JON DEE GRAHAM and KELLY WILLIS at The Gallery 5-24-09

The Gallery is the upstairs portion of the legendary Continental Club. I never knew it existed. Jon Dee plays the Continental Club every Wednesday when he is in town. He decided to start this weekly Sunday night series at The Gallery called Jon Dee Graham and Friends. He brings in a guest each week and they talk, tell stories, play a song, talk, tell stories, play a song...get the idea? This is a very tiny space, according to the fire marshall there is room for 49 people. There are sofas, chairs, a tiny bar and you are basically sitting on top of them! This is pretty darn neat, let me tell ya.
So far, Jon Dee has had Alejandro Escovedo, Ray Benson, Bruce Robison, to name a few. I would have loved seeing them all. A guy sat next to me who had been at the Alejandro show. He raved. Said the story telling is the best thing. You get to hear all of this behind the scenes stuff in the music business that is totally fascinating.
After seeing the show myself, I have to agree. It's all the things you never hear when you go to a concert that makes this intimate show so cool.
Number 1, I think Jon Dee likes to talk more then he likes to play! And that's ok because he tells great stories. He's a really funny guy. He just started chatting with Kelly about parenting and they were off and running. Jon Dee said "you know you're a parent when, as a musician, you go on the road to get some rest." Then Kelly passed around a series of photos of her 4 kids. For those of you who don't know, Kelly is married to the GREAT SONGWRITER Bruce Robison. They have 4 kids, an 8 year old, a set of 6 year old twins and a 3 year old. Suffice to say, something had to give and unfortunately for us fans, it's been Kelly's career. She hasn't been touring and rarely performs these days, except private parties around town, she said. Another reason why I wanted to get to this show. I love listening to Kelly sing and play, so when she does appear in a public performance in the Austin area, I try to get there.
Anyway, the pictures she passed around of the kids were hilarious. She talked about the difficulty of raising a family and trying to have a music career and being on the road. Kelly also said things were getting easier at home until 2 weeks ago when Bruce brought home a puppy. She said she was ready to kill him for that!
They also talked about their days playing together as Jon Dee, back in the early to mid-90's, was her lead guitarist. I did not know that. So, they told war stories about the road days. There was much laughter. We learned of Kelly's dry sense of humor. It's all the personal things you discover that makes this show so neat. We learned when driving the van back from a gig, Kelly was the one who was the "cleanup" driver. Jon Dee said you would be driving back and it would be 4am and nobody in the band wanted to drive anymore and that is when Kelly would say "I'll drive." Jon Dee said she would take over and that was it, they were home. We heard many stories of their time together.
Jon Dee sang a song he wrote for his 17 year old son who has had his heart broken for the first time. He talked about that. Kelly played "Not Forgotten You," a great song Bruce wrote. Kelly said it was written after she broke his heart back when they were dating.
They each played maybe 3 or 4 songs, in-between the stories. Jon played along to all of Kelly's songs. He's such a great guitarist. At one point Kelly told of wanting to learn how to play the mandolin but Bruce told her she needed to learn how to play the guitar first. Ouch!
This is the kind of stuff you can expect when going to one of these shows. You get to learn about the artists beyond their music. It's really special.
Admission for this show was $17.
My only complaint is they keep it so dark in there that both were in the shadows the entire evening. They do have spotlights but they didn't sit underneath them. It would be nice if, since you are there, you could see them.