Butch Morgan Press

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**Roddy Tree Ranch Opens Concert Series with Claude 'Butch' Morgan by Mary Petre**

**HILL COUNTRY HAPPENINGS**
**AUGUST 2008**
www.hchappenings.com

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Summertime in the Texas Hill Country brings thousands of visitors from across the U.S. to rest, relax, and enjoy themselves at camps and resorts all along the Guadalupe River. For those in the know, Roddy Tree Ranch, owned and operated by Keith and Gretchen Asbury, is a little piece of paradise for the summer tourist. The pavilion at Roddy Tree is also a very happening spot for the locals to visit on Fridays and Saturdays to listen to some of the Hill Country’s finest music.

This year, Roddy Tree Ranch is sponsoring a summer concert series in conjunction with Cabin Productions (see ad on page 6). The gate opens at 6:00, so you have plenty of time to eat and visit with friends and performers before the concert. Sundresses, shorts, t-shirts, and sandals to boots and jeans, the attire was summer casual and cool. Jeff Gavin, head of Cabin Productions, along with his wife Mimi, prepared some super yummy burgers, chili cheese dogs, and chicken sandwiches, and they were priced to sell! There are plenty of picnic tables inside the pavilion--good food, good friends, and good music--definitely my kind of gathering!

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Attendance at the opening night was far less than expected, but Claude “Butch” Morgan stepped up to the mic with the seasoned demeanor of a veteran performer and immediately had the audience in his hand.

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Butch Morgan is not one of those performers that you can stuff into a box and tie a neat little genre bow around. Both his life and his musical style defy conformity, and his stories, like his music, require listening to them all before you can appreciate the depth of his talent. I walked away with three of his CDs, including a signed copy of his latest release, “Better Late Than Never” by the Buckboard Boogie Boys. Suffice to say that he has another new fan.

As Butch Morgan introduces himself and his songs, his wry sense of humor and poignant sense of life are shared abundantly, and before the evening is over, you have a true sense of connection with his life and his songwriting. Morgan still lives in his hometown of Divine, Texas, and many of his songs are personal reflections of people and events that occurred there. One of my favorite songs, “Eddie,” is about a guy who rides around town on a bike with an 8-track on it listening to Tammy Wynette and George Jones (Eddie likes George, but not Tammy). Butch has a picture of Eddie taped on his guitar.

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Sometimes, Butch’s reflections are laughter through tears. He dedicates some of his songs to his 93-year-old father, whom he lovingly praises as a role model and his best friend. However, Butch Morgan dedicated his concert tonight to Chris Holzhaus who, sadly, passed away this afternoon (7/11/08) around 4:00 after an extended battle with cancer. What a tremendous honor to a fellow musician and friend.

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Sixty-one-year-old Butch Morgan readily acknowledges that both he and his father have overcome a serious alcohol addiction, and many of his songs, while seemingly self-deprecating, recognize powerfully the before and after redemption of forgiveness. Anyone who has been there will immediately recognize the experience; anyone who is there will find inspiration in his words if they will only listen. However, Butch Morgan has been playing guitar and writing songs since he was 13-years-old—that’s 48 years of hands-on experience—and I guarantee he knows his way around a guitar.

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At one point in his performance, he shared the story of how he got his first guitar. To paraphrase it, he signed up for a local talent contest. When he told his father what he had done, his father wanted to know what talent he was going to perform. Young Butch hadn’t really thought about that, but he announced that he would play the guitar. Butch’s father brought it to his attention that he didn’t know how to play the guitar, but that didn’t bother him at all—he had two weeks to learn! So Butch got a guitar and proceeded to learn “Malaguena.” Well, Butch didn’t win the contest. In fact, a 5-year-old girl wearing a tutu and twirling a flaming baton beat him. To this day, he consoles himself with the fact that she can no longer wear that tutu or twirl a baton, but he’s still playing guitar!

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After a brief intermission, Butch Morgan was joined on stage by local musicians, Keith Asbury on keyboard, Dr. Neil Cassidy on bass, Steve Coppage on mandolin, and Dave Schlabach on harmonica. It was a jam session like I’ve never heard before with both a cohesive, impressive progressive jazz sound, and an eclectic, dynamic demonstration of individual talent. The good news is that you can hear this local bunch playing again at the Roddy Tree Ranch; the bad news is you missed Claude Butch Morgan. You owe it to yourself to check out the schedule for the remainder of the concert series at Roddy Tree Ranch and mark your calendar. I had a fabulous time.

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**H!X Really Live**
“Really Live”
Yea-Hawlleluja Production

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From the 70s of The Buckboard Boogie Boys, the 80s of The Blast, and now in the 21st Century, Butch Morgan and HIX have exceeded their fans' wildest dreams with this release of their most popular original and cover songs - all recorded live - really live - directly out of the PA with no overdubs, re-takes, smoke, mirrors, and no net. This is HIX in honest audio glory.

