We'll remember when...

In the process of the Summer Songwriter's Series, we have seen some exciting new performers emerge during these past few months, and even though our crowds were small, we feel like we helped to hatch some real winners. Will Makar, Season Ammons and Bud Bierhaus were just a few of the very promising new faces that we hope to see again.

It's goin' on at the Corner!

Saturday night was another orgy of musical delight, REALLY! Bud Bierhaus was the featured performer, and he brought along a couple of friends that generously shared their talent, and left all of us feeling lucky. Bud is back in the States after a long period in Arabia, and he sings and picks like a man that has gotten many an hour of sanity and inspiration by preserving his American soul and his roots in American music. His talent is impressive, as he sings and plays the guitar like a veteran performer, and then backs up his friends on the bass and mandolin.

Season Ammons was back at the cafe, for the third time, looking and sounding more stunning than ever, and with a guy she calls Grumpy, who collaberates with her on songs... and he got up as well and displayed a budding mastery for good old Country music.

And, best of all, there were decent crowds at the Cafe both nights, giving all of us hope for culture in Navasota!

Much thanks goes to the musicians who perform more as a labor of love... and the Hiebelers who have so persistently hosted them.

Great songs are always in Season.

Season Ammons came to play. It was Friday night, her husband was watching the kids back at the house, and she would not be denied. Whether six or sixty, she was going to give this lucky Navasota audience an art moment as authentic as the coolest coffee bar in San Francisco. An elite but select group sat in near reverence as she delivered up one soulful original after another. The songs, many of them refreshingly honest, were inspired by some facet of her life, or even some of her bravest fantasies. They sounded intelligent, gutsy, even sensual, but Season stood and delivered them effortlessly as if they were a casual conversation.

Like her songs, Season is 100% original, and a very decent guitar picker, and I cannot help but draw some comparisons so you can appreciate your own need to hear her perform. Try if you can, to imagine a voice as tough and yet womanly as Tanya Tucker, as edgy and sophisticated, and at times as jazzy as Billie Holliday, but as relevant as today’s mail. And then that voice being poured like warm honey all over you. In the end, the only thing missing from the moment were CD’s made available at the door, to run those sweet, sensitive, fearless vocals by, one more time, to make sure I heard what I heard. Many of her songs have such a familiar, powerful ring, your brain instinctively tells you these “ought to be classics someday.” Perhaps not being able to satisfy that sudden personal need to acquire a recording of her impressive quiver of songs, and take the music home, makes the performance so much more a treasure.

So Season came to play and to give her all, and own the crowd, and she did. Someday, if there is justice in art, it will be a larger crowd in a major city worthy of her important talent. The Corner Café in Navasota will just be another little place where she humbly honed her performing skills, before the inevitable deservedly happens. Yes, you could say we were smitten. Anyone who enjoys hearing good songs, passionately sung by their own writers, will want her to do what she comes to do, and to just keep on playing.

A New Navasota Tradition: Concert Hopping!

World famous entertainers have often been in our midst. If you want to know about some of them, visit the Navasota Public Library this month and check out the display in the back. You will be stunned and pleased to know who some of our neighbors have been. And here’s the point: Nobody ever knew or cared, and that was our loss.

But I want to tell you about the here and the now. Regardless of how people in the old days responded to rare talent that passed through small towns like ours, we can only benefit from our own choices. And let me tell you, we have some great choices these days. Friday, music enthusiasts were able to hear two excellent female vocalists at the Corner Café. Season Ammons very ably opened for Susan Herndon and they both charmed the crowd. Both very talented young women, I dare say Navasota has rarely seen this class of female vocalist performing live, much less a pair of them. Herndon had an impressive quiver of original songs, written and delivered with easy flair. At then end, the two joined into an impromptu version of a Fleetwood Mac song that made us realize we had only experienced the tip of the iceberg.

But that was not the end of it, and I ran over in the balmy night air to the Filling Station to catch Navasota’s favorite son Randy Pavlock. Randy was slicing the night air with his usual fare, Grimes blues-rock, and a nice crowd came out to see him. He is a popular opener for big time rock groups these days, and we are lucky to get him anymore. The recent rains had cooled things off and it was pleasant out. I walked up just in time to catch him using an old blues trick, playing slide on his guitar with a beer bottle, out on the streets. That’s sort of a Navasota tradition.

Blind Willie Johnson, credited as the progenitor of the slide guitar, used a sawed off bottleneck and taught Mance Lipscomb, who improvised and used his pocketknife. Blind Willie played for nickels at the intersection of Tenth and Washington Ave. Right here in Navasota. Who could have guessed that someday NASA would send one of his songs on the voyager space ship, along with a few others, on a golden CD of the most important songs of Western civilization.

Local restaurateurs Phil and Sarah Hiebeler have taken a daring leap. They built a stage, put in lights and sound, and scheduled an exciting line-up of Texas songwriters, who come and dazzle us every Friday night. The show comes with the meal. So far we have heard a treasury of song, delivered up by Texas songwriters, good ones who actually sell their songs. Bob Livingston is one the original Lost Gonzos, has written, played and recorded with Jerry Jeff Walker, Gary P. Nunn, and Michael Martin Murphy. He is a heavy hitter. He was right here in Navasota. He opened for Mance Lipscomb a long time ago and loved our Blues museum and was eager to reminisce.

Kevin Robinson, sure to be a force in Texas country music, played a few weeks ago. His day job is expediting for Hassell Construction. He has an unforgettable, mature voice, and writes the kind of songs you want to hear again. Right here in Navasota. So far the musicians are impressed with our charming little town, and want to come back. And there are more to come. It’s neat to say you just played in the “Blues Capital of Texas.” It’s even better to say you live here!

Note: The Navasota Examiner did not have room in their publication to include this article, so I offer it here. The musicians and restaurateurs deserve all the exposure they can get.