SECOND SHOW NOW SOLD OUT TOO!




 

 


       
Thursday, March 28, 2019 at 8:00PMย and
Friday, March 29, 2019 at 8:00PM
Doors:ย 7:00pm |ย Show:ย 8:00pmย 
Tickets:ย $25-$48ย 

Stateside at the Paramount presents
David Ball & That Carolina Sound
featuring Warren and Marshall Hood

Byย Peter Blackstockย 
Posted Marย 25,ย 2019ย atย 12:05ย PM

Flash back, for a moment, beyond the just-finished South by Southwest to last yearโ€™s SXSW. Its 10-day run had just kicked off when, in a show that wasnโ€™t even part of the festivities, Nashville songwriter David Ball joined cousins Warren and Marshall Hood at the Saxon Pubย to revisit the music of beloved 1970s-โ€™80s Austin trio Uncle Waltโ€™s Band.

Marveling at the magic brought back to life, listening to the sincere testimonials and lovely guest-vocal turns by Uncle Waltโ€™s Band devotees Kelly Willis, Marcia Ball and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, I wondered how I could see anything for the rest of SXSW that would be as good as this. And I didnโ€™t.

An encore at a larger venue was well-deserved. It comes this week, when Ball and the Hoods, along with bassist Nigel Frye and drummer Scott Metko, set up shop at Stateside at the Paramount for a two-night stand Thursday and Friday. (The Friday show sold out quickly, prompting the added Thursday show.)
And now thereโ€™s more Uncle Waltโ€™s material from the vaults to celebrate. Last yearโ€™s show coincided withย the release of a 21-song anthologyย on the renowned archival label Omnivore. This week, Omnivore reissues the bandโ€™s self-titled first album and doubles its length by adding 11 previously unreleased tracks, a combination of studio demos and live recordings.

In the 1990s and 2000s, Ball had a handful of top-10 country hits (including โ€œThinkinโ€™ Problemโ€ and โ€œRiding With Private Maloneโ€), but many Austinites still remember him most fondly as the upright bassist joining guitarist Walter Hyatt and fiddler/guitarist Champ Hood in Uncle Waltโ€™s Band. Relocating here from South Carolina in the 1970s, they quickly became one of the best bands ever to call Austin home.

Mixing folk, country, jazz and swing styles, all three members wrote original tunes that highlighted the perfect blend of their tenor voices. As Gilmore reminisced last year at the Saxon, โ€œThe three best singers in Austin were all in the same band.โ€

They eventually went their separate ways. Both Ball and Hyatt moved to Nashville, pursuing solo careers with major record labels. Hood stayed in Austin and played regularly with Gilmore, Toni Price and many others while touring occasionally with Lyle Lovett.

Any possibility of Uncle Waltโ€™s Band reunions ended when Hyatt was killed in the ValuJet plane crash in Floridaโ€™s Everglades in 1996. Hood died of cancer five years later.

But soon to follow in Champโ€™s footsteps was his son Warren, whoโ€™s now in his mid-30sย and is one of Austinโ€™s most accomplished musicians. Meanwhile, Champโ€™s nephew Marshall moved here from South Carolina in 2005, playing guitar for years with local group the Belleville Outfit.

The Hood cousins have long included some Uncle Waltโ€™s Band tunes in their own repertoires, and theyโ€™d done a few UWB tribute shows over the years. But this new opportunity to play these songs with the groupโ€™s lone surviving member is something special.

โ€œThis is the coolest thing I could imagine doing, and I think Marshall feels the same way,โ€ Warren said on a mid-March morning with his cousin at Cosmic Coffee. Warren has been playing there semi-regularly on Tuesday nights in recent weeks, complementing his long-running Wednesday residency at ABGB.

Marshall learned to play much of the Uncle Waltโ€™s Band catalog when he was still in high school. โ€œI spent many, many hours sitting there and watching as many videos as I could find of Champ playing, watching where his hand was and figuring it out,โ€ he said.

All that practice paid off in spades a couple of years ago when Ball was in Austin to play a house concert for Daren Appelt, a music gear manufacturer who recorded dozens of Uncle Waltโ€™s Band shows at venues such as the old Congress Avenue location of Waterloo Ice House. Warren and Marshall were at that house concert, and Ball eventually called them up to join him.

โ€œWhat was supposed to be an hour show wound up being about two hours as David just started calling Uncle Waltโ€™s Band songs,โ€ Warren recalls. โ€œHe didnโ€™t really know that Marshall and I knew ALL of them. And theyโ€™re not easy songs to learn.

โ€œMarshall really blows my mind with all the chords and stuff. I play some guitar and I pretend to know about music, but this guy sat down and learned all the songs, and they are hard. So we started singing them and playing them, and Davidโ€™s eyes grew big and we were having fun.โ€

Ball has known the Hood cousins for all their lives, but until recently, their interactions were more a matter of โ€œseeing them off and on over the years,โ€ he said by phone from Nashville last week. โ€œWe never did really do that much playing, so this is a great opportunity. These guys can swing just right, and itโ€™s a joy.

