Western Swing & Texas (and Other Punchy Thoughts) - I.
I.
I’m amidst the filth of a Nebraska truckstop and repulsed by the lack of decency of a week’s worth of grown men. Standing a comical distance from the urinal and now the sink, I rinse my hands with scalding water in hopes that the temperature will make up for the lack of soap. From one extreme to the next, I close one tap and allow the other to run its coldest as I cup the water directly into my face. The awkward distance adds to the mess. I’m as bad as the last occupant.
There’s a version of Tired that races well past fatigue and seems to watch you mockingly as you attempt to keep up. It is vengeful. You denied me, it cackles. Its pursuit to wear on the mind and body teases sleep but gains evermore control. Taunting like a captor feeding small rations to a prisoner. Its possession is gradual. One’s ignorance to their well-being is a black magic that invites the entity in. Strength developed in full before showing any signs of the infestation delivering clouded thoughts and ashen skin. It will detach reality. It sinks your eyes and steals the pigment from your hair.
I untuck my denim snap-shirt and use its hem to wipe my face knowing the inside of my pants are cleaner than the reusable towel roll thrown into the corner under the mirror. Assuming I would have recognized my first grey facial hair, a dozen or so have somehow presented themselves in the cold lighting.
We have a twelve hour haul to put behind us in order to make it to Weyburn, Saskatchewan for their Flavours of Fall show and cabaret. Operating within the sliding business model of “tell us what you need and we’ll deliver”, I’ve been quiet on the drive to let my voice heal up before the coming four set performance. I open the bathroom door to my guitarist, Bryce Lewis, patiently waiting his turn, a fresh coffee in his hand.
“Dude, I have white hairs in my mustache,” I say as I move past him.
“You just notice that now?” He laughs and sets his coffee on the dirty sink.
***
I had met Colter Wall in the winter of 2015. He was a second year university student and had driven to Regina to meet up with producer, Jason Plumb, as they continued to work their way through floor-cuts of Colter’s original material. Jason had forwarded the demos in my direction and was eager to get the two of us in the same room having mentioned it repeatedly over the previous months. It was Colter’s guitar playing that had me interested in what he was doing, although there was no denying the unique feel he was tonally attempting with his voice. His vibrato had a shudder and his thumb had might. I couldn’t hear influences, that’s what has always irritated me in others’ perception of his styling - it’s their shortcoming, a lack of vocabulary to properly convey the discovery. He sounded nothing like Johnny Cash and harkened more to Blind Lemon Jefferson with his tempo carefree and moving off metre. As word of mouth built him a foundation, comparisons always came up short - because what we were experiencing was visceral.
As he and Jason sat in the corner of a local dig, I was surprised to see I wasn’t the only one in a hat as was usual when I entered any building in Regina. Colter, under a black Lash Stetson, sucked the suds off his top lip and stood up to introduce himself. He was sweet and instantly snagged my reverence as he made the odd genuine reference to my own songwriting catalogue. It is difficult at times to be around artists a decade younger. They push to impress or come off as pitching but he was neither. In fact, I was the one displaying my arrogance as a veterned performer throwing unsolicited advice in his direction. It was in good faith leaning on my go-to: quit school, go for it. And whether that specific moment had impact or not, he did just that.
A cascade of high profile endorsements catapulted his sessions with Jason and the Imaginary Appalachia debut was the spark to a wildfire. My lifestyle wasn’t void of anomalies but to exist on the fringes of such a freakish clamour, I was pinching myself by association. The last minute decision for my now wife, Belle Plaine, to record a vocal track among the chaos of catching a plane to Australia swept her into the coming wave of cult followers. A then unknown folk singer and an invite to sing on his song “Caroline”.
