The members of Eleven Hundred Springs can’t find an easy
way to describe their music, so they’ve taken to labeling
themselves instead. But “long-haired, tattooed hippie freaks” doesn’t
accurately convey the Dallas-based quintet’s appearance,
much less its finely whittled sounds. Forced to try again,
they resort to spouting this equation: Buck Owens x Doug Sahm
x Rolling Stones x Willie Nelson.
Here’s what it really is: original Texas country music
in the Americana vein played with respect for esteemed elders
but without falling into a time warp. It really has nothing to
do with sounding like any particular act or style. The bandmates
just do what sounds good to them. And they’ve learned it
sounds pretty darned good to others as well.
Eleven Hundred Springs, named after the
slogan for Pearl Beer (“from the land of 1,100 springs”), was formed by
lead vocalist/rhythm guitarist Matt Hillyer and bassist Steven
Berg in 1998. But they’ve been playing together since 1992,
when they wound up in a rockabilly band called the Red Devils.
That turned into to the popular Lone Star
Trio, which had a network of fans stretching from Dallas to
Southern California and San Francisco. The name became Eleven
Hundred Springs when they were offered a regular gig at Adair’s
Saloon in Dallas.
“It became so much fun we decided to pursue it full-time,” is
Hillyer’s assessment of the band’s career arc.
Rounding out EHS’ roster are pedal
steel and keyboard player Aaron Wynne; fiddler Jordan Hendrix;
and drummer/percussionist Mark Reznicek, an alum of the platinum-selling
rock band the Toadies. Berg and Wynne also contribute backing
vocals.
There’s another performer whose presence permeates Bandwagon
even though he’s no longer around. That would be rockabilly
legend Ronnie Dawson, whose voice can be heard on the Mickey
Newberry-penned “Why You Been Gone So Long.” Hillyer
and Berg once played with Dawson, who used the song for pre-show
vocal warm-ups. In 1993, on a whim, Berg recorded Dawson singing
it. The album includes a remastered version featuring the late
Dawson as a tribute and as a way of giving listeners one more
taste of “the Waxahachie Wildman.”
That song is one of only two only covers on the album; the other
is the traditional folk tune, “The Rock Island Line.”
Although Hillyer wrote most of the other
12 cuts, all of the members contribute. Together, they’ve created a disc full
of humor and wit (the song “Long Haired Tattooed Hippie
Freaks” is a strong clue) as well as weightier matters
involving life’s ups and downs.
Sometimes even those downs require lighter
treatment, as in the case of “North Side Blues,” the product of an
all-too-common experience for traveling bands. “Steve and
I wrote it together after we had gotten a whole lot of our equipment
stolen on the north side of San Antonio,” Hillyer explains.
He says the tune is heavily influenced by the late Doug Sahm,
a native and favorite son of that illustrious city. Theft is
also the topic of “The Only Thing She Left Me was the Blues.”
Another cut, “A Straighter Line,” is
about redemption, he says, and moving past bad times to the good
ones. It’s
also the title of an acoustic album the band released in 2001.
(EHS’s earlier releases, Welcome To Eleven Hundred Spring,
Live at Adair’s and No Stranger to the Blues, are out of
print.)
With the release of Bandwagon, Eleven Hundred Springs is on to
better times.
