There was this one gig that lasted 8 hours long and caused the Texas power grid to fluctuate slightly. From the moment we loaded in to the State Fair of Texas till we tipped our hats to Big Tex, we had ourselves a marathon of shows for Opening Day on their Texas Wine Garden stage. Little did our gracious hosts at State Fair Records know, an acoustical sorta band like ours actually requires a whole bunch of electric juice, mostly to fuel that psychedelic washboard of Doc's. But they whipped up more power and took great care of us, and stocked our little Airstream green room full of snacks for our down-time between sets.
They seemed to dig us, too. At three different times, someone from the State Fair Records staff approached us to ask, "How have I not heard about y'all before?" ...And honestly, we were a bit surprised by their surprise! After all, we've been around for 11 years, have played the same venues and shared stages with most of those on the State Fair Records label, and are good friends with many of them, too. But, to be fair, I suppose it's hard to fit a hootenanny-washboard-type-of-band into a box, and we sometimes get mis-categorized when folks first glance a fiddle and banjo and ask us to play something with Nashville pop and polish.
"Are you bluegrass?," they'll sometimes ask.
"Not exactly," we'll say.
"Folk-Americana perhaps?"
"Well, yes, but..."
"Alternative country?"
"Ehh..."
"Jam band?"
"Depends on the amount of booze 'n such."
I'll say we're "Hootenanny." And that satisfies some, and confuses others.
Anyhow, we consider what we do to be a sort of gumbo stew of Texas stylings, and we seemed to fit the vibe of the State Fair hand-in-glove. Several times throughout the day, we showcased our new tune, "Hootenanny," which sums us up pretty well and always gets folks boot-scootin' with it's Western swing-meets-jugband flavor, and a chorus that goes like this:
If'n y'all from Arkansas or come up from the border
Bring your gal, or bring a pal in case you can't afford her
Come my way from OK or come from Louisiani
We're about to show you how to have a hootenanny
Anyway, we had ourselves a good time performing mostly original tunes, as well as a few of our Texas-twisted covers. We were thankful to have newlyweds Randal and Priscilla (who first met at a Bodarks gig!) there to run our merchandise table while we were on stage, not to mention helping us out with the essential corndogs and beer-runs.
Mighty good times at the 2022 State Fair of Texas. Hoping for a return journey in 2023, so y'all come back now, ya hear?
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