AUSTIN CITY LIMITS TV Series taping of HEARTLESS BASTARDS 6-3-09

A once in a lifetime chance, maybe. I've watched this show for a very long time and since moving to Austin 3 years ago, I have tried to figure out a way to win tickets to a taping. The studio is tiny, holds around 300, I believe. Tickets can't be bought. The big donors to KLRU, the Austin PBS station, get passes for it. Other than that, it usually works like this: you're listening to the radio and hear "go to the KLRU studio right now as they're giving out passes for the ACL taping of so and so." Unless you are near there, forget it. They are gone in minutes. And that pass doesn't guarantee admission. You line up and once they have the magic number inside, the rest don't get in. Well, got lucky last week and won tickets for the Heartless Bastards taping! I'll tell you what, we could not wait for Wednesday night to get here! Very, very excited. Ended up first in line! The staff at KLRU was chuckling at how early we were there. It will air sometime this coming season, their 35th!
So, we took seats on the front row, side stage near the guitarist because cameras were set up all along the front of the stage and Erika Wennerstrom's (leader of the band) family had the front row seats on her side of the stage! They serve free beer at this thing also!
For those who watch this show, there are the 3 cameras out front, one is a big boom that has the long arm which moves all over the place, while the other 2 are much smaller and kind of roam back and forth along the front. There is a 4th camera, a hand held, and that guy shoots from the back to the front mostly. He was on the drum riser most of the time shooting Erika and I swear, inches away from the drummer. It didn't seem to bother him, he played hard all night, like the guy wasn't there sitting on top of him.
I don't have any other taping to judge from so I don't know if this is how it always works or if each artist is different. The Heartless Bastards did several start and stop, do overs. It was not like being at a concert. They wanted to get each song right so if Erika didn't like the way it sounded, she'd stop and they'd start over. They played for 1 1/2 hours and it will be edited down to 30 minutes for the show, basically.
Erika, you could see, was nervous to start. After the first song she turned to her bass player, Jesse Ebaugh, and said "did I play that too fast?" Then she exhaled a very deep breath. It was endearing to see her so wanting to make this show as good as she possibly could. Like I said, she stopped several songs to start them over. She brought out a couple of special guests, one of which was Alex Mass, the lead singer for the Black Angels. They sang "If I Were A Carpenter" as Erika said, in the tradition of Johnny Cash and June Carter. Well, it was a train wreck. They started over 3 times and my guess is, it won't make the final edit. We'll see. She also brought out a fiddle player for a couple of songs. He was great! Didn't get his name but he was terrific.
The Heartless Bastards have a new album out called The Mountain. They are, with this record, making a pretty big splash. You don't get on this show otherwise. This band has been a trio for the last 5 years or so but they had another guy tonight on guitar. Having a true lead guitarist allowed Jesse to play other instruments besides the bass. At any rate, no matter how good the players, this band is all Erika. She writes the songs and with that voice, you don't need much else.
For me, the Heartless Bastards are a garage rock band in the best sense with a leader who can really tear it up when she wants to. Man, that girl has got soul.
For us though, on this night, it didn't matter who was playing, it was all about being there.
One side note to this day; had we not won the tickets to this we would have gone to the opening KGSR Blues on the Green summer concert series which had Ruthie Foster playing. That afternoon we got the word that Koko Taylor had died. Kind of wanted to be at that concert because I knew it would be special. It seemed natural to be at a blues show on that day if you could be. I did hear that Jody Denberg of KGSR came out and talked about Koko before introducing Ruthie and Ruthie also dedicated a song to her memory. As it should be.