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Event
(MT)Part 3: The Starlight Series: From the Heart of Austin: Music Ticket only
This is a three part Live Music Series held at the The Movie Lounge in Fort Smith, AR. This collaborative effort between The Movie Lounge, R. Landry's, and The Indie-pendent Agency to create a world class live music and dining experience.
An Introduction to Part 3: Shelley King, Susan Gibson, and Wendy Collona in Songwriter Round; Austin Inspired Food, with Cocktails and Brews to Match!
Part 3 of our series takes us to Austin, Tx, a cultural epicenter of the United States. Right in the heart of Texas sits one of the world's largest music cities and cultural melting pots. Austin has become home to countless musicians, cultures, and creeds.
If one were to walk down Austin's infamous 6th street for only a few blocks, you would site restaurants that vary from Sushi, Mexican, Organically inspired American food, Vietnamese food, Cajun inspired Seafood spots, and so much more! Every other spot and more has Live music streaming out of the doors with influences from blues to trance
music. This part of our series will surely bring the delights of Austin's dynamic culture!
The Music:
If one were to take their pick of Austin Divas, they would never run out of choices! Soul, blues, and country laden singer-songwriters Shelley King, Susan Gibson, and Wendy Colonna are no exception. Shelley has had one of her song's recorded by Nancy Sinatra while Susan Gibson has written "Wide Open Spaces" for the Dixie Chicks. As For Wendy, this sultry Soul and Blues songstress has multiple awards for her songwriting that has gotten her into Austin City Limits Band of The Year!
Wendy Colonna:
Wendy Colonna is a Louisiana girl with a blend of Cajun and Italian ancestry; a perfectly sexy combo that translates well in her music. A young woman who has decidedly come into her own, the dark-eyed Colonna fills her musical space with a throaty voice, deep-down retro roots and soul.
Colonna admits that the path of a musician isn't always the easiest, but she can't imagine chucking her dream. "I do this work because it calls to me; I have learned that what I'm doing has a powerful effect on people's lives; it heals and transforms. So I just keep doing it. After all, isn't persistence and perseverance necessary in all forms of love?"
Having grown up in Southwest Louisiana in a working class home, Colonna's self confidence has not always come easy, even if she makes it look that way. "Life is full of hard knocks," she realizes. "As long as I'm in touch with my roots, my family, my friends and source, all is possible." Indeed, Colonna's seriously strong pipes and songwriting prove that age does foster wisdom and practice does, indeed, make perfect. "My writing is influenced most by songwriters who's work is so nerve-strikingly personal and universally accessible. . . Jackson Browne, Carole King, Marvin Gaye, Randy Newman, Willie Dixon, Leonard Cohen, Ray LaMontagne and countless others. They touch your soul and let you bring your own stories and characters to the music. . . That's what I aspire to in writing melodies and lyrics and working with grooves."
A multi-award winning talent who was also voted Austin's "Best Singer Songwriter" (Austin American Statesman), Colonna is a down-to-earth gal. She regularly cleanses her spirit, conjures musical inspirations and practices yoga on the banks of Barton Springs. "Everyone needs an accessible means and a language for caring for themselves. Making music and yoga are mine." Like a rock in hurricane, Colonna will continue to move through the music business with the wind behind her, a force of nature that is consistent, strong and rich, like her pipes and her stories. Christine Cox
Wendy Colonna:
Wendy Colonna is a Louisiana girl with a blend of Cajun and Italian ancestry; a perfectly sexy combo that translates well in her music. A young woman who has decidedly come into her own, the dark-eyed Colonna fills her musical space with a throaty voice, deep-down retro roots and soul.
Colonna admits that the path of a musician isn't always the easiest, but she can't imagine chucking her dream. "I do this work because it calls to me; I have learned that what I'm doing has a powerful effect on people's lives; it heals and transforms. So I just keep doing it. After all, isn't persistence and perseverance necessary in all forms of love?"
Having grown up in Southwest Louisiana in a working class home, Colonna's self confidence has not always come easy, even if she makes it look that way. "Life is full of hard knocks," she realizes. "As long as I'm in touch with my roots, my family, my friends and source, all is possible." Indeed, Colonna's seriously strong pipes and songwriting prove that age does foster wisdom and practice does, indeed, make perfect. "My writing is influenced most by songwriters who's work is so nerve-strikingly personal and universally accessible. . . Jackson Browne, Carole King, Marvin Gaye, Randy Newman, Willie Dixon, Leonard Cohen, Ray LaMontagne and countless others. They touch your soul and let you bring your own stories and characters to the music. . . That's what I aspire to in writing melodies and lyrics and working with grooves."
