Gatemouth

Damn, I've got this news via Bitch, Ph.D. (who links to a CNN article and some downloads at Amazon). Clarence Gatemouth Brown died yesterday of a heart attack in Texas after having just missed the hurricane at his home in Louisiana. He had apparently spent a fair amount of time in Europe in his later years, where he was better-appreciated than in the US.

In the small Texas town where I went to college, there used to be a little house with a front porch and kegs of beer in the back that was converted into a small music venue with the stage in the middle of the living room. It was called Dr. G's at one point, Morgenstern's at another point, and I forget the other couple of names it went through. Not far away from Lyle Lovett's "this old porch." About 30 miles up the road from Lightnin' Hopkins' birthplace, and 30 miles south of Blind Lemon Jefferson's birthplace. No AC at this place, so on Texas summer evenings all the windows would be thrown open and a lot of shirts came off. I believe this is also where a good buddy of mine re-invented the hand-fan. A lot of great bands came through that place, usually before they were big enough to book larger venues: Butthole Surfers, Big Boys, Joe Ely, Marcia Ball, Flaco Jimenez, Joe King Carrasco, the Killer Bees, Robert Earl Keen, the Vaughan brothers, countless blues, reggae, Tejano, and the good Texas hippie kind of country/folk music like that of Doug Sahm.

When Clarence Gatemouth Brown came to town, everybody went to the show. He'd stand in that converted living room with guitar or fiddle and a warehouse of jokes. A friend, Wes, sitting nearly at Gatemouth's feet grinning and enjoying the show once stopped CGB in the middle of a song -- Gatemouth looked at Wes and said, "boy, if you keep grinning like that, you're going to fly away." Everyone I know from those times still thinks of those shows as some of the best we've ever seen anywhere. Gatemouth live in an intimate setting was simply it.