PREACHER MOSS

February's Texas Music Coffee house was an exceptional pleasure with comedian Preacher Mosse, and musician David LaMotte headlining. The evening started off with open mic. Which was, as usual, a delight. Then came Preacher Mosse sharing an anti racial message in a non-politically correct way that proved to be a great success. We all learned to laugh at ourselves, and were allowed a rare glimpse of another person's point of view. and his view on other people's points of view which was at times painfully funny.

GARY MEX GLAZNER

Kerrville’s Texas Heritage Music Foundation and Schreiner University’s Department of Student Activities will be hosting nationally renowned slam poet, Gary Mex Glazner, for its “Second Annual Poetry Slam” on Wednesday, November 3rd, at Schreiner University’s Cailloux Activities Center. Admission is free.

Billed as “The Minister of Fun of the National Poetry Slam”, Glazner will showcase his razor sharp spoken word skills as part of the Foundation’s final 2004 installment of its popular Texas Music Coffeehouse Series.

Beginning at 7 p.m., the Coffeehouse will begin with an hour-long “open mic” slam poetry contest that will be judged by a panel made up from the audience. Organizers are encouraging any and all aspiring poets, rappers, and spoken word enthusiasts to sign up for the contest and to test their skills in front of the judges and an enthusiastic audience. Each contestant will be given a maximum of three minutes, and prizes will awarded to winners, along with a grand prize of $25.00. Glazner will take the stage at 8 p.m.

Gary Mex Glazner’s journey into the world of spoken word began as a graduate of Sonoma State University’s Expressive Arts Program with an emphasis in poetry. In 1990, he produced the first National Poetry slam in San Francisco. His work has appeared in New Mexico Magazine, Poetry Flash, The Bay Guardian, The Harwood Review, and Aloud! Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café, which won the 1994 America Book Award. His poems have been translated into Chinese, Moldavian, Nepali, and Vietnamese. In 1997, Poets and Writers Inc. awarded him a grant to work with Alzheimer patients using poetry.

From November of 1999 to June of 2001, Glazner was Poet-in-Residence at the Inn on the Alameda, in Santa Fe, NM. Instead of chocolates, the hotel placed his poems on the guests’ pillows. According to their records, the hotel gave away 45,862 poems from his southwestern series. Glazner is also the editor of the anthology, Poetry Slam: The Competitive Art of Performance Poetry, which chronicles the first ten years of the National Poetry Slam. He also organized SlamAmerica, a poetry bus ride across America in 2000, which featured 37 readings over a 30 day period in 36 cities. More than 100 poets participated and all of it was documented in his festival award-winning film, Busload of Poets. He has also written Ears on Fire: Snapshot Essays in a World of Poets.

Called an album, a journal and a recollection, Ears on Fire details Glazner’s 30,000-plus mile trek around the world with his wife, Margaret, and the people they encountered. “The idea was to travel around the world”, say Glazner, “meet poets, work on translations, and write poems. My wife Margaret and I traveled approximately 34,229 miles by planes, trains, tuk-tuks, bemos, ferries, broken down Chinese night buses, and rickshaws.” Along the way, they encountered the Princess of Thailand, fried grasshoppers, Tibetan monks in China cheating at cards, Tea House rappers, Xuan Xe of the Naxi Music Orchestra, the Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey, a sandal maker/poet in Greece who was the cobbler for Sophia Loren and the Beatles, Geraldo Rivera, and a visit to Garcia Lorca’s home and grave.

These chance meetings with dignitaries, poets and everyday people are what inspire Glazner’s spoken word performances, as evidenced on his spoken word CD, Fast as Knives.

SONNY THROCKMORTON
by Bob Gray

On Wednesday, October 6th, the Texas Heritage Music Foundation and Schreiner University are bringing Sonny Throckmorton and Rock Killough to the Coffeehouse Series.

