Fifty original recordings by the late country legend Alvis Edgar “Buck” Owens Jr. and his band, the Buckaroos, sound better today than ever before with the release of Buck ‘Em! Volume 2: The Music of Buck Owens (1967-1975).
This double album, a sequel to Buck ‘Em! Volume 1: The Music of Buck Owens (1955-1967), features beloved Owens classics alongside seven previously unreleased tracks. Personal favorites include “Corn Liquor,” “The Battle of New Orleans,” “Let the World Keep On A Turnin,’” “Today I Started Loving You Again,” and “Streets of Bakersfield.”
In addition, exceptionally high-energy recordings of Owens’ live performances deliver front-row-seat entertainment on tracks like “I’ve Got a Tiger By the Tail,” performed in Washington, D.C. while President Lyndon B. Johnson served in the White House, “Johnny B. Goode,” from London, and “Rollin’ in My Sweet Baby’s Arms,” from Australia.
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Singer and songwriter Dale Watson admits that he lies when he drinks — and he drinks a lot of Lone Star beer, a magical elixir that he says promotes good health and a long happy life.
“It’s the best beer in the world,” he says. “It whitens your teeth, increases your brain cells, eats calories. If you drink one day every day of your life, you’ll never die – that’s a money back guarantee, though you must collect in person.”
He calls Lone Star beer “liquid Viagra; it’s good for your skin, it increases your eyesight, and it makes you prettier. Lone Star has all kinds of benefits.”
Though Watson has been performing at venues throughout Austin for more than 25 years, he recently became “an overnight sensation” with his hit single, “I Lie When I Drink,” off his El Rancho Azul album. The lyrics to his song: “I lie when I drink and I drink a lot” drew the attention of David Letterman who invited Watson to appear June 24 on the LateNight TV show.
Since January, Watson’s signature deep baritone voice sings the catchy tune for Nyle Maxwell’s television commercials: “Maxwell’s got the trucks man, Maxwell’s got the trucks. Any Ram truck you’d ever want, Maxwell’s got the trucks…”
“I love those commercials man,” Watson says. “They help pay the bills” and for upkeep on his long luxury touring bus as well.
Watson also has become something of “a lightening rod” spokesman for recent music controversy across the Internet. The old-timers in the music business could have spit teeth when 2012 Country Music Awards’ entertainer of the year Blake Shelton called country music “grandpa’s music” while taping an episode of Backstoryin Nashville.
Shelton’s words chewed on classic country performers across the state, but it in Austin he really rubbed Watson and others the wrong way. Watson and the late Ray Price before his death in December had spoken out publically about Shelton’s misperceptions.
Over the past six months, Watson drew a following of loyal fans who supported a new genre of music that he together with Price had named “Ameripolitan music.”
Watson ended up spearheading Austin’s own inaugural “Ameripolitan Music Awards” Feb. 19 – a 100 percent fan-funded event with 400 guests at the Wyndham Garden Hotel to honor the roots of country, western swing, rockabilly and honky-tonk music. Honorees included Johnny Bush who received the “Founder of the Sound” award. Bush also accepted and a posthumous “master award” given to Price.
Other local performers honored included: Jesse Dayton, James Hand, Ray Benson, Rosie Flores, Dawn Sears, Wayne “the train” Hancock, Whitey Morgan, the Derailers and the Haybales band.
“Some don’t like the roots of country music, so we just took that and named it something different,” Watson said.
The popularity of Ameripolitan music began in Texas with Bob Wills, Ernest Tubb,Ray Wylie Hubbard, and the likes of Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell, Web Pearce and Faron Young, Ray Price and George Jones, and with female performers like Rose Maddox, Jean Shepard and Jean Shepard Patsy Cline, and later Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette. Buck Owens, and Merle Haggard, and other honky-tonk heroes like Gary Stewart, continued to produce hits well into the 1970s and ‘80s.
Watson continues to cover the great classic hits of his predecessors in live performances and has recorded his own original music on 21 albums and on Austin City Limitstelevision show dozens of times. His latest November performance aired on KLRU-TV Feb. 8, ironically on the same night that he and his band, the LoneStars, played at the Broken Spoke. Watson shared the ACL episode with Grammy winner Kacey Musgraves. The show re-aired Feb. 13 on the same channel.
“I’m hoping some folks that watch Kacey, will discover me,” Watson says. “She has a totally different type of music. She has a new – ‘girl-bashing-guys’ sound and I’m an old standard country singer.”
