The Gobblers Knob

The Next Big Thing….real BIG!

You know that annoying guy in the next cubicle, dorm, or apartment who thinks that anything good can ONLY come from Texas? Or how ’bout the guy at every show you go to that insists he saw Randy Rogers and Pat Green back before they “sold out” (they didn’t), and therefore is an expert on all things Texas Music?  Well, you can be that guy in a year or two if you go out and do what I did today.  I went to Shiner Sunday at Love & War (Plano) to catch The Bois D’Arcs.  It is likely that you have at least heard of them and their song “Dead and Gone” or even “Wasted” (my personal fave), since they are played fairly regualrly on 95.3 KHYI.  As of now, they are a regional band playing mainly North Texas with a few Hill Country stops here and there.  I happen to believe, after witnessing their rocking live show in the hotter-than-I-thought-it-was-going to-be-Texas-heat, that they are the next regional act, and as a result, one of the first bands since the Okie groups CCRagweed, Jason Boland & Great Divide to break out and carve out an identity as a rockin’, roadhouse, honky-tonkin’ crew that represents the best of Texas Country.  Unfortunately, Shiner Sunday was populated by a sparser crowd than typical for a bill that contained not one, but two acts that feature prominently on The Range’s playlist (Kevin Deal was the headliner of a bill that could’ve easily been flip-flopped).  Yes, the songs that were featured in their live set were classic “Country-Drunk Rock” (I just coined this term actually -  “Drunk Rock”: consists of up-tempo songs that use drinkin’, killin’, and losin’ as the central themes), but the band posesses multiple other aspects that will help catapult them to stardom.  For beginners, they have a bass player (Joseph McCoy) who smoked what looked to be a high-quality and very large stogie (not cigarette) throughout the entire set (awesome!).  And they have a melody-singin’, arm-flailin’ drum player (Ian Desmuke) who can easily open for the band as a comedian with his jokes about the height of the mike stand and lack of crowd size.  Blend the afforementioned ingredients with sharp songwriting (Lead Singer Shayne Wimmer), sizzling guitar licks (no gimmicks there, the lead guitarist Chris Stewart is phenomenal) and years of putting the sound out on the road, and you have a band that’s as hot as the cigar ashes that fall from the Bass Player’s stogie!

 The Bois D’Arcs - Wasted