Artist: Gourds
Feature from web archive January 6, 2009
Even curmudgeons dig the Gourds
Over a dozen years down the road, it’s hard to remember the exact wording of the message that Mark Rubin of the Bad Livers sent to the Postcard music listserv. The post was about Austin, Texas, band the Gourds, specifically the band’s debut album Dem’s Good Beeble, and it went something like this: “You need [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #70 July-August 2007
Gourds – Noble Creatures
The Gourds’ ninth studio release, their first for Yep Roc, continues to mix equal parts genre-blending road-honed instrumental grooves, iconic verbal turns, and impenetrably opaque lyrics. The musical hooks are ample, but the memorable verbal phrases are shiny fragments rather than whole jewels, rendered in tone and words rather than characters or story. Perhaps it’s [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #62 Mar-Apr 2006
Gourds – Heavy Ornamentals
Over the course of fourteen years and eight studio records, the Gourds have scuttled across Americana/roots-rock like one of them newfangled ‘Roomba’ robot vacuum cleaners — patrolling the turf, drawing up bits and pieces, hitting a wall, spinning about, skittering off at a new tangent, bumping a table leg, wheeling and doing it all again. [...]
The Long Way Around - Feature from Issue #55 Jan-Feb 2005
Gourds – Appetite for agglomeration
Some things are not accidents. I had agreed to write a story on the Gourds for this magazine, and so I was in the process of gathering up some of the stuff I didn’t have, which included their previous album and soundtracks for two films by a guy named Mike Woolf, Growin’ A Beard and [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #41 Sept-Oct 2002
Gourds / Kev Russell’s Junker / Clocker Redbury & Dusty Slosinger
Let me drop my critical guise for a moment and talk straight from the heart: I love the Gourds. This Austin combo is all about serious fun. They have livelier music than your favorite bar band and more memorable lines than a lounge lizard, and they keep getting better. Their oddball sensibility and twisted wordplay [...]
Miked - Live Reviews from Issue #35 Sept-Oct 2001
Gourds – Fowler’s (Durham, NC)
“I can’t think of another band that creates as much of a commotion without an electric guitar,” a friend is fond of saying. It’s hard to gauge whether the Gourds could have out-commotioned the train that roared by Fowler’s Gourmet Store a couple of songs into opener Mike Nicolai’s set on this night. But this [...]
The Long Way Around - Feature from Issue #30 Nov-Dec 2000
Gourds – Blossoming on the Vine
Our story begins one sweltering night in the dog days of summer in 1991, at the Hole in the Wall, a dive on The Drag (a.k.a. Guadalupe Street) in Austin where a million stories have begun over the years. I’m talking with a fellow named David Green, who plays drums in a band called the [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #21 May-June 1999
Gourds – Ghosts Of Hallelujah
Gourds songwriters Jimmy Smith and Kevin Russell tend to write songs from different planets lyrically, but musically they live in the same zip code. While Smith’s songs favor chuckling at the mundane, annoying, or even repulsive, Russell writes with a more reverent touch. In the end, though, there’s a wistful pining that haunts both writers, [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #15 May-June 1998
Gourds – Stadium Blitzer
If you ever have the occasion to drop in on the Gourds website (www.eden.com/~seagreen/), you’ll find the obligatory bio page displaced by a listing of personally recommended record purchases — stuff from Doug Sahm, The Band, Bad Livers, Steve Earle, Meat Puppets, Boozoo Chavis and…Dr. Dre. You can hear elements of all these artists (minus [...]
Miked - Live Reviews from Issue #12 Nov-Dec 1997
Gourds – The Brewery (Raleigh, NC)
Here’s where it’s tough for a band — playing for a crowd numbering in the low 20s on a Wednesday night in Raleigh. To the Gourds’ everlasting credit, they didn’t do this show on automatic pilot. In fact, what could have been a disheartening evening turned out to be a darned fine experience. Extensive touring [...]
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