Gourds singer/guitarist/mandolinist Kev Russell tells the story over the phone from his River City home. "This guy from Spin.com was interviewing him and they start talking about hip-hop's influence on mainstream culture. And Snoop says that hip-hop had influenced every major form of American music except country. So the interviewer's like, 'You ever heard the Gourds?' "
Snoop hadn't, and the band has an mpeg of the gangsta-riffic SoCal rapper's initial reaction to the recording on its Web site. For the technophobic among us, or those whose computers are behind a firewall and don't play movies, Russell offers up the Cliffs Notes version. "So he's listening to it and bobbing his head and he goes, 'I like this shit. I like this shit. Is this a real band?' " (Note to Gourds management: Make sure to sticker the next album with Snoop's blurb.) For Russell, it was the ultimate validation. "It was like, 'Cool! Fonzie likes us!' "
The only rap on their soon-to-be-released Cow Fish Fowl or Pig (street date September 10) is a field recording by one "Short Guy from Chi-town" an anonymous, reformed hard-case street poet Russell recorded outside a Little Rock club in 1999. It's the centerpiece of their new album, the division between the two named "sides" of the CD. Since the first half is called "The Cow Brings Home the Fish" and the second "The Fowl Tells the Pig of Each Transgression," Cow looks like some kind of barnyard concept album. Russell says it is so only in structure. There is no grand unifying idea behind all the songs. In other words, don't go looking for an Animal Farm sequel.
Ex-Wilco/Uncle Tupelo/Freakwater string whiz Max Johnston has added songwriting and singing to his skill set, and as of 2000's Bolsa de Agua ranks alongside Russell and Jimmy Smith as the Gourds' part-time bandleader. None of the three has consecutive tracks on Cow. As usual, Russell writes early Dylan-style nonsense poetry that almost makes sense. (His timelessly leathery voice delivers lines like these: "Said the apple to the snake / yer erotic forks are fake / Said the goose to the jailer / Yer religious awe's a failure / Said the spider to the candle / Yer bride is mechanical.") Far less esoteric are Smith's songs; the magic realism of album opener "My Name Is Jorge" reads clean and lean as Hemingway, as does his line "Whoever said sleep is a thief just ain't right in the head." Johnston shows a marked appreciation for Steve Earle; wrapping up in his "Blankets" is a lot like driving "Down the Road" with Nashville's angriest young man.
Musically, it's more of the same for the Gourds, which is to say a little of everything rootsy. The label Americana could have been invented for the Gourds, who handle everything from Let It Bleed-style sloppy-tonk to Texas-style rock with equal aplomb.
Russell says that his legendary ability to bend genres has its seeds in Humble's soil. If he had never moved to Humble from Beaumont, his life might have taken a very different path. Russell's father, who was in the oil business, was transferred to Houston when Kev was in the eighth grade. The Russells settled in tony Atascosita, and today he says the move killed an athlete and gave birth to a musician.
"If I had stayed in Beaumont, I would have supplanted Jay Novacek as the tight end for the Dallas Cowboys," Russell declares. "But when I moved to Atascosita, I started playing the guitar and writing songs and here I am -- the Jay Novacek of the roots world." (No, Russell's not planning to open a chain of Gourds-themed barbershops.)
First, Russell says, he suffered from culture shock, which was later reflected in his music. "Houston was kind of the beginning of my class consciousness," he says. "We lived in a blue-collar neighborhood in Beaumont, and when we moved here our house was right by a golf course. I was just miserable. All of a sudden I was in the middle of this culture that I didn't fit into at all."
Russell -- at the time a Skynyrd and Waylon fan -- fell in with the skate-punk crowd at Humble High. They turned him on to the weirdness that was then broadcast on KPFT, the sort of stuff you just couldn't get in Beaumont. Russell's inner Golden Triangle good ol' boy still resisted the new music. He had to get past the band names. "At first I was like, 'This is kinda bad. The Dead Kennedys -- I don't like that name,' " he laughs.
Russell also credits a Houston music writer -- the man they call "The Party Machine" -- with setting him on a different path. "Marty Racine," Russell remembers. "I used to read his stuff a lot when I was a kid, and he wrote this one feature about these bands like the Beat Farmers and the Replacements and all that, and that particular article kinda turned my head around in terms of what music I was listening to at the time. Houston was where my musical trail took a different turn."
A few years later, the Russells were transferred again, this time to Shreveport, the Beaumont of north Louisiana. Russell launched his musical career there in the now-legendary post-punk group Picket Line Coyotes, who moved en masse first to Dallas and then to Austin, where they broke up. In 1994 Russell joined Smith and Claude Bernard's duo Old Government, and after hiring a drummer, the Gourds were born.
Along the way, Russell and company shed the punk instrumentation if not the fire and anarchic attitude that gives you the huevos to record Snoop Dogg with a mandolin as the lead instrument. Not that the band is all on the same sheet of music when it comes to influences. "The longer we go, the more divergent we are of each other in the music we listen to," Russell says. "The other night we played San Antonio, and Jimmy got kinda drunk on the way back, and me and him and Max were arguing about music. Me and Max are really into late-'70s, early-'80s country music like Don Williams, Gene Watson and George Strait -- there's sort of a guilty pleasure we get out of it. Jimmy just despises it, he just hates it. He was just getting so worked up."
Smith hates it so much, in fact, that Russell eventually had to throw out some of the material the band had been playing live. "I had the Gourds cover 'Amarillo by Morning' for a while," Russell says. "I told 'em at the time, 'Look, guys, I know this is a stretch but just indulge me here.' Max was all over it man, but Jimmy -- he just couldn't do it."
A twangy Texas group that loves to cover Snoop Dogg but turns up its nose at George Strait? Like the man said, is this a real band?
