Rightous Intonation –Tal Spackman (from left), Nick Spyker, Connor Montoya and Patrick Hoppe — are celebrating the release of the band’s new album “Songs From Texas.”
Courtesy Righteous Intonation
Righteous Intonation sounds like the name of a gospel group.
But when these musicians open their mouths to sing, they conjure memories of dusty cowboy poets, Jerry Jeff Walker campfire song-swaps, Marty Robbins storybook ballads and even Robbie Robertson’s Civil War-inspired songs with the Band.
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What: Album release party for San Antonio string band
When: 9 p.m. Friday
Where: Lonesome Rose, 2114 N. St. Mary’s St.
Details: With Anna La Mare & Damn Sam and Eley Buck. Free, thelonesomerose.com
The fresh, if enigmatic, San Antonio four-man string band sings in killer four-part harmony and draws from bluegrass, folk, country-blues and high lonesome hillbilly music.
Their story songs, tongue-in-cheek send-ups and murder ballads sound as if they were preserved in some other, older time.
Think Lucky, Dusty and Ned in the move “The Three Amigos” singing along to Randy Newman’s lullaby “Blue Shadows (On the Trail)” and you’re close to the vibe.
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Righteous Intonation will celebrate the release of a new album, “Songs From Texas,” on Friday at Lonesome Rose.
The San Antonio group, which has been together a little more than two years, is led by 35-year-old Nick Spyker, the band’s chief songwriter, lead singer and guitarist. The rest of the members, tight as musicians and friends, are violinist and pianist Tal Spackman, mandolin player Connor Montoya and bassist Patrick Hoppe.
The gang looks like they could have ridden the plains with Jesse James or rolled out of Austin circa 1973 — the Wild West or the Soap Creek Saloon.
The heart and soul of the music and its lyrics come from historical newspapers, oral histories of the Texas region and romanticized stories from the road.
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“Henry the Beer-Drinking Goat,” for example, is one such song inspired by a recent trip to Terlingua in the Big Bend. They have the pictures to boot.
Songs like “Dead Man’s Cave” and “The Nueces Massacre” were born from conversations. The latter grew out of a chance visit to a Union memorial in Comfort — The Treue der Union, the oldest Civil War monument in Texas.
“A third of the songs come from the newspapers, and the rest come from people telling us stuff,” Spyker said.
Onstage, between-song patter is often filled with little back-story sagas from the road and short history lessons.
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Righteous Intonation evolved from Spyker and Spackman’s quirky folk duo, which they called Grandma’s Favorites. They performed 19th century parlor music from sheet music found at estate sales.
“They were songs you would play in your living room,” Spyker said. (That is if you lived in the time of composer Stephen Foster.)
“We actually had a (residency) at the Dakota Ice House playing this crazy-ass music . . . but it really wasn’t going anywhere,” he added. “People thought it was weird as hell. They didn’t really care.”
Another random estate sale find changed that trajectory. It was a copy of a 1959 vinyl album by Marty Robbins, “Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs.”
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The vintage artwork that drew Spyker in first. The blood-red cover featured Robbins dressed in black like Richard Boone’s Paladin, crouched with one hand on the pistol in his black holster, as if about to draw like a gunslinger.
“That’s when we really shifted, when we found that record,” Spyker said. “Marty is probably our biggest influence . . . there’s a context for the music to resonate.”
That context, he added, is “country music and nostalgia,” which became the vehicle for his original songs.
It’s really not that much different from when Gram Parsons and Michael Nesmith tapped into the trappings of traditional country music in the late ’60s, from its roots to its twang to its fashion statements.
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For Spyker, meeting singer-songwriter John Whipple, a veteran of the Kerrville Folk Festival, was a pivotal moment in the formation of Righteous Intonation.
Whipple introduced the young songwriter to the music of Texas legends Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark. He also mentored Spyker with his songwriting.
“He helped us put the band together,” Spyker said. “He was really important.”
Spyker met Whipple at one of his long-running Tuesday open-mic nights at the Pig Pen on Broadway. Spyker sang two Marty Robbins tunes.
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“It was just amazing,” said Whipple, who also is part of the songwriting group San Antonio Song Saloon. He said he was blown away by Spyker’s operatic voice — and enthusiasm.
Spyker and band mate Spackman started making the welcoming songwriters scene in town. In fact, the band’s first album comprises songs Spyker wrote as part of Whipple’s songwriting gatherings.
“He took it seriously,” Whipple said. “The songs are all historical influenced . . . bank robber songs and Old West sheriffs.”
Whipple calls Righteous Intonation a breath of fresh air on the scene.
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“I’m proud of them because they came to it from the right place. They were looking for community,” he said. “They were looking for an audience. They started to play and make friends with everybody. And we saw the vision of them come together right before our eyes.”
Spackman, 38, a classically trained pianist and virtuosic violinist, was all in. And he could tell from the applause that they were now going over even when playing a gruesome, true-to-life ballad.
But even he can be taken aback by Spyker’s lyrics, especially if it’s about a hanging as in “Texas Love Story.”
“It’s like this horrifying story,” Spackman said. “The first maybe 10, 15 times I played it, it felt like getting hit in the head.
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“If (the audience) is actually listening, it’s either one of two responses. It’s either like, ‘Wow! That was amazing. I can’t believe that just happened.’
Or it’s kind of like this hesitant, ‘Oh, I’ve got to clap because the songs over.’ ”
There also are crowd-pleasing original numbers like “(Expletive) Hole Bar” that turns into a sing-along about dive bar drama.
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Here’s betting Friday’s record release gig is an exhilarating kick in the head. Or at least pretty righteous.
Hector Saldaña is a longtime music journalist and is the curator of the Texas Music Collection at The Wittliff Collections at Texas State University in San Marcos.