Dedringers at Courville's

Yes, last Thursday was once again buffet time at Big Rich's Courville's. The buffet, as you've no doubt guessed, was the traditional gumbo with pork loin and potatoes, but the gumbo was especially good this time. As has become usual for these Courville's events, the place was packed. I still haven't figured out how they do that; I've never seen them advertise anywhere, you'll have a hard time finding their website if you type "Courville's Beaumont" into Google, and until very recently even if you found their website, you wouldn't find any relevant information. You would find an ad for hot sauce, though.

All that's changed now. Almost all that, anyway. It's still hard to find the place with Google, but the hot sauce ad is gone and now there's a "calendar/events" page where they'll tell you who's up next. (I've added Courville's calendar to the sidebar, so when Google fails you, you know where to come.) In this case, the "calendar/events" page will tell you that next up is Fred Eaglesmith and Band on March 22. I've never heard Eaglesmith's music, but whoever picks the bands for Courville's seems to know what he's doing. I expect it'll be a good show.

But the title of this post isn't "Courville's Calendar," it's "Dedringers at Courville's." They're a couple young guys from Austin or something who play the sort of Texas music that doesn't suck. Eclectic, sort of folkie sound of their own, with good song writing and a good stage presence. The put on a really good show. I even bought their EP.

Not that it matters, but they look like this:



They'll be at The Old Quarter in Galveston on March 3 and again on April 28. It'd definitely be worth the drive.

When the Dedringers were finished playing, some old guy came on to close the show. He had a hit song 30 years ago or something, but he didn't even sing it himself. It was just something he wrote that someone else made famous. The song is "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother," and the someone else was Jerry Jeff Walker. The old coot who closed for the Dedringers was this guy:



Yes, it's good ol' Ray. His show was much the same as last time. A good number of the songs and a lot of the between song banter was familiar, but that's not a bad thing. He has stories that go with the songs, and the stories are as much a part of the show as the songs. And sometimes, the stories are better than the songs. It's all in the timing and delivery, and he's got both down pat. The man is just plain laugh-out-loud funny.

He has a new album coming out in a few months called "Snake Farm." He started the show with the title track, which has this refrain:

Snake Farm, it sounds pretty nasty,
Snake Farm, it pretty much is,
Snake Farm, it's a reptile house,
Snake Farm, uhh-uhh-uhh.

I really don't know how to write "uhh-uhh-uhh" to capture the sense of mock ickiness and disgust in his voice. I'm pretty sure no one ever even thought to use that "word" in a song before. At least not like that. He had the whole crowd singing along by the time the song was ended, and that was on his very first song. I don't know if something like "Snake Farm" would really work outside a live performance, but I'll definitely be buying the CD when it comes out to find out.

The rest of the show was at least as good as the start, even though he didn't play any of my favorite Ray Wylie Hubbard songs. But the one's he did play, he played very well. Even stuff like "Screw You, We're From Texas," which I tend to skip when I'm listening to the CD, was great when performed live and with the benefit of the story about the rich drunks from Nashville who (supposedly) inspired the song. And it makes a damn fine T-shirt or bumper sticker to boot.