This is probably the least likely record to come out this year — so far, at least. Its full title might actually be The Flatlanders Live At The One Knite, Austin, TX, June 8th, 1972, depending on how you read the CD cover. The longer title starts to tell the story.
The eccentric Lubbock, Texas, band featuring Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock had recorded a remarkable album that would much, much later come to be known as More A Legend Than A Band. They didn’t play many club dates in the wake of the recording — little more than a dozen, perfectly preserving their peculiar anonymity.
This is an amateur recording of one of those rare dates, not known to exist until the past year, taped at a forgotten Austin dive called the One Knite with maybe fifteen somewhat enthusiastic audience members on hand. You can hear them buzzing in the background now and then, over the sound of the musical saw (yes, Steve Wesson and his eerie tool tones were on hand).
Has anybody mentioned that this all happens just a few days before the arrest of a loose crew of burglars at the Watergate in Washington, D.C.? No? Well, the relevant point is that the sound quality here is much, much better than the Nixon White House tapes — not bad at all, in fact.
What the Flatlanders are, at this point — and often later, for that matter — is loose. Gilmore does the singing on most of the sixteen tracks. Joe Ely takes the lead on two tunes: Hank Williams’ “Settin’ The Woods On Fire”, showing off his rhythmic proclivities, and Townes Van Zandt’s “Waiting Around To Die”. (There’s more Hank from Jimmie Dale, as well as Townes’ “Tecumseh Valley”; the boys had clearly spotted, even then, a couple of the Van Zandt numbers that would become most familiar.)
Their folk roots are still showing, in a turn on Dylan’s “Walking Down The Line” as raucous and raring to leave the acoustic arena as Bob was inclined to do, and in folk-blues numbers such as “San Francisco Bay Blues”. But the intensity, and more importantly, the knowing playfulness that these gents bring to blues not touched by the folkies shows just how they were something else again. And not many folk or rock shows of the era would have ended with rousing group versions of Sam Cooke’s “Bring It On Home To Me” and the Cajun fave “Jole Blon”.
This is not, by the way, the Flatlanders’ pre-signing Odessa, Texas, demo tape set also recently discovered; that’s said to be scheduled for release next year, along with a second Live At The One Knite show taped in 1974.
From this ’72 appearance, the only band originals are two by Hancock (“The Stars In My Life” and “You’ve Never Seen Me Cry”), both of which appeared on More A Legend; the gang sounds particularly at home with them. There are also two songs from their friend Al Strehli, including “So I’ll Run”, later rendered by Hancock on his 1985 album Yella Rose and by Gilmore on his 1993 disc Spinning Around The Sun (and, more recently, the subject of a short chapter in Nick Hornby’s 2003 Songbook collection).
The Flatlanders in 1972, finally, sound pretty much as you might expect — lopey, a little loopy, offering sweet, smart fun. This disc is more a treat than a revelation, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
