Author Archives: Buckley Wineholt

This weekend, here in the town that delivers nightly open-mouthed kisses to the rock & roll lifestyle, there’s this big, huge, sold-out festival. Yep, the Austin City Limits Festival was sold-out before they even announced the performers — Yanni, Jimmy Buffet & Kenny G, FYI.

While contemplating the number of ways one could hacksaw / chisel though the layers of steely fencing surrounding Austin’s only performance by Stevie Wonder, the OTHER fests this weekend gave me pause. You can Ditch the Fest, even though with this summer’s drought you won’t have to worry about the Dillo dirt, at a number of venues on Red River and the Eastside. Or you can attend Art Disaster 13 at Beauty Bar tonight, or you can “cornfuse the acronym” by attending the Austin Corn Lovers Fiesta at other venues around town.

Read More »

I have been seeing the name Roxy Roca popping up a lot lately so I decided to head down to Threadgill’s last weekend to see who this Roxy Roca is. It turns out Roxy Roca is not a who, but a what—and the “what” is a nine-piece powerhouse of southern soul. Fronted by green-eyed soul shouter Taye Cannon and backed up by a crack team of veteran players, this band is the real deal.

Roxy Roca | Ain’t Nothin’ Fancy (It’s Love)

Roxy Roca delivered a tight, gapless set showcasing their obvious affinity for late ’60s southern soul like Al Green and Joe Tex mashed up with a slightly more modern pop sensibility, as heard in their Internet-only single, “Ain’t Nothin’ Fancy (It’s Love).”

Read More »

New TVD Austin Editor Buckley Wineholt remembers why live music is life’s blood.

Growing up in Baltimore in the mid-’70s, it was easy to see why a gritty scene like punk could develop. My tastes ran more towards the blues bars, and one Nighthawks show at the Famous Ballroom on N. Charles one New Years Eve really got me hooked. Arena shows that followed, like Zappa on the Overnight Sensation/Apostrophe tour, and Little Feat with Lowell George cemented my attraction to the live music scene.

Decades later, here in The Live Music Capital of the World, a yowza set by ’60s psych-era icon Arthur Brown (“Fire”) backed by Austin’s own Flounders Without Eyes, opening for DeadEye at Ruta Maya for a Jerry Garcia birthday show kept the fire burning this past weekend. (Ruta Maya, sold-out, at about five hundred degrees… ouch.)

Seeing Arthur Brown, so many decades on, and hanging out with this R’nR vet, watching him work his magic both onstage and off, really made my night. This cat played with the Dead, Zappa, and many others at the Atlantic City Pop Festival, the week before Woodstock. And he remembered it! His inspired vocals, many of them improvised, were wild, wild, wild.

Read More »