Charlie Robison at Gilley’s

by Scott Chaffin

Last night, I had a poker tournament to attend to. As I was putzing around on the TexasGigs site looking for some place to have a hamburger prior to sitting for three or four hours, I noticed in the Tonight sidebar that one Charlie Robison was playing in town. Which, um, kinda blew me away. For those not familiar, Charlie is one of my top 5 Texas music dudes. Call me crazier than hell, but my leader, Jack Sparks, thinks very highly of him, too. So, in the interest of pleasing my leader and my own self, I made a command decision to go to the show if I was out of the tournament in time. Since my “please Lord I need a double-up bad” semi-bluff at a big-ass pot with the nut flush draw got busted (by dang 3s — a pair of 3s, I say! — something my own pair of 3s would never do) at almost precisely 10:30 in the pee-emm, I was in. And besides, this was a resolution for 2006.

Now, problemo numero uno: the show was at Gilley’s. Never been to Gilley’s in Dallas before, and I don’t really have anything against that urban cowboy tomfoolery if that’s your scene. Some people dress up like vampires to go out at night, some dress up like pimps, some dress up like Trashville artists they see on the CMT. But, folks, Gilley’s, for all their faux yee-haw Texana persona, ain’t no honky tonk. It’s a disco with designer Hill Country accents. Nice and purty, but not a bar. Crikey, they have a smoking patio. So, I wasn’t real thrilled about paying $10 to see one of my favorite artists live for the very first time in a disco. But you take your shots where you can, so I did.

And I can’t say that I’m unhappy about it. Charlie did what I perceived to be his “big stage” show, with all the hits, a bunch of between-song patter, lots (and lots) of guitar changes, and girls coming up on stage to sing that dumb wedding song. The 5-piece band, though, looked completely dwarfed by size of the stage. To their credit, they minimized that by staying up at the lip of the stage, but it was decidedly weird to have to rotate your head a full 180 degrees to follow Charlie from corner to corner. I can’t say that the sound was really dialled in, either. There’s simply no excuse for that kind of thing, either, at a joint the size of Gilley’s. They’ve got two ginormous sound boards, and speakers as big as a van hanging from the ceiling. But throughout the show, guitars would fade in and out, drums would completely overwhelm vocals, feedback would cause young ladies with good hearing to fall to the ground writhing in pain. That’s simply unacceptable.

As far as song selection, I was pretty happy with it. Lots of stuff off the latest album, including "Big City Blues," "Photograph," "Love Means Never Having to Say You’re Hungry" (with EVERYBODY singing along). "El Cerrito Place" was just excellent, and I simply love everything about "Flatland Boogie." Plenty of his old stuff was mixed in, including personal favorite "Loving County," a spooky little song about the crazy things women will make men do. To make my personal night complete, they did "John O’Reilly," a great Irish-sounding reel that makes it impossible for me not to do the Wirsky Stomping Shoddish for Grizzlies (sadly, the sound effed up here, and the mandolin was buried by the damn drums.) Yes, of course, he did the gajillion-selling "Bar Light," but interestingly, he introed it with Ted Nugent’s "Stranglehold." Methinks Charlie and the boys might be kind of tired of playing that song — they charged through it triple-quick. Overall, I was really pleased with the set, and it was a good long one, clocking in at 100 minutes.

There seemed to have been a fair contingent of Robison fans at Gilley’s last night, as the crowd was standing pretty deep in front of the overly-vast stage. Everybody seemed to know most of the songs, everybody seemed real happy to be there. There were a few morons who, being morons, felt it was their right and duty to do their damn dumb two-step through the crowd rather than around them, knocking into people and spilling drinks, but that’s just idiotic urban cowboys everywhere. There were also one hell of a lot of people way back behind the dance floor, around the (yet again, idiotic urban cowboy) bull-riding machine, doing who knows what while the band was on. You kind of got the feeling, when observing them, that they were mildy put out that there was live music impinging. Again, though, that’s, I’m pretty sure, a Gilley’s deal. Of course, as soon as Charlie’s encore was over, I headed straight for the door, knowing what was coming next. I almost made it, too–I was 20 yards away from the fresh air when I got aurally assaulted by a chick rap dance song about junk in the trunk. I was a salmon struggling upstream to get through all the PYTs practically sprinting from the bars and tables to the dance floor. Gilley’s knows their customers, I guess.

Overall, I consider myself half-satisfied. For $10 and three Shiners, I got to see a man I consider very talented musician and songwriter and who has given me some great music to listen to. I feel cheated that it wasn’t in a smaller place, and that the sound was so dang iffy (and that I was the victim of the Big Stage Light Show - man, I hate that rotating woo-hoo flash crap.) I want to see him and the band again, and this time force my wife to go along. I’m looking at tour dates, and it looks like he’s in Helotes in a couple of weeks. Might be time for a road trip?

Oh, yeah — that burger that kicked the whole durn night off? Lee Harvey’s. I have only just enough vestigal cool to go there with Herself as a tour guide. Pretty good thick-patty burger, comes with a big side of fries that tasted fresh-cut.

Check out Scott Chaffin's Blog TheFatGuy.com