San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Augie Meyers back to old stompin’ ground
Music legend to lead a band at Floore’s for first time in decades
Augie Meyers first played at John T. Floore Country Store in 1955 or ’56, when the admission was 50 cents.
George Chambers beat him to the Helotes hotspot by a few years.
Chambers started at the Family Night & Free Dance on Sundays at age 13 in
1952, when he and his band members earned a few bucks each.
While the paths of the two San Antonio music legends crossed over the decades, and they sat in with each other on occasion, they’ll meet again in a big way on Saturday in a show billed as Augie Meyers’ Country Dance (Back to His Roots) Featuring an All Star Band.
George Chambers & The Country Gentlemen will open at 8:30 p.m.
Known for his distinctive and influential Vox Continental organ sound, which combines Tex-Mex and rock, Meyers, 79, was a founding member of the
Sir Douglas Quintet, the Tex-Mex band that caught on during the British invasion with hits such as “Mendocino” and “She’s About a Mover.” He also was part of the Texas Tornados, the Grammy-winning Tex-Mex supergroup that included Sir Douglas Quintet frontman Doug Sahm, country star Freddy Fender and conjunto accordion virtuoso Flaco Jimenez.
He performed on Bob Dylan’s albums “Time Out of Mind” and “Love and Theft” and with the likes of Willie Nelson, John Hammond, Raul Malo, Tom Waits, Vince Gill, Tom
Jones and Jerry Lee Lewis.
Chambers played Floore’s Sunday dances for years, with Nelson when he was a regular there in his early days, and went on to open for or play or record with a who’s who of country stars, including George Strait, Charley Pride, the
Gatlin Brothers, Johnny Bush and Darrell McCall.
“I haven’t played at Floore’s with my band since the 1970s, when I had Lord August & The Visions of Light,” Meyers said. “Doug and I played there and sat in with others, though. I’m looking forward to it.”
The lineup of his all-star band for the show will be:
Bassist Jack Barber, an original member of the Sir Douglas Quintet and the Texas Tornados.
Drummer Ernie Durawa, a major figure on the Austin scene who played with the Texas Tornados and Delbert McClinton.
Pedal steel guitarist Jerry Blanton, a longtime member of George Chambers & the Country Gentlemen who wrote Nelson’s sixth single, “San Antonio.”
Fiddler Ron Knuth, who has played with Meyers, Nelson, Bush and scores of others.
Guitarist Claude “Butch” Morgan, who opened for Nelson the third Saturday of the month for a year at
Floore’s while the Redheaded Stranger was getting started in Texas and went on to front the Buckboard Boogie Boys, the Blast and H!X.
“We’re going to play some old fiddle and steel country, some of my country originals and some Tex-Mex,” said Meyers, who has recorded a number of country albums, including “Country,” “Loves Lost and Found” and “When You Used to Be Mine.”
“I started playing country music many years ago, but it’s the old country music,” he said. “I cut a country record and went to some major labels in Nashville.
“They said it was good, but it sounds old, like Hank Williams and Ray Price. They want Kenny Chesney and Keith Urban.
“You win some and lose quite a few. That’s why I have my own record label. I tell myself thank you — you just do what you do. I sell quite a bit on CD Baby.”
Meyers’ schedule is packed. He just returned from a European tour with a backup band that includes the original guitarist, bassist and drummer from ABBA, the Swedish superstar pop group of the 1970s and ’80s.
“They’re all in the mid-70s, but they’re still good pickers and players,” he said.
Upcoming shows include Sept. 6 at Riley’s Tavern with Roy Head, the country and rock singer from Three Rivers who scored an R&B hit in the mid-1960s with the uptempo “Treat Her Right.”
He also will be among the Texas musicians on floats Nov. 29 at the Ford Holiday River Parade on the River Walk with grand marshal Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top. He’s also teaming up with Jimenez for a new album that will be released after Christmas.
“We have 12 songs cut, a couple of Flaco’s originals and four or five of my originals,” he said. “It sounds like Tornado music, Tex-Mex and conjunto stuff. We don’t have a name for it yet.”
On Feb. 16, Meyers will depart on the 10th annual T. Gozney Thornton’s TexMex Fandango Cruise.
In between, he’s still writing his autobiography and coming across anecdotes, such as the one he was reminded of on a Canadian tour last month, when a reporter asked about an American group that rented motorcycles in 1965 and crashed on a woman’s lawn.
“I said, that sounds like me and Doug. That was 54 years ago. We were going too fast around a corner,” Meyers said.
Chambers recalled a story from the 1960s about Meyers, too.
“He came into Jerry Blanton’s steel guitar shop on Zarzamora Street and said he had a hit for me written by Doug Haywood, and he’s a straight hat,” Chambers said. “I said what’s a straight hat? He said like that guy on the oatmeal box (Quaker Oats).”
Chambers recorded Haywood’s “Ding Dong Howdy,” and the song became one of his regional hits alongside “Walk Another Mile,” “The Ribbon” and “Marie.”
At Floore’s, where he hasn’t played for more than a decade, Chambers plans to play songs from his albums unless he gets a request.
“And if I don’t know it, you get to sing it,” he said.
Chambers said he doesn’t recall the name of his band members — all fellow students at North Side High School, now John Marshall — from those early days at Floore’s. The Country Gentlemen name came along in the late 1950s.
He had a knack for picking great players.
Nelson hired bassist David Zettner, who was drafted in 1968, and then Bee Spears, who played bass with him for 44 years.
Charley Pride hired bassist Preston Buchanan.
McCall took drummer Larry Roberson off his hands.
A biology teacher from 1962-’93 at Southwest and Holmes high schools, Chambers never let teaching get in the way of music, even when he had a regular gig in Houston on Wednesday nights.
One of his students was future singer-songwriter Steve Earle, who gave him a never-recorded song, “Singing Them Songs About Mexico,” in 1974.
“He called about a year ago and said why don’t you and Johnny Bush record it so I can play it on my SiriusXM show,” Chambers said.
So they did, along with Knuth and other sidemen.
Chambers stays busy with solo shows, conventions, private parties and regular gigs at El Chaparral in Helotes, La Cabana in Schertz and William Street Depot in Tarpley.
“I haven’t done a dance hall in a while,” he said. “Playing at Floore’s will be like going home.”