Okkervil River
Meet Austin’s old, new kids on the block
Sure, Austin’s Okkervil River has been getting press of late in Rolling Stone, Filter and the New York Times. Don’t let that—or the cutesy press photo playing off diner-inspired themes—fool you. Okkervil has been recording for almost 10 years. Perhaps it’s the new wave sound that creeps into the band’s folksy ballads that makes reviewers portray songwriter Will Sheff and Co. as “newbies.”

But even when Sheff takes on the slightly echoed, emo voice of The Killers’ frontman Brandon Flowers, his lyrics are much more informed. Take one of his recurring subject darlings, the late, real-life groupie Savannah Wilsey, who debuted as author of the diary discussed in a track on last year’s The Stage Names.

“She peripherally existed as a little girl in ‘Savannah Smiles’ in The Stage Names,” Sheff says. “And then in The Stand Ins, ‘Starry Stairs’ is sort of written from her point of view. [That song is like] the last scene of All That Jazz, when Roy Scheider is playing this director character who is kind of a stand-in for Bob Fosse, and he’s just died and is climbing this light-up staircase into heaven, singing this corny song.”

It’s the heavier, literate side of pop. More Bowie than baby. Okkervil albums tend to be short, and the pop-rock beats such as “Unless it’s Kicks” are danceable and catchy. Don’t let that fool you; there is a lot of material to mull over. Harmonious musical elements decided which songs would debut on last year’s The Stage Names and which would be reserved for the upcoming The Stand Ins, but Sheff says the two albums share recurring themes and characters.

Asleep at the Wheel
Longevity and innovation keep this band going

You may recognize Asleep at the Wheel’s patented heart-wrenching fiddle strings, playful catcalls and dreamy steel guitar riffs. But the band owes its longevity not only to its Grammy-award-winning swing music—though that’s certainly part of it. Asleep at the Wheel and frontman Ray Benson are also masters of reinvention, despite having been around since a few years before their 1975 Top 10 hit, “The Letter that Johnny Walker Read.”

Since then, there have been plenty of hits, plenty of albums and plenty of tributes to Bob Wills, the local, larger-than-life patriarch of western swing. But when Benson decided to bring Wills’ story to the stage, using AATW’s handsome fiddle player Jason Roberts to bring a young Wills to life, it gave the band a new lease on touring and publicity.  A Ride With Bob recounts Wills’ young life in Kosse, Texas, his rise to fame and the failed marriages that fueled songs like “Faded Love.”

The play has been written up in the New York Post by Texas media star Liz Smith, who found it good enough for Broadway. You can catch it yourself November 14 in Orange, Texas, or in Galveston next March.

In the meantime, catch Asleep at the Wheel with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra.  It features standbys like “Miles and Miles of Texas,” “Ode to Joy” and “Don’t Fence Me In” with stately orchestral backup.

The Real Deal
Austin-dweller Alejandro Escovedo celebrated a new album with an Austin City Limits performance and Letterman

How to sum up Alejandro Escovedo, if you haven’t heard of him? It’s hard to paint an appreciation without dropping too many names.

For example, there’s the requisite mention of The Boss’s approval. Bruce Springsteen is an outspoken fan and recent tour-mate of Escovedo’s. We’ll just use that oft-cited name because it’s the most pertinent: Escovedo also writes and plays big, American rock.

That’s a bit strange, perhaps, for a first-generation American. Escovedo’s father was a Hispanic immigrant. Son decided not to go the song route of his father’s colorful corridos, though that tradition may inform some of his music.

“Storytelling is inherent in my culture, and definitely in my cultural musical heritage,” Escovedo says. “I mean, I definitely don’t play that style of music. But a lot of the imagery that I use, I think [comes from] the culture I was raised in.”

Perhaps the seeming disjunction between his name and his brand of music affected his audience reception. “There’ve been times in the past where my records have never ended up where they should have been, [which was] in the rock and roll section. They were in world music, or world beat; third world music.”

Actually, Escovedo has been around since—well, about since he shared space in the Chelsea Hotel with Sid Vicious and girlfriend Nancy Spungen in ’78, the year the latter would die. There’s a song about that on the new album.

Another, “Nuns Song,” has to do with his half-serious entry into the music biz via punk rock. “At the time it was an avenue to wear cool clothes,” Escovedo says.

The Paul Green School of Rock All Stars
These rock and roll kids are coming to and a city near you

Remember Jack Black’s The School of Rock? Paul Green is the real Jack Black—er, Dewey Finn. He founded The Paul Green School of Rock Music in Philadelphia in 1998 to get kids from ages 9 to 17 playing rock with the likes of Alice Cooper or Billy Idol in venues such as The Knitting Factory in Los Angeles or The House of Blues in Vegas.

This year, the “all stars,” kids plucked from schools of rock all over the nation, are playing the Austin City Limits festival.

But the original school’s aggressive expansion is perhaps more exciting than that. It’s actually a franchise with more than 50 operations nationwide. There are two Schools of Rock in Texas already—one in Austin and one that just opened in Dallas—and CEO Matt Ross predicts a few more will open here by the beginning of next year.