Kevin Russell: From Roots to Ribsanity

Before Shinyribs were the Gourds, also great, in a completely different way

The latest Outlaw Country Cruise, which docked back in Miami last Saturday after six days at sea, could’ve been nicknamed “the Lu Cruise” for all the love tossed the way of Miss Lucinda Williams. Not only did the Americana Streep play two jampacked concerts and a guitar pull, she was the subject of an outstanding tribute show that will air soon on SiriusXM’s Outlaw Country channel. We all agree that Lucinda is the coolest.

But the biggest crowd-pleaser on the boat was Shinyribs, Kevin Russell’s Gulf Coast showband that seemed to power the Norwegian Pearl all the way to Puerto Rico and back. Repeat O.C. Cruisers had been waiting for the Austin band’s return since they transformed the 2,400-capacity ocean liner into the world’s largest Mardi Gras float in 2022. Folks are still talking about the Tijuana Trainwreck Horns leading a second line parade all around Deck 12 on Fat Tuesday.

It's every other year on the boat for the Shiny tribe, who rotate with Raul Malo and the Mavericks as the horn-sporting high energy act, and Russell and the band made the most of their turn in ‘24. Besides three wild sets tailored to the ship’s varying venues- from the Atrium stage to the Main Deck to the Stardust Theater- they practically stole the Lucinda tribute show with a Funky Meterlike version of “Can’t Let Go.” That Randy Weeks composition was on Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, which a studio-bleary Lucinda greased mid-session in Dec. ’95, by playing five consecutive nights at the 350-capacity Electric Lounge in Austin.

One of those shows was opened by a band of guys in their early thirties who played old man mountain music. The Gourds went from unknown to “Holy shit!” that night, and became recognized as Austin’s best band, at least by me, for the next 18 years and 11 albums. I didn’t miss too many Gourds shows, especially when their great sister band the Damnations opened. Their repute as “Austin’s The Band,” with Kevin Russell as both Levon Helm and Robbie Robertson, was not farfetched, especially when they’d pull out a cover like Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” or a mandolin-driven “Gin and Juice,” which became their most-streamed recording (though it was credited to Phish on Napster). The Gourds were not defined by a cool Snoop cover, however, but a sturdy torso of material that sweats through its work clothes. 

This is the first of a 4-part series featuring Austin acts that set the boat on fire.

The "fraternity of curmudgeons," as Russell called the Gourds, developed the instinctive language of motion you'd find with a playoff basketball team. But the chemistry didn't always come easy off the court. The band was founded as a 50/50 frontman split between Russell and bassist Jimmy Smith, which caused tension when Russell sang more crowd favorites, but a deal is a deal.

The Gourds were "a constant tug of war," Russell said, and in 2013 he let go of the rope and took his wife’s brother Keith Langford with him to concentrate on Shinyribs full-time. Russell’s Jim Eno (Spoon), drummer Langford is the only other original member still with Shinyribs.

Here are the highlights: A Gourds Playlist: “The Last Stomp.”

Rare smiling photo of the grumpy Gourds by John Carrico. L-r Jimmie Smith, Max Johnston, Kevin Russell, Keith Langford, Claude Bernard.

In the beginning, Shinyribs was Kevin Russell and a guitar. A prolific writer, he had more good songs than half a Gourds set would allow, so in 2007, needing to come up with an extra $500 a month to pay for the new family car, Russell got a solo gig for one Wednesday a month at Houston club Under the Volcano. It sure beat throwin’ newspapers. He loved the freedom of running the whole show, of making up a setlist without debate, of singing his heart out without worrying that he might be upstaging the band. On a great night he felt like he’d been cheating on the Gourds, but without guilt.

Shinyribs eventually became a combo, with Jeff Brown on bass, Winfield Cheeks on piano, and Langford on drums, and released two albums- Well After Awhile and Gulf Coast Museum - while Russell and Langford were still members of the Gourds. That band was going gangbusters at the time of the breakup, recording Old Mad Joy at Levon Helms' studio in Woodstock, touring to a growing cult audience across the country, and being the focus of the terrific documentary All the Labor. "I really felt that the past five years of the Gourds, money became a main motivation," Russell told me on the eve of the band’s swan song at Threadgill’s South on Oct. 27, 2013. Since the 1996 release of debut LP Dem's Good Beeble (which Russell calls the best Gourds album), the married band members fathered more children, 12, than albums, and there were bills to pay, first steps to witness.

Original Shinyribs Big Band, with tour manager Choppy Waters far right. Photo Wyatt McSpadden.

In concert, Shinyribs never plays Gourds songs, not out of bitterness, but because, with the bi-annual LP releases of Okra Candy (2015), I Got Your Medicine (2017), Fog & Bling (2019), Late Night TV Gold (2021) and Transit Damage (2023), there’s more than enough great post-Gourds material. Still, Russell leaves a lot of great originals on the table. Maybe to pay for his next luxury expense he’ll start the Dem’s Good Beeble tribute band. Would love to hear Kevin Russell play the mandolin again.

