Amazing is an understatement of the convoluted circuits the song has traveled within the past year, courtesy of the fanatical bootlegging habits of Phish fans and the influence of the internet. Apparently, at Phish’s Y2K New Year’s Eve show, a pirate radio station set up in the campground of the venue gave repeated airplay to the Gourds’ version of “Gin & Juice”, and a bootleg copy of the radio show started circulating via Napster. Only problem was, the pirate DJs never bothered to identify the Gourds as the performers of the song.
The result was massive confusion that led to the recording being incorrectly attributed to a slew of artists. “So now, on Napster, you can get our version of ‘Gin & Juice’ by pretty much any hippie jam band you want,” Russell says. “Our version is under Widespread Panic, Ween, Phish, String Cheese Incident, Leftover Salmon — nobody knows who did it.”
Eventually some clarification has arisen. “Yahoo did a little story on it that was pretty good, and all the Phish fan sites have corrected it and made it plain who did it,” Russell continues. “And most of the Napster chat rooms, they always correct people who come in there asking.”
It’s the kind of phenomenon that garners a lot of attention but could also lead to the perception that the Gourds are a novelty band. “It’s been a test of time for us, dealing with it,” Russell admits. “At first we loved it, and then the guys got really down about it. But it won us a lot of new fans, and people bought our other records, and a lot of them like the Gourds now because they heard that song.
“We went through a phase where we refused to play it, we just wouldn’t play it, just to see if those people would go away….But we’ve made a peace with it, and we’ll play it sometimes if we feel like it, if it’s the right moment.”
It’s a clear night in South Austin, the Sunday finale of another South by Southwest weekend in March 2000. A few hundred people have gathered in the spacious, rambling backyard of Leeann Atherton, a local singer-songwriter whose annual SXSW closing parties have become a tradition for many Austinites.
Late in the evening, the Gourds amble up to the funky little wooden stage and ease their way into an hour-long set. Ultimately, it’s a cover song that captures the moment, but this ain’t no Snoop Dogg tune. When the band launches into “Nuevo Laredo”, everyone in the place is overtaken by memories of the song’s author, Doug Sahm.
In essence, Sahm epitomized everything the Gourds aspire to be. “What we do musically comes almost directly from what he did,” Russell acknowledges, though he clarifies that it wasn’t exactly a direct relation.
“We were well on our way before we really ever knew that much about Doug,” he continues. “I think a lot of it has to do with the culture of Austin, and Texas, being just such a diverse musical place. If you’re aware of what’s happened in the past, you can’t help but reflect that. And Doug was a huge part of that history. Seeing his connection to even the older forms of Texas music, he knew so much about it. So much died with him.”
Sahm’s death at age 58 in November 1999 hit everyone in the Austin music community hard, but it struck the Gourds deeper than most. They’d recently recorded a couple tracks with Sahm for his S.D.Q. ’98 disc, and had plans to record a full album together.
“He was gonna finish that country record [The Return Of Wayne Douglas, which came out posthumously this year], and after he was done with that, we were gonna make a whole record with him,” Russell says. “When we were doing those sessions for those two songs on that record, we spent a lot of time just sittin’ around playin’ in the living room of the studio. Every now and then he’d play one of his songs that he’d never recorded, and he had tons of ’em, and every one of ’em was just amazing. And we were like, ‘Man, wow! You gotta do that song, you gotta do this song’ — but we didn’t have time at that session, so we were gonna record all these songs that he’d never done. Man, it just kills me. It was so sudden.”
Despite the lost opportunity, the Gourds have a vivid memory of Sahm they’ll forever cherish. “There was a festival in Belgium that Doug had played at the night before, and we were playing the next day,” Russell retells. “And so we played that song ‘At The Crossroads’ in our show that night. We didn’t know if he was still there or not, but one of the promoters of the festival, told Doug, ‘Hey, listen!’ And Doug was like, ‘Oh man, they’re playing my song!’ And the promoter’s like, ‘Go sing!’
“So he finally walked up there, and the crowd was all cheerin’, and he just took the mike and did his thing, and sang the song with us. I got chills. I looked around and there he was, and I was like, YES! Oh man, it was really a joy.”
He also left Russell with a few words that will stay with him always. “He once told me something that made me feel really good. He was talking about the Armadillo days, when Willie came to play there, and he used to play with them. And he said, ‘You know, Willie was the old guy and he was passing it on to us. And I’m doing the same thing right here to you guys. I’m passing it on to you.'”
Among the other Gourds gigs in No Depression co-editor Peter Blackstock’s live-music logs is a December 18, 1998, performance at the Electric Lounge, which followed a show earlier that night at Antone’s by Doug Sahm’s Texas Tornados.
