Thursday, April 10, 2014

Donna Gable Hatch & The Kerrville Daily Times Have Done It Again!

Today has been great—thanks to Donna Gable Hatch and The Kerrville Daily Times great article today about the Concert for Utopia, on Sunday. Kinky, Tony and I love Donna and The Kerrville Daily Times for helping out our rescue ranch and we cannot thank them enough. Here's Donna's latest article about the Concert for Utopia.



Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel, Billy Joe Shaver headline fundraiser


By Donna Gable Hatch 
Features Editor

In 1966, Kinky Friedman and legendary honky tonk hero Billy Joe Shaver became lifelong friends. Over the years, whenever Friedman stepped up to help raise funds for a worthy cause, he turned to his old friend, and Shaver had his back.
“Twenty years ago, we did a benefit for the historic Arcadia Theater on Water Street. The show was a sellout, and it was just great,” said Friedman, a best-selling novelist, humorist and singer-songwriter. “Well, Billy Joe was on stage, and he said, ‘Before I go on with the show, I have to thank the man who is the reason I’m here today.’ Well, I stood up, and I was making my way to the stage, you know, thinking he was going to thank me. I get my foot up on the first step, and he said ‘and that man is Jesus Christ.’ Well, I felt like an idiot, and the audience laughed their heads off. I felt about 2 inches tall and slinked back to my seat.”
The dynamic duo is at it again, this time to raise money for Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch, an animal sanctuary co-founded in 1998 by Friedman, Nancy Parker-Simons and Tony Simons.
The Concert for Utopia is at 3:30 p.m. Sunday, April 13, at the Kathleen C. Cailloux City Center for the Performing Arts, 910 Main St.
“I’d do anything for Kinky, anytime, anywhere,” Shaver said. “I dearly love Kinky. He’s a good ol’ boy.”
The fundraising concert also features nine-time Grammy winner Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel — dubbed the Kings of Texas Swing — and singer-songwriter Chet O’Keefe, who performed with blues master and rock and roll pioneer Bo Diddley. Also on the bill is Austin-based Jesse Dayton, a honky tonk-rockabilly artist who has performed with Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings.
Friedman and radio host Gordon “Big G” Ames of radio station KERV-AM 1230’s Big G’s Texas Roadshow will co-host with a little help from Friedman’s longtime friend, Little Jewford. Born Jeff Shelby, he is an accomplished pianist and comedian — as well as the keyboardist in the original country western band, Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys. He’s been described as “a Liberace and Victor Borge cocktail, with a twist of the Marx Brothers”
“He’s a Jew, and he drives a Ford,” Friedman quipped of his friend’s moniker.
Friedman said longtime friend and supporter of the ranch, Ruth Buzzi — comedienne and actress of “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” fame — also will be in the house. Buzzi and her husband, Kent Perkins, are “pen sponsors at the ranch,” Friedman said.
Concert tickets start at $45, and all proceeds support Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch, 966 Echo Hill Road, which is located on the 365-acre Echo Hill Ranch in Medina. The ranch has been in the Friedman family for more than six decades.
“There will be absolutely no politics at the benefit,” said Friedman, who faces cattle farmer Jim Hogan in a May 27 Democratic primary runoff for the position of agriculture commissioner of Texas. “And Big G and I will keep our remarks brief. This night is all about great music and raising money to save animals and support the work we do at the rescue ranch.”
Good friends, great music
Ray Benson, frontman for Asleep at the Wheel since 1969, and Friedman have been friends for 42 years.
“Whenever I see Kinky’s name come up on the caller ID, I hide,” Benson said with a laugh. “But eventually he tracks me down, and this is what happens.”
Benson said he’s always happy to saddle up and ride in to help animals in need.
“I’ve rescued a number of dogs, and I love dogs. We have corgis, and there’s a lady who does a corgi rescue in north Texas, and she calls when she gets one, and we become their forever home,” he said. “As a matter of fact, just before I called you, a new one we rescued just peed in my guitar case, and I had to clean it up. We’re dog lover and cat lovers around here, and we’ll do anything we can to help.”
Benson said he will do his famous hat trick at the concert — he balances his hat on the tip of his nose and flips it back on his head.
“Kinky does love that hat trick,” he said. “I also do a bit of juggling, but that’s another story.”
Benson said he’s excited about sharing Asleep at the Wheel’s new band member, Katie Holmes, with the Kerrville audience.
“Katie is our new fiddler and girl singer, and she just started two months ago. She’s just fabulous,” he said.
The Kerrville audience also will be the first to hear live performances off Benson’s new solo album “A Little Piece,” which was released earlier this year.
