner, T Bone Burnett. Gilmore has been nominated three times for Grammys, but has never won.
“During that time, I got lots and lots of publicity,” Gilmore said. “I also did lots of touring. That was the time in my career that I was the most visible.”
In 2000, Gilmore released One Endless Night on the Rounder Records label and returned to High Tone Records to release Don’t Look for a Heartache in 2004. He released Come On Back on Rounder Records in 2005.
Gilmore also appeared as a bit actor in films: The Thing Called Love in 1993 and The Big Lebowski in 1996. He has also appeared on late night television shows hosted by Jay Leno and David Letterman as well as Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion. His song “Brave New World” graces the film soundtrack for 1995’s Kicking and Screaming.
He enjoyed his regular weekly gig at El Mercado South that ended in April. Now occasionally he will sit in with the band on stage as part of “Mystery Mondays.”
“It’s different every week. We do a lot of the same songs every week, because they’re the songs that we know, but the sound is different because we have different instrumentation,” Gilmore said. “David (Carroll) contacts the people to play with us and he has a lot of friends and really good taste.”
Along with their son, Colin, Gilmore and his wife Janet, have two daughters, Elyse Yates and Amanda Garber. Her husband, Scott Garber, sometimes plays bass with Gilmore. The Gilmores also have several grandchildren who he refers to as “the most important part of our lives.”
“I’ve enjoyed two basically different personas – one under my name and one under The Flatlanders, but I’ve done a lot of different things with both of those,” Gilmore said.
“I never have really thought much of career and that kind of stuff. I just do what I like for however long it lasts.”
San Antonio native singer/songwriter Dennis Jay collaborates with some well known Austin musicians including multi-instrumentalist and music producer, Lloyd Maines, on his newest CD, Western & Country. While Jay’s high tenor vocals and yodeling deliver some emotional lyrics, Maines’ superb performances on steel guitar, as well as bass, percussion and spoons make the album memorable. Kudos too to locals Terri Hendrix on harmonica, Bukka Allen on piano and accordion, drummer William Mansell, Jimmie Scott Calhoun on upright bass, Howard T. Levine on lead guitar and Richard Bowden on fiddle and trumpet.
Donna Marie Miller 
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