He and his band have performed at the Grand Ole Opry 19 times. He plays at the Broken Spoke 3201 S. Lamar once a month and lots of Monday nights at the Continental Club 1315 S. Congress Ave.
Never one to shy away from an enterprise, Watson owns two bars: Ginny’s Little Longhorn Saloon, featuring “Chicken Sh*t Bingo,” every Sunday from 4 until 8 p.m. and Big T Roadhouse in Saint Hedwig just outside San Antonio. He manages the bars when he’s not touring or playing venues throughout Central Texas on weekends.
Ginny’s Little Longhorn Saloon’s previous owner, Ginny Kalmbach, retired amidst money troubles before Watson bought and refurbished it in November.
“It was going to turn into a used car lot,” Watson says. “Luckily the owner of the property approached me. He says ‘You’re the only one I trust to do this right and keep Ginny’s Little Longhorn the Little Longhorn. We had known each other for 20 years.”
Regardless of wherever he and his LoneStars perform, Watson pretty much sings the same song set – including his original tunes, as well as the classic cover songs of Bob Wills, George Jones, Merle Haggard, Ray Price – a lot of Price, — and Johnny Cash.
Watson’s career has spanned the whole gamut of country and western music from the 1960s to the present, with all of its dips, dives and flows. His quirkiness for flamboyant satin and sequins costumes, a fondness for personal tattoos, and his shocking head full of white hair styled in ‘50s rockabilly pompadour fashion, makes him a standout among his middle-aged peers.
“When I grew up, on the radio there used to be Merle Haggard, George Jones, Ray Price and Gary Stewart – really good music; it was country music without all the other players in there,” Watson says. “In the 1970s country music all changed once they started lettin’ in the Kenny Rogers and the pop bands from LA. It changed drastically. You had these little bands from Texas, like Rascal Flats. Nowadays we’re dealing with the most pop stuff I’ve ever heard in my life, like Taylor Swift and Kenny Chesney.”
Texas’ disco years briefly followed the 1980 dramatic western romance movie, Urban Cowboy, starring John Travolta and Deborah Winger. Most club owners hired deejays to spin records and for a time some local clubs quit hiring bands to play, but the Broken Spoke didn’t.
He first performed at the Broken Spoke in 1989, with members of The Wagoneers, before Monte Warden, Brent Wilson and Craig Allen Pettigrew broke up that band.
“It felt good to be playing in such a historical place,” Watson says. It’s (the Broken Spoke) kind of like Austin City Limits; it’s a place you aspire to play if you grew up in Texas and you want to play real dance halls in Austin – it’s the only one left.”
Not long after establishing a name in town, Watson released his first single “One Chair at a Time,” in 1990 on the Curb Records label and he followed by producing a video.
Watson started sitting in on stage with Chris Wall before finally creating The LoneStars in 1992. About that time, he landed a regular Wednesday night gig at the Broken Spoke.
“I’ve worked hard — over 33 years playing,” Watson says.
His career began in his hometown of Pasadena, Texas. Watson began performing in clubs at 14 years old, along with two of his older brothers, Jim Watson, who played guitar, and Donny Watson who at different times played either guitar or bass. The Watson brothers called their band Classic Country, named after the popular PBS television show, The Classic Country Hour.
Watson’s musical passion has always been classic country music, but he says some of his early performances wandered far from his roots. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, in order to find steady work, he played whatever his audiences demanded — the radio hits of the late ‘70s and ‘80s in country music.
“Then music started getting polluted,” he says. “I remember playing some stuff that I didn’t really want to play.”
During the disco era, Watson continued to perform cover songs by George Jones, Gary Stewart and Ray Price. Stewart died in 2003 and Price passed away last December.
Watson says that fans come out to hear him specifically, but the Broken Spoke’s loyal following of dancers will show up regardless of whoever performs on any given night.
Lots of celebrities have shared the stage with Watson over the years at the Broken Spoke: every one from Johnny Knoxville to Amy LaVere, Johnny Rodriguez and Johnny Bush used to sit in regularly too, but not so much recently, Watson says.
As a youngster, Watson says he never intended to become a musician, singer, or songwriter. As a boy he dreamed of joining the military or becoming a doctor, but childhood poverty and an eye injury instead decided his fate.
“It was a blow to me because I really wanted to be a pilot. My folks couldn’t afford college and I was interested in aviation, but I knew my eye wouldn’t let me do that,” Watson says. “So my next interest was to go into medicine. I was going to go as a corps man in the Navy; the military would have allowed me to go to college, but that didn’t work out.”
Watson supported himself by performing gigs in bars every chance he had, week nights and weekends.
