Back before there was the Internet there was something called Flyers. And in the 1990s, if you went into Antone ‘s, the downtown music club, you would see a stack of Flyers. One of those stacks of Flyers was a list of Antone’s women. These were singers and artists that Antone’s featured on a weekly basis. They could be found. Playing music together or as guests at this iconic music venue in downtown Austin.
The Flyer. Had a list. And then it went on to talk more about each individual woman performer on the list. There was a schedule on the wall. So if any of the individual singers that you could read about on the flyer were going to be playing well, you would know when to show up and see them.
In the mind’s eye, she exists almost wholly by inference. Try to picture Angela and there is dim blue light, there is a sway of a hip in a sequin gown, there is an elusive allure, and then there is voice, vibrant as a dynamo, and as subtle as an eddy of smoke crawling around a glass of whiskey.
Although she makes her home on the Left Coast now, she has been a fixture at Antone’s since almost the day the club opened its doors. As a girl in Lubbock., in West Texas, Angela acquired an early love of gospel, music and Blues. She came to Austin in the early 1970s and made her initial mark as in a series of bands., the Fabulous Rockets, James Polk and the Brothers. The Brothers was one of the city’s first integrated bands. One of the lineups, Sunday Land Special, was among the first to play the club in its original 6th Street location.
But it was the formation of the Angela STREHLI Band in 1982 which allowed her gifts to coalesce in a fully realized performer. Staffed by two of the City’s musical icons, guitarist Denny Friedman and drummer George Rains, The STREHLI ensemble captured numerous honors in the annual Austin Music Awards. Angela. Herself captured the award for best female vocalist seven times. She went on to share a stage at Carnegie Hall in 1985 with Stevie Ray and Jimmy Von and Dr John. Also in 1986, she, along with Clifford Antone, founded the Antone’s record label. Antone’s released her debut, Soul Shake, in 1987. Angela helped forge the sound and style of Anton’s records. She has a hand in the production of almost every release. In 1990, she helped produce Dreams Come True, a collaboration between herself, Louanne Barton, and Marcia Ball, and it was the winner of the NAIRD Award for Best Blues Album. On stage, she exudes a quality of cool reserve that is directly at odds with the torrid emotions she conjures up in song. It is an elusive contradiction, a tantalizing quality that led one critic to describe her as the sphinx who sings.
At the piano, she is all sinew, sleek and grace, and from her fingers flow the syncopated rhythms that made heroes out of the likes of Professor Long Hair, James Booker, Fats Domino, and other New Orleans keyboardists. Ball aspires to their ranks, and, after two decades on stage and 5 albums. She is within her hair’s length of that August. company.
Ball grew up in Vinton LA, just across the Sabine River from Texas. She was a high school cheerleader, but eschewed sock hop ditties in favor of hard shell, R & B. and Swamp Rock hits by the likes of Cookie and the Cupcakes and Lazy Lester. Hey, Cortana. The musical elements of Louisiana. Percolated through her to emerge a fiery sauce aglow with rock, soul, blues, the rhumba, voodoo torch songs, and a dash of classic Crescent City 2nd line party meter.
She began her professional career in Austin in the early 1970s, in the midst of the city’s progressive country boom. But as she gained confidence in her prowess, balls, native instincts began to reassert themselves. Today, she is not only the heir to 80 odd years of keyboard tradition, but also in the process of building a legacy of her own.
LOU ANN BARTON
Linda Ronstadt once delivered a carefully considered professional evaluation after hearing Luanne Barton sing. This woman, she said, scares me to death. And well, she might be. Barton ‘s inimitable honey and gravel voice has allowed the Fort Worth native to rest songs from the grasps of formidable stylists along the lines of Irma Thomas, Slim Harpo and Tina Turner.
Lou Ann did the lion’s share of her growing up in the gin mills and Juke joints of Fort Worth and Austin. She enjoys the rare distinction of having fronted bands for both the Vaughn brothers. In The Fabulous Thunderbirds and Stevie’s Double Trouble, and she even migrated north to Rhode Island for a short center stage tenure with Room Full of Blues. She has also helmed her own groups and bands with wonderful names like Lou Ann and The Flip Tops and The Brand New Lovers.
BARBARA LYNN
Lynn initially stood out at as the only left handed female guitarist in Beaumont. But it was her singing, in. State line roadhouses like Luann’s and the Texas Pelican Club that caught the ear of fabled producer and self-described Crazy Cajun Huey MEAUX. Joe Berry told Huey that he had seen this girl across the bridge playing the guitar, and singing, and it sounded like she’s got talent, he recalled. He brought Lynn down to the famous Canal Street studio in New Orleans and began rolling tapes. The rest is a delightfully danceable history.
SUE FOLEY
When Sue Foley arrived in Austin a couple of years ago, she wasn’t hard to spot. Gamey redheads toting Paisley telecasters are not exactly standard issue, even in towns as free spirited as the Texas capital. In any event, foley wasn’t a Texan, not by a long shot. Her home lay in Ottawa but her heart belonged to the mythical landscape inhabited by the likes of Blues masters like Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters and James Cotton. It was they whom she burned to emulate when she began sneaking into clubs. At the tender age of 16. By the time she turned eighteen. Not yet old enough to buy beer in some Texas counties, she had already lit out for Vancouver and cobbled together a ban. Foley has completed the sessions for her debut album Young Girl Blues, which will be released on the Antone’s label in March of 1992. She is only twenty three. The stars which led her from Canada to Texas have barely begun to run their course.
TONI PRICE
At first glance, Tony Price would seem to have few of the attributes of the classic Southern R & B vocalist. She was born in Philadelphia and spent two decades growing up in Nashville, her initial forays into public performance consisted of essaying hits by Rush and Led Zeppelin at high school, pool parties, and, as far as influences went, her musical roots barely predated the Beatles. It wasn’t the sort of upbringing that, say, Etta James would recognize.
But Price is far more than just the sum of her circumstances. There is the voice, for one thing, a rich, dark instrument that is laced with Memphis soul, not Nashville twang. It is a voice which has as much business singing Led Zeppelin Chartbusters as Pavarotti has singing rap.
And the voice coupled with direction, thanks to a fellow musician, Price crossed paths with a stack of Bonnie Raitt’s albums. The encounter provided the spark of inspiration. The third of price’s strengths was desire, coupled with the force of her own personality. Once direction was established, departure became only a matter of time. Price first visited Austin in the spring of 1989 to perform at Antone’s in a showcase at the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference. And that, as the old song says, was all it took.
Price was venturing into uncharted Waters, but she quickly found herself established in a community full of supportive and creative songwriters, with enough honky tonks and empty stages to give her a regular forum.
LAVELLA WHITE
Miss Lavelle, they call her, and she has been Miss Lavelle for years. It is difficult to conjure up another title which conveys the same sense of the poise and conviction which Lavelle White radiates on stage. She grew up just outside of Baton Rouge LA. Though she found a home in music, she came to it relatively late in life. Originally entranced by gospel, she became enamored of the more secular music in her early 20s after she moved to Houston. She wrote any number of songs as well as and at least one has achieved classic status. Though she sold it to ROBEY, who put his pen name on it, it was White who authored Bobby Bland’s Lead Me On with its haunting opening lines. ”You know how it feels. You understand what it is to be a stranger in this unfriendly land.”
Music put her on the road with the likes of James Brown, Jean Chandler, Smokey Robinson and Aretha Franklin. Life took her to Chicago, where she was the house singer at Kingston Mines, a Chicago club.