“I did a song with Willie Nelson on that one, and I’ll do that song live, and we’re working on a new Asleep at the Wheel-Bob Wills album, and we’ll do a few of the songs we recorded for that,” Benson said.
In addition, “An Asleep at the Wheel-Billy Joe Shaver show is very rare,” he said. “We’ve known the boy for 40 years or more, and we don’t play together a whole lot, so this is quite a show. Billy Joe and I go way back, and we’ll do one of the songs that we cut, ‘Way Down Texas Way.’”
Benson said he hopes the audience enjoys the show as much as he knows the performers will.
"I hope the good folks from the Hill Country will come out and join us for a good time and enjoy the hell out of it,” he said.
Friedman said the music industry has recently lost some great artists — George Jones and Ray Price, to name two — “but we will have on stage some of the finest musicians in country music today. Asleep at the Wheel is the last great swing band of the modern era. Billy Joe, as Willie Nelson says, is Texas’ greatest songwriter. As far as pure songwriter and someone who’s currently writing great stuff — and his recent stuff is brilliant — I’d say Willie’s right. He’s a real poet.”
“Chet comes from the great Northwest, and people are really going to enjoy him,” Friedman said. “I think he’s about the best singer-songwriter I’ve heard this side of Woody Guthrie.”
Dayton is a native of Beaumont, which named a block of a street George Jones Place in homage to Jones, who moved to the city when he was 11.
“Jesse is going to do a salute to George Jones. He sounds so much like George, it will make you cry. They’re both Beaumonsters.”
Shaver, who in 2006 was inducted into the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame, also was honored in 2007 by the Americana Music Association with a Lifetime Achievement Award in Songwriting.
He’s known as the songwriters’ songwriter, and his work has been covered by such musical luminaries as Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash.
His string of hits include “I’m Just An Old Chunk Of Coal,” “Live Forever,” “When the Fallen Angels Fly,” “Georgia on a Fast Train,” “Ride Me Down Easy,” “Old Five & Dimers Like Me,” “(Just Because) You Ask Me To” and “Sweet Mama,” among many others.
Shaver wrote 90 percent of Waylon Jennings’ 1973 “Honky Tonk Heroes” album, which was the genesis of the country outlaw movement and changed the face of country music.
“I wrote 10 of the 11 songs on that album, and Chet Atkins was so mad at me, because it was so different,” Shaver said. “It was the first outlaw stuff, and Chet didn’t like me one bit, because he thought it was gonna mess everything up. Well, it turned out OK,” Shaver said. “Of course, it was very helpful to have someone like Waylon do the songs, because the songs are so much bigger than me. He was one of the greatest singers who ever lived.”
Shaver said he’ll perform his old, crowd-pleasing classics, but he also will give the audience a taste of his latest work from his yet-unnamed album.
“I’ve got a new album coming out in June, and I’ll play a few songs off of it,” Shaver said. “A single will be out soon, and it’s called ‘It’s Hard to be An Outlaw Who Ain’t Wanted Anymore.’ I gotta say, it’s a really great song.”
Shaver pulls no punches when it comes to pouring his life into his music.
“I write the truth,” he said. “It’s real easy to do that. I guess I was meant to be a songwriter; all kind of crazy stuff keeps happening to me. All I do is report it.”
Shaver said he hopes he can help put a person in every seat at the Cailloux.
“I have the same kind of heart Kinky has for these dogs,” said Shaver, who shares his life with a shih tzu named Lucy Lou and a pit bull named Honey Bee.
“One time, I found a dog, a pit bull, up by the capitol building, and it had one leg that looked like it was near torn off in a fight. She was a good dog, but she couldn’t be in a pen with another dog,” he said. “Well, I took her out to Utopia, and she was there for a while. It happened that a Vietnam vet, who had his leg knocked off, well, he came to Utopia, and he and that dog just fell in love. It was real heartwarming.”
That particular dog, he said, “never would have stood a chance someplace else. It would have been put down. But not at Utopia. That dog had a fighting chance to have a good life, thanks to the rescue ranch, and it ended up with a war hero.”
That’s what this concert is all about, he said. “It’s about raising money for a place that helps dogs find the people who need them.”

If You Go
➤ What: Concert for Utopia
➤ When: 3:30 p.m. Sunday, April 13
➤ Where: Kathleen C. Cailloux City Center for the Performing Arts, 910 Main St.
➤ Details: The concert features Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel, honky tonk hero Billy Joe Shaver, Jesse Dayton and Chet O’Keefe
➤ Tickets: Start at $45
➤ Info: For tickets, call 896-9393 or visit www.caillouxtheater.com

Before I finish writing this, I want to let you know that today has also been great, because Fay is here!
Y'all have a great day!

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