thelonesomerose.com<\/a><\/p>\nThe 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.<\/p>\n
Their story songs, tongue-in-cheek send-ups and murder ballads sound as if they were preserved in some other, older time.<\/p>\n
Think Lucky, Dusty and\u00a0Ned in the move \u201cThe Three Amigos\u201d singing along to Randy Newman\u2019s lullaby \u201cBlue Shadows (On the Trail)\u201d and you\u2019re close to the vibe. \u00a0<\/p>\n
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Righteous Intonation will celebrate the release of a new album, \u201cSongs From Texas,\u201d on Friday at Lonesome Rose.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0Tal Spackman, mandolin player Connor Montoya and bassist Patrick Hoppe.<\/p>\n
The gang looks like they could have ridden the plains with Jesse James or rolled out of Austin circa 1973\u00a0\u2014 the Wild West or the Soap Creek Saloon.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u201cHenry the Beer-Drinking Goat,\u201d for example, is one such song inspired by a recent trip to Terlingua in the Big Bend. They have the pictures to boot.<\/p>\n
Songs like \u201cDead Man\u2019s Cave\u201d and \u201cThe\u00a0Nueces Massacre\u201d were born from conversations. The latter grew out of a chance visit to a Union memorial in Comfort\u00a0\u2014 The Treue der Union, the oldest Civil War monument in Texas.<\/p>\n
\u201cA third of the songs come from the newspapers, and the rest come from people telling us stuff,\u201d Spyker said.<\/p>\n
Onstage, between-song patter is often filled with little back-story sagas from the road and short history lessons.<\/p>\n
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Righteous Intonation evolved from Spyker and Spackman\u2019s quirky folk duo, which they called Grandma\u2019s Favorites. \u00a0They performed 19th century parlor music from sheet music found at estate sales.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were songs you would play in your living room,\u201d\u00a0Spyker said. (That is if you lived in the time of composer Stephen Foster.)<\/p>\n
\u201cWe actually had a (residency) at the Dakota Ice House playing this crazy-ass music . . . but it really wasn\u2019t going anywhere,” he added. “People thought it was weird as hell. They didn\u2019t really care.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another random estate sale find changed that trajectory. It was a copy of a 1959 vinyl album by Marty Robbins, \u201cGunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The vintage artwork that drew Spyker in first. The blood-red cover featured Robbins dressed in black like Richard\u00a0Boone\u2019s Paladin, crouched with one hand on the pistol in his black holster, as if about to draw like a gunslinger. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s when we really shifted, when we found that record,\u201d Spyker said. \u201cMarty is probably our biggest influence . . . there\u2019s a context for the music to resonate.\u201d<\/p>\n
That context, he added, is \u201ccountry music and nostalgia,\u201d which became the vehicle for his original songs.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s really not that much different from when Gram Parsons and Michael\u00a0Nesmith tapped into the trappings of traditional country music in the late ’60s, from its roots to its twang to its fashion statements. \u00a0<\/p>\n
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For\u00a0Spyker, meeting\u00a0singer-songwriter John Whipple, a veteran of the Kerrville Folk Festival, was a pivotal moment in the formation of Righteous Intonation.<\/p>\n
Whipple introduced the young songwriter to the music of Texas legends\u00a0Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark. \u00a0He also mentored Spyker with his songwriting.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe helped us put the band together,\u201d\u00a0Spyker said. \u201cHe was really important.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spyker met Whipple at one of his long-running Tuesday\u00a0open-mic nights at the Pig Pen on Broadway. Spyker sang two Marty Robbins tunes.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt was just amazing,\u201d said\u00a0Whipple, who also is part of the songwriting group San Antonio Song Saloon. He said he was blown away by\u00a0Spyker\u2019s operatic voice\u00a0\u2014 and enthusiasm.<\/p>\n
Spyker and band mate Spackman started making the welcoming songwriters scene in town. In fact, the band\u2019s first album comprises songs\u00a0Spyker wrote as part of Whipple\u2019s songwriting gatherings.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe took it seriously,\u201d\u00a0Whipple said. \u201cThe songs are all historical influenced . . . bank robber songs and Old West sheriffs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whipple calls Righteous Intonation a breath of fresh air on the scene.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI\u2019m proud of them because they came to it from the right place. They were looking for community,\u201d\u00a0he said. \u201cThey 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
But even he can be taken aback by Spyker\u2019s lyrics, especially if it\u2019s about a hanging as in \u201cTexas Love Story.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like this horrifying story,” Spackman said. “The first maybe 10, 15 times I played it, it felt like getting hit in the head.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIf (the audience) is actually listening, it\u2019s either one of two responses. It\u2019s either like, \u2018Wow! That was amazing. I can\u2019t believe that just happened.\u2019<\/p>\n
Or it\u2019s kind of like this hesitant, \u2018Oh, I\u2019ve got to clap because the songs over.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
There also are crowd-pleasing original numbers like \u201c(Expletive) Hole Bar\u201d that turns into a sing-along about dive bar drama.<\/p>\n
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Here\u2019s betting Friday\u2019s record release gig is an exhilarating kick in the head. Or at least pretty righteous.
\u00a0
Hector Salda\u00f1a 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rightous Intonation –Tal Spackman (from left), Nick Spyker, Connor Montoya and Patrick Hoppe\u00a0\u2014 are celebrating the release of\u00a0the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[82,84,83],"class_list":["post-373117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}