Carolyn Wonderland w/ special guest Shelley King

Thursday April 2, 2015 @ 8:00 PM

A musical force equipped with the soulful vocals of Janis and the guitar slinging skills of Stevie Ray, Carolyn Wonderland reaches into the depths of the Texas blues tradition with the wit of a poet. She hits the stage with unmatched presence, a true legend in her time.

“She’d grown up the child of a singer in a band and began playing her mother’s vintage Martin guitar when other girls were dressing dolls. She’d gone from being the teenage toast of her hometown Houston to sleeping in her van in Austin amid heaps of critical acclaim for fine recordings Alcohol & Salvation, Bloodless Revolution, and most recently, Miss Understood.

Along with the guitar and the multitude of other instruments she learned to play – trumpet, accordion, piano, mandolin, lap steel – Wonderland’s ability to whistle remains most unusual. Whistling is a uniquely vocal art seldom invoked in modern music, yet it’s among the most spectacular talents the human voice possesses.

That vocal proficiency was well-established in the singer’s midteens, landing her gigs at Fitzgerald’s by age 15. She absorbed Houston influences like Little Screamin’ Kenny and soaked up the Mad Hatter of Texas music, Doug Sahm. The Lone Star State was as credible and fertile a proving ground for blues in the 1980s as existed, especially in Austin with Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Angela Strehli, Omar & the Howlers, and Lou Ann Barton all in their prime. By the following decade, Austin’s blues luster thinned, but Houston, always a bastion of soul and R&B, boasted the Imperial Monkeys with the effervescent Carolyn Wonderland as ruler of the jungle.

In the early 1990s Wonderland & the Imperial Monkeys were invited to the Guadalupe Street Antone’s in Austin. There, they were treated like royalty with the singer as the queen of hearts in the club’s post-Stevie Ray Vaughan stable, which included Toni Price, Johnny and Jay Moeller, Sue Foley, Mike and Corey Keller, and the Ugly Americans. It was a good bar for the Monkeys to hang, and Austin felt so comfortable that when the band called it quits a few years later, she set her sights on Austin at the start of the millennium.

Living in Austin renewed Carolyn Wonderland’s focus on her multiple talents, underlining luxurious vocals with fine guitar work, trumpet, and piano, as well as that remarkable ability to whistle on key. A series of each-better-than-the-next discs began with Alcohol & Salvation in 2003 (“songs about booze and God; records are a time capsule of what happened that year”). Her music played in television series such as Time of Your Life and Homicide.

Her circle of musician friends and admirers broadened to include not only Ray [Benson, who produced Miss Understood] but also the late Eddy Shaver, Shelley King, and yes, Bob Dylan, who likened her composition “Bloodless Revolution” to “a mystery movie theme.” She began co-writing with locals Sarah Brown, Ruthie Foster, Cindy Cashdollar, and Guy Forsyth; sat in with Los Lobos, Robert Earl Keen, and Ray Wylie Hubbard; recorded with Jerry Lightfoot; and toured with Buddy Guy and Johnny Winter. She also claims membership in the all-girl Sis Deville, the gospel-infused Imperial Crown Golden Harmonizers, and takes aw-shucks credit for inspiring Amsterdam’s annual WonderJam.

It was magic in the studio, too, as Miss Understood came to life, a canny mix of Benson’s production, Wonderland’s compositions, and select covers of Terri Hendrix, J.J. Cale, and Rick Derringer that punched her sound up a notch. As soon as the album roared to life, it was clear the singer-songwriter-guitarist-whistler had delivered on her long-awaited promise.”

...

In Austin's exalted music scene, Shelley King ranks among the royals; in 2008, she even received a title: Official State Musician of Texas from the Texas Legislature. But she wouldn't think of resting on her laurels - not when there are so many songs to sing and stages to conquer. Her newest album, Building A Fire, debuted at No. 4 in its inaugural week of availability on the AirPlay Direct's Global Radio Indicator Chart - Americana/AAA. Building A Fire, released this past August (on her own Lemonade Records label), has Shelley poised to reign over legions of roots music fans.

The album perfectly captures the essence of King's personality: a self-made woman who carries herself with strength and assurance, even a little swagger at times, but who also has a sensitive, vulnerable side, and a well of compassion - along with the ability to still find wonder in the world. All of which make for powerful songwriting, the kind that gets noticed by artists such as Lee Hazlewood, who recorded King's "Texas Blue Moon" with Nancy Sinatra after he heard King's version on the radio while driving through the state.

The tension between spirituality and sexuality - both major aspects of the human condition, she observes - is a theme permeating Building a Fire played out amid her gospel influences and rootsier renderings. The stage for that duality was set when she began singing as a toddler. Following her parents' split and her mom's remarriage, King wound up in Houston, then Amarillo, where she landed in the children's choir at her grandmother's church. After another stint in Houston, her mother divorced again, and King wound up with her other grandmother back in Arkansas. She found salvation - literally - in a one-room country church, where she built a social life, gained solace from familial turmoil and soloed weekly. Sometimes her uncles accompanied her on guitar. That's when she started writing songs, inspired by her beloved Caddo River and a teenager's hopes and dreams.

King returned to Texas for college, self-financed via her own business. She planned on law school, but after working for a lawyer and starting her own band, she realized music, not law, was her passion. She gigged around Houston for a couple of years, then moved to Austin. By day, she worked as a sales rep; the rest of the time, she lived for music. One day she realized she would forever regret it if she didn't at least try to follow her heart.

She quit her job, went home and booked 11 gigs that day. She also formed her label, Lemonade Records. "I always liked that saying, 'If life hands you lemons, make lemonade,'" King says. "And I felt like my corporate gig was a lemon and I split and I made lemonade."

She certainly has. In addition to being the first woman to hold the State Musician title (she preceded Willie Nelson), her accolades include several Austin Music Awards.

Links:

Tickets:

$22, $32