Friday is a rather low traffic day here at southpawjones.com, so I’d like to share the rough draft of a biography/CD pimping page I had to write up for myself. I HATE doing this kind of thing, because I really have no idea what is interesting about me or what I do. “What is your album about, Southpaw?” I don’t know! I called it CRUELTY, isn’t that enough of a description? As an independent artist, I realize that it isn’t all creativity, line dancing, and beer. Sometimes I have to be a promoter, press release writer, mail boy, booking agent, webmaster, etc. This is one of those times. If you have a minute, let me know what you think of this elongated description. Imagine what you would think if you’d never heard of ol’ Southpaw. Here ‘tis:
SOUTHPAW JONES
Songmaker • Whimsicologist • Austinite
How does the youngest member of a righteous, right-wing, right-handed family grow up to be left-wing, left-handed, and free? Methodical escape, that’s how. Southpaw Jones understands the step-by-step process because he learned it as he lived it.
Step One: Find Helpful Instruments
Surrounded by his homogeneous extended clan, Southpaw received an acoustic guitar from his Uncle Randy on his sixteenth birthday. He proceeded to turn the right-handed ax over and learned to play “upside down” without guidance. In those early days, Southpaw accidentally broke the high E string. Having no clue where to buy new strings or how to put them on, he continued to learn with the remaining five. He plays the same flipped over, five-string guitar to this day.
Southpaw also accompanies himself with harmonica (right side up) on the traditional wire harmonica holder. He brings out his Yamaha keytar and his child’s xylophone when the crowd and the mood are right.
Step Two: Move and Keep Moving
Southpaw left a conservative Houston suburb for a more conservative Nashville suburb at the age of 18. Five years later, he split for otherworldly Los Angeles, and after touring everywhere in between, he finally found a comfortable middle ground in Austin, Texas.
In the midst of all this moving, Southpaw performed successfully at historic, respected acoustic venues, including the Bluebird Café (Nashville), Anderson Fair (Houston), Genghis Cohen (Los Angeles), Eddie’s Attic (Atlanta), and the Cactus Café (Austin). He has opened for brilliant songwriters like Lisa Loeb, Terri Hendrix, Dan Bern, James McMurtry, and Slaid Cleaves.
Step Three: Settle Down Someplace Nice
The city of Austin is weird but down-to-earth, friendly but genuine, and eager but easygoing, the perfect home for an artist finding his voice. Southpaw has performed every week for six years with Matt the Electrician, and they currently report to Austin’s Flipnotics @ the Triangle on Thursdays. Individually, they write new songs for each show to the delight of regulars and first-timers alike. Southpaw also updates southpawjones.com on weekday mornings with rhymes, quotes, history, and miscellany.
In 2005, Southpaw was a New Folk Regional Finalist at the nearby Kerrville Folk Festival. He performed a hit se at the Kerrvillle Wine & Music Festival that fall. Jim Caligiuri at The Austin Chronicle listed Bedroom Demos Vol. 1: Zero Demand as one of the Ten Best Texas Albums of 2006, when it appeared for weeks on the Hear Texas Here listening station at Austin’s legendary Waterloo Records. Other critics say he has “that most amazing ability to be hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time,” and his songs are “at once political, personal, serious, hilarious, lucid, and muddled.”
Step Four: Invest in Cruelty
CRUELTY is Southpaw’s first studio CD since 1999’s The Southpaw Jones Starter Kit. This off center, acoustic collection brings darkness into the light for your twisted enjoyment. CRUELTY explores the meanness of society, relationships, life, time, and song itself, but it is decidedly more fun than its namesake.
Southpaw recorded the 13 original tracks of CRUELTY at Top Hat Recording over the course of three years. Terra Nova Digital Audio mastered the finished product. The songs feature backing performances by amazing Austin musicians like Scrappy Jud Newcomb (The Resentments, Ian McLagan & the Bump Band), Matt the Electrician, Seela (Torch), Jon Greene, and Sick (Sick’s Pack, formerly of Asylum Street Spankers).
Track 1, Legitimate Film, tells the story of a middle-aged woman whose dreams haven’t exactly come true. (Don’t worry, it has a happy ending. Maybe.) The Cruelty of Teenage Girls is the title track, more or less, and it paints a portrait only Southpaw could imagine, where adolescent nastiness becomes an alternative energy source for automobiles. Other tunes feature the biography of Fatty Arbuckle, the exploits of The Last Remaining Beatle, the promises of a romantic Everyman, and the loneliness of a museum installation in El Soldado.
Amelía, Domesticity, and You Let Me Down explore the hard realities of love found then lost. Wheat Threshers brings home the war on drugs for questioning, while To Be So Bland rails against an obnoxious moviegoer while paying tribute to Mr. Bob Dylan. The last two tracks, Main Street and Sometimes I Forget provide closure and, in traditional folk fashion, an answer to the question “What are we to do about all this?”
CRUELTY is the just about furthest thing from escapist background music. It is a clarion call, an engaging and emotional roller coaster that listeners will not soon forget. For Southpaw personally, it is the commencement of true artistry and a long-awaited declaration of independence.
FIN
as reported in The New York Times
September 19, 1908
RUNAWAY ELEPHANT LEFT AMID SNAKES
If Alice, Chained in the Bronx Reptile House, Cuts Loose Look Out for Trouble.
HER DAY ON THE RAMPAGE
Women In Bronx Park Crowds Scared Into Fainting Spells as She Dashes Around the Park.
Alice, whom they are trying to call Luna, the new elephant in the Bronx Park Zoo, went on a rampage yesterday afternoon. It was a case of nerves. For an hour she went tearing around the park with Director Hornaday and an increasing army of keepers at her heels. She went slambanging into all sorts of houses without so much as knocking at the door, throwing visitors into panic. Perhaps a dozen women fainted.
One clue whose answer consists of two rhyming words:
If he starts to get stubborn during the negotiations, just remember that he has a weakness for tasty drinks. Pour something cool and fancy, then hold it in front of him until he gives you what you want. Exert some…
Highlight here for answer: [beverage leverage]
Wackyfun Food Art Time
A musicologist is a man who can read music but can’t hear it.
Sir Thomas Beecham
EVERY DANG THURSDAY
8:00 PM
Flipnotics at the Triangle
4600 Guadalupe
AUSTIN, TX
(512) 380-0097
www.flipnotics.com
________________________________________________________________
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2008
9:00 PM (Doors open at 8.)
Matt the Electrician & Southpaw Jones
Anderson Fair
2007 Grant 77006
HOUSTON, TX
713.528.8576
http://andersonfair.com
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