Houston musicians and the local scene (or lack there of).

come up to Rudyards, Tue night.

Desolation Row - featuring ex-pure rubbish/teen cool members.

Glam punk.

 

I think there's been some good bands from our little area...

I think some members of ...,And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead used to live here at some time or another. And aren't the Toadies from here?

Not many people know 'em, I don't think, but Casino was a pretty good band.

Right now, our biggest claims to fame so far have been hip-hop/R&B stuff like Screw, Scarface, Flip, and of course the almighty Destiny's Child. Rockwise we have...The Hunger?

 

Houston is definitely a tough town to be a musician in if you are making original alternative rock. It seems to me that the only two genres of music where a Houston musician can consistently make money are country and blues. Any other genre of music and you will be having a tough time here.

Personally, I kind of like it. I spent nearly 13 years in LA playing alternative rock, and let me tell you, it is tougher there than it is here. There is so much competition and so many bands that club owners screw bands out of payment routinely. Plus they have pay to play there....certain clubs require bands to draw a certain number of people to a gig. If they don't then the band owes the club money for playing there!

I'm currently playing in one alt-country band (Carl Hayn and the Holdouts) and one blues band (the Dukes of Houston). Both bands make money, but on average I get paid more with the Dukes. Blues is very popular in Houston and if you can play and you hook up with a good group, you can make decent money per gig.

The beauty of the music business these days is the internet. If your band is good and has good music, get it out on the internet. If you are good enough, the record companies will find you if you are out on the net.

They days of having to move to Los Angeles or New York in order to "make it" in the music business are over, thank God!

 

I am guessing it's still kind of tough for bands, though since I am not in one, I really wouldn't know.

As a supporter of local music, I think Houston is great. Rare is the weekend that I can't find at least one show I want to go to, and often I find myself having to choose between several shows. Houston is actually pretty good for me because you have 3 sources of bands to fill local spots : 1) local acts, 2) other Texas acts (mostly Austin), and 3) national acts.

Numbers two and three probably make it harder for local acts to really get going and that's a shame. Ideally the solution would be creating a larger fan base for the music scene which would then lead to more venues coming on and actually thriving. My hopes are dim on that because Houston doesn't seem to have much of a sense of adventure when it comes to music. If they haven't heard it in heavy rotation on a Clear Channel station, it might as well not exist. That's not really CC's fault, it's the local market's fault for allowing CC to set the agenda.


RMT makes a good point about the internet. I have found a lot of good stuff out there. Almost every artist has a website, and if they are smart, they should put some sample cuts or a free mp3 or two for folks to listen to. I also like www.emusic.com, a pay download site focusing on independent labels.

 

Kings X?

I think the problem with the original music scene in Houston is the lack of venues to play at, or more specifically the location of these venues. We have some decent venues but they are so spread out it makes it impossible for our 'scene' to build anything resembling momentum IMO. One on Pease, one on Waugh, one on Washington, one downtown, one in The Heights, one on Huffmeister etc.

If these venues were somewhere centralized, I think it would be easier for local bands to create a 'buzz'. You can't really create a 'buzz' unless you're drawing people off the street. This would be much easier to do if there was one huge street to draw people from. A street full of people open to hearing new bands.

I've always thought Washington Avenue would be a perfect spot for a bunch of live music clubs. People could park and just walk from club to club and hear 8 different bands without having to drive all over town. It could be our little version of 6th Street (at least the way 6th Street used to be).

Of course, it's kind of hard to do that with clubs like Rockafellers turning into a banquet hall or the Satellite Lounge turning into a hair salon. This doesn't exactly help our 'scene'.

I played in an original band for a while here in Houston. We played at Ruds, The Engine Room, Side Car Pub, Mary Janes, Last Concert Cafe, all the usual venues. We sold CDs at our shows. It was damn near impossible to get anyone besides our friends to our shows on a consistant basis.

I eventually quit the band and decided to join a band that actually made money instead of one that cost me money.

BTW, what's the over/under on posts before Jeff makes an appearance in this thread?

 

Eight

 

Then I'll take the over.

 

...quickly followed by Galactic Cowboys, and the one that didn't make it, Toy Subs. Man, it has only been 5-6 years, and I'm already an embittered old fart reminiscing about the past.

Oh well, as VH-1 said, "I LOVE the 90's!"

 

The worst thing about playing music in Houston is how scattered all the venues are. If you go out to see live music, you're going out to one venue and that's pretty much it. I should mention that the downtown scene is starting to pick up, though, and I think pretty soon all the bands will be playing downtown, and that's where the live music scene in Houston will actually blossom. Also, venues simply charge too much door $. I mean, you go to Austin, walk up & down 6th street, and you can walk into any number of bars & clubs to check out some great music. Here, you drive to 1 place, pay a $8 cover and you're stuck there for the evening, 'cause to catch anyone else, you'll hafta drive halfway across town and then pay another $8.