The Series is held in the Cailloux Snack Bar on the SU campus the first Wednesday of each month. There will be an open mike from 7 to 8 pm. – and Sonny and Rock will take over from 8 to 9 for a tremendous showcase of great songwriting.

Sonny is one of those guys who actually makes country music work – he sings, he plays, he writes the hits that others sing. Without the Throckmortons of the world, Country music would still be the bad adenoids, stolen trucks and missing dogs of the 1950' s.

Among his seventeen top of the chart hits are: Where the Cowboy Rides Away (George Strait), It' s a Cheating Situation (Moe Bandy), The Way I Am (Merle Haggard), I Wish You Could Have Turned My Head (and Left My Heart Alone) (Oakridge Boys & Peggy Forman), I Feel Like Loving You Again (T.G. Sheppard), Last Cheater's Waltz (T.G. Sheppard & Emmylou Harris), a dozen more.

He has won Songwriter of the Year awards four times, and two of his songs won Song of the Year (It' s a Cheating Situation and Why Not Me). In fact, two of his songs, Middle Age Crazy and I Wish I Was Eighteen Again, (both recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis) were made into movies! Now that's songwriting.

Sonny cut his first album in 1962 at twenty-one years of ae. Forty plus years later he is still writing and performing. As Sonny put it in an interview with Kathleen Hudson, “… I figure it (life) is going in the right direction if I don' t get in its way.” I can' t imagine a life having gone in a better direction, and if you' re a fan of country music you aren' t going to get a better chance than this to see one of the true pillars of the genre up close – and free to boot.

Rock Killough is another of the country music support-beams that goes largely unnoticed by anyone other than the devoted fans who know what to look for. His first project as a singer was in 1977 on the Epic label, but his songwriting has been a mainstay of dozens of performers for much longer. He has songs on gold albums by The Oak Ridge Boys (2), Hank, Jr., Sammy Kershaw (3), and songs on platinum albums by Hank, Jr. and Sammy Kershaw. Johnny Rodriguez, Brenda Lee, Jerry Jeff Walker, Jeannie Seely, Mickey Newbury, Carole King, Waylon, Jeannie Pruett, Jerry Reed, Marty Raybon, 4-Runner, and Randy Travis and John Conlee have all done Killough' s songs.

We hope to see you at the Cailloux Snack Bar on the Schreiner University Campus in Kerrville, Texas, Wednesday evening, the 6th of October. Come early for the open mike session from 7 to 8 pm, for a preview of those who will be future headliners, then stay for Sonny Throckmorton and Rock Killough.

Life seldom pays off this well – if you' re alive, then collect. Come join us.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *Kevin Fowler will also be on the Schreiner University Campus performing in the Quad on Thursday, 7 October at 8 pm. General Admission is $10. Schreiner students can get in for $3 - all other students $5 (bring your student ID, one ticket per student at the listed price). Beer and food available on the grounds. Fowler is quickly becoming a nationally known performer, and his availability at these prices is going to become a fond memory soon – get there if you can.

The Ben Beckendorf Band

The Ben Beckendorf Band are regulars on the Luckenbach stage and offer an eclectic and electric mix that includes everything from B.B. Kings The Thrill is Gone to perennial kids' favorite, Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah. The band is a blues trio made up of Beckendorf on guitar and vocals, Jeffrey Walker on drums and John Gammil on bass. They will highlight the evening by performing a special tribute to former Kerrville resident and Father of Country Music, Jimmie Rodgers, whose birthday is September 8.

Rodgers' music has influenced many of today' s country, folk and blues musicians and is recognized as the first recording artist to have a single that sold more than a million copies. He is a member of both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Country Music Hall of Fame.

Barrett Taylor

Barrett Taylor, from Austin, Texas, is an admissions counselor at Schreiner University. He has also studied abroad in London and The Netherlands.

He has been writing songs since high school and playing guitar for about 12 years. His favorite musician is John Hartford, and he loves all kinds of acoustic music.

