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Flanfire (Duggan Flanakin) is bringing LIFE to Austin music -- and telling the world how sweet it is!
Monday, October 02, 2006
A Brave Night at the Continental!
Groundwork founder Neal Kassanoff shows why he's the man to teach children to sing and dance; future Continental Club regulars swinging to Brave Combo on the legendary dance floor.
On normal days, the Continental Club has a strict age 21 and up policy that applies to just about everyone except young music prodigies such as Warren Hood before he turned legal. Not so last Sunday, when Grammy-winning polka partiers Brave Combo made music for a raucous crowd that included many of the children whose lives have been touched by The Groundwork Music Project - which for the past few years has been providing free music education to Austin pre-schoolers.
The monthly fundraisers are sponsored by the Whip In (South Austin's finest libation source); the November fundraiser will feature Groundwork founder Neal Kassanoff and the lovely Carolyn Wonderland (just before she leaves for Amsterdam and the Wonderjam!). Kassanoff says he got the idea for Groundwork after being paid to write a few children's songs and from a couple of well-established children's music programs. The key to Groundwork, he said, is that he brings his own songs to the schools - and hopes that other musicians will follow suit elsewhere in Austin and in other cities where the doors are open for children's music education.
Kassanoff, who holds a Master's Degree in School Psychology and got his training in children's music from Princeton, New Jersey's Music Together program, says, "We are hardwired to be musical. Developing musical skills is no less fundamental than learning to move and speak and analyze the world around us." For the record, Neal also writes some pretty fair country adult music (see our review of his brand-new CD).
A Sunny Evening at the Poodle Dog!Later on Sunday, we stopped by to catch a solo set at the Hole in the Wall by old pal Leo Rondeau and then joined Leo and the lanky Brennen Leigh as special guests of songbird Sunny Sweeney at the Poodle Dog Lounge on Burnet Road. Sunny is from Longview and has what has been described as a thick East Texas accent and a twang to go with it. She's also a self-described smartass who posts a sign announcing a forty-dollar fee for any Patsy Cline song (even though she probably would turn down twice that amount rather than sing "I Fall to Pieces"). Sunny wrote some - but far from all - of the songs on her debut CD, "Heartbreaker's Hall of Fame," and even got the venerable Jim Lauderdale to record a duet with her for the record.
Brennen had warned me that Sunny has a hot band - and indeed it was so, beginning with Mark Patterson on drums (whose credentials go all the way up to Billy Joe Shaver - the top of the mark in Texas country). Chris Brady is on bass, and Joey Borja (whom I last saw playing with Leo) was on pedal steel. Handling the lead guitar was the gunslinger Robert Socia (whose own band opens for the South Austin Jug Band in Denton this weekend), and on keyboard was Bruce James (whose trio will be at Flipnotics this Saturday). Sunny persuaded Brennen to sing a couple of songs (wearing her cowboy hat, of course) while she took a break, and then hornswaggled Clay Harrell to leave his comfortable seat in the back of the room for another couple of songs.
Sunny is playing again at the Poodle Dog on October 15 and October 29; in early January she has a week booked in Key West at the Hogs Breath Saloon (no, she's NOT there for the World Famous Home Made Bikini Contest). Just remember - ask her to sing any Patsy Cline and she will turn into the Sunny that Shawn Colvin wrote about -- you know, the one who came home "with a vengeance."
