HtownTransfer: 2015

I will be honest. I had only heard a few Cowboy Mouth songs before seeing them live in person last night, and therefore I can only provide a novice perspective on their performance at the Houston House of Blues. Any true Cowboy Mouth fans can feel free to provide a more expert take on their show.

After seeing the band, I felt compelled to write a review for this blog and share my experience.

First off, I arrived to the venue at 8:30 p.m. since the show was billed to start at that time. I’ve been to a million concerts and none of them ever start on time, but the Houston House of Blues (HOB) is usually pretty good at starting close to schedule. Not this time. I grabbed a beer and found a spot near the stage while a blast of frigid A/C cooled me off from walking in the Houston humidity from the Metro rail to the HOB. I was alone since my wife was working, so I sat there and followed the Sporting KC versus FC Dallas MLS match on my phone. The bartender had told me that the opening act would come on at 9:30 and Cowboy Mouth would probably hit the stage around 10:30. I just prayed my phone battery wouldn’t die before the band came on so I could take some pics.

Around 9:00 p.m., someone started passing out some red spoons to others in the crowd. I had no idea why, but they approached me and asked if I wanted one. I asked what they were for and the guy gave me a puzzled look and said they were “for the song”. Ok. I took the spoon and went back to checking the soccer score.

At 9:30, an opening artist came on stage. It was weird because no one had set up any sound equipment or checked the mic’s. Just some dude walking out with an acoustic guitar. I thought he said his name was Josh Roberts but I couldn’t find him on the internet. He wasn’t bad though, but in the tradition of horrible Houston concert crowds, you could barely hear him over the chatter. Idiots.

He played a 45-minute set, gave out 2 CD’s to lucky crowd members, then walked off. I bought another beer, went outside to stare at the Houston Rockets home stadium and defrost a little (the A/C was freezing), then went back to my spot by the stage. A guy came up to me seeing my red spoon and asked if I had an extra. I thought that was weird. I mean, when would you ever in your lifetime have to ask another dude for a red spoon, outside of a Target company picnic? I referred him to some others I had seen passing some out. He got a spoon and gave me the most enthusiastic “Thanks!” I have ever received in my life. This guy was overjoyed at being handed a red piece of plastic.

Since I was still puzzled by this, I texted my brother and he said it had something to do with a song. I was saving my phone battery and decided not to google it, but a guy standing next to me was wearing a Texas Tech hat (which is where I worked last year) and holding a bag of red spoons, so I asked him what I was supposed to do with the spoon. He said “Just wait for the song! You will know!” Um, ok.

I decided to close out my bar tab lest I forget, and also because I only planned to stay for a few songs. After closing it out, I went back to my spot under the A/C blast and waited for the band to hit the stage. At a little bit after 10:30, they came on stage with a drum set on a platform right in the front and 3 microphone stands on the side of that. The band started playing a warm-up beat and everyone was cheering. Then the real fun started…

The singer of the band, Fred LeBlanc, was also the drummer, which is pretty interesting. Additionally, he looked a lot like Jon Laughran, the cross-eyed linebacker from the Adam Sandler movie Waterboy. He immediately got the crowd pumped by talking about how awesome it was to be in Texas. Then he told everyone to hug 2-3 people around them because we were gonna have a good time and we were all friends. And crazily enough, everyone was hugging each other. Possible solution for World Peace?

They launched into a song that just got everyone clapping and moving, and even created banter with the crowd in the middle of the song by encouraging people to clap along. Later, one of their conversations (I forget the context) was punctuated with the statement “Texas is better than the Middle East!”

They also interacted with the folks in the balcony above the floor area, and found out it was one girl’s birthday. They got the entire crowd to sing her Happy Birthday and after everyone flubbed on her name (Emma Rose), Fred made us all sing it again so we could get her name right. Hilarious.

In the middle of the set, they started talking about how they were professionals and had a show the next night in Louisiana (their home state) and talked about how they needed to save their voices for that show but who cares, they would worry about it tomorrow. It was great fun, and I haven’t even talked about their music yet, which was tremendous and energetic. It is like a combination of rock, pop, country, alternative, and rockabilly. They played some of their old songs from the 1990’s and some songs from their most recent album (2014). They even played rockabilly covers of Stand by Me and Rock Me Baby by BB King.

At around 11:45, they started a drum beat and all of a sudden everyone got out their red spoons. I was glad I had stayed this long because I had originally thought I would leave within 20 minutes (I got free tickets so don’t judge me). Guess I would finally see what the spoons were about. The song is called Everyone Loves Jill and basically every line in the song incudes the word “red.” Some guy saw that I only had one spoon and gave me about 15 to hold.

At some point the band shouted “she eats her red cake with my favorite red spoon” and everyone started tossing their red spoons towards the stage. The best way to describe it is the scene in the movie 300 when the Persians “blot out the sun” with arrows, only instead of deadly weapons filling the sky, it was cheap red spoons.

I was holding my phone up with my right hand trying to capture the moment on video (see below) and at the same time toss 15 red spoons onto the stage with my left hand. I probably launched all 15 spoons into the back of someone’s head but NO ONE CARED because we were all having a great time. And before the band was even done playing, some guy came out on stage and started sweeping up the spoons (my guess is there were enough spoons for the entire Duggar clan to use at a family picnic). The guy even started sweeping the spoons back towards the crowd and people just LOVED having red spoons swept into their faces. I got a decent video of what it looked like and all I can say is that if you get a chance to see Cowboy Mouth live, DO IT.

I haven’t posted in a while on here, but that is because I have yet again been too busy experiencing all that Houston has to offer. So I would like to give y’all a quick update and show you some things that I have seen around town. Also, a quick disclaimer about the new photo on the heading for this blog: I grew an identical beard to James Harden’s of the Houston Rockets, my brother from another mother, and thought you might enjoy seeing said beard.

My last post was in October. Since then, I have attended 4 Rockets games (they went 4-0 in those games), attended the Astros Opening Day (they won 2-0), took a road trip to New Orleans, became a member at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church, saw the Christmas lights at the Zoo, checked out the Rothko Chapel and Menil Collection (free stuff!!!), took a road trip to Corpus Christi, ate at 2 different private tents at the World Championship BBQ Cookoff, attended several days of the Houston Rodeo, walked around the Space Center, checked out the Beer Can House, and saw the Astrodome turn 50 years old. And that barely touches the surface of the Exploring-Houston-iceberg.

My bucket list includes:

The Heights

San Jacinto Monument

Underbelly

St. Arnold's/Karbach/8th Wonder brewery tour

Little Matt's near Rice Village

Art Car Parade (just missed it this year)

Texans game (In 2015 they play my hometown Kansas City Chiefs!)

Pasadena Strawberry Fest

Below are some other neat things I have seen: