Writer, historian, Texan
Come and dig the Sir Doug film playing his hometown, Sunday June 5 at the South Texas Popular Culture Center, 1017 Mulberry St, San Antonio screenings at noon and 2 pm, Rosie Flores, Mitch Webb and the Swindles, and Joel Aparicio’s photo exhibit until seven pm. Come groove with us.
Join Tony Diaz and me at the Miller Outdoor Amphitheater in beautiful Hermann Park south of downtown Houston for Texas Folklife’s 27th Texas Accordion Kings and Queens
This year’s lineup: Geno Delafose and the French Rockin’ Boogie, David Lee Garza and Friends, the Melody Sisters, and the Czech Melody Masters
Everyone playing squeezebox. Songs in four languages. Everybody dancing in the same counterclockwise direction. Free. Starts 7 pm Sat June 4
link here: Crossroads of Texas Film Festival
Sir Doug & The Genuine Texas Cosmic Groove continues riding the film festival circuit, stopping in Waxahachie, just south of Dallas, on Weds evening, May 18. Sir Doug is one of several great films screening in Waxa for the fest including True Stories and Selena, plus lotsa music.
Check it out. Two other Texas screenings have been added – Sunday afternoon, June 5, at the South Texas Popular Culture Center in San Antonio, and Saturday night, June 11 at the Barnhill Center in Brenham.
Chicago’s fantabulous CIMMfest has added Sir Doug & the Genuine Texas Cosmic Groove, which will screen at the Logan Theater at 9:15 Friday April 15 followed by a Q and A.
99+ films and bands in 5 days!
Spread the word. Groove Doug into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
…from Austin to Boston
Sir Doug and the Genuine Texas Cosmic Groove has been accepted by the prestigious SALEM FILM FESTIVAL and will screen Sunday afternoon, March 6. Boston-area Doug-Heads and Groovers are now on alert. C’mon out and make a Tex-Mex party. Salem Film Fest
Sir Doug and The Genuine Texas Cosmic Groove makes its Mexican premiere on the beach of Sayulita, Nayarit on Sunday evening, January 31 to close out Festival Sayulita – details at www.festivalsayulita.com
Y’all come
thanks to Brendan Toller for this fine review of Sir Doug & the Genuine Texas Cosmic Groove MUSICFILMWEB review link
Directed by Joe Nick Patoski
USA, 2015
We haven’t run a Music Documentary Monday in a while, but when we asked filmmaker Brendan Toller about his favorites of the year, he responded with such written enthusiasm for this title – an SXSW 2015 premiere, as was his own Danny Says – that we decided on a one-off revival of our review column to share it with readers at length. Check back in a few weeks for our annual round-up of the year in music film, featuring picks from Brendan and host of other connoisseurs.
Joe Nick Patoski is a rock ‘n’ roll/Texas font, penning books on Willie Nelson, Selena, and Stevie Ray Vaughn. His bylines have appeared in The New York Times, LA Times, No Depression, et al., and he quickly rose to Variety’s “Top Documentarians to Watch in 2015″ with his directorial debut, Sir Doug and the Genuine Texas Cosmic Groove. Doug Sahm’s recordings, legacy, and inducive character are among the thrills of my life, so it was just minutes on the ground at SXSW before Patoski and I were cackling in a corner over a mess of Franklin’s barbecue. This prowess of this production from Austin-based creative team Arts+Labor was the true gem of discovery at SXSW 2015, and few music docs in this “year of the music doc” have reflected the tone and candor of their subject so well.
Doug Sahm is an indefinable character, but here goes.
At 7 he was considered San Antonio’s country music prodigy, getting a tip of the hat from Hank Williams himself. In the mid-’60s, at the suggestion of record producer Huey P. Meaux, Sahm partnered with his longtime friend, organist Augie Meyers, and Jack Barber, Frank Morin, and Johnny Perez to form the Sir Douglas Quintet. The Quintet cashed in as a fake British Invasion band with their ’65 smash “She’s About A Mover.” They traveled the country and, like not a few other Texas greats (the 13th Floor Elevators, Johnny Winter, Butthole Surfers), got busted for a few joints. Sahm’s parents mortgaged their house to get him out of jail.
As soon as he shook loose from probation, Sahm moved to San Francisco, and any remaining “redneck” roots were hippified by the LSD revolution. He took this dual sensibility back to Texas, and it defines the forces that have kept his adopted hometown of Austin weird. As his lookalike son Shawn Sahm recalls in the film, Doug was driven by the groove – a desire to keep the whirlwind of beautiful music, women, and food forever in orbit. His eclecticism and showmanship permeate his solo debut, Doug Sahm & Band (produced by Jerry Wexler and featuring contributions from Dr. John, Bob Dylan, and the Memphis Horns), but those qualities didn’t always pay in the bloated ’70s record biz (see also NRBQ). In the ’80s Sahm took the rollicking highs and lows of showbiz to Scandinavia (“Bavarian Baby”!) and Canada, returning home late in the decade to form Tex-Mex supergroup the Texas Tornados. He passed away in 1999 at the early age of 58. Fans include: Jeff Tweedy, Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Bottle Rockets, Drive-By Truckers, et al.
