Conway's Corner by R.C. Banks

The disc has already been declared "one of the best albums I've heard this

year," by Australian critic and deejay Eric Black, who notes how "every

track on this album is an absolute gem." Likewise, Banks' hometown weekly,

the Austin Chronicle, named Conway's Corner the #1 Texas Album of the Year,

while critics have been running to the kitchen to cook up superlatives to

describe its multi-stylistic, soulful musical stew and encapsulate the

richness and heart that pervade the disc.

Austin American-Statesman critic Michael Corcoran likens Conway's Corner to

a pot roast "that's sizzling with all sorts of chopped up ingredients like

carrots, kale, onions, bell peppers and celery, plus a few bones of

mysterious origin for a flavorful twist." He declares the tasty platter

"one of the most invigorating CDs to pull up a chair and twist one off in a

long time." Similarly, Rockzillaworld warns diners, "It isn't Lean Cuisine,

friends, it is a smorgasbord of pickled pigs feet and hard boiled eggs, of

collard greens, black-eyed peas, blood sausage and Tabasco sauceS. [I]f

you're ready for a down-home, poor-folks Southern musical banquet, dig in."

Or in other words, Conway's Corner is a delicious musical repast that is

ruggedly nutritious if also a bit dangerous - as the best genuine American

roots music should be. It's rocking roadhouse Southwestern soul that is "a

no-frills celebration of the good times, hard knocks and broken hearts of a

Texas Saturday night," says the Austin Chronicle.

And if anyone knows the ingredients for a musical stew that transforms

Saturday evening into the night of your life, it's R.C. Banks. After all,

he's been doing just that for nearly four decades. Starting out with

accordion lessons and performances at age six, teethed on his parents'

affection for Lawrence Welk and the Ray Coniff Singers, Banks also lived

and heard the music from the other side of life during his summers working

as a cowboy on his grandfather's ranch outside Clovis, NM. Then, on the

radio, he heard Elvis for the first time, followed soon after by Ray

Charles, which was a major revelation. "I knew he had something I wanted

and that I wanted to be part of," says Banks.

In junior high in Lubbock, he began playing baritone sax in school bands

while also borrowing a guitar and amp from a friend down the street to

start his first rock'n'roll group. Banks took up trumpet in the show band

he played in during his college years at Texas Tech while digging on blues

acts like Memphis Slim and the Butterfield Blues Band. His group Street

Theater landed in Los Angeles for a stint, and later Banks played Louisiana

music with some expatriate Cajuns in the Colorado Rockies before moving to

Austin.

Once there, Banks embraced the eclectic roots music styles that Austin

music is known for. Throughout the 1970s, he played in such reliable club

acts as Showdown, The River City Rockets, The Blue Beats and The Texas

Shieks at such seminal Austin music joints as The One Knite, The Rome Inn,

Soap Creek Saloon and the original Antone's nightclub on Austin's Sixth St.

At the dawn of the 1980s, Banks hooked up with singer and songwriter Harvey

"Tex" Thomas to form The Danglin' Wranglers. The band's renegade country

Sunday night shows at Hut's Hamburgers are legendary as some of the finest

nights of music ever in that very musical city. He followed that with a

stint in the Groovemasters, which introduced a teenaged Charlie Sexton to

the Austin scene, and playing with his pal and Loudhouse Records labelmate,

accordionist Ponty Bones, in The Squeezetones.

Banks then took his own accordion back up to form Zydeco Ranch and explore

his love of Louisiana music while also playing with famed British rocker

Ronnie Lane, who had relocated to Austin. Along the way Banks started

releasing records of his own as well as waxing three albums with Zydeco

Ranch.

The sum of all this considerable journeyman experience has imbued Banks

with a musically rich palette that makes him "about as close as anyone in

the state to what a space alien would call a Texas musician," notes Jim

Beal, Jr. on the San Antonio Express-News. With Conway's Corner, Banks'

fourth album, rapidly winning international acclaim, one of the best kept

secrets in the Lone Star State is now being recognized an avatar of genuine

Texas music. As Michael Corcoran urges in the Austin American-Statesman,

"Do Banks a favor. No, do yourself a favor and buy this."

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