What was bizarre in the moment and normalized in hindsight. As continuous events would deviate from an average existence, Colter kept us included. I tried to earn my keep but it wasn’t expected and whether it was sitting in the rare early crowds of dozens or to sling my arm around him and share a microphone during an encore in front of thousands, I felt my role was to stay grounded in the electricity and always shoot him straight. Even then, these moments are rare in comparison to my duty to be a brotherly ear. The most profound was his evening at the Cactus Café on The University of Austin Campus in November 2017. As his start time was increasingly pushed back, I knocked on an upstairs academics room to find him pacing, “This isn’t good, Blake,” having never seen him as distraught. And it wasn’t good. After the decision to play the majority of the evening while The Speedy Creek Band waited against the off-stage wall, the works of them, merchandise tender included, were later informed they were relieved of their roles come week’s end. The Canadian leg of that tour was transitional, I opened the shows as a duo and he confidently closed them down solo.
If The Speedy Creek Band was Colter and Them, The Scary Prairie Boys is Colter with Them.
What he carried so well, alone with an acoustic was sonically shifting to fill the rafters of dancehalls and keep partners together. His back catalogue of goth was still honoured but listeners began to be treated to a dismantling of his mystery. The shock value in the first three years, including Imaginary Appalachia and his self-titled, was rooted in the unknown and as Songs of the Plains mirrored the period without The Speedy Creek Band or The Scary Prairie Boys, it foreshadowed yet another incarnation of the writer. Stretching his legs out and strolling home. If flying me to Nashville to sing on the album alongside himself and Corb Lund wasn’t enough, he asked me to write the liner notes. Of the four paragraphs on the backside of the Songs of the Plains, I could have summed the works up with the one sentence - “Colter’s mythology remains his greatest allure.” The Scary Prairie Boys threw that sentence to the wolves.
As a couple hundred tour dates tends to do, it made for a lightning collective. As we continued to share their bills, Belle and I watched them shake venues across Europe before meeting back up in Regina for its folk festival. We weren’t to perform, Belle having reluctantly declined the festival’s offer giving us a weekend to enjoy the event free of responsibility. My intermittent dryness from alcohol interrupted in celebratory fashion with a text of Colter’s arrival up the street from our suite in the city. We sat at the table we first met, bands in tow, Kacy Anderson leading the charge of “just one more pint.”
“There’s this great little studio on a ranch outside of Wimberley, Texas, we recorded a couple tracks at,” Colter said, “it’s really something special, you’d like it.” Us, each sharing the philosophy of capturing tone and imperfections in recording sessions. As he expanded on the studio’s distinction, complete with bunkhouse on the Blanco River, he extended his invite.
“We’re heading back in to work on a new record and I’d really like to have you in the room if you have nothing else going on.”
***
With the Flavours of Fall organizers aware that we had just returned off a twelve hour drive from Nebraska and are coming into our last set of the night, the works of us are rather impressed with the energy level of the show. It’s appeasing to give a crowd less backstory and banter and move from the ending of one song immediately into the next, keeping a dance floor filled with renditions of Merle Haggard, Don Williams and a twanged-out John Prine. Fulfilling our duties to the minute, we return to the stage for another five as Belle takes the verses in our encore original “Word’s Gettin’ Around”. I break the strings and stomp my foot to Steve’s backbeat. Slamming my heel down on the mobile stage as it echoes through the hockey rink, an extended outro cutting into the time needed to tear our gear down and get me straight to the airport.
continued…
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Howdy Readers,
Good to have y’all back. Western Swing & Texas (and Other Punchy Thoughts) has been an exciting piece to put together, revisiting journal entries, pictures, and voice memos of my time in Texas with Colter and his crew. I’ve been so damn lucky over the years to feel the love from their online community, The Folksingers Union, that I thought this piece would be something to offer back as a touch of insight into a part of CW’s world and friendship that I’ve had the utmost privilege of being included in and nurturing. So whether this piece acts as another layer to the connection you’ve made with his music or you’ve been a follower of my musings, please enjoy. I’m grateful to all of you that share these entries on your social channels to help get the good word out and a special thank you to those who have subscribed to my writing on the homepage of this site - I have lots in store for you.
Blake
P.S. The Scary Prairie Boy’s special “Live In Front of Nobody” airs tonight (Thursday, March 11, 2021 8:30 PM EST / 7:30 PM CST) powered by La Honda Records and Mandolin. I know I’ll be tuning in. Get ya some. Here’s the link:
https://boxoffice.mandolin.com/collections/colter-wall-live-in-front-of-no-one-3-11