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Anyone who has any knowledge of Texas music in the last few decades is familiar with Claude “Butch” Morgan. He has been one step ahead of the musical pack - satirizing musical genres just prior to their being popular. The Buckboard Boogie Boys were performing great Americana - some tongue-in-cheek just before the Redneck Rock craze hit Austin. In the 80s, Butch was already in the post-punk era with his widely popular and critically acclaimed band, The Blast. Although Butch is a man of faith, there is no musical genre sacred enough to avoid his strong wit and musicianship. An ad hoc reggae version of a Hank Williams song may not be for the Country purists, but it underlines something that most people don’t realize - sans dreadlocks, Hank Williams writes great reggae songs. Leave it to HIX to prove it.

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Thought-provoking lyrics are a Butch Morgan standard and one of the downfalls of HIX music is that listening to the music sometimes requires that you think to “get it,” which is why Britney fans avoid HIX like the plague. I think it is pretty safe to say that if you don’t enjoy a HIX concert, you aren’t “getting it.”

“Really Live” is an accurate description of the new CD as it was recorded in the environment closest to HIX hearts - before a live audience. The CD was recorded at the now-defunct Esquire Tavern, Kerrville’s Watering Hole, Luckenbach, Casbeers, and “Someplace Else.”

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Claude and HIX have had a good run so far this year. Butch won the Wildflower Music Festival songwriting contest, was a finalist for the Kerrville Folk Festival New Folk award, and HIX performed at Quiet Valley’s Threadgill Theater at this year’s festival. The HIX future is looking very bright indeed.

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There is gold in them hills for all die-hard HIX fans; whether gnarly old hippie fans from the 70s like myself or the newfound audiences HIX have won over in recent years. The CD has eleven tracks - most of which are penned by Butch and a couple of irreverent and rockin’ covers. Included are three of my personal favorites from The Blast era - “WhattsaMatta,” “Dressin It Up,” and the nutty as a fruitcake “Slingin’ Language.” The covers are great renditions of evergreens, “I Got You (I Feel So Good)” and the perennial “Wooly Bully.” HIX approach the songs from off axis and put a great new twist on both of these tunes.

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I suspect one of the reasons HIX are so popular is that the musicians are all world-class. The masked man on bass who has been joined at the hip to Butch for years is Robert “Robar” Adams, RB handles all the keyboard work - which means every instrument known to man that can be sampled and Claude’s son Trevor providing the rock steady groove that is a HIX signature.

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The CD was produced and mastered by a master - RB Blackstone who has some of the best ears in Texas. His skills are reflected in the sonic quality of this CD - that was not recorded in a sanitary studio environment but more challenging environments - Texas Honky-tonks. RB goes into production with “the room we have” and makes it all sound great.

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What’s coming up for HIX? Get down to Casbeer’s in San Antonio on Saturday, September 15th for the HIX CD Release Party. Butch has been hosting a Wednesday showcase at Casbeers for over five years with the Happy Campers and this show is sure to pack the room to the rafters as a full-blown and formal HIX appearance is a relatively rare occurrence at Casbeers.

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Singer-songwriters that will be attending the upcoming Southwest Regional Folk Alliance (swrfa.com) in early October will find Butch back in residence and hosting poolside showcases for up-and-coming writers.

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This long-awaited CD is worth the wait and now that we have it, the HIX fans will be clamoring for more. - Ken Munson

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REVIEW

Review in The Current - 9/12/2007

By Gilbert Garcia/Serene Dominic

 

The H!X are a good example of what happens when baby boomers go nuts.

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If Claude “Butch” Morgan and his band of rootsy pranksters were in their teens, their healthy absurdist streak would manifest itself in loud, fast, aggressive dissonance and maybe a bit of onstage auto-destruction. But while they’re more than a little bent, the H!X are also traditional and sentimental (not to mention musically accomplished), so they sneak their strangeness into a semi-acoustic package that inevitably pleases alt-country regulars at Casbeers and Luckenbach.

Any H!X fan will tell you that you have to see this quartet in the act to understand them, so it makes sense that their new CD, Really Live, documents the loose, madcap nature of those shows.

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Morgan’s humor rears its head on “I Hate Music,” a plea for silence with some ironic guitar heroics in the middle. He also hams it up on “WhatsaMatta,” a slender hook masquerading as a song, by bragging about an amazing guitar lick he’s learned, and then supposedly playing it so fast that everyone misses it. Only slightly more serious are “Eddie,” the tale of a “self-appointed security guard” who spends his life riding around town on a bicycle, and “Blubberball,” in which Morgan invites listeners to watch his body decompose.

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The flipside of Morgan’s comic shtick is his earnest singer-songwriter persona, which he showcases on “G-Pa” and “Kingdom.” But he and the H!X are most appealing when they bring levity to their sincerity and determination to their hijinks, as with their cover of James Brown’s “I Got You (I Feel Good).” Clearly in love with the song, the band nonetheless refuses to approach it with reverence, giddily recasting it as an accordion-driven, conjunto dance number. Without a doubt, these clowns understand their roots.

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— Gilbert Garcia, San Antonio Current

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