Opie Hendrix: WHAT THEY SAY

Opie Hendrix is Maximum Country and Western personified. His 2006 release "CHUPACABRA" (Def-Texan) is an excellent project, showcasing Opie's enormous talent. His 2003 release "SAN JACINTO" (Def-Texan) proves this point with fourteen tracks of typical Opie gold. Assembling the usual suspects and then some, Opie Hendrix has formulated a treasure of true Texas music gems even more smashing than his debut offering. Combining traditional country with an in-your-face approach makes Hendrix a crowd pleaser at every turn. Both discs are excellent projects from a Texas music mainstay. Hendrix garners maturity and extra fans with his new offering...he is simply captivating. Opie is a truly diverse performer, and puts on a great live show. Now you can take home your favorite Opie Hendrix songs. Get "CHUPACABRA" or the fabulous new "SAN JACINTO" today!

Part Waylon Jennings, part Webb Wilder and part Hank III, Opie Hendrix is a self-declared pot snob and imlied connoisseur of all things low-life with a gift for delivering raggedly right songs for and about fellow wastrels, slackers and ne'er-do-wells. On his latest, Chupacabra, Hendrix serves up another round of loser's laments and rowdy fight songs about going home with long legged waitresses with criminal intent, getting guitars out of hock and finding a beer joint "where my tab ain't that high." He delivers them with the conspiratorial winks of the Old 97's, and sells them with good-ol'-boy exuberance and crisp arrangments. The first half is music from the land of meth labs and mullets, but in true Gulf-Coast fashion, Hendrix later breaks our of the loser-rock template and drops a smooth blue-eyed ballad that belies the Opie image. That he follows it with the straight-on roots-rock of "Something Out of Nothing" confirms this Houston boy had his game face on.

I've been sitting on this last piece of found musica for too long, so I'll just knock it out here for you while I sit and listen to it. I found this one on my desk when I got back from Minneapolis a week or two ago, a present from The Wife. I finally got to listen to it on my drive back from Austin last week.

It's really hard for me to say just how much I like this album, and how much I dig Opie Hendrix. There's really nothing wrong with it that I can find (except for one slow song that I just can't abide). I'm already on record as saying that Opie's nothing short of a Texas musical genius, and this CD just makes me believe that even more. He's an awesome guitarist, and I love to hear him wail. So, let me just kind of take this track-by-track, if you don't mind. But really...you should just trust me on this one and go buy it right frikkin' now. You will not make a mistake by snagging Smashed Hits at the same time, my friends.

1) A 30 second intro that cracks you up...

2) Can't Even Yodel - a nice little "saloon by the train station & a broken heart" song about drinking, sorta shuffly and blue. Good pedal steel guitar here, and some superb fiddling, too. I want to hear this one out under the stars. And Opie does a passable yodel in there, too.

3) Little Party - heh...a good "caught you in the middle of doing wrong" in classic Ft. Worth Stockyards country music style. I can just see the hats twirling the rhinestone jeans around in a sweet, well-practiced two-step. Lopes along beautifully, has a good honky-tonk piano plinking along in there, and the chorus a great sing-along (the dog is the only one who agrees with me.)

4) Golfing & Gravy - a folky, fun little thing, full of aphorisms and metaphors, strung along with what I've come to consider a typical Opie style — bright notes peeking out, kinda poppy, but fun — a real toe-tapper & head-knodder. Great line: "gotta keep singin, even when no one's dancin..."

5) Beautiful & True - slow love song — UGH! But wait...there's a nice accordion, and a cool San Angelo mex-tex sound back there. It's got a name, but I can't recall it. Sounds like Family Dance Night at the VFW in Brady...

6) You & Me - good "we're both a couple of drunks, so let's get drunk, get together, and have some fun" song.

7) Suddenly Susan - a whole 45 seconds of noodling on the guitar. Whatever, Opie.

8) Mr. Blue - this is the kind of song that makes Opie a madcap musical genius. It's a dang 1954 doo-wop song, complete with pedal steel guitar and falsetto backing vocals. Hilarious. "Call me Mr. Blue/wah-wah-oooooh." You just hafta grin.

9) Texas Love - starts out like slow Bob Wills tribute, then kicks into a shit-kickin' mandolin-pickin' stomp, then drops back to Bob. Opie and the band jam through all the gears on this one, and it's weirdly beautiful.

10) My Favorite Waitress (aka, Big Boobies) - every damn radio station in the land should be playing this one at least once an hour. If you don't grin and jump around and sing along at the top of your voice with this one, you're clinically dead. You gotta love the chorus:
She's got big boobies
Likes dirty movies
She can suck a golf ball through a garden hose
Shaves her beaver
I'll never leave her
Just get her wasted and it's anything goes.
An instant classic, my friends...mix tape fodder for generations yet to come.

11) Two Swinging Doors - slow song — the only punch-out song on the whole disc. It's good country blues, but it ain't my style.