“Man, I got lucky. I count my blessings all the time,” Watson says. “My kids are going into acting. I’ve done a lot of acting too – those (Maxwell) commercials play every hour, so much that people are getting sick of them, but I like those commercials.”
His two daughters, Raquel Cain Watson and Dalynn Grace Watson, both work as actresses, even though Watson wishes they wouldn’t, he says. The music business may be tough, but life for an actor can be even tougher.
“I moved to Austin, then I got job offer at a publishing company in Nashville. I worked there about 10 months and then I said ‘screw this.’ Then I got an offer to be in some movies with River Phoenix, who was going to direct them. Just as I was moving out to LA, he died,” Watson says. “Then I moved straight back to Austin.”
Watson signed with Hightone Records in 1994 and produced his first album, Cheating Heart, in 1995. He recorded two records in Nashville in 2002 and 2008, but since then all of his other albums have been recorded locally at Willie Nelson’s Pedernales studio or Ray Benson’s Austin studio.
Currently, he spends most Tuesdays and Wednesdays working on a new album that will become Volume 3 of the trilogy series, TheTruckingSessions.
Watson’s steel player Don Pollock, has performed with him for the past 11 years.
Watson says in his 50s now, he’s working harder now than he did half a lifetime ago.
“It’s weird being 51 years old, having this stuff happen so late in life,” Watson says. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way, but that’s ok – I’d rather be busy than not. Once the Ameripolitan awards show is over I’ll be able to breathe again.”
Watson says he feels grateful to the Broken Spoke’s owners, James and Annetta White. The Broken Spoke received “the best venue” trophy at the Ameripolitan Awards for helping to support the roots of country, swing, rockabilly and honky-tonk music across the United States. The nearly 75-year-old James White, spontaneously broke into the song, “Sam’s Place,” when accepting the award on stage and nearly stole the show at the Ameripolitan Music Awards.
“Nobody gets where I am alone,” Watson says. “Having this place as a bi-monthly or monthly gig — whether I’m touring or whatnot — has helped through the years, for me to support my family. It’s helped me to meet other people through here that have furthered my career. I’ve gotten movie deals, commercials, and record deals through playing here. James is modest about what he brings to the place, but playing at the Broken Spoke gives you some modest stature.”
Watson performs at:The Broken Spoke, The Little Longhorn Saloon, The Continental Club, Sengelmann Hall in Schulenburg, TX, The Saxon Pub, 11th Street Cowboy Bar in Bandera, Tomball Honky-Tonk Fest in Tomball, Big T Roadhouse in Saint Hedwig, and Luckenbach Dance Hall in Luckenbach.
Real estate agent by day, Janie Quisenberry donned a red and gold-fringed western outfit, boots, and a cowgirl hat one cold January night to sing again beneath spotlights on a southwest Austin honky tonk stage.
Quisenberry and other part-time local country stars – all senior citizens – left behind day jobs or retirement Jan. 21 to perform at the Broken Spoke on South Lamar.
Until midnight – on a weeknight – they yodeled and crooned before hundreds of aged fans to honor the late Texas Swing Hall of Fame great Don Walser at his fourth tribute and reunion since he died in 2006 at the age of 72.
Walser didn’t cut his first album, Rolling Stone from Texas, until he was 61 years old and a local talent scout “discovered” the country singer and bit actor who had retired from the National Guard and moved to Austin in 1994. One of Walser’s biggest hits, “John Deer Tractor,” Brennen Leigh sang for him that Tuesday night.
All of the musicians who came out on a week night shared stories or sang some songs Walser once did in the style of Bob Wills and Jimmie Rodgers or other traditional country music stars.
“I didn’t make that the criteria when I invited people – that they had to sing a Don Walser song,” Kalish said. “We sang a lot of standards, but we did those that were his songs too.”
Slaid Cleaves performed a set filled with Walser’s songs. He also sang one that he wrote about the man who later became his mentor:
“And every soul in that roadhouse
felt the power of his song.
Through life’s joys and sorrows
he brought us together as one.
They called him ‘God’s own yodeler,
The Pavoratti of the plains.’
There’s no bigger voice in Texas.
Don Walser was his name.”
Cleaves, who also plays guitar, may be the only guy who can yodel anywhere near the Don Walser artistry, Kalish said.
Fiddler Chojo Jacques from Dripping Springs played a duet with Cleaves on stage as part of the tribute.
