Lisa Pankratz: Austin's first-call drummer
"I feel like I can go anywhere and she’ll be right there with me”
If you want to impress a visitor with the vitality of the Austin music scene, take your guest to see a band featuring Lisa Pankratz on drums. The shuffle king from Dripping Springs has inspired double-takes since the early ‘90s, when she gigged with the Derailers, Dale Watson and, especially, Dallas rockabilly original Ronnie Dawson.
At first she was a novelty -- the knockout who could throw down -- but through steady gigging and a penchant for doing her homework, Pankratz now is recognized as one of the town's best drummers, period. Her gender has been a non-issue since even before she signed on as Dave Alvin’s drummer in 2008.
It was a sad time for the ex-Blaster, whose best friend and guitarist Chris Gaffney died of cancer, so he changed up his Guilty Men backup. For a fast-approaching gig at the Strictly Hardly Bluegrass Festival, Alvin decided to fly in an all-female band, the Guilty Women. He had only one choice for drummer.
“We did that show without a rehearsal,” Alvin says of the gig in front of 20,000 people. “Lisa’s always watching what everyone else is doing, so I told her to follow my left hand on the top of the guitar.” That cued her onto the turns. Alvin said the show went perfectly.
Ronnie Dawson also praised Pankratz’s intuitiveness. “She's just more in tune with what's going on, and that could be because she's a woman,'' he said in 1995. Ronnie kept rockin’ hard with Lisa and High Noon until succumbing to cancer in 2003. This 1995 appearance on the Conan O’Brien show shows the band in its sensational prime.
Lisa Pankratz reminds us that the richness of the Austin music scene is not just in the bands or headliners, but in its wealth of backing musicians. Ask a singer-songwriter why they moved to Austin and many will say it was for the caliber of musicians for hire.
“I knew Lisa as a great country shuffle drummer when she played with the Derailers,” said Alvin, who produced the Buck Owens-worshipping band’s Jackpot in 1996. “Then when I saw her with Ronnie Dawson, she was this great rock n’ roll drummer. Since she’s been in the band, I’ve found out she can play reggae, funk, everything. When she’s onstage I feel like I can go anywhere and she’ll be right there with me.”
When Pankratz first became known on the Austin scene in the early ’90s, almost all female drummers were in punk bands. Watching her at the Broken Spoke or the Continental with the Derailers or Chaparral or Cornell Hurd was an anomaly because she was keeping authentic honky tonk beats, not trying to play up her uniqueness. Nina Singh of the Borrowers was another drummer whose technique was the draw.
Pankratz, who graduated from Rice University in 1990 with an English Lit degree, has adjusted so well to the life of a working musician because it’s all she’s ever wanted. She’s a Pankratz, after all, whose patriarch Lucky was friends with Willie Nelson and was often writer Townsend Miller’s plus one. Her father Mike “Miguel” Pankratz, who recently passed away, played Buddy Holly covers with Roky Erickson in high school before becoming the first-call reggae drummer in town. So, instruments of percussion were everywhere and Lisa messed around on them since she was old enough to hold a stick. But she vividly remembers the point when drums became more than a toy. ”I was in class in sixth grade, and I couldn't stop thinking about how much fun it would be to go home and play my drums,” she said. “I couldn't even hear the teacher; in my mind I was wailin' away on the drums.''
In her early teens, Pankratz started playing in reunions of her uncle's Pat’s band Greezy Wheels; at age 16, she played with them on Austin City Limits.
But Pankratz paid enough attention in class to graduate as salutatorian of Dripping Springs High School's class of '86. “I'd been going to clubs since I was a baby -- going to my Dad's gigs or going to Soap Creek with my Mom -- but there was a whole period I missed out on because I was busy doing my homework every night,'' Pankratz said.
Basically, Lisa missed the roots revival of the '80s, when the T-Birds, Lou Ann Barton and Stevie Ray Vaughan ruled the blues circuit, while Rank and File was inventing cowpunk, Asleep at the Wheel was keeping western swing alive, and such acts as the Leroi Brothers, the Commandos and Omar and the Howlers were firing up the carcass of vintage rock. But, boy, has Pankratz made up for lost time. A Lisa week in 1995: She played five straight nights with three different bands, then flew off to Boston to play drums on a Sleepy LaBeef session.
All-instrumental band Teisco Del Rey pulled Pankratz from the audience at a set during SXSW when their drummer flaked out, and hired her on the spot after she tore it up on a cover of “Casbah” by Sandy Nelson. ”She goes so far beyond that ‘good for a girl' cliche that it's not even funny,'' said Dan Forte of Teisco. “Just look at her impact with High Noon. She turns that town- hall-party thing into Bill Haley and the Comets. Lisa just puts that total boppin' swing feel into everything she does, and she does it with a rare intensity.''
If there was a knock on Pankratz, it was that she's a little too self-critical. “She has to ease up on herself a little bit,'' Dawson said in ‘95. Marrying a bass player- Canadian transplant Brad Fordham- nearly 20 years ago has helped keep Lisa grounded.
“Listen man, when it comes to musicians you have to play with night after night, looks don’t mean a thing,” said Alvin. “You gotta be able to really play, and Lisa’s got the ability, no question. But even more importantly, she’s got the attitude. That’s ‘let’s go out there and have some fun’ thing she brings to every gig.”
You don’t forget the first time you see Lisa Pankratz playing drums. She’s not showy, doesn’t do any look-at-me tricks, and yet you can’t take your eyes off her. She’s so natural behind the drums, but at the same time looks like she stepped out of a 1950’s glamour magazine. You watch her crack out the beat and after awhile you forget she’s a woman and instead wonder what planet she’s from.
“I used to call it ‘the elephant in the room,’ being a female drummer,” Pankratz said after a 2014 pick-up gig at the Broken Spoke. “But sometimes it’s pretty cool.”
Sometimes it’s pretty cool for everyone in the room.
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She's an amazing part of an amazing family.
Great piece. Learning stuff!