Barrett will play some of his favorite during this showcase of local talent on Feb. 4 at the Texas Music Coffeehouse.

 

Tom Russell
www.tomrussell.com

bio: (from tomrussell.com):

Tom Russell was born in Los Angeles in 1950 and now makes his home, on the border in El Paso, Texas. He has recorded seventeen albums of original material and has written such classics as "Navajo Rug," "Gallo del Cielo," "Blue Wing," "Walking on the Moon," "St. Olav's Gate," and "Outbound Plane." Russell's songs have been recorded by Johnny Cash, Nanci Griffith, Guy Clark, Doug Sahm, Dave Alvin, Joe Ely, Ian Tyson, Suzy Bogguss, Iris DeMent, Peter Case, k.d. lang, Bob Neuwirth, Sylvia Tyson, Katy Moffatt ... and many others.

Russell's acclaimed tribute to Merle Haggard, Tulare Dust, co-produced with Dave Alvin, was responsible for creating what came to be known as the "Americana" radio format. It was that format's longest running number one record.

Russell's roots song-cyle, "The Man From God Knows Where," released in 1999, was called by John Lomax "one of the most important folk records ever recorded." The record featured Iris DeMent, Dolores Keane, Dave Van Ronk's last recordings, and a cameo recording of Walt Whitman. Rolling Stone and UPI-syndicated-journalist John Swenson stated: "Russell is one of America's greatest songwriters . . . this record is as close to a Homeric treatment of American history as we're ever likely to see ...when somebody is looking for the equivalent of the Harry Smith anthology in the middle of the next century, The Man From God Knows Where is what they'll discover."
 

pictured above: Andy Hardin, Elana Fremerman and Tom Russell visiting Hudson's writing class October 2, 2003. Tom Russell Andy Hardin performed at October coffeehouse.

Borderland was released on Hightone in 2001. It was produced by Gurf Morlix, noted producer of many of Lucinda Williams' records. Sing Out wrote: "Tom Russell raised the bar pretty high with The Man From God Knows Where. The next CD would be like Orson Welles filming a follow-up to Citizen Kane. Fortunately, Russell continues growing as an artist and has chosen to grow in a substantially different direction, in style and substance, with Borderland. Billboard said: "Russell is a major talent, and Borderland ranks among his finest work."

Patricia Vonne
www.patriciavonne.com

bio:  (from her web site) ...Vonne is able to assert her vibrant personality within a diversity of musical and thematic modes offering "something for everyone" thanks to a lifelong immersion within a universe of music. One of 10 offspring of a drummer father of Mexican descent and a singing and guitar playing Spanish mother, she grew up in a household where "music was always a part of our lives." Her mother would quell the brood and instill them with a harmonic sense by leading them in Spanish folk songs from an early age, while also treating them to afternoons at the cinema enjoying MGM and Broadway musicals.

By her early teens, Vonne was also enjoying musical input from the various sounds and styles found within her siblings' record collections. But it was artists with a particularly Texan mix such as Lone Star heroes Stevie Ray Vaughan and Joe Ely that captured her imagination. After attending her first concert by Chris Isaak sideman Johnny Reno and his Sax Maniacs, Vonne was captured by the allure of performing onstage.

pictured right: Patricia Vonne and Robert LaRoche (center) in Hudson's (sitting) advanced composition class at Schreiner University following the November 5, Coffeehouse Series.

Then when one of her brothers brought home an album by Chicano new wave rockers The Cruzados, she discovered a modern style that reflected her identity. " They sang in English and Spanish, which made us proud of our heritage," she recalls.

editorial note from Kathleen Hudson: Patricia Vonne is sister to rocking film producer--Richard Rodriguez--One Upon a Time in Mexico--some film footage in San Miguel with Anthony Banderas and Johnny Depp and Selma.....whew). Patricia is Cherokee and Hispanic. Born in San Antonio, TX. Loves Flamenco and dances in her set a bit.



photo of Patricia Vonne and
International Club

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