By Jay Brakefield
Expect plenty of hot Texas music in a cool, old place July 13, when community radio station KEOS presents the latest fund-raising concert in its Lone Star Music Series. The show will feature the John Evans Band, Emily Herring & Farm to Market, and Magic Girl.
Headliner Evans is a 6-foot-5 Houston native, now transplanted to Austin, whose musical influences range from Mississippi Delta blues, to punk, to Texas honky-tonk. He’s won an eight-year string of awards from his hometown alternative paper, the Houston Press. Two decades into his music career, he stays busy writing songs, touring, and producing records by other artists. Evans’ songs have turned up in the feature film Country Strong and the TV series Friday Night Lights. His latest album Polyester is featured in Butterfly Girl, a documentary about his daughter Abigail, who died tragically young of a rare skin disease.
Emily Herring played music in Portland, Oregon, for a decade before returning home to Texas in 2010. Like her native state, her music is eclectic, drawing on traditional country, Tejano, western swing, and the blues. She commands the stage and she can swing like Bob Wills and yodel like Jimmie Rodgers. She now lives in San Marcos and plays all over the Hill Country, solo and with her band. If you don’t feel like dancing when you hear her tune “Austin (Ain’t Got No) City Limits,” you may need a soul transplant. The title of her newest album, Gliding, may tell you something.
Then there’s Magic Girl, who more than lives up to her stage name. Mary-Charlotte Chavez grew up in South Georgia, a lineage you can hear in her voice, which can belt or croon as the song demands. Her dad had worked as a DJ, and she grew up listening to everything from Hank Sr., to bluegrass, and to Motown. She’s lived in Bryan since the mid-2000s, save for a two-year sojourn to California. She devotes to full time writing and making music, painting and drawing — and being a mom. Daughter Clementine, who often tags along on gigs, is five, and come September, she’ll have a little brother (no name yet). Magic Girl writes something every day — maybe just a line or a snatch of conversation that might find its way into a song. She plays solo or with other musicians, in wonderfully named aggregations such as Magic Girl and Her Ex-Husbands. She’ll go it alone at the Ice House, but we’re betting that local fans will be there to cheer her on. There’s a new album, her third, in the works (no name on that either, so far; can’t rush these things).
All-volunteer KEOS, 89.1 FM (“the left end of the dial done right”) has been a community institution since 1995, when it first hit the airwaves in a leaky former tortilla factory. Now it’s more comfortably ensconced in a building it owns at 202 E. Carson in Bryan, but it still depends on listeners for most of its operating funds. Tickets to the Ice House show are available at www.Icehouseonmain.com, and when purchasing tickets, devotees of the station can also include an additional donation. It’ll keep all that great music and alternative information coming your way. Doors open at 7pm, music starts at 7:30pm at the historic venue at 800 N. Main St. in Downtown Bryan. A good time will be had by all.