A multi-award winning talent who was also voted Austin's "Best Singer Songwriter" (Austin American Statesman), Colonna is a down-to-earth gal. She regularly cleanses her spirit, conjures musical inspirations and practices yoga on the banks of Barton Springs. "Everyone needs an accessible means and a language for caring for themselves. Making music and yoga are mine." Like a rock in hurricane, Colonna will continue to move through the music business with the wind behind her, a force of nature that is consistent, strong and rich, like her pipes and her stories. Christine Cox
Shelley King:
The music of Shelley King draws from and blends a spectrum of roots music styles, but one word succinctly describes it: soulful. Be it R&B, folk, blues, country, bluegrass or rock or combinations of and variations on those themes she delivers the goods straight from the heart with a voice that's splendidly rich and warm and as big as all outdoors. Writing "a proverbial trunk full of instant hits and yet-unheard classics," as the Austin Chronicle describes her songs, King has risen from the vibrant music scene in the Texas capital city to charm fans across North America, Europe and Japan, win two Austin Music Awards, and be named the Texas State Musician for 2008.
And now she truly finds her sweet spot on her aptly titled new album Welcome Home. Recorded and co-produced with John Magnie, Tim Cook and Steve Amedée of The Subdudes rated by All Music Guide as "stellar musicians of the swampy jazz-rock-blues New Orleans persuasion" it's a roots music tour de force where the spirit of the church meets the soul and spices of the South and the many moods and modes of the human heart.
From the opening and intoxicating sunshine of "Summer Wine," Welcome Home travels the musical highways and byways below Mason-Dixon to echo the finest traditions and open new musical dimensions, thanks to a magical marriage of the multi-instrumental gifts and vocal blend of Magnie, Cook and Amedée with the splendorous humanity and emotiveness of King's singing and songs. On tracks like the call and response of "I Remember," the hymnal "Welcome Home" (written just after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans) and the prayerful "Grain of Sand," King and company draw from the gospel oak to create spiritual sounds for the modern age. "Asking Too Much" and "It's Starting To Rain" renew classic New Orleans R&B, and "I Can't Make It Easy" is a swooning swamp pop slow dancer. The lilt of bluegrass meets the zest of Cajun music on "Everything's All Right," and King and company summon up a spirited fais do do with the boogie-woogie of "How You Make Me Feel" and swing of "Falling Fast" before closing out with the acapella and handclaps of "Welcome Home Reprise." All told, Welcome Home is a listening experience sure to be treasured and relished by all it touches for years to come.
King's voice first rang out at the age of four in a tiny rural one-room church in her native Arkansas and then bloomed further as she grew up singing in parishes large and small across her home state and Texas. Listening to her uncles sing and play songs on their acoustic guitars by Neil Young, Bob Dylan and Crosby, Stills & Nash also instilled in her a sense of songwriting excellence from an early age. After working her way through college by starting and running her own business, King stepped onto the club and concert stage fronting bands in Houston before moving a few years later to Austin, the longtime noted nexus of roots music authenticity and innovation as well as superlative songwriting that proved to be a welcoming home for her talents.
She had been writing songs since her early teens, and in Austin her gifts found a place to bloom without the strictures of style or commercial concerns. "I just started writing for myself. I don't care what kind of song it is it might be bluegrass, it might be blues, it doesn't matter it's whatever mood I'm in and whatever the song needs."
After King gave a copy of her debut album Call Of My Heart to Toni Price, Austin's beloved and long-reigning favorite female voice, Price recorded two of the tunes on it the title track and "Who Needs Tears" for her 2001 album, Midnight Pumpkin. Her version of "Call Of My Heart" went on the win Song of the Year at the Austin Music Awards, where in 2005 King and her group were also named Roots Music Band of the Year. Price recorded another King song, "Tennessee Whiskey" for her 2003 album Born to be Blue. Then after Lee Hazelwood heard King's "Texas Blue Moon" on the radio during a drive through the Lone Star State, he and Nancy Sinatra cut the song for their album Nancy & Lee 3.
For her second album, The Highway, King traveled to the legendary Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama where icons like Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding and many others have tracked classic recordings. Her 2004 live album, Rockin' the Dancehall, captured her dynamism as a performer at the famed Gruene Hall in Central Texas, and was declared "an exuberant breath of air" by the Austin Chronicle and named a Top Recording of the Year by Buddy magazine for its "excellent, high-energy country-rock-pop-blues-gospel-soul, delivered by a tight, experienced band." King's catalog also includes the compilation Armadillo Bootleg #1 that features live and studio tracks including a live cut from her all-woman Southern rock band Sis Deville, a collaboration with Sara Hickman and two Subdudes covers.
As the Dallas Observer says of King, "Onstage, she leads her band through tangents of electric Southern blues and acoustic folk, revved-up Cajun country and rock and roll with a charismatic ease that evidences the resilience of a lifelong performer." And for more than a decade now, she has taken her act across the U.S. and Canada and as well tours of Europe and Japan, sharing stages with scores of noted performers from a range of styles (including such top acts as Patty Griffin, Los Lonely Boys, The Flatlanders, Mavis Staples, Ricky Skaggs and many others), appearing at major festivals in North America and Europe, and performing live on XM satellite radio and the internationally syndicated concert show Woodsongs, among many other radio and TV appearances.
