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Welcome to the Butch Hancock page.
Future home of Pics from his upcoming show as well as a review of the show.
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The Return of The Flatlanders
Texas Supergroup Releases Second Album in 30 Years
NPR Weekend Edition Sunday
July 21, 2002
Listen to the broadcast
There are many paths to success in the music industry, but few have been more circuitous than that of The Flatlanders. This year marks the release of the Lubbock, Texas, outfit's second album in 30 years. As Ed Mayberry reports for Weekend Edition Sunday, while the Flatlanders can't exactly be considered prolific, the group has inspired other words of praise, such as "mesmerizing," "classy" and "the standard-bearers for Texas music."
The music of The Flatlanders was influenced by everything from Jimmie Rodgers to the Beatles to Mexican border radio. Jimmie Dale Gilmore united with Butch Hancock and Joe Ely for the first Flatlanders album in 1971, when they were all in their 20s. But that album had trouble drawing interest in Nashville. The following year, they finally found a record company to release it, but only as an 8-track tape.
As a result, few people got to hear the music, and the album in later years took on legendary status. When it was re-released on CD in 1990, after the three principal members had achieved success as solo artists, it was titled More a Legend Than a Band.
The album's appeal is due in part to the group's ability to capture the expansive, windy universe of West Texas, says Austin music writer John T. Davis. It is "a very, very physically imposing, almost intimidating landscape," he says. "There's a lot of force behind it, and I think that reflects in their music."
The three men continued to work together and to perform each other's songs over the years. Hancock churned out albums on his own label. Gilmore released several albums that critics called "country and eastern" music owing to the singer's interest in eastern spirituality. Ely put out rock 'n' roll-influenced albums, and played with bands including The Clash and The Rolling Stones.
After the 1990 re-release of the band's first album, critics started clamoring for a "reunion" -- a concept that Gilmore and Ely found odd. "We never were separated," says Gilmore. "People thought the band broke up, but it never really did."
But they waited quite a while before deciding to record new music under the Flatlanders name. The catalyst was Robert Redford, who commissioned a song from the group in 1997 for his movie The Horse Whisperer. Gilmore says the recording of "South Wind of Summer" put all three men into songwriting mode. "We finally tried it out and it actually worked," he says.
Critics loved the resulting album, Now Again, but program directors at country-music stations essentially ignored it. That's when New York radio jock Don Imus stepped in. During an appearance on CNN's Larry King Live , Imus pledged to donate $10,000 to the favorite charity of the first major-market station to report that any single from the album had made it into the top 10. Earlier this month, Los Angeles station KZLA started playing "Wavin' My Heart Goodbye" every hour. Sales have doubled, and the album recently hit No. 22 on the Billboard country charts.
The band is now on tour, where audiences are being treated to the sounds of a Texas supergroup that is greater than the sum of its parts.
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Joe Ely sings while Jimmy Dale strums and Butch blow on the harp
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Our Man Butch !
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My friends and I got first row seats for this show at the Beachland Ballroom
On 04/04/04
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Bleow my little Tribute to the Lone Star State where I learned so much about original singer songwriters and spent many great evenings seeing some great live performances.
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washingtonpost.com
The Flatlanders, Together Again, More or Less
By Joshua Klein
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, May 29, 2002; Page C05
Convenient though it may be, calling the Flatlanders' new album, "Now Again," a reunion disc would be misleading. After all, the group never really broke up, and the reason it never broke up is because it was barely a band to begin with.
Songwriters Butch Hancock, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Joe Ely hooked up in their early 20s in Lubbock, Tex., birthplace of Buddy Holly. Holed up in an old house on the outskirts of the town, the trio wrote and played music together as a counterculture klatch, and while the Flatlanders did manage to record one album's worth of material in Nashville in 1971, it quickly disappeared for almost 20 years. When the sessions were re-released in 1990, the disc was appropriately renamed "More a Legend Than a Band."
In keeping with the Flatlanders' laid-back approach to musicmaking, "Now Again" is therefore whatever you want it to be: either the band's first album in 30 years or its first in 10 years. But any way you view it, "Now Again" exudes the kind of unbridled joy that only a lifelong friendship can produce, and the feeling is infectious.
With the exception of Utah Phillips's opening (and tone-setting) "Going Away" and Hancock's "Julia," the record is credited collectively to the three Flatlanders. This could be in keeping with the band's hippie roots, but just as likely it reflects the egoless songwriting process. No doubt the group wrote much of "Now Again" sitting around a campfire (or some social equivalent), and it shows in the disc's offhand brilliance. Drifting from folk to country to Western swing, with bits of rock thrown in for good effect, "Now Again" finds Hancock, Gilmore and Ely in fine form, singing simple and good-natured songs.
Steve Wesson's eerie musical saw is one of the few links to the Flatlanders' early work, though there's no mistaking the three principal singers. Here, Hancock and Ely get to share more space with Gilmore than in previous sessions, though his distinctive voice still tends to dominate. Gilmore's quivering singing all but defines such gems as "Wavin' My Heart Goodbye" and "My Wildest Dreams Grow Wilder Every Day," but Hancock's lead on the mystic "Down in the Light of the Melon Moon" and Ely's turn on the meatier "I Thought the Wreck Was Over" provide a tougher counterpoint to Gilmore's more ethereal croon.
But hearing the three play off each other on the fun "Pay the Alligator" and the somber "South Wind of Summer" reveals the unbreakable bond that drives the Flatlanders in spirit, if not always in practice. The return of this institution that barely was is something to celebrate, and no one seems to be celebrating more than the Flatlanders themselves. "Now Again" captures Hancock, Gilmore and Ely in the twilight of their careers while simultaneously announcing a collective renewal, an album that paradoxically looks backward and forward at the same time. Given the jaw-dropping quality of the disc, three decades almost seems a reasonable wait, but hearing these three hearts beat as one once again make you hope the next Flatlanders installment will come much sooner.
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