“Many years ago, when I was just starting out I played an opening set for Don Walser and the Pure Texas Band. I was just a solo act at the time, and my songs were all of the tragic folk variety. Don said to me after my set, ‘Slaid, you sure do know how to make ’em cry! But you need to learn how to make ’em laugh, too.’ Don saw that I was interested in and influenced by the country music of his generation. And I got the feeling it warmed his heart that someone 30 years younger was keeping a bit of his music and his memory alive,” Cleaves said.
Carl Hutchins sang “Cattle Call,” and “Don’t Worry About Me,” two songs that Walser used to sing often at the Broken Spoke. The band also performed “Whiskey River” and other classics of country music.
Fiddler Howard Kalish and legendary bassist “Skinny” Don Keeling performed with Walser for more than 14 years and played together at the Broken Spoke for the first time in 1991.
“A lot of these people are those who Don Walser enjoyed, like Janie Quisenberry and Ted Roddy. He (Walser) always liked Ted’s voice and the way he did (the song) ‘Borrowed Angel,’ which we got Ted to do,” Kalish said. “So we covered quite a few of Don’s tunes.”
Quisenberry said she first met Walser in 1984.
“I was managing a BMI Music publishing company called Texas Crude. Our meager little office was located in what was originally the Sheraton Terrace Motel at the corner of South Congress and Academy Drive,” Quisenberry said. “Willie Nelson and Tim O’Conner were also housed there.”
One day Walser walked into Quisenberry’s office with a few cassette recordings of his songs in hand.
“Good thing because all the equipment I had was a small mint green radio/cassette player,” she said. “He introduced himself and asked if I might have time to listen to a couple of songs he had written. As I recall he was still living in Bastrop and finishing up his National Guard work, but I can’t swear to that. He put on a tape and I fell apart.”
At the time Quisenberry tried to interest her connections in Nashville into buying Walser’s songs.
“I went to Nashville with the intent of pushing Don’s songs to one the coolest swing players I knew. I did and I guess just because of fate and the world of music, it was clear that the only person in the world created to sing Don’s songs was Don Walser. He had a start early in life and put it on hold for many, many years, but when he took that second chance at his dream he caught the gold ring.”
Kalish said anyone who sings Walser’s songs has a hard act to follow.
“It’s kind of intimidating to tell people, ‘oh here’s a Don Walser song that you need to sing like Don Walser,’ you know. If it’s ‘Waltz Across Texas,’ it can be sort of scary. He was one of the best singers,” Kalish said.
Some Walser fans have been dancing at the Broken Spoke for the past three decades including Marcia Koch and her husband of Bastrop.
“We remember a lot of these performers from years ago when they played with Don Walser,” Koch said. “It’s great to see them all again and to be here dancing – it feels like yesterday.”
A lot of the people in the audience at Walser’s tribute, Kalish remembered seeing 20 years earlier dancing on that same dance floor.
“Going by, I thought ‘oh hey, there they are,’ you know?” Kalish said.
Keeling said seeing those older couples brought back a lot of memories. He said the band members knew regular singles who met on that dance floor and became romantic couples.
“We would see these stag people – independent girls and boys — who would start dancing together and five years later they married,” Keeling said. “Consequently, we played a lot of weddings.”
In the early years, Walser became somewhat of a wedding singer for his large fan-based following.
“So we played a lot of weddings as a result of our gigs, not only at the Broken Spoke, but everywhere,” Kalish said. “We would play a wedding and Don Walser would say ‘If I play your wedding then you can’t ever get divorced.’”
Kalish together with fiddler and singer Jason Roberts Jan. 21 used hand signals to alert Keeling to chord changes and key signatures for songs they performed; they gestured with two or three fingers held to their chests as the band started songs in each set.
“On songs I don’t know, he (Kalish) gives me the numbers,” Keeling said. “For the big band songs, I know a lot of them, but some of ‘em I don’t. Neither he nor Jason (Roberts) need to say a word. They just turn around and give me the numbers.”
Keeling said he learned to play by ear on both guitar and stand up bass, which he played for 20 years before switching to electric bass.
After graduating McCallum High School Keeling performed as a freelance musician playing bass in various local bands in the late 1950s including Jimmy Martin, considered the king of bluegrass and Martin’s Sunny Mountain Boys of Tennessee. Keeling played bass with Charlie and Ira Louvin of the Louvin Brothers band. The Louvin Brothers, opened for late great stars such as George Jones at Hilltop Inn and Elvis Presley first at Dessau Hall in Pflugerville and again in the Louisiana Hayride at Houston City Auditorium in the 1950s. For a short time, Keeling also played with High Noon, a rockabilly trio.