Like Sahm, Patoski and Arts+Labor chief Alan Berg are at heart creative-community organizers. They’ve assembled a team of Austinites that wind together beautifully shot interviews, archival stills, and rare footage and audio tapes (including an incredible reel-to-reel recorded by Sahm’s wife foreshadowing her departure from their marriage). Super-8, VHS, and HD formats are embraced and blended to stunning effect by colorist Joe Malina and director of photography Yuta Yamaguchi. Sir Doug and the Genuine Cosmic Texas Groove is infused with a thoughtfulness and heartfelt sense of humor that transcends tribute and effortlessly infects viewers with the groove: you too will be driven to discover astonishing music, love, and food, with Doug Sahm providing your spiritual soundtrack. As Sahm himself put it, “You just can’t live in Texas if you don’t have a lot of soul.”
Three big film festival screenings are coming up for the film I directed Sir Doug and the Genuine Texas Cosmic Groove
Wednesday, November 4 Sir Doug will screen at In-Edit Barcelona, the music documentary festival 
Saturday, November 7 Sir Doug will screen at the Lone Star Film Festival in Fort Worth
Friday, November 13 Sir Doug will play the Houston Cinema Arts Festival
I will be doing a Q and A after these screenings.
Mil gracias to the Mill Valley Film Festival in northern California for hosting us and screening the film on October 11-12
and mega mil gracias to the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival for hosting us and for three consecutive sold out screenings, and for the festival’s Audience Choice Award.
More screenings are coming, along with (hopefully) a distribution deal.
Longterm goal: get Doug on the nominee list for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this time next year. Here’s a link to sign the petition. Please pass it around. Groove Doug Sahm into the Rock Hall
https://docs.google.com/a/pro4use.com/forms/d/1AJdk627hiZ1dHgWo_kbzVdqCaGhxRLV130piBqC8kZI/viewform?fbzx=-2682775639320421499
Wink is a classic oil patch town that despite the steady stream of fracking trucks in and around the community, has clearly seen more hubbin’ days. Roy Orbison’s family moved to Wink when he was in junior high school. He was born in Vernon, the same hometown of Jack Teagarden, the King of the Blues Trombone, and Paul English, Willie Nelson’s drummer. The family moved to Fort Worth before moving again to Wink following the end of World War Two.
Roy quickly found his place working on the high school annual, starting in junior high, where he illustrated annuals with his sketches.
During his senior year, the Wink Wildcats were Class A state champions in Football, whose path to state Roy illustrated here
He formed his first band, the Wink Westerners in high school which became the Teen Kings when the band switched from playing western music to playing rock and roll.
Popular throughout West Texas and the South Plains, the band had their own television show in Midland and in Odessa, and backed up Slim Whitman for a spell when that entertainer found himself stranded without a backup band. The Teen Kings first recorded in Dallas for the storied Jim Beck, then made their way to Memphis, where they recorded for Sun Records, the same label that recorded the first tracks of Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, and Jerry Lee Lewis, and also recorded in Clovis, New Mexico for Norman Petty, who recorded Buddy Holly and Buddy Knox, among others.
He emerged as a solo artist under the tutelage of Fred Foster of Monument Records, who broke Roy as a singing star, taking his talent to England in 1963 where he toured with a new band called the Beatles.
Throughout his career, he never forgot where he came from.
Edith Jones moved to Wink after Roy had departed. She and her husband wanted to restore the Rig Theater next door to the museum. After that effort stalled, she’s become active in the Roy Orbison Museum and helping to organize the annual Orbison festival, which for the first time in twenty-six years, was not held in 2015. [Bands interested in appearing at Wink for 2016 should get in touch with Edith now]
Edith is a great tour guide and told some good Roy stories. She even let us try on a pair of Roy’s sunglasses, whose lenses were so coke-bottle thick, I got dizzy just putting them on.
We also bought some t shirts from past festivals and a Roy Orbison koozie. Edith graciously gave us a small sample of “Pretty Woman” perfume that was developed by Roy’s second wife and widow, Barbara, now deceased.
Edith told us about the time Carl Perkins came to the museum. He was dressed in all white and managed to not dirty himself despite the dust and the dirt that are part and parcel of the Permian Basin. Carl donated to the museum these autographs that the Beatles gave to him.
We left a donation in the jar by the door in thanks for Edith’s time and knowledge. If you go, you should too.
Thanks to a community of Doug-Heads and Groovers, the Sir Doug and the Genuine Cosmic Groove film reached its $75,000 goal to pay for music and video licensing for the film. Now we can take this movie worldwide, spread the work, and Groove Doug Sahm into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Thanks to all the backers who made this possible by jumping on board and lending a helping hand.
We’re topping it off with a Groovers Gathering at the Broken Spoke Weds July 29
followed by the first Los Angeles screening at Cinefamily Thurs July 30