โ€œItโ€™s funny, because Marshall reminds me a lot of Champ. He acts like him and looks like him; heโ€™s always doing something that reminds me of him. Whereas Warren is kind of like Walter AND Champ. Heโ€™s a little more serious.โ€

Like his father, Ball says, Warren is โ€œa naturalโ€ at playing fiddle, but heโ€™s also taken the instrument to another level. Formal training at Bostonโ€™s prestigious Berklee College of Music helped Warren better understand and appreciate how the music of his fatherโ€™s band was well beyond what most Austin pickers were playing in the clubs back then.

โ€œA lot of the music that they wrote and played, you canโ€™t just write a chord chart out for it and be like, โ€˜Oh, thatโ€™s G6, or C, whatever,โ€™โ€ Warren said. โ€œThere was a specific voice leading a melody hidden in the chords. So the hand shapes are not conventional hand shapes; theyโ€™re really intricate. Thatโ€™s why the songs are so hard to learn. Itโ€™s like learning Bach, and then singing on top of that. Every part is a melody.โ€

Ball concurs. โ€œIt wasnโ€™t really acoustic fiddle music. They had a lot of that kind of stuff, but at the same time, the music went a lot further beyond that. Itโ€™s very hard music to pick; itโ€™s not like a back porch, sitting around, plucking on an acoustic guitar thing.โ€

Perhaps thatโ€™s why many of their peers appreciated the trio so much. โ€œThe great musicians in Austin responded to what Walter was writing,โ€ Ball said. โ€œThey took to us because there were three guys singing together and we had this harmony thing going. It was kind of like the Kingston Trio or Peter, Paul & Mary format, but we really werenโ€™t like that at all (musically).โ€

Among those drawn in by the Uncle Waltโ€™s Band sound was a young Lyle Lovett, who has sung the groupโ€™s praises for decades and frequently plays their music on the house PA system as concertgoers arrive for his show. Both Ball and the Hoods hinted that Lovett might well be around for the Stateside shows.

Might he sit in for a song or two? โ€œLetโ€™s make this an open invitation,โ€ Ball said with a laugh. โ€œWe donโ€™t want to apply any pressure.โ€

Lovett first brought Hyattโ€™s song โ€œIโ€™ll Come Knockinโ€™โ€ to wide attention when he recorded it for his 1998 album โ€œStep Inside This House,โ€ a tribute to Texas songwriters who influenced him. The original Uncle Waltโ€™s Band version of the song finally surfaced on last yearโ€™s โ€œAnthologyโ€ collection.

The bonus tracks on the reissue out this week attest to the thorough archival work of Heidi Hyatt, Walterโ€™s widow, and reissue co-producer Mark Michel. โ€œA lot of these songs I didnโ€™t even know about until a couple years ago,โ€ Warren says. โ€œItโ€™s really obscure Uncle Waltโ€™s Band material that even the die-hard fans donโ€™t have live recordings of.โ€

At the Stateside, the focus will be on Uncle Waltโ€™s Band material, but Ball and the Hoods will also play some of their own songs. Ballโ€™s big hits โ€œThinkinโ€™ Problemโ€ and โ€œRiding With Private Maloneโ€ are likely selections. His new record, โ€œCome See Me,โ€ includes a song called โ€œLittle Rancheroโ€ that Hyatt and Hood used to play when Ball would go see them in Spartanburg, S.C., just before Uncle Waltโ€™s Band formed.

Warren says that part of the joy for him in these shows is drawing a line for fans of Ballโ€™s country hits back to the trioโ€™s work.
โ€œThereโ€™s a lot of people who are big David Ball fans who have no idea about Uncle Waltโ€™s Band,โ€ he said. โ€œAnd if you play the two side by side to them, they canโ€™t believe itโ€™s the same person. But for me, because Iโ€™ve studied the whole thing and been there for most of it, I can hear the connection.โ€

In Austin, itโ€™s easier to find the die-hard Uncle Waltโ€™s fans โ€” to a point. โ€œThereโ€™s a handful of people who are still here who were there and remember the live shows,โ€ Warren said. โ€œWhen we sold out the first night (at the Stateside), that was basically the 300 people who remember. So what weโ€™re trying to do with the second show is to reach some of the people who had never heard about it who would get into it, and should know about it.โ€

A tantalizing question lingers: Have Ball and the Hoods written any new music together? โ€œWe have not,โ€ Ball said, โ€œbut that would be fantastic. I would welcome doing something like that. We could do a whole new record of new music.โ€

Perhaps it could lure Ball back to Austin for a spell. โ€œOh, I would love it,โ€ he said. โ€œI miss Texas all the time. Maybe I could find my old flip-flops that I left down there, and eat some Mexican food. That sounds perfect to me.โ€

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