Ever since BR5-49 signed with Arista Records last year, there’s been speculation about the effect that the deal would have on the band and the Lower Broadway honky-tonk scene they helped revitalize. In the first place, how could a studio recording, especially one under the direction of an outside producer, capture the magic of the group’s live shows at Robert’s Western Wear? And how would the demands of celebrity—the touring, the pressure to sell records, the hungry mouths of lawyers, publicists and a management company—change the good-natured guys from 3 Doors Down? In other words, how long would it be before BR5-49 left Lower Broadway behind, creating an enormous void in what is arguably the city’s most exciting traditional country music revival of the past 20 years?
Perhaps to quell doubt arising from questions like these, last week the group released a live EP, BR5-49 Live From Robert’s, several months in advance of their studio debut. They also decided to celebrate the event with a midnight record-release party at the Ernest Tubb Record Shop downtown, where they were surrounded mostly by familiar faces from across the street at Robert’s. From the group’s insatiable tip jar—into which Robert’s matriarch Mattie Gates fittingly stuffed the first dead president—to the eclectic mix of honky-tonk old-timers and ersatz bohemians, the band’s in-store performance was tailored for no one so much as their Lower Broadway friends and family.
And yet, for a show designed to promote a record of mostly original compositions, BR5-49’s covers of two country songs recorded some 50 years ago—Floyd Tillman’s “Drivin’ Nails in My Coffin” and Bob Wills’ “Right or Wrong”—revealed as much about their current outlook as anything they did all evening. “Drivin’ Nails,” done as an encore, was perhaps the group’s way of acknowledging that their shot at the big time may mark the beginning of the end of two unforgettable years at 416 Broadway.
“Right or Wrong” was more assertive and optimistic. In the hands of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, the tune is a straightforward declaration of unconditional love. But, as BR5-49’s Gary Bennett attacked its chorus for the second time, singing the lines “In your heart please just remember/Right or wrong I’m still in love with you,” the song sounded more like the group’s way of telling the Arista representatives in the crowd that their Robert’s audience will always come first.
Singer Chuck Mead even confirmed as much when I spoke with him at a second record release party at Tower Records the following evening. “That’s true,” he said. “You can say that because we are gonna stick with our fans. That’s why we had to do Ernest Tubb. We did that first because that’s part of the street.”
BR5-49 won’t be down on “the street” as much during the upcoming months as they take their hillbilly thing to national and international audiences. But, insists Mead, the group has no intention of leaving Robert’s behind. “We’ll play Robert’s whenever we come to town,” he says. “We’re supposed to go to Europe in June, but we’ll be back in July. Whenever we’re not on the road, we’ll be down at Robert’s. We’ve been telling ourselves all along that we can’t forsake the home field advantage.”
The benefits of the home field advantage notwithstanding, BR5-49 have already proven that they can win on the road. “Every place we go,” Mead says, “we get the same positive response. I can only attribute it to the fact that we’re still not trying to bullshit anybody.” Indeed, the band’s appearances at the Mercury Lounge and the Rodeo Bar in New York City, at the South By Southwest music festival in Austin, and in Chicago and the Northern Midwest have been met with overwhelming enthusiasm. “We even played a boot-scootin’ place in Minneapolis,” Mead says. “That was kind of weird. They were line-dancing to ‘Opie.’ But it was OK, because there were some people who really liked it.”
Radio is also embracing the fedora-donned darlings of Lower Broadway. Last week, BR5-49 Live From Robert’s was the most added record on Gavin’s Americana chart, and this week the EP debuted at No. 22 on the chart as 17 more stations added it to their playlists. It’s certainly no wonder: From the ensemble’s close-harmony singing and swinging rhythm section to Don Herron’s fiddle-and-steel wizardry and Mead’s Carl Perkins-inspired lead guitar, the EP captures both the sound and spirit of the band live at Robert’s as well as anyone could have expected. “We just wanted to give everybody a slice of Robert’s,” Mead says. “It’s important to us that people understand where we’re coming from.”
BR5-49’s studio debut, due out in September, will feature mostly originals, as well as a few covers of old hillbilly tunes. “We recorded about 16 or 17 songs, and there’s probably gonna be 10 or 12 on the record,” Mead says. “And it sounds like us,” he adds with evident satisfaction. “We all played on the record. It’s not like they got a bunch of pickers to come in. There was an A&R guy there for three hours during the whole time we were doing it. So they stayed out of our hair because no one really knows what’s gonna happen with us.”
Indeed, a lot of people are wondering what the future holds for Nashville’s favorite hillbilly band and the 400 block of Broadway that they helped put back on the map. But, after talking with Mead and attending the group’s record release parties last week, I get the sense that, like fellow honky-tonker Junior Brown—who records for Curb Records and still plays his weekly gig at the Continental Club in Austin whenever he can—BR5-49 may just be able to achieve commercial viability without losing touch with the thriving local scene they helped create. That’s one of the reasons they chose to release their live EP at the Ernest Tubb Record Shop downtown—Tubb was as loyal to his fans as practically any performer in the history of country music, tirelessly taking his show out on the road while always maintaining a strong Nashville presence. As someone who hosted the Midnight Jamboree on Lower Broadway every Saturday night right up until his death, he knew the value of the home field advantage. If the way BR5-49 kicked off their commercial career is any indication, they seem determined to follow in the Texas Troubadour’s footsteps.
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