Girls in the 'Hood

Sisterly harmonies light the way to eternal Damnations TX

by Peter Blackstock

THE DAMNATIONS TX.
Photograph by David Gahr

It's a new-age laundromat now, the spot at 2915 Guadalupe that for most of the '80s and '90s was home to Antone's, the world-famous "home of the blues" in Austin that moved downtown a couple years ago. Just a few blocks north of the University of Texas campus, the area is predictably rife with Longhorn students, post-collegiate hangers-on, street drunks, and other various forms of easygoing deadbeats.

"The sweet, strong stench of smoked meat permanently permeates the air, thanks to the pits at Ruby's BBQ that stay stoked long into the night. A block to the north, an old stone building houses El Patio, a modest Mexican restaurant run by the same family for decades. A block south is Dirty's, which has served up the O.T. Special, the greasiest and greatest burger in town, since the days my dad attended UT in the '40s.

It's no wonder the neighborhood is saturated with musicians. Back in mid-late '80s, a four-block radius became known as "The Triangle" for a well-worn path between three houses whose residents blended together into a network of young singers, players, writers, managers and other ne'er-do-wells who have made no small mark on Austin music in the past decade.

At the time, though, it was all just a matter of hangin' out. This was a place "where burned-out mesquite winds blow/And senseless conversations grow"; a dead-end district "where they sit taking shots of rotgut/Long after the bar is closed, until dawn."

Those lines are from "Commercial Zone Blues", a song on Half Mad Moon, the Sire Records debut of the Damnations TX (due out Feb. 16). The band's origins can be traced back to that very same location, even though sisters Amy Boone and Deborah Kelly didn't form the band until several years later.

"Deborah and I lived together behind Antone's for about seven years," affirms Boone, who teamed with Kelly to start the Damnations TX (back then known simply as the Damnations, but we'll get to that later) in 1994. Though they've since moved to the south side of town, their song about that old alleyway apartment captures the slackerly spirit that somehow seemed to sprout bands in every direction.

Despite the proximity to Antone's, few of these bands were blues-based (though "Commercial Zone Blues" kicks off with a genuinely bluesy riff from guitarist Rob Bernard, clearly a tribute to the old home turf). In the mid-late '80s, they were mostly alternative-rock acts, bands such as the Wild Seeds, Doctors' Mob and the Wannabes.

By the time Kelly and Boone began playing, however, that scene's glory days had faded away. The sisters – who moved to Austin from the small upstate New York burg of Schoharie (pop. 1,045) about 10 years ago – started out playing as an acoustic duo at open mikes, frequenting such places as the nurturing but now-defunct haven Chicago House. (They are, by the way, full sisters, not half-sisters; Deborah took on her mother's maiden name several years ago.)

In 1994, they hooked up with two women friends (one of whom went on to play in the Trance Records indie-rock band Starfish) and began playing under the name the Damnations. When Starfish started taking off and the other member moved away, they were back to a duo again, but "we decided we wanted to keep doing it because it was really fun," Kelly says.

At the time, Kelly was bartending at the Electric Lounge, the city's premier alternative-rock venue, "and I was meeting a lot of musicians that way," she recalls. One of them was drummer Keith Langford, who was in a band called Prescott Curlywolf. Langford started playing with the sisters on the side, and they also hooked up with Gary Newcomb, who played guitar, lap steel and pedal steel.

In 1996, they made an appearance on a weekly radio show on KUT-FM called "Live Set", which features hour-long in-studio performances by local acts broadcast live. Joining them on that session was Bernard, who played guitar with Langford in Prescott Curlywolf and had just recently begun playing banjo.

"It was over at Amy's house, and she had just gotten it outta hock," Bernard recalls of his introduction to the banjo. "She suggested that we work up something on that, and I was like, 'Sure, let's see what this thing is about; it can't be really that hard." He laughs, adding, "I didn't have any clue as to how to really play it."

A couple years of experience have sharpened Bernard's banjo skills considerably, though he still describes his playing as "limited." On the other hand, "One of the things I love about this band is that I wouldn't have been exposed to that normally," he points out. "It wouldn't have occurred to me to go buy a banjo and learn banjo."

Indeed, Prescott Curlywolf's three albums have little in common with the countrified touch that defines much of the Damnations' repertoire. The hallmark of the Damnations TX sound is a traditional foundation in country music: sibling harmonies. Bassist Boone's full-bodied twang blends beautifully with acoustic guitarist Kelly's higher-pitched lilt to create a melodic union that's reminiscent of classic familial duos.

Still, they're not exactly comfortable with the idea of being likened to the Louvins and the Stanleys. "We didn't grow up in the Appalachian Mountains or anything like that; we're just middle-class people," says Kelly, though Boone observantly adds, "Well, kinda did grow up in the mountains, in the Adirondacks."

In this case, however, generation is more important than geography. As kids growing up in a small town in the '70s and '80s, what radio stations they could pick up were a lot less likely to be playing old-time country and bluegrass than they would have been in the '30s and '40s.