But with each album, Shinyribs gets further away from its bluegrassy roots. When the Shiny Soul Sisters (originally Alice Spencer and Sally Allen) and the Tijuana Trainwreck Horns of Mark Wilson and Tiger Anaya were added for 2017’s I Got Your Medicine, the Ribs became a powerhouse swamp funk band, fronted by the Round Mound of Get Down. Unless you have a conga line allergy, Shinyribs’ Austin City Limits taping in 2018 was one of the best-ever by a local band.

The song that stirs the crowd to its craziest is “Poor People Store,” an ode to retailers Dollar General looks down on, which prominently opened a recent episode of Fargo (the Juno Temple season- Home Alone meets Straw Dogs.) On the big deck stage of OCC8, the ukulele tune morphed into a medley that mixed Ozzy Osbourne and Al Green under a wild horn chart. The crowd went nuts.

Russell’s road to rapture began as a teen in Shreveport, where his father's job took him after Kev’s childhood in Beaumont. He worked at Johnny’s Pizza in high school and started a band with co-worker David Green, a drummer. Picket Line Coyotes were a sort of punkier Elvis Costello, and when they opened for Austin bands passing through, Russell and co-horts would invariably hear that they needed to get down to A-town. "We had people in Shreveport and this was in the era of the 55 miles per hour speed limit and it took forever to drive from Shreveport to Austin," Russell said. So the band moved to Dallas in 1988 as a midpoint. Rob Bernard, later of Prescott Curlywolf and the Damnations, played guitar.

Picket Line Coyotes Rob Bernard, Kevin Russell, Jimmy Smith, and David Green.

When the PLC bassist got married and settled down, a Plano kid named Jimmy Smith auditioned for the job and got it. "It was actually George Reiff who sent him our way," Russell said of Well After Awhile’s producer. Smith tried out as guitarist for Reiff’s Big Loud Dog, but when he admitted he was really a bass player, but desperately wanted to be in a band on the Deep Ellum scene, George sent him the Coyotes’ way. "Jimmie was the fresh blood we needed," Russell said. "He was this really great bass player with tons of enthusiasm. We would've broken up if it wasn't for him."

Smith was a quirk, a wounded jughead with a poet's soul and a hobo/fabulous fashion sense, who wrote songs of a structure all their own. He made the band more interesting, for sure.

The Coyotes made the move to Austin in 1991, and did eventually break up. Kevin and Jimmy started a duo, the Grackles, which followed a spare new direction in the songs that Russell was writing. He became infatuated with the work of John Lomax, the Austin-based musicologist who hunted indigenous music all over the world with his son Alan.

The Steamy Bowl, as Smith called his East Hyde Park party/jam house, was where multi-instrumentalist Claude Bernard (brother of Coyote guitarist Rob), original drummer Charlie Llewellin, Smith and Russell first started experimenting as the Gourds in late ‘94. The band and their friends would get together on Bottle Night, pooling their money for quarts of hooch, then jamming until the sun came up. Lyrics were written on the walls in Sharpies. It’s a scene sketched on the first album’s “Web Before You Walk In It,” which sounds so much like a Shinyribs song today that you can hear where the horns would go.

Dem's Good Beeble laid the blueprint for organic freshness and consistent insight- dark themes and light touches- that would mark the band's recorded output. You have to go back to the Crickets, or at least ZZ Top, to find a Texas rock band with a five-year output that tops 96’s Beeble, Stadium Blitzer (1998), Ghosts of Hallelujah (1999), Bolsa de Agua (2000) and 2001’s Shinebox. 

But once-magical marriages can get stale. The co-leaders stayed together for the kids that followed them from gig to gig, but like Michael Murphey and Jerry Jeff Walker long before, they were just sharing a band. Russell said the Gourds song that most led to Shinyribs was "Promenade" from 2006's Noble Creatures. It's a beautifully sung ballad with minimal accompaniment that the Gourds almost never played live. "The other guys just couldn't seem to get behind that one," Russell said, "and I thought it was one of the best songs I'd ever written with the group." 

Russell also started writing more songs on the ukulele than the guitar, which really fit his vocals. "Some Shinyribs songs, like 'Country Love,' became Gourds songs, but most of them I'd just keep on the side.” They were for something else that became something else, indeed!

There are a lot of Gourds fans who don’t like Shinyribs, see them as a sellout party band. These are the Jimmy people, who love Smith’s songs like “Plaid Coat,” “Layin’ Around the House,” “County Orange” and “All the Labor” - and dig his unmatchable bass-playing. Even as a Ribs fan, I sometimes get tired of the showbiz “schtick.”

That’s why their sets on the big boat were so thrilling, to see this monster band along with so many unjaded eyes from Ohio and Utah and Norway. They were fun as hell! Sometimes you need outsiders to show you the treasure in your own back yard.

Recommended listening:

Recent Shiny Ribs podcast has Kevin talking about the Outlaw Country Cruise, and including rehearsal footage of the band working out “Don’t Let Go” (21:40- 23:11), as well as a Johnny Rodriguez cover they’d hope to sing with the country legend, but he was a late scratch from the cruise, so they sang it in tribute.