There are definitely good bands out of Houston, though. Make no mistake, we have lotsa good music happening here. Unfortunately, there's not much live music support. No real promotions, and honestly a general lack of interest in the local music scene. But again, I really blame the scattered venues and no real centralized location for easy access to our good local music.

 

I would agree on the alt.rock, but jazz musicians can make money here and there are plenty of national artists who call Houston home. The Latin and Tejano scene have always been successful here and Houston is still one of the hottest spots in the US for rap.

The problem, IMO, with Houston is that there is too much focus on how successful the local alt.rock scene is. Because of the lack of success launching a big time act or creating a "scene," everyone assumes that Houston is completely devoid of musical talent. Nevermind that the biggest single star in pop/r&b music over the past three years - Beyonce - is from Houston and happy to tell anyone who asks.

There seems to be great respect here for indie music and blues, but not much for Tejano, country, jazz or rap, yet those four categories have produced more successful artists from Houston in the past 10 years than Houston has managed to produce in the 40 years prior for ALL categories of music. Maybe it is a little musical snobbery sneaking in, but I personally think we miss out on promotion of our city because we focus more on how embarrassing our local rock scene can be and not nearly enough on how successful other genres of music have been.

 

What about Lyle Lovett and Nanci Griffith?

Seems they got their start in Houston.

 

Ditto on the decentralized club locations. And I agree with imadrummer - I have been imagining Washington as a entertainment street for several years. Unfortunately, the loft builders have already taken over, and I don't see it ever happening. I'm not too thrilled about the prospect of having the local music scene in downtown - parking is bad enough already and would make loading a pain. I'd rather have it some place close (i.e. 5 min or less drive away) but not right in the middle of downtown.

I agree with Jeff to a degree regarding the popularity of other musical styles. However, I think that a music "scene" is (fairly or not) is usually defined by the bands who play in the clubs. Beyonce (or Destiny's Child for that matter) never played the club circuit in Houston - she and they tended to appear at special events (fashion shows is what comes to my mind, but there were others). As a result, it doesn't seem like they were part of the scene. Similarly, most rap, Tejano and (to a lesser degree) country bands tend to play clubs that don't have name recognition. So they get very little exposure outside of their niche audience (which is too bad, because its a pretty damn big niche).

 

BTW: har de har har.

Tex and I are probably the senior musician members of this site. I can't recall how long Tex said he'd been playing - as in actually playing in clubs with bands, etc - but this is year 20 for me.

My first "real" gig was at a club out in Spring that is long gone. The same summer were a couple battle of the bands (Tradewinds Skate Park - oh my - and one at Castle Golf & Games) and a gig at the original Cardi's on Westheimer.

It was all downhill from there!

 

Actually, DC used to play some dives down in the wards early on before moving on to the special events. I just think it depends on your definition of "scene." There is a thriving Latin community that just doesn't get written about. Do they not have name recognition because no one cares or because places like the Houston Press don't talk about them?

I mean, for years when I played in the Basics, they would get nominated in the "Best Tejano Band" category even though we were a rock band that mixed in Latin music. I remember the year that they won, the singer accepted the award at the awards ceremony (if you can call it that) and said, "We're not ****ing Tejano. Thank you."

And, in truth, there are much larger audiences in Houston for country and Tejano than for alt.rock. They just don't get the pub locally even though they often play in front of crowds of thousands when they travel to other cities. La Mafia couldn't get 100 people at an icehouse when they started but would go to Laredo and fill up a 3000-seat amphitheater.

Even Destiny's Child got nary a write up in any Houston rag until they got a deal and sold a million records. Then, all of a sudden, we are wanting to claim them as the band Houston produced. In reality, they just lived here. We didn't do anythinbg to launch their careers.

 

Including sitting in with bands at Third Ward Blues clubs when I was underage, this is my 26th year. First underage gig was at Shady's Playhouse in Third Ward, first "real" gig was at Club Foot on 6th Street in Austin, first "real" Houston gig was at Fitzgeralds.

Never got to play the original Cardi's on Westheimer, but did get to see both the Blasters and Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul there.

I got one for the oldtimers:

Anybody remember the Dome Shadows club?

I used to see Alan Haynes and the Stepchildren there all the time when I was underage!

 

I think mine was at Fitz...er, Zelda's back in the mid-80's when I was in HS. I played in a Police Tribute band! We paid for them to print up some tickets and gave them to our friends. We had well over 10 people there! Rock stars, baby!

At the time, I thought having a ticket with your band's name on it was the greatest thing in the world!

So that would have been around the early 1940's, right?

 

1977.

Close!

 

First gig in Houston was at the Goethe Institute... playing Cure, Bauhaus, and Smiths covers in 9th grade back in 1989.

Most of my other gigs were years later... and out of town... Knitting Factory, CBGBs, Middle East, Khyber Pass...

Damn, I need to start playing again around here...