Laugh tracks

The plain fun of the Austin Lounge Lizards

by David Ritchie

The Austin Lounge Lizards have an arsenal of talent that would make any serious band jealous. But the Texas-based band are anything but serious. Much like Frank Zappa, the Lizards have the unashamed ability to have a rip-roaring good time with satirical music. And because they're such good musicians, they're able to expose the foibles of our culture using whatever country style applies, from honky-tonk weepers to ballads to bluegrass.

Musical comedy is a fine line to walk, but the Lounge Lizards have been doing it skillfully for almost 20 years. Their songs hold up much better on CD than someone like Weird Al, simply because the songs are anchored by great musical performances (and their humor is considerably more literate and timeless). With the release of their seventh album, Employee of the Month (Sugar Hill), they prove there are plenty of subjects left to poke fun at and weaknesses to expose. But still, there's little doubt that the Austin Lounge Lizards (like any comedy) are best appreciated live, where spontaneity rules each performance (they play Franklin's Circle of Friends Coffeehouse this Sunday). As their Web site proclaims (until they get around to typing them in), "Lyrics??? . . . Who needs lyrics? How often have you seen us stick to them?"

If you do see the Austin Lounge Lizards, you're sure to hear one of their oldest and finest songs: "Saguaro" is the true story of David Grundman, an Arizona man who, for kicks, fired two shotgun blasts into a giant saguaro cactus that was more than 100 years old. The best writer couldn't come up with the kind of irony that followed, as he was killed by a 23-foot section of the cactus that fell on him. In the Lizards' hands, the tale becomes a gunfighter ballad of man against monster: "He crossed a small arroyo, the sun was in his eyes/He was looking for the leader, he'd know him by his size/When all at once upon a ridge the squinting gunman saw/Twenty-seven feet of succulent challenging his draw." Guitarist Conrad Deisler is proud to say that it's a big favorite of the organization Earth First!.

There are occasional political numbers like "Ballad of Ronald Reagan" and "Gingrich the Newt" that are too well written to be forgotten just because the subjects have faded away. But few of their songs are explicitly political. Mostly, their music is social commentary or just plain fun. A short drive up Interstate-35 from Austin will reveal the source of one of their most beloved songs: the town of Pflugerville, Texas. The song starts off like any number of murder ballads about a guy killing a girl, but winds up being a homoerotic, masochistic love story: "My flogger was fine in Pflugerville/Oh how I loved the pain!/I pfled with my pflogger from Pflugerville."

Deisler reports that the little Texas town had a pretty good sense of humor. "They've got an annual gathering called the Deutschen Pfest in early May," he says. "For several years we played that, and the people would all come out with their cans of beer and just sing along with the song."

"Old Blevins" is another honky-tonk number whose title came straight off a road sign along I-35: the exit for Old Blevins Road.

"You hear all these country songs about people going into honky-tonks at emotional lows in their lives, and meeting this incredibly wise person who straightens them totally out, and makes their lives wonderful again. And, y'know, you just think about that for a second and it's ridiculous, cuz who're you gonna meet in a bar?"

The character in the song has nothing to impart but unintelligible gibberish, which is a lesson in itself: "And my memories of that evening fuel an inner, mounting fear/That I might become Old Blevins anywhere that they sell beer."

The group originally developed around Deisler and Hank Card, who've been writing songs together since 1976, when they were both history majors at Princeton. They went to law school in Austin, where they continued to pursue music. With the addition of other players, including Tom Pittman, they began playing local dates in and around Austin. Their songs are very intelligent social commentary along the lines of Tom Lehrer, and their musicianship is superb. The band now pull off four- and five-part vocal harmonies, with Deisler still holding down the acoustic lead-guitar duties, Card helping out on vocals and guitar, Pittman playing banjo and pedal steel, Richard Bowden on mandolin and fiddle, and Boo Resnick on bass.

When asked if they've ever been tempted to play a straight-ahead bluegrass show, Deisler replies simply, "No. Back in '91 we went to the International Bluegrass Music Association convention, and we showcased, and we had a lot of debate. We drove up to Kentucky; and the whole time we were trying to decide, well, y'know, should we try and temper our material and fit in, and we finally decided that no, we're gonna just do what we do. We did `The Dark Side of the Moon' and `Jesus Loves Me, But He Can't Stand You.' Somebody told us that Doyle Lawson [a gospel bluegrass artist] got up and walked out at that point. And so, we've stayed members of IBMA, but we haven't been asked to showcase again." On the other hand, the Lizards are invited to play a lot of the non-traditional bluegrass festivals like Winterhawk (they'll be there again this year on July 16th).

"When we do a bluegrass-style arrangement, we try and be as true to the form as we can: the way we arrange the harmonies, and the way we use different instruments. But we're just a little too weird intellectually to try and masquerade as a straight-bluegrass band for a whole gig." Clearly, the audience is the beneficiary of that philosophy; you can expect to hear every style of country and bluegrass simultaneously revered and skewered during their show.

Their newest album, Employee of the Month, contains perhaps their most ambitious unmasking: "Stupid Texas Song" takes on the infamous pride of their home state. "By God we're so darn proud to be from Texas -- yahoo!/Even of our pride we're proud and we're proud of that pride, too/Our pride about our home state is the proudest pride indeed/And we're proud to be Americans, until we can secede." Next thing you know, they'll be taking on the world's only superpower, the good old USA.

Austin Lounge Lizards play at 6:30 p.m. on May 16 at the Circle of Friends Coffeehouse with opener John Forster. Reservations are recommended. Call 528-2541.