Texas Renegades and Assholes

Assholes, they are like opinions and everybody's got 'em. I first heard this saying from a great old family friend (Ronnie Chilton, RIP) when I was like 12 or something. Ronnie also taught me a bunch of other crude yet very practical things as a kid ("blue balls" is the one that most comes to mind). To that "end", I go to see the Texas Renegades play last night at Billy's Ice House in New Braunfels. I sit there putting all these "clever" things in my phone as to where they're a good 90's cover rock band with pretty unmemorable songs and stuff and THEN I meet one of the guys in the band. I get to talking to this really nice guy (guitar player and really good singer) and he tells me of how he and his twin brother (bass player in the band) were raised around here, playing music their whole lives, and how there's a picture of him and his brother sitting on the bar as very young children in one of the Dance halls (Twin Sisters or Club 21) with all of the Texas great's Townes Van Zandt and the likes of those typa guys. Back to this band, they play on the average of about 180 shows a year over the last 5 years (much harder than I've worked when you figure in the travel dates and stuff like that). I guess all that to say that this reviewing band blog stuff sucks more times than not, unless of course you just liked everything that you saw. Then it wouldn't suck for you but nobody would really care what you'd think (as they care what I think?). They were good musicians with good arrangements, good singing, etc... . Now that I'm thinking back on it, I guess it came down to the lead singer for me. He didn't have a sound that I could really distinguish from a bunch of others nor did the overall sound of the band or the songs do anything that stood out from the crowd (other than doing a really good job of sounding like a 90's rock band). They just worked their asses off, played well and I just didn't get it. I'm gonna "hang" in the back of the bar the next time and keep my big mouth shut. Cheers, S

P.S. FYI, the bar actually had great sound and a decent looking stage set up.