What Happens When They Give A Show And Nobody Shows Up, Part 2: Renee Austin
by El Dormido (Dormido@hotmail.co)

Ok, Renee Austin's appearance at the Grand Emporium was preceded by pub on her success winning awards from the Minnesota Blues Society, a poster that gives her a look like Carly Simon, a website (reneeaustin.com) that extols her experience playing shows with blues greats, and some mp3 samples.

The draw is the chance to catch an up and coming performer as she lays a foundation for a national name, broad-spectrum success and musical legacy.

Wouldn”t you have liked to have been in the audience when Stevie Ray Vaughn jammed with Ronnie Baker Brooks in the late 80' before they became stadium level acts? That”s the ticket, no?

So I walk into the club and there are two couples sitting at front row tables, Blues Society member Clay telling Evie Quarles how cool her picture of him and his kids at the Gladstone Festival was.

Looks to be about 9 people plus the staff, fewer people than the Bill Perry show. Looming in the forefront of my mind is the numbing memory of the muffling inertia of the few.

It doesn”t hurt, though, that Renee is a striking red head, very appealing to the eyes, dressed in a diaphanous peach dress with deep vee neckline, calf high black leather boots with stiletto heels. (She said she was trying to keep her feet warm on a night with the temperature in the teens and heading south.)

She has a classic redhead”s face, a Celtic cast to the sharp features, thin lips, a hardness and danger lurking there, if you know what I mean.

The band is sifting around through the club, checking equipment, setting sound levels, reading the posters on the wall.

Renee herself is quite taken with the stained glass picture of Stevie Ray as a guitar playing angel. I think someone needs to watch her or she might walk off with it she loves it so much!

Evie, Clay and I catch her attention and she pulls up a stool in front of the bar to sit and talks a while. She is a north Texas hill country girl moved by her family to Minneapolis in her teens. There is a faint hint of Texas to her talk, but you”d miss it or misidentify it if inattentive.

She talks about touring, breaking out of being a regional act, looking at offers from booking agents, who she loves to hear, who she enjoyed playing with, and the trip across the Paseo Bridge just before MODOT closed it because of the gap in midspan.

She is easy to talk to, accessible, good natured and light hearted after riding in that van the whole day. She says she used to try and do tours in cars but that didn”t work so well. Reminds me of stories of the old territorial bands in Kansas City' past, everyone crammed in Cadillacs.

She”s just happy to be playing the Grand Emporium, something she”s wanted to do. A chance booking Roger Naber picked up on a recommendation from the manager of the Lamont Cranston band, the first act Roger ever booked into the GE, and a personal favorite of Renee'.

So what happens when the show starts? Strangely enough, excitement and revelation.

To begin with, Renee has a big voice without being loud, the kind of robust sound Shemekia Copeland and Carolyn Wonderland can command.

The next thing is, the band kicks up some dust right out of the gate, it generates it”s own excitement regardless of the surroundings.

The lyrics to the first song are clever, witty, sharp on images - "...pillow in the bath tub.." The piano and guitar fill out the sound nicely behind the voice. Renee hits high notes without being shrill. She brings the song to an end, punctuating the climax with a thrust of the hip. 

They launch into “Love like a Seesaw”. She takes the song within her and nails it, makes it unique. That”s followed by “Catfish Woman”, a tune with a heavy funk bottom that reminds me of Tony Joe White”s “Polk Salad Annie”, during which Renee hits a ringing note and sustains it like tolling a bell.

They do a song called “Calling it Quits”, with a rolling tempo and a hard bitten lyric: “...We say things we regret.”

Then comes “Full Moon”, slow torch song where the revelation begins. Renee is more than just a blues vocalist. Her vocal gifts transcend genre. The proof is, she is so persuasive that one of the two couples gets up to dance. The other couple embraces and tenderly kiss.

That”s not the usual kind of response at a blues show. Maybe a slow grind but usually not a tenderness.

Torch songs are a genre unto themselves and, while owing something to the blues emotionally, they are more the uptown, citified, high falutin”, lounge singer kind of material. Think Julie London or the smoldering Peggy Lee. Renee puts it on like a glove.


"Dancing with Mr. Blues", the title song of her album, features a supple, agile vocal. They do "Rock Me Baby" as a dirty blues, with a ringing guitar solo amidst the thunder of the band. She takes the familiar lyric out of shape and makes it fit her own profile!

During the break she changes into a red, sparkly velour top and tight, black pants with sensible shoes. I'm relieved, what with just us chickens here, everyone should be relaxed, and those spiked heels were something other than relaxing.

The show goes on through a second set that includes tunes such as "Poison Ivy" and "Knock On Wood". They do ballads and blues, uptempo rockers and the funk tinged dance numbers.

“Chain of Fools” starts out with a clunky arrangement but the vocal doesn”t miss. A tasty keyboard break comes in, the guitar rips off a biting solo, and it ends up being fiery workout all around.

"Its All a Game" demonstrates that Renee has an unerring pitch moving between octaves, no hesitation.

The band includes Tim Whitt on keyboards, Chris Johnson on bass, Mike “Taco” Vasquez on drums (a James Solberg Band alumnus filling in for regular drummer who is on a honeymoon), and Dave Hoffman on guitar, who really burns whenever he steps up to the front. They maintain a level of excitement far beyond what the size of the crowd warrants. Shows me that they enjoy playing just plain and simple.

Renee Austin is a multi-instrumentalist, filling out the band on rhythm guitar and piano. But she is the vocalist par excellance, and I’d rather see her up front.

When she does ballads, the rough edges disappear and she displays smooth and warm vocal tones, a smoky romantic clarity. At times her voice takes on the timbre of a tenor sax.

When she sings the blues, she has a different inflection to go along with the music. She can be gritty, she can howl, she can shout the lyric through the ceiling, but she never lapses into a vocal distortion or muddiness. She has a precision of tone without making a point of it. She even has a Mariah Carey quality in a soaring vocal riff.

She can get low down, dancing lasciviously, with spirit, without being neither gratuitous nor overt. Just a girl expressing her own self, part of her personality rather than a premeditated stage act.

And so it goes through the end of the second set. The crowd has swelled by another 5 people, Jo and her cohorts, until we must be approaching 20 people total. But everyone has been having a good time, beginning with the band. They hold nothing back, and people are getting up to dance. There are Indian war whoops and resounding applause, or as much as we few can generate.

A couple of things come to mind when there is a small crowd. A vocalist can touch and move people no matter how many or how few. I think it has something to do with the quality of the human voice communicating emotions. Somehow the voice is much more effective in reaching out no matter how much the guitar gently weeps.

The other thing is the band’s excitement and joy in playing that says, "We”re going to do it here no matter what." Especially when they back a vocalist like Renee.

Renee Austin should never be just a blues singer because, like I said, her vocal capabilities transcend genres. She is blues for sure, but if she can do that torch song that gets all the couples in the crowd to go romantic, even though there are only two, that’s a gift that should not be confined.

After the show it’s all pretty casual, people leaving and urging Roger Naber to bring her back. 

Renee and Roger end up at the end of the bar telling stories about mutual friends.

It all ends very companionably, comfortably, satisfyingly.

Look for that name on the calendar next time around, Renee Austin. I’d like someone to dance with, especially on those slow torch songs.