Southern Cultured

David Ball is South Carolina's answer to the Texas two-step

by David Ritchie

David Ball may not hail from Texas, but he can two-step with the best. But life could have turned out very differently for the Spartansburg,

South Carolina, native had Nashville been ready for him in 1971. Yet it was in Austin where he found receptive ears. And once he'd settled there, it was Texas honky-tonk dance music that turned his hears. When he arrives this Friday at Indian Ranch, Ball will see if New Englanders share his love of the Texas two-step and his own brand of honky-tonk tunes.

A guitarist in several junior-high bands, Ball switched to upright bass toward the end of high school when he heard his classmate Deschamps "Champ" Hood playing guitar with the slightly older Walter Hyatt (also an accomplished guitarist). "Walter and Champ had about 12 or 15 original songs that I just thought was the best stuff I'd ever heard." Hyatt already knew of Doc Watson and of other folk tunes, and Ball convinced the pair to let him join. As Uncle Walt's Band, the three found common interest in New Orleans jazz and blues and all manner of folk and country styles.

They made several trips to Nashville before moving there for nine months in the early '70s. But Nashville wasn't ready for an acoustic band whose best description was "eclectic." Down in Austin, they found what they were looking for -- a more open environment. They soon had a devoted following, including a waiting-to-be-discovered Lyle Lovett, who opened often for them. Adding more country and bluegrass styles to the mix, Uncle Walt's Band recorded three independent releases starting in 1974 (reissued, in 1991, by Sugar Hill as two CDs).

Meanwhile, each member of the trio began branching out. Hood is, to this day, one of the most sought-after session musicians in Austin. Hyatt embarked on a solo career (helped out by an impressive roster of Austin luminaries that included both of his bandmates). And Ball fell for the Texas dancehalls and the traditional sounds of fiddles and pedal steel. As late-'70s new wave replaced Hank Williams and Bob Wills on Austin radio, Uncle Walt's Band became a bar act (something they never intended to be) and were courted by folk venues (something with which they were reluctant to be identified). So Ball made his way north again.

Having lived in Austin (what he calls one of the most beautiful places in the country), Ball had no desire to go back to Tennessee right away. He settled on Isle of Palms, a little barrier island off the South Carolina coast where he began writing songs and sending tapes off to Nashville. Four years later, the stars began to align for him -- country radio was moving away from pop-crossover artists toward more hard-country sounds. Randy Travis succeeded with several originals, and Ricky Skaggs was recording traditional versions of classic songs that Ball had played for years. "I thought, `Well heck, y'know, I might as well get on to Nashville and see if I can't get my licks in' . . . cuz it had kinda gone from Kenny Rogers to somethin' a little more down to earth."

Ball considered the lyrics to Travis's "On the Other Hand" especially impressive. "I think there's such a beauty in being able to do somethin' simple and yet complicated and deep, and that's sorta hard to do." He began writing in earnest, and it all paid off when he signed a publishing contract, and Warner Bros. released his debut album, Thinkin' Problem, in 1994. The album peaked at No. 6 on the Top Country Albums chart with the title cut reaching No. 2 and netting him his first gold record. Ball's music is an updated version of the old styles he was so infatuated with (he describes himself as liking anything that's old-cars or -music). On his second release, Starlite Lounge, Ball continued to present traditional country with contemporary production, but the album didn't perform as well, peaking at No. 44.

Play (released in 1999) is Ball's first album in three years. It's an energetic and lyrical neo-honky-tonk dance record with six of the 10 songs coproduced by Ball himself. The remaining four were left to hit-producer Don Cook (Brooks & Dunn, Wade Hayes, and the Mavericks). The album's first single, "Watching My Baby Not Coming Back," has a great melody perfect for two-stepping with nice pedal steel and fiddle breaks, but it's marred by Cook's use of unimaginatively typical echo-laden 2/4 arena rock drumming. It's the more stripped-down self-produced songs that stand out on the album: originals like "A Grain of Salt" and "Lonely Town" or like Jim Lauderdale and Melba Montgomery's beautiful and understated "What Do You Say to That." The new single from Play, "Hasta Luego, My Love," is the strongest of the Don Cook-produced songs, one that would've been right at home on the Mavericks' Grammy-winning Music for All Occasions.

Ball's vocals place him comfortably in the company of George Jones, Merle Haggard, and Webb Pierce (as well as contemporaries Dwight Yoakam and Randy Travis). Sadly, however, country radio, since Thinkin' Problem, has become as stale and devoid of hard or traditional country as it was before Travis. "It's back like it was -- in a way, back in the '70s and '80s -- when I really didn't identify with it. There's some good stuff, I guess, but it looks pretty bleak out there to me."

In a nod toward Austin and home, Ball dedicated Play to the memory of Walter Hyatt, whose 1996 death in the Florida Everglades Valujet crash was felt by the entire Austin music community. Hyatt was a mysterious person, unlike anyone Ball had ever met. "Y'know, you never really knew exactly what he was -- he was hard to read. I always related to him in musical terms. And, of course, music is something that, I think, is mysterious. It's hard to know where it comes from, and Walter was just my favorite songwriter that I'd ever heard -- and still is."

For now, Ball is hoping to score another hit, but he confesses that more than anything he always wanted to pack places like Texas's historic Gruene Hall. (His first question to me about Indian Ranch: "They have a dancefloor?") "In a way I still haven't done what I always wanted to do, cuz once you have a big hit in Nashville, well, then you hit the road. . . . I wanted to have a dance band that could play Gruene Hall and get 500 people in there, y'know what I mean?" he laughs. "When you have a big hit like `Thinkin' Problem', why, Gruene Hall's too small -- I can't make expenses to play there . . . but that was always my goal. I like the fiddles and steel and drums, and, y'know, I was the bluegrass singer in Uncle Walt's Band."