The famous Armadillo World Headquarters made Austin’s music scene a beacon for musicians and fans. In just a ten-year span from 1970 to 1980, the venue helped create the cosmic country movement and cemented Austin’s place in music history.
No one embodies this spirit more than Greezy Wheels. The band famously set the stage for Willie Nelson to have his first performance at The Armadillo, forever changing the trajectory of his career.
Greezy Wheels became the house band for the venue and played there more than any other group, often serving to draw in guests to see up-and-comers at the time. “Everybody took advantage of our crowd and those crowds became their fan bases and we kind of dissipated in a way,” says Greezy Wheels founder Cleve Hattersley.
Greezy Wheels is back and the group has reunited with the name that made them legends. Greezy Wheels has released their latest album We Come We Go on the recently relaunched Armadillo Records, the first release for the label.
They will perform in Houston on Friday, June 19 at Shoeshine Charley’s Big Top Lounge where they will celebrate their album release with a full band show and opener, Miracle Cure.
“We were so honored to even be signed with a record company,” says Hattersley, who reached out to the company a few years ago, on the suggestion of a friend. He describes with admiration the approach and fair treatment he received from label owners Trey Watson and Emily Gianopoulos.
Hattersley laughs while recalling a mix-up a few years back when the label invited him and his wife and bandmate Sweet Mary to a screening of a filmed performance of Greezy Wheels, Willie Nelson and Billy Joe Shaver.
Hattersley was having trouble recalling this very performance only to realize while watching it that the guitarist in the film was not him but Pat Pankratz as Hattersley was serving time in jail for smuggling marijuana.
Armadillo Records plans on focusing their efforts to release recordings from those famous Armadillo World Headquarters days as well as working with newer artists who maintain that mindset.
It only made sense that the label chose Greezy Wheels as their “beta test” for their new endeavor. We Come We Go embodies the band’s lifelong, uncategorizable, freewheeling sound with one foot in the warm folky past of hippie culture and another on the pulse of modern themes with funky beats.
“My goal was to get the record made and then to get it on the air because once it goes on the radio, it goes into the universe forever. It becomes part of the universal music and that’s my goal and part of that is that every song is its own universe. I’ve been sort of blessed that I can never stay focused in a genre because there’s just too many other areas to explore.”
Ironically, being impossible to define is exactly what defines Greezy Wheels and with We Come We Go the band leans into that even further. The album, made mostly during COVID times when the band members were all separate from each other and in isolation, came together piece by piece with band members sending one another tracks to collaborate on.
Hattersley describes sending tracks back and forth between drummer John Bush, bassist Brad Houser and multi-instrumentalist Matt Hubbard, all associated with Edie Brickell. Together with his wife Sweet Mary, Hattersley’s sister Lissa and Penny Jo Pullus, the album was completed.
“We discovered the thread that tied everything together, even though it’s so disparately different. We found the thread just by staying at it,” says Hattersley. “Every step we’ve taken has been without resistance or problems. It’s almost like some sort of greater force is saying do this, just do it.”
We Come We Go is 14 tracks each blending to represent the band’s wide array of rich influences ranging from zydeco, country, rock and psychedelic. The album frequently taps into themes of communication and human nature, kicking off with the sarcastic rocker, “Emoticons.”
Sweet Mary’s one-of-a-kind way of wielding a fiddle is on full display throughout but especially standing out on the upbeat “In the Middle Of” where hearing her ferociously play reminds listeners why Jerry Jeff Walker and Doug Kershaw tried to steal her away from Hattersley many years ago.
“Soon it will be her 83rd birthday and our 52nd anniversary and you’d never know she was that old by the way she plays “Orange Blossom Special,” laughs Hattersley who is still clearly proud to call Sweet Mary his own.
Greezy Wheels has always had a strong family element to it and a deep camaraderie between members which Hattersley maintains to this day. He describes the decision to give everyone songwriting and publishing credit on the album to avoid the hurt feelings he saw in peers like Levon Helm. “I knew how much he was hurt by Robbie Robertson not giving credit where credit was due. It just reinforces that family thing that we always felt that we had to be.”
As a family the Hattersleys have lived a colorful life to say the least, with many stories documented in his book Life Is A Butt Dial. He describes his time in Texas well and later relocating to New York City to manage The Lone Star Cafe. The couple now lives in Mary’s hometown of Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Life Is A Butt Dial is filled with anecdotes from his life surrounded by artists and musicians, always quick to make a joke even at his own expense.
He frequently touches on his long friendship with Kinky Friedman and his role not as his manager but his “Executive Buttboy.”
“The biggest influence in our lives comes down to Kinky,” says Hattersley. “We were so fortunate in a way to play the last music he ever heard.” Hattersley describes making a stop in Kerrville with Sweet Mary to play for Friedman as he lay in a semi-coma watching his beloved hummingbirds from a hospital bed.
“We played a full set and when we concluded with his song “Marilyn and Joe” which is now our theme song, a tear rolled down his cheek and that sort of vouchsafed all of the 40 years we were together as the most important person I think in so many ways.”
With We Come We Go completed, Hattersley hopes to focus on another book in the future as he still has stories to tell.
“At a certain point when you get to our age you start realizing, what’s the best thing you can do? We are too old to go out and play with the revolution anymore, although I did participate, but we can leave the messages behind.”
Greezy Wheels will perform on Friday, June 18 at 6:30 p.m. at Shoeshine Charley’s Big Top Lounge, 3714 Main. For more information, visit greezywheels.com
