The Gourds

The Gourds certainly are a good-time, honky tonkin’ music group with plenty of quirk and underground appeal to justify the “alternative” tag in “alternative country-rock.” A part of Austin’s lively scene and well-known performers in the city’s nationwide music display SXSW, the Gourds 1st gained the interest of the Zero Depression crowd using the drunken porch jam audio of their debut, Dem’s Great Beeble, in 1997. The band’s quirks arrived even more on its follow-up, 1998’s Stadium Blitzer, with tunes of questionable subject material (not offensive, simply really befuddling) like “Plaid Coating” as well as the goofy “I Ate the Haggis.” Later on that 12 months, the Gourds broke to university radio with several covers around the live EP Gogitchershinebox. While their cover of “Ziggy Stardust” may possess elevated some eyebrows, it had been the Gourds’ galloping twang remake of Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice” that basically captured listeners’ imaginations. Regrettably, the demise of Watermelon Information required their recordings out of printing right after the discharge of their third recording, Spirits of Hallelujah, in 1999. Gladly, Sugar Hill Information stepped in, and without lacking a defeat, the Gourds’ 4th record, Bolsa de Agua, arrived the following season. Over another year, Glucose Hill also reissued all of those other Gourds’ existing catalog. The Tx group began with multi-instrumentalist/vocalists Kevin Russell and Jimmy Smith (who also distributed songwriting responsibilities), accordionist Claude Bernard, and drummer Charlie Llewellin. In past due 1997/early 1998, Llewellin was changed with a longtime friend from the music group, Keith Langford, who was simply kicked from the Damnations TX when his bandmates noticed that he wished to sign up for the Gourds but might experience too poor about quitting to really leave them. After that, after playing banjo, fiddle, and even more on Spirits of Hallelujah, Utmost Johnston (of Uncle Tupelo and Wilco) also became the official person in the music group. With the brand new lineup intact, the Gourds released Bolsa de Agua in the summertime of 2000, Cow Seafood Fowl or Pig in 2002, Bloodstream of the Memory in 2004, Large Ornamentals in 2006, Noble Creatures in 2007, and Haymaker! in ’09 2009. In addition they provided the rating towards the Mike Woolf documentary Growin’ a Beard. The music group inked a cope with Vanguard Information the following season, and began focus on its tenth studio room album. The ensuing Old Mad Pleasure, made by longtime Bob Dylan sideman Larry Campbell and documented at Levon Helm’s studio room in upstate NY, arrived in Oct 2011.