IN HARMONY
Bringing back Uncle Walt’s Band While widespread fame eluded one of Texas’ most beloved trios, its fans have many reasons to cheer
Afew months ago country music singer David Ball invited the young fiddler Warren Hood to join him on stage at a house concert in Austin.
They’d known each other for ages: A decade before Hood was born in Austin, Ball started singing and playing bass in a South Carolina band with DesChamps Hood, Warren’s father, and singer-songwriter Walter Hyatt. That trio went by the name Uncle Walt’s Band. After striking out in Nashville, the group settled in Texas in the 1970s, where it became beloved for its heavenly harmonies and swinging songs that drew ravenously from decades of different American music styles.
At the house concert, Marshall Hood — Warren’s cousin, DesChamps’ nephew — joined on guitar and they played an Uncle Walt’s Band song.
“Let’s do more of that!” Ball declared. And the three dove deep into a songbook by one of Texas’ most beloved bands, playing one Uncle Walt song after another, bringing back to life songs that should’ve been heard by more people during their day. That impromptu set must have felt right, because Ball and the Hoods are doing more dates tagged That Carolina Sound, including one in Houston this week. It’s the closest thing there is to an Uncle Walt’s reunion, since two-thirds of the band is gone. And the band’s recorded music — long out of print and non-existent in the streaming sphere — will soon circulate once again. More than 40 years after its heyday, Uncle Walt’s Band is having its moment.
The band
Uncle Walt’s Band first came together when teenagers DesChamps Hood and Walter Hyatt started picking together in Spartanburg, S.C. Hood was known around town as a
hotshot guitarist in a rock band.
“Champ’s band was a big mess,” Ball says. “But at the same time, I saw the brilliance in it, y’know? It was like, ‘These guys don’t know what they’re doing. But it’s close to great.’ ”
Ball, a Spartanburg native, used to see Hood and Hyatt play in the basement of an Italian restaurant. He’d listen and hum harmony parts. Ball wanted in and learned stand-up bass so he could join.
Uncle Walt’s Band’s sound was full of identifiable elements, but resisted easy categorization. The harmonies were a thing of beauty, a modern male take on the sister groups of the 1930s and ’40s. Hood had a three-octave voice and was a guitarist of uncommon ability, his fingers a blur on the fretboard, reminding of Django Reinhardt. Hyatt was a studied lyricist from a rich folk tradition.
They left Spartanburg for Nashville, and didn’t find much success there.
“We’d spend all this time working out the harmonies, I guess that was confusing to people,” Ball says. “They’d come see us and say, ‘OK, but who’s the lead singer? Who do I talk to here?’ They just didn’t get it.”
The trio caught the ear of Texas singer-songwriter Willis Alan Ramsey, who urged them to give Austin a go. There Uncle Walt’s found its nest. The trio proved immensely popular playing around the state.
“What I remember is just how big they sounded even though it was only three guys,” says Lyle Lovett, a lifelong fan. “The harmonies were so rich, and each was a great player. There was a lot to listen to in their songs.”
They looked for a record deal worthy of their talents, but didn’t find the right fit. So Uncle Walt’s released “Blame It on the Bossa Nova” independently in 1974.
The group split briefly, with Hood and Hyatt forming a group called the Contenders. By the late-’70s they reassembled, releasing “An American in Texas” in 1980.
But by the mid-’80s Uncle Walt’s Band had called it quits. Again. Ball and Hyatt headed to Nashville. Hood stayed behind.
The widow
In May 1996, shortly after takeoff from Miami International Airport, ValuJet Flight 592 caught fire and crashed into the Everglades. All 110 passengers on board were killed, Hyatt among them. He was 46.
Hyatt at the time had been living in Nashville, where he was again trying to make it as a solo recording artist. Lovett produced his gorgeous 1990 album “King Tears,” a recording of countrytinged jazzy balladry. Three years later Hyatt released “Music Town.” And three years later he was gone. In 2008, his name resurfaced with “Some Unfinished Business, Vol. 1.” Hyatt’s widow, Heidi — an artist and Houston native — decided to start circulating his name once again. He left behind a trove of unreleased music.
Heidi’s primary goal was simply to get Hyatt’s music into the digital sphere.
“I’m a terrible sales person and I’m not a record label,” she says. “I wasn’t getting anybody’s attention this way.”
She connected with Mark Michel, a music industry veteran who a year ago retired after a long tenure with Sony.
He saw parallels between Uncle Walt’s Band and Big Star, the Memphis based power pop act that made recordings in the ’70s that were largely ignored in their day only to prove wildly influential years later.