12) You Don't Care (Slight Return) - this was on Smashed Hits, and it really is a slight return. I'm glad he re-issued it or re-did it or whatever it is. I love this song, mucho. Adding a tee-tiny bit of surf-y guitar in there jazzes me, too. Great line: "Someone slipped me cocaine/Must have been in that powder I was sniffing" Yeah, it's a dope song, which goes agains my grain, but it's a funny song. I've had women who busted me down enough to gobble up a pile of reds, I reckon.

12) Shoulda Known Better - the Ghost of Waylon Jennings haunts this song. It's uncanny, and it's awesome. I kept hitting the re-do button on the CD player and listened to this about 10 times in a row. Opie brings in a guest lead vocal on this one, one Capt. Mike Bly to play guitar and sing along with him. The song's one of those "fish out of water" deals, with crazy drunks covered in weird tattoos and stinking of cheap perfume: "when she smiled, she was pretty/in that scary kind of way". Waking up in the car with a grotesquely swollen head, police tappin on the window — aw, hell, just buy it and listen to it. This song is worth the price of admission alone.
If I'd known then, what I know now
I'd have never learned what I know now
Hehehehehe. Gorgeous.

14. Things Gotta Change - another durn style-change: Texas blues, with a by-God organ snakin around in the background. It feels like I've been listening to this song for a hundred years in a thousand smoky bars with a million cold beers in my hand, and it always just pole-axes me how gorgeous the blues can be. I get all wrapped up in the Texas honky-tonk stuff, and rightly so, but I will never stop loving the blues shouters. Not never.

15) It's My Life - ack...slow song. Opie! Son! Put this at the beginning of the album. It's bluesy - girlfriend done left him, and he's all angsty, and getting drunk & misty. Blech. Purty, but not for me, bud.

16) If I Had A Girl Like You (I'd Shoot Myself) - this is such a classic punky Americana midwesterner song, and it rocks your lame ass. Very 'Mats circa 1992, which could quite easily be where it came from. I swear I've heard this song before, but it's not even listed as a song, and there aren't any credits. Officially, it doesn't exist, but my gosh! it's a great rocker. I just wanna pogo around and play air guitar and be a big scowling screaming punk when this one's on. If anyone knows the provenance of this song, let me know.

There you go. What I dearly love about this CD is the fact that it covers a lot of great styles that I enjoy, and Opie does it with typical Opie flair. I wish to hell that more people knew Opie Hendrix and the Texas Tallboys. I've seen him several times, but it ain't enough. He's one guy I'll stop down for and make an effort to catch when he comes to town. When I miss a Dallas show, I'm always sad, because I know I missed a good show. And in my books, Opie is one of the good guys when it comes to musicians. I genuinely like the guy, and I don't say that about many musicians I meet.

Go buy it and support independent Texas music, and support a truly great guy.

It makes me sick to my stomach that Houston gets to claim the Opester & the Tallboys. You swampy sonuvaguns better go support him — there will be no [crosses fingers] Camus quoting. You might get a Hendrix replay and walking on the bar while playing the guitar, but not Camus.

Mayberry LSD
Opie Hendrix talks about his favorite waitress and other dangerous pastimes
By John Nova Lomax
Published: September 26, 2002

The term "schema" is defined as "a pattern imposed on complex reality or experience to assist in explaining it, mediate perception or guide response." In other words, we sort out the seeming chaos of a football game by knowing that the Texans are all the guys in red, white and blue and the Cowboys are in blue and silver.

But no fancy terminology can explain the jarring juxtapositions of people and roles you find every night at Earthwire studios. The realities are too complex for mediated perception -- it's like a nonsensical fever dream... Young street rappers chill with aging literary poets. Noise rocker and original punk Don Walsh of Rusted Shut was recently seen freestyling with an ad hoc posse of honest-to-God rappers, for chrissakes...

[ON SAN JACINTO]
...the album is plenty eclectic. In addition to Hendrix's Texas Tallboys band -- bassist Pat Sullivan, drummers Albert Storo and Steve Candelari, fiddler Marty Starns and visionary steel guitarist Susan Alcorn -- people like Greg Harbar of the Gypsies and Chris Hirsch of Lonestar Bluegrass guest on the record, too.

And Hendrix's opener at Rudz is no slouch in the oddity department, either. Psychedelics Express -- featuring Rebel Crew turntablist Joe B., jazz percussionist Citizen Doug and blues harp player Cap'n Krunk -- will bring their electronic update on the blues to the opening slot. "Talk about a diverse show, that's gonna be wacky-doodle diverse…I don't want to be quoted on that 'wacky-doodle' part," says Hendrix. "They're gonna come up and do that weird techno blues stuff, and then we're gonna come up and do our thing."

Racket recently spent an evening with Hendrix trying to find out exactly what that "our thing" was. First, he observed Hendrix broadcasting his Earthwire.net show Straight Jacket Junction, which is billed as "three hours of maximum C&W with the will to be weird." Talk about truth in advertising. The show starts out a fairly straightforward deep honky-tonk show -- plenty of Pride, Coe, Paycheck, Willie and Cash. Suddenly, he's slapped on a platter of the Kronos Quartet's Elvis covers. Then there's some Zappa, and a Hendrix Mix of the Firesign Theater and Ozzy Osbourne playing simultaneously. Bill Monroe, the Andrews Sisters and the Captain and Tennille make appearances, too. Where there's a will to be weird, Hendrix shows the way.