By the time Keeling joined Walser’s band in 1989 he had gained a name for his style of “walking the bass,” a chord progression that rises and falls in pitch over several bars, in quarter note movement, by holding two, three or four beats. It’s a sound that forms the heartbeat of any good country song.
Kalish and another Walser band member, piano player Floyd Domino, taught Keeling how to perform a few baseline riffs “back in the day,” Keeling said.
“Kalish said ‘there it is.’ And I said ‘I’ll be darned; this is what I’ve been looking for.’ It’s amazing. It was the grandest thing that ever happened. Floyd or Howard would tell me, ‘that’s three, two short, then two.’ Till then, come to find out I had been leaving it out of half the songs,” Keeling said. “Today I’ve still got it. I can slap it too.”
Walser and the band played at the Broken Spoke regularly until his diabetes made him too ill to perform in 2003.
During the 1960s Walser called his band, The Texas Plainsmen. They didn’t become known as the Pure Texas Band until the 1980s.
“Before I started playing with him, he was kind of regional. He would perform in the areas where he lived,” Kalish said. “Once he gained some national attention, we did some national tours and he did a few on his own without us, with a different group.”
Walser gained attention for the hit “John Deer Tractor,” a song off the Rolling Stone From Texas album produced in Austin by Ray Benson of the Asleep at the Wheel band on independent label, Watermelon Records.
“He (Walser) never got top 40 hit air play or anything, but he got lots of attention and he had a following,” Kalish said. “His songs played on what you call underground stations and college radio – that was really before there was an Internet of any consequence. Somehow, though, people heard about him, however they hear about people who are under the radar.”
The Austin Chronicle voted Walser “Best Performing Country Band” in 1996 and he received a National Association of Recording Artists award in 1997, for his independently produced album. The National Endowment for the Arts bestowed Walser with at lifetime heritage award in 2000 and he performed at the Grand Ole Opry in both 1999 and 2001.
“At the Grand Ole Opry, when we performed ‘Riders in the Sky,’ all the other performers came up to shake Don’s hand and said ‘we’ve never heard yodeling like this,’” Keeling said. “Not since Elton Britt.”
Britt, a native of Arkansas, set the American standard for country yodeling from the 1940s through the 1960s, following a tradition set in the 1930s by late great Jimmie Rodgers. Walser captured their famous yodeling styles and more from Slim Whitman, best remembered for his three-octave falsetto and his tour with Elvis Presley in the 1950s and direct television marketing in the 1970s. Whitman died in June last year.
“Don had a bunch of different kinds of yodels that were interesting. He had Elton Britt’s kind of turkey yodel. If you listen closely to both, you can tell that Don definitely listened to Elton Britt, who was a protégé’ of Jimmie Rodgers,” Kalish said. “Don liked Slim Whitman a lot because Whitman had a falsetto and Don had an amazing falsetto as well.”
Walser used to often say that he thought of himself as a country singer who could yodel, Kalish said.
“He didn’t think of himself as a yodeler because to him that was like a ‘one trick pony’ you know. When I first heard him sing, he didn’t yodel at all; I was just amazed by his voice. Then he did the yodeling and I thought my god, that knocked it up a couple of notches,” Kalish said.
Whenever Walser performed at the Broken Spoke, close to 400 people would show up to see him. Walser would perform about five songs and then would invite Kalish and Keeling to each sing a few songs. He would introduce the two by saying: “You get tired of picking up diamonds,” Keeling said.
Keeling performed “Blue House Painted White” and “More and More,” during the Walser tribute performance in January.
“I’m old, but I just keep going,” Keeling said. “My heart runs like a jet airplane.”
Keeling received a Pacemaker that doctors surgically installed in his chest eight years ago that helps his heart keep time, he said.
Walser’s drummer Phil Fajardo recently also received his Pacemaker a few weeks ago.
The Broken Spoke’s owner, James M. White, joined the group’s unofficial Pacemaker club last fall. On the night of the tribute and reunion, White was home preparing for endoscopic sinus surgery scheduled for Jan. 30.
“We would always look forward to James White singing ‘Back in the Saddle Again.’ He would honor us and he did a pretty good job of it,” Keeling said. “Walser loved him and he loves Don.”
Fifty original recordings by the late country legend Alvis Edgar “Buck” Owens Jr. and his band, the Buckaroos, sound better today than ever before with the release of Buck ‘Em! Volume 2: The Music of Buck Owens (1967-1975).
Real estate agent by day, Janie Quisenberry donned a red and gold-fringed western outfit, boots, and a cowgirl hat one cold January night to sing again beneath spotlights on a southwest Austin honky tonk stage.
Donna Marie Miller 
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