Flanfire

Fans of Explosions in the Sky, take heart! While everyone's favorite Austin-based, incredibly passionate instrumental quartet is on the West Coast prepping for a European tour, ANOTHER Texas band -- which hardly anyone in AUSTIN has ever heard of (blithering idiots, we are!) -- is pounding out the passion, with lyrics added, from its base out in Abilene. [There's something in that West Texas sky, to be sure.] Now, I talked with two guys who had come up from San Antonio to see the band -- which has a big following from New Mexico to Oklahoma and beyond.

Homer Hickam, Jr., is the ORIGINAL "Rocket Boy," and you may have read his books or watched the movie "October Sky" (which is an anagram of rocket boys, by the way). Memphis native Brandon Kinder, who trekked out to Abilene for college, has a signed copy of Hickam's Rocket Boys, from which the movie was made, and he and his pals opted to name their band in honor of the NASA scientist who started out in life as a country boy from Pennsylvania (altering Hickam's name for legal reasons).

The name fits this band -- a sextet of young men from small-town America seeking to catapault their music into the stratosphere and succeeding (146,000 listens to songs on their myspace site to date). So when I got their myspace bulletin that they were playing Sunday night at Room 710, I changed my plans for the evening and made sure to be in the house. [An extra bonus was my first listen to Taylor Muse's new project, Quiet Company, of which more will be told later.]

The Rocketboys are in the midst of recording a new EP, but you can catch some of their earlier efforts on DVD "Colder Nights of Texas," recorded in Levelland (McMurtry never mentions the great music school out there in his deprecatory song!) at South Plains College. My first words upon hearing them live were -- POUNDING, PULSATING, RICH FULL SOUND and absolutely beautiful! Kinder plays piano and a Les Paul, fellow Memphian Mitchell Holt also plays a Les Paul, Daniel Wheeler is on an old Telecaster, Josh Campbell is on bass, Justin Wiseman plays a second keyboard (and several guys share turns on an electrified xylophone), and WOW Philip Ellis pushes the envelope on drums and percussion.

When I got to Room 710, I found Wheeler typing furiously on a paper for one of his graduate school classes. The band had to drive back to Abilene after the gig to get Wiseman to his 6:45 am bell for his student teaching job. And, yeah, there were maybe 15 to 20 people at the show who were not in some other band (I could not stick around to hear Consider the Source). Not even my reputation was good enough to get even my best friends out on a Sunday evening!

Okay -- so Quiet Company alone was worth the price of admission (had there been one). YES -- This was a FREE show!!!!! Muse, who may one day be known as the "fifth Eisley," having left the band before they made the bigtime, plays both piano and guitar -- as does Tommy Blank; the drummer is the very active Tim Robbins (not the actor). THIS band is about to go on tour, but you can catch them at Emo's in the lounge on May 3rd and again at Stubb's on May 20th.

Muse is an animated performer, especially on guitar, but I really love his keyboard work. The tunes are what I would call passion pop (often interrupted by crescendoes of noise). Muse built this new band after laying down the tracks for "Shine Honesty" playing everything but drums (a job handled by Stellamaris' Alex Bhore) -- and I would swear there are some recorded loops that augment the three-piece lineup (sans bassist!).

Now as this was a first listen, I had a hard time figuring out song titles -- for example, I would have thought "The Sun Is Gonna Rise Up" was called "borrowed time," and surely the final number (which was awesome) was "hold onto me" -- but no -- it is "Then Came a Sudden Validation." Another song on the CD is "Love Is a Shotgun" (just think of what it means), and another asks,"How Many Times Did You Want To Be in Love?" And how would anyone figure out "Fashionabel," which is very Beatlesque pop. The only possible complaint would be that we only got seven songs -- and wanted more. And why not -- listening to this band makes you feel like you just got out of the shower (or out of the water at the beach!). [Special thanks to Leah, Taylor's REAL muse!]

AND YET -- it just got better with the Rocketboys! I quickly got caught up in the never-slowing-down pace of the twin guitars and twin keyboards and lyrics like "don't take the stars away," and "waiting for the clouds to disappear." Once again, I would have killed for a song list with actual titles to report to you -- songs that might be titled, "You Are," "It's You," "Stay," or the brand-new "For Johnny." But the diligent will soon learn the song titles -- what is important here is the music -- and the Orbison-like quality of this Kinder voice -- creamy rich in tone that just mesmerizes when he reaches the higher notes.

One I do know is "Heartbeat," which opens with quiet keyboards that break into music that sounds like a west Texas sunrise ... and the drums kick in and then the words -- "Here we go I guess I'm leaving soon" -- and then "I would sell you out in a heartbeat, cause you can defend yourself ..." As the tune wanders through time, we get to a chorus of "I'll do what I want," which to me echoes that famous Bangles song, "If She Knew What She Wants." But when you think about it a moment, who was it who sold out his best friend in a heartbeat, thinking he could defend himself?

As it happens, Kinder is a pal of my photographer friend Esther Havens -- whose photos will be featured at a May 12th opening at the Local Color Gallery (1700 S. Lamar) as part of a project to raise funds for an orphanage in an area in Nicaragua hit years ago by a major hurricane and in which children live in the city dump and forage for food there. Yes, this is the same Esther Havens who was caught (by her own camera?) dancing at Stubbs' with Kirsten Dunst during SXSW ... wonder where Spiderman was that evening?

Finally, a toast to my pal Stephanie Duphily of New Song -- she of the raised hands and silly smile (and why not -- that's LZ Love singing at the benefit at NXNW for the nonprofit, which helps set women free from the sex industry. Stephanie's own story is quite amazing -- just for starters, she was shot in the face while unknowingly pregnant with her second child -- now a beautiful 12-year-old -- and the bullet is still lodged in her spine and cannot be removed. And her third child was born AFTER she had fought off cervical cancer and told she could not have any more children. Stephanie (who ought to know) says that many of these women were sexually abused as children (as she was) and have less than a high school education (as she did) and no real skills -- and many (again, like Stephanie) have one or more children to feed.

Flanfire -- Bringing LIFE to Austin music.