"We listened to what we got fed, pretty much – which was classic rock," Kelly acknowledges. "You know, it was Foghat, and Kiss, and Lynyrd Skynyrd, and all that stuff. And we didn't really have much of a choice."

Not that there weren't other sounds sneaking in through the back door. "Folk music was around when we were kids, because mom was really into Bob Dylan and the whole folk thing," Boone says. "But my first experience with country music was bad Nashville radio country music; I didn't want any part of country music at all....It wasn't until I went to Austin that I kind of rediscovered country music."

Indeed, with artists such as Junior Brown, Don Walser, Toni Price, Dale Watson, the Derailers and others playing constantly in local clubs during the early-mid '90s, good country music was not hard to find in Austin. The influence clearly rubbed off on the Damnations, as evidenced by the songs they played on that KUT "Live Set" recording, which they subsequently released as an independent CD in a limited run of 1,000 copies (long since sold out, with no current plans for reissue).

The 14-song disc includes numbers by Lucinda Williams, Doc Watson and the Carter Family, plus a couple traditional tunes. The seven originals, however, represent a broader range of musical interests: "Unholy Train" is utterly infectious pop, "Half Mad Moon" has an Eastern European folk feel, and the aforementioned "Commercial Zone Blues" is spiked with the Antone's aura.

All three of those songs, along with three others from the Live Set disc, were re-recorded for Half Mad Moon, which is finally seeing the light of day after being recorded a year ago with producer John Croslin (whose old band, the Reivers, used to practice in one of those houses behind Antone's). The record was originally scheduled to be released last September, but problems over the rights to the band name (there's an L.A. group called Damnation) resulted in the addition of the "TX" designation to the name, and a delay in the album's release until February.

Half Mad Moon sports a tighter, cleaner sound than Live Set – partly because it's a studio album as opposed to a live recording, and partly because the band had jelled more with another year under their belts. Steel guitarist Newcomb moved to Idaho in early '97, reducing the lineup to a four-piece but increasing the focus on Bernard's instrumental skills.

The producer was also a factor. Known mostly for his work with alternative-rock acts such as Spoon and the Wannabes, Croslin is good at getting solid, straightforward performances down on tape. "He just wanted to get us sounding the best that we could sound, and I think we pretty much achieved that goal," Kelly says. "I think the record basically sounds like us, but at our best."

If there's a drawback to Croslin's approach, it's that Half Mad Moon sometimes sounds a little too tidy. The nature of the Damnations' aesthetic often lends itself to the ragged edges apparent on Live Set; while the performances are stronger this time out, a little bit of warmth is lost in the translation.

The other notable difference between the two records is the sharper focus on original material. Only two covers are included this time around, and both of those are from fellow Austin songwriters – "Catch You Alive" by Mike Nicolai (who recently moved from Austin to Seattle), and "Down The Line" by Jimmy Smith of the Gourds.

The latter tune underscores the special kinship between the Gourds and the Damnations TX, who often seem to function as "sibling bands." To a certain degree, that description is even literal: Rob Bernard's brother, Claude, plays in the Gourds.

They've also recently exchanged members, with original Damnations drummer Langford rotating into the Gourds lineup last year (though he did play on Half Mad Moon before he departed). At present, the Damnations TX work with a rotating cast of drummers, most often Conrad Choucroun, who also plays with up-and-coming Austin songwriter Damon Bramblett among others.

Bernard also wrote and sings lead on one track on the new album, "Finger The Pie" – which raises the possibility of further contributions from him in the future, or perhaps collaborative writing.

"We're trying to get Rob more into that too, or just have him bring his own songs in," Kelly says. Bernard sees more of that happening in the future: "I didn't want to inject my stuff into the band from the beginning," he says, "but it's been a little while, and we work a lot better together now as a band."

For their part, Kelly and Boone have collaborated on songs since the band began, extending the sibling symbiosis beyond vocal harmonies and into the writing process. "Both of us add to songs," Boone says. "Deborah would come in with a chord progression, and I would come in with lyrics, and she'd put a melody to lyrics I've written, or whatever."

It's also not as simple as each woman singing lyrics she wrote; both say they've written words that the other sister ends up singing. Then again, much of the time, they're both singing the words.

"The kind of music we love to listen to has a lot of harmonies running through it, so I can't ever really picture a song where Deborah would just sing the song," says Boone, before adding, with a laugh, "Although maybe Deborah pictures it!"

Kelly adds, "People are always asking, 'And who's the lead singer?' They get totally hung up on that lead-singer thing, and we just laugh, because we're like, 'Well, believe it or not, we don't have a lead singer.'"

Spoken like true sisters, indeed.

ND co-editor Peter Blackstock lived from 1987-89 in The Lodge, which was the southernmost point of "The Triangle" at 2827 Salado Street, right next door to Junior's Keg Beer Store. (Convenient, eh?)