Downtown Live

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Go To: Greyhound Soul • Notes

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A Decade of Soul

Scene stalwart, Greyhound Soul, turns 10

by Gene Armstrong

unny, isn’t it? Ten years from now feels comfortably tucked into the distant future, while 10 years ago seems as if it were yesterday. This circumstance has not gone unnoticed by the members of the rock band Greyhound Soul, which will celebrate its 10th anniversary with a special gig on March 25 at Club Congress.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, relaxing in the band’s downtown rehearsal space, singer-songwriter Joe Peña expresses his own theory of relativity: “Well, the older you get the faster time seems to move.”

After some calculating, Peña and bass player Duane Hollis determined that the band really started playing together in mid-1994, but that its debut album, “Freaks,” was released around March 1995. So, now seems as good a time as any to gather some of the musicians who have played with GHS.

These days, the band is a streamlined quartet of Peña, Hollis, drummer Alan Anderson and guitarist Robin Johnson. It has been whittled down from its much-celebrated, two-keyboardists/two-drummers line-up of a few years ago. Albert, many of the musicians who have played with the band over the years will show up to jam at the Congress gig.

Keyboardist Glen Corey will definitely be there - his new band, Final, opens the show. Guitarist Jason DeCorse will visit from his new home in Los Angeles. There’s a good chance some of the superstar drummers of Greyhound Soul past – Winston Watson, Tom Larkins and Bruce Halper – will make appearances. Larry Vance, a guitarist currently playing with the hard-rock band Great American Tragedy, might stop by to play, too. Vance was there when Greyhound Soul started.

You can’t blame the guys in Greyhound Soul for hyping their anniversary show a bit.

“We’re trying to play it up,” Peña chuckles, ruefully. “It seems like these days you gotta do something silly to get people to go out to clubs.” Especially when your band is a known quantity easily taken for granted, and the trendy nightclub denizens have moved on to drinking beer to the accompaniment of some other group. Peña is well aware of the public’s fickleness. “Lately, it seems like there’s not been that many people coming around to hear us when we play, not like it used to be. It doesn’t bother me, though. I just wonder: Do we suck now? Or maybe it’s them that suck.”

Those who have lost interest in Greyhound Soul are missing out. An elegant, bluesy tension now smolders in the band’s mellower performances – the guys have borrowed the best elements from classic rock and pop and made them theirs. The songs on “Down” are as good as any recorded in Tucson in the 21st century.

Goodness knows, if the band had been in it for the money, it would have split up long ago. “It’s not real easy to keep a band together for 10 years, or stay close friends for that matter,” Peña says. “I think if we took it more seriously as a business we wouldn’t be hanging out and playing together anymore.”

Along the way, the band has released three studio albums – the aforementioned “Freaks,” “Alma de Galgo” in 2001, and the under-appreciated “Down” in 2003 – as well as the hard-to-find, European release “Live and Dusted Vol. 1.” Work on a new studio album is expected to begin later this year, and a live DVD may be in the works, says Hollis, who handles much of the day-to-day business of the band.

“I think we’re also going to re-release the first record (“Freaks”), which has been out of print for like five or six years,” the bassist says.

But the products of the band’s efforts are far less important to its members than the efforts themselves. The old saw - it’s about the journey rather than the destination - rings true for Greyhound Soul.

“And it has been a journey,” Hollis notes with a weary satisfaction. “We all got to do a lot of cool shit that we wouldn’t have done otherwise.”

That journey has taken the band to Europe for concert tours, including an appearance on the popular German music TV program Rock Palast. (Translated Rock Palace, the show is the German equivalent to Austin City Limits and has also featured U2, Depeche Mode, Metallica, and Ben Harper.)

Early during its evolution, the band dallied briefly with managers, contracts and percentages, but Peña says the band members felt as if they were losing track of what they valued. “We just want to keep that loping-along attitude. We get together with some songs and flesh them out. We just want to play music that makes us feel good.”

Greyhound Soul plays March 25 at Club Congress, 311 E. Congress St. Show starts at 9 p.m. with Final. Cover charge: $4. Call 622-8848 or www.GreyhoundSoul.com for info.

Notes

by Jamie Manser

Austin’s March music conference SXSW puts a bevy of bands on the road and Tucson is a regular thoroughfare!

• March 5, Surly Wench hosts a raucous show guaranteed to get yer rocks off with Dallas’ Max Cady, Austin’s Broken Teeth, Sonic Titan and our own Whiskey Bitch.
  
  
• March 10 sees the distinctive vocalist/enigmatic storyteller Stan Ridgway playing Plush. You’d remember him from Wall of Voodoo and their hit Mexican Radio. Anyway, the songwriter has been prolific over the decades and in 2001 he culled together 14 unreleased tracks which resulted in Holiday in Dirt. In February, New West Records released the film versions of the songs. Yes, film versions – not music videos. Extremely visually engaging, the shorts were done on a shoestring budget and blow anything on MTV out of the water. Get the DVD at the gig or www.StanRidgway.com.
  
  
• Energetic goofballs, Galactic Federation of Love will hit the road with Dr. Dog and Congress hosts their send off show on the 11th.
  
  
• On March 14, bid local favs Nick Luca Trio adieu at Plush. They are touring with John Doe (from X), as both his opening and backing band. Check dates at www.NickLuca.com.

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