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.
