He’d been playing heavy metal in San Antonio. Keith Langford, the drummer they settled on, is Russell’s brother-in-law. The original drummer was the immigrant Welshman Charlie Llewellin, now Texas Monthly’s new media director and the band’s favorite photographer. Red-bearded Claude Bernard joined the band blowing on a hooter and bought his first accordion for 35 bucks at a flea market he’s also the keyboard player. He has a fine song on the new album called TK. Max Johnston, the third lead singer, had come down from Kentucky and played banjo and acoustic guitar and the violin, which he plays like a violin, not a fiddle. The evolving band moved to Dallas, and then Austin. “We were just playing music, and drawing crowds, but fraternity guys were getting drunk and tearing up joints. “We sort of got run out of Shreveport,” Russell said. Lynnyrd Skynnyrd was my favorite.” Then punk bands from Minneapolis and the West Coast caught his ear, and punk was somewhat the tenor of the Picket Line Coyotes. “I was into Southern rock,” Russell said. They lived first in Beaumont, where an uncle used to play Willis Alan Ramsey’s legendary only record and long for the old days at Armadillo World Headquarters, and then his dad’s work moved them to suburban Houston, and then Shreveport. Between its legs was a butternut squash.” Russell shrugged. And he had this little sculpture in the front yard. We played, we crashed, we slept on the floor. Off the road, 200 bucks a month, nobody we could bother much. A shack, really, but he lived there 10 years. He had this little house we called the Steamy Bowl. I guess he wanted us to play happy hours at Central Market.
Jimmy wanted us to be the Sun-Dried Diegos. “There was some history associated with that, and we just decided it was time to change. “When we came to Austin we were the Picket Line Coyotes,” he replied. “Why the Gourds?” I asked about the name. Russell asked me one time, “You want to know why we became an acoustic band?” He laughed and said, “We didn’t want to haul around amps. It was a gentle way of saying I was old enough to be his father. “We’d never heard of them until people like you started telling us that we sound like them,” he said with a smile, perhaps putting me on. Smith nodded politely as I mentioned the similarities and perceived influences.
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“He is Rick Danko” - the late singer and bass player of The Band, which in the sixties and seventies, especially with the parting Martin Scorcese movie The Last Waltz, far transcended its origins as Bob Dylan’s backup group. David Langford, a rancher and nature photographer whose son Keith is the Gourds’ drummer, told me that I had it wrong. In style and voice Smith reminded me of the late singer and piano player Richard Manuel, of The Band. Jimmy Smith, the Gourds’ bass player and another star singer, has curly black hair and sideburns that are going a little gray now. I guess if you live out there it seems like they do.” Shinebox also contained eclectic covers of David Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust," Townes Van Zandt's "Two Girls," and Billy Joe Shaver's "Omaha." But now the Gourds seldom play any covers, because their own writing is so prolific and so good. “The guy said, ‘You’re where?’ Like everybody in the world lives in Los Angeles. Russell hesitated and said they would have to make some travel arrangements. An associate on his radio program reached Russell and asked the Gourds to roll on over and rap. Dogg, as the late Molly Ivins tagged him. The cover was an Internet sensation, and reached the notice of Mr. That first exposure led me to an album called Shinebox, which was recorded in the Netherlands, and that started with a pitch- and humor-perfect country-western take on Snoop Doggy Dogg's hip-hop classic, "Gin and Juice." The band's leader - to the extent they have one - is a large good-natured man named Kevin Russell. I first encountered them about 10 years ago, and I thought, good lord, it was like seeing and hearing The Band. They blend strains and echoes of gospel, rock, blues, country, bluegrass, Cajun, even barbershop harmony - sometimes all of that blended in one song. They have four fine singers and songwriters and an astonishing facility with an array of instruments that include acoustic and bass and electric guitar, mandolin, accordion, violin, piano and organ, and drums. The Gourds came out this fall with a highly praised and historically resonant Vanguard release, Old Mad Joy. In the 40-odd years since Austin became more than a backwater of American music, none of its talents have been more rousing and enduring than the band called the Gourds. 'We've done everything kind of backward.' By Jan Reid / The Rag Blog / January 14, 2011 No Last Waltz for the Gourds 'Most bands grow out of rock and roll when they get to be our age,' Russell told me with a laugh.
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