Howdy people,
Tryin' to keep this thing alive by pasting some inneresting stories to fill in the spaces. The one immediately below tells of the rising success of Kym Warner and Carol Young in the Texas music scene. Seems only a couple of years ago they were playing the Inner West pubs! Guess it was only a couple of years!
Anyways, read on:
May 12, 2004, 9:15PM
For The Greencards, travel comes with the job
By MICHAEL D. CLARK
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle
It's not always easy to figure out how bands derive their names, but it is with Austin's high-energy acoustic folkies the Greencards. As their accents make clear, these Austinites are not from Austin. Or Texas. Or even the United States.
"We're from the other side of the world," says native Australian Kym Warner about the band,
which includes Eamon McLoughlin and Carol Young.
"I feel very comfortable living here in Austin though."
He's not the only one. While Young is also Australian and McLoughlin is British, the
Greencards were named the best new band of the year at the Austin Music Awards during the
South by Southwest Music Festival in March. It was recognition of the group's debut album, Movin' On, which melds modern bluegrass and Americana, as well as the following the band has gained along Sixth Street's club row. The Greencards' sound combines the flighty yet precise strings of Warner's mandolin and McLoughlin's fiddle with Young's whispered vocals. The sound is everything Texans hold
sacred in musicians like Jimmie Dale Gilmore,
Bruce Robison and Kelly Willis, and has made
the Greencards favorites not only in Austin but also at other Texas venues like Houston's
McGonigel's Mucky Duck, where the group plays
May 13.
That two Aussies would transplant themselves
to Texas and find their musical niche is quirky. That they managed to find McLoughlin
among all the other musicians in Austin is
about as likely as Los Lonely Boys relocating to Sydney. Warner feels like it was only a matter of time before the Greencards came together. All three members, who don't give their ages, were drawn to Texas because of the singer-songwriter
tradition it fostered.
"It's not that surprising because none of us
could play the music we wanted to at home,"
Warner says. "We can't (successfully) do in
Australia what we can do here."
Warner and Young came to Texas together three
years ago as accomplished professionals.
Warner was a four-time winner of the Australian National Bluegrass Mandolin Championships and had played behind Kasey Chambers (he traveled with her to Austin for SXSW in 2001). Young had hit singles back home and was named Australian independent female artist of the year in 2000 by the Country Music Association of Australia.
They lived in San Angelo and Abilene before finding Austin's music scene and McLoughlin.
The classically trained fiddle player was in town not to play music but to study politics and American studies at the University of Texas.
"We got together to have a pick, and it started coming together quickly," Warner says.
Last winter the group opened for Robison and
Willis at shows throughout Texas. The bill worked so well they recently finished a second
tour together along the East Coast. They have
already received wisdom about songwriting and
arranging from bluegrass guru Lloyd Maines,
and last month the Greencards lived a dream by
sharing a stage with Sam Bush, Gillian Welch,
Vince Gill and other country and American
musicians at the four-day roots festival, Merlefest, in North Carolina.
"We've obviously known about Merlefest for a
long time," Warner says. "I don't know if we can hang there, but we were there."
These expats are certainly hanging around
Austin quite prominently.
Posted by rayzon1
at 11:53 PM EADT