“Like Big Star, here’s this great group that, on the surface, should’ve been huge,” Michel says. “Three good looking guys, who could sing their asses off and could play and write. Certainly lesser groups had made it. But they were holding out for the right deal that never happened. And they ended up making great music in different periods. Great music that should still be heard.
“And Heidi has so many archived tapes. She did a great job getting Walter’s work out there. But the Uncle Walt’s Band stuff was neglected.”
Michel worked with Heidi and connected also with Ball and Warren Hood.
And he reached out to Omnivore Records, a fairly young label started in 2010 that specializes in interesting music that may have missed its time in the spotlight. Omnivore releases lovingly curated recordings that cater to a certain type of music collector. And the label has been active with the legacy of Big Star, releasing classic and unearthed recordings by the Memphis band as well as specialty products by one of its members, Chris Bell.
“At least back in the day Big Star albums showed up in cutout bins for a few bucks,” Michel says. “That’s how a few people discovered them and it grew from there. That wasn’t the case with Uncle Walt’s Band. People picked up records at their gigs, but they were really known as a live band.”
But memories of shows fade. Heidi Hyatt would like to build something bigger than a collector’s market for old vinyl copies of Uncle Walt’s Band’s music. The hope is Omnivore’s Uncle Walt’s anthology — likely due in the spring — will bring the band attention it couldn’t find in its day. Michel selected a mix of favorites along with some previously unreleased material. Should it generate interest, there’s much more material that could be released.
“I want these songs to be heard,” Heidi says. “And I’d love for them to get played and used. Songs are supposed to get used.”
The son
Warren Hood was just 18 when his father died of cancer, at age 49.
“Up to that point I was strictly a classical violinist,” he says.
He attended the Berklee College of Music, at which point his interests started to change.
“My dad passed, and I just dove head first into that music,” he says. “I heard some of it as a kid and just didn’t get it. But then it became something big to me. It’s my Beatles or Stones or Dylan. The same way their music influenced people all over the world, that’s the effect Uncle Walt’s Band had on me.”
Warren is based out of Austin. He’s earned a following over the years, but also early on found a built-in audience of Uncle Walt fans that had been left behind.
Hood refers to his father as “Austin’s darling,” which isn’t overstating his standing in the city. After Uncle Walt’s Band split for good, Hood became a fixture in Austin’s live music scene through the rest of the ’80s and ’90s, playing with anybody who needed a fiddler or guitarist, including Lovett, Guy Clark, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and scores of others.
He was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2001 and died that November. The following year his sole solo album, “Bon Haven,” was released.
“He was everybody’s side guy,” Warren Hood says. “And it’s funny because that’s everybody I play with now. But it’s the music I like. I guess I’m out of the loop with what the young people are playing. But it’s the music I like.”
Warren always includes some Uncle Walt’s material in his sets.
“It’s a great thing to see,” Michel says. “He plays one of those songs and instantly people start dancing.”
He’s not the only one that feels the pull of Uncle Walt’s Band. Warren’s cousin Marshall Hood grew up in Spartanburg and quickly became consumed by his uncle’s music.
The cousins have done Uncle Walt’s Band covers shows. But the opportunity to play with Ball connects them back to the source.
“Nobody sounded like them before or after,” Warren says. “They incorporated every genre so effortlessly: jazz, blues, rock, country, bluegrass, folk. If they’d gone electric in the ’70s who knows what could’ve happened because some of their stuff sounds straight up disco to me. They could sound like the Bee Gees if you put a ’70s production on it. But that’s the hallmark of a great song, isn’t it? That you can take it and do it in any style. A Beatles song works as a piano instrumental and with a symphony arrangement and with a jazz arrangement.
“Their songs belong in the Great American Songbook in my opinion. It’s a treasure chest.”
The survivor
The youngest member of Uncle Walt’s Band, Ball enjoyed the most success of the three.
“I was always an airplay guy,” he says. “And Houston was very, very good to me. My song got played over and over again in Houston.” He’s speaking about 1994 when he finally broke through at country radio. His song “Thinkin’ Problem” launched Ball’s career nationally. It reached No. 2 on the country charts, and testament to its reach broke into the pop Top 40.
Ball was 41 at the time, hardly a freshfaced rising star. But his path to success included two decades of paying his dues. He hit the country charts another nine times in the ’90s, but Nashville has a short memory.
For the time being, he’s excited about That Carolina Sound, the two sets he’s doing this Friday at McGonigel’s Mucky Duck. He’ll be joined by the Hood cousins, working through some songs that more than four decades old.
“I love that there’s still a pocket of fans out there who want to hear these songs,” he says. “Texas was so good to us. We found people who were very open to what we were doing. It’s not the same without those two guys, but I love everything they did. I love the songs Walter wrote, the way Champ played guitar. I like knowing there’s still a future for Uncle Walt’s Band.”