Through it all, the red-haired, freckle-faced Hendrix sits in the control booth sipping on a big bottle of cherry Gatorade and smoking pungent hand-rolled cigarettes that come his way from time to time. His image is about 45 degrees different from your typical Texas-based alt-country artist. Instead of boots and a snap-button shirt, he favors Dickies overalls and sensible navy-blue canvas slip-on shoes that your grandfather would wear after work. Judging by his threads, and also his more Southern as opposed to Texan taste in music, he seems a little more like the type of guy you would meet in the Nashville underground rather than the one here, a little less huevos rancheros, a little more biscuits with sausage gravy. If you're looking for Houston's answer to Mojo Nixon, call off the dogs -- here he is.

As it happens, Hendrix doesn't even hail from south of the Mason-Dixon. He's from Albany, Indiana, a town so small he uses Muncie to try to place it. But as anyone who has been there can tell you, rural Indiana is Northern by geography alone. The accent is Southern, and so is the taste in music. Hendrix was born there 32 years ago as Stephen Buchanan and grew up on a steady diet of Elvis, the Beatles and Hee-Haw.

Hendrix moved to Houston in 1993 to become a bluesman. He spent the next five years woodshedding at the old Boat Yard, where he landed his current nom du rock. "I used to be easily riled up," he remembers. "The guys in the Hairy Fish band that used to play there used to say, 'Hey, there's Opie Hendrix,' and it really used to piss me off."

Buchanan sat in with other artists for a few years then got a band. As a joke, he told Boat Yard owner Dennis Marshman to bill them as the Opie Hendrix Experience. "Dude, there's a couple of things I wish I could take back," Hendrix says. "I don't know if I regret it or what, really. It's a blessing in disguise, I guess. A lot of people would come in just to see what an Opie Hendrix was."

He was a blues slinger then. Not anymore. "I got sick of playing mediocre, half-assed blues for drunken audiences," Hendrix says. "There are legends out there -- and then there are cats like me. I mean hey, I like to consider myself a picker or whatever, but sometimes you gotta quit kidding yourself and say, 'Look, I could spend my whole life trying to bend that note in two, but Stevie Ray Vaughan wannabes are coming age 14 now." After releasing an EP in this blues-rock vein, Hendrix released the alt-country Smashed Hits in 2000, from which KPFT DJ Roark Smith has been heavily spinning the rollicking rocker "Yellowhammer." "We didn't know Smashed Hits was gonna do what it did," Hendrix says. "It was just an example of 'Goddammit, I turned 30, I'm gonna make a record, and I'm gonna make it my way.' And some weird things happened. I didn't get any Grammy nominations or anything like that, but I did get some radio play."

Hendrix is hoping to build on the small success of Smashed Hits with San Jacinto. First, about that title. Is Hendrix a Texas history buff? "Dude, if you wanna know the God's honest truth, I named it that just 'cause it sounded so ZZ Top," he admits. "You know? Degüello, Fandango, San Jacinto…"

And there's a bit of extreme Top-style songwriting on the album, too, though Hendrix is even more leeringly crass (in a good way) than the tiny aged combo from the land of the bluebonnets. Here's a sample of lyrics from "My Favorite Waitress": "She's got big boobies / likes dirty movies / she can suck a golf ball through a garden hose / shaves her beaver / I'll never leave her / just get her wasted and it's anything goes."

The description shows this waitress is also capable of "[driving] you all the way to crazy and [making] you walk back home."

Other highlights include a perfecto cover of the Fleetwoods' 1959 doo-wop No. 1 "Mr. Blue" (complete with wah-wah chorus by a vocal group Hendrix has dubbed the Moron Tabernacle Choir), the heart-tuggingly pretty, Mexican-tinged "Pale Blue Eyes" and -- throughout -- the stellar, ambient steel playing of Susan Alcorn. Her impromptu intro to "Mr. Blue" will shiver your timbers.

Hendrix hasn't quite finished the album, and he's hoping this show will help to that end. "As you know, Capitol hadn't picked it up yet, and I have to pay for this album myself and raise a family and all that," Hendrix says. "Basically, this is a benefit for Joe Omelchuk, the sound guy at Rudyard's. He engineered the album. He worked really hard on the album, and he's not like, 'Dude, where's my money?' But that day will come."

Hendrix is hoping to have San Jacinto out by the end of the year. He's also hoping to elevate Houston's perception of him somewhere close to the current reality. He clearly ain't the half-assed blues cat of the old Boat Yard days. "I want this to be my 'Hey, look at me!' show," he says. "I'm really gonna swing for the fences on this gig."

Should be a wacky-doodle dandy evening, for sheezy

"Everyone's favorite cosmic cowboy..."