King's fervent Texas following led her to be nominated and then selected as the Texas State Musician for 2008. She shares the honor with such acts as Willie Nelson, Billy Joe Shaver, Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel and Dale Watson, and is the first woman to hold the prestigious annual post.
The origins of her collaboration with members of The Subdudes was first seeing the band in 1993 in Austin and being knocked out by their show, and then buying a cassette of one of their albums in a used tape bin. "I could not take it out of the tape player in my car for months," King recalls. "I just got into the groove where that was my music and the soundtrack to my life." She later met and befriended the group running into them on tour and playing shows together.
Welcome Home started out informally with an initial session at Magnie's home studio in Fort Collins, Colorado. "I really just went to demo a few songs and kind of goof around in the studio with them," explains King. "We were in the studio for three days and came out with five songs, and had just an amazing time together. I wasn't trying to do a record. But when I started listening to it all afterwards, I thought, wow, this is really special, and I'd really love to do it again."
Over two subsequent visits to Fort Collins, a full album took shape. "It came about really organically," King enthuses. "We didn't get together and say we're going to produce a record. We were just thinking about the music and having fun recording with no pressure, and whatever comes of it comes of it. When it all came down I had recorded a whole record. I savored every moment of it and didn't want it to end. It was a total labor of love."
Welcome Home is now sure to reside in the hearts of all that hear it as a contemporary classic of soulful American music. Yet for all the honors, praise and success King has achieved and doing so by booking her own tours and releasing her albums on her own Lemonade Records label the ultimate rewards for King are those of the soul. "It's joyous work," she concludes of her career. "It's what I love doing and it's such a blessing to be able to do what you love every day."
Susan Gibson:
In 1990 Susan Gibson went to college; it was there she found her love of trees and open mics. When pressure grew to pick one or the other, she moved to Amarillo to join forces with the Groobees, a choice that produced 3 albums, 5 sets of hard feelings, and one shoulder tattoo. During that time, esteemed producer Lloyd Maines, in an effort to get his daughter out of the house, sent Natalie Maines and the Gibson penned "Wide Open Spaces" to the Dixie Chicks. The rest is political and socioeconomic history. Recently, after being asked enough about it for the past decade, Gibson had to look up just what exactly the Dixie Chicks did win at the Grammy's in 1999. Google affirmed that she did indeed write the title track to a Grammy award-winning album.
In 2002, the promising solo album debut of Chin Up went horribly awry after an unfortunate typo coupled with a proofreader afflicted with glaucoma ended in Gibson mistakenly offering a "free bonus truck" with each purchase instead of a "free bonus track." Regardless, the album was met with acclaim from fans, critics, and members of the United Auto Workers alike.
2005 brought about the release of Outerspace, which against the wishes of esteemed producer Jack Saunders, has no title track because no song on the record is actually called "Outerspace." Gibson embarked on several blind date writing sessions that birthed tunes like "Happiest when I'm Moving" with Jim Lauderdale and "Together Strong" with Randy Scruggs and Jack Saunders. "Happiest" spends summers with Lauderdale on his record "Hummingbird" and school years and alternate Christmases on Gibson's album.
A hefty touring schedule and 137 oil changes later, Gibson released 2008's "New Dog, Old Tricks," which, against the wishes of esteemed producer Walt Wilkins, has no title track because no song on the record is actually called "New Dog" or "Old Tricks." It is a simply resplendent collection of re-recorded Groobees tracks and new songs. Tracks include "Baby Teeth," and "Start Over." Tracks include "Baby Teeth," and "Start Over."
In 2011 Gibson did what no one ever expected would happen; she titled her fourth album after a song on the actual album. TightRope was birthed even though she expressed uneasiness at the title decision because the obvious choice was "Susan Sings the Songs of Wang Chung" (as there are no Wang Chung songs on the record). It was released to acclaim from fans and critics alike, with the exception of one Mr. Wayne Mansfield in Carbondale, IL, who probably listened to it on poor quality headphones after a bad day at work and did not acclaim over it as much as everyone else.
Gibson's performance style is suited to any venue, from solo acoustic in living rooms to raucous full bands in Texas dancehalls and everything in between. She will get uncomfortably close to broaching your personal space boundaries at a house concert, or tell just-inappropriate-enough jokes to make the crowd in an attentive listening room blush but feel good about it.
These days you'll find Gibson on the road anywhere from Terlingua, Texas to New York City, flirting with Freightliner Sprinter and Honda mechanics in every state. Her immediate plans consist of touring the U.S., Canada, and Europe in support of TightRope and working on her yet untitled next album, which against the wishes of whichever esteemed producer she chooses, will probably not have a title track because no song on the record will actually be called whatever she ends up titling it. When asked about her long-term future plans, she says she often wishes she were a scientist.
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LocationThe Movie Lounge in The Starlight Balllroom (View)
7601 Rogers Ave.
Fort Smith, AR 72903
United States
Categories
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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