The Ballad of Shambles ('85-'88)
Three years was the life of one of Austin's greatest bands
What made the Austin music scene special when I was bouncing around the clubs night after night was that you didn’t need to make plans. You’d just show up and find who you wanted to hang out with, or you just drank your beer and watched the band in peace. There were characters on the scene that made it like no other place I’d ever lived.
If it wasn’t happening, you went to another club. But you could always count on a wild good time at a Ballad Shambles show. A powerhouse band with a singer whose comparisons to Jim Morrison were not baseless, Shambles drew an interesting cross section of punks, gearheads, groupies, music nerds, rockabilly dress-ups and especially Clara Portillo, a sweet 18-year-old who had style and moves, without an ounce of phoniness.
Clara Que Si, as she was dubbed as the Continental Club’s go-go dancing bartender, has been energizing Austin clubs with the moves she learned watching Hullabaloo reruns while growing up in Mexico City, for 40 years! Clara first moved to Austin as a six-year-old in 1974, when her mother was on scholarship at UT to get her masters in library science, so she was one of those little kids at Soap Creek who’d dance with Diana Ray. She returned for good in 1983.
There were always a few drummers at Ballad Shambles shows to check out Clara’s boyfriend Stan Moore, a Corpus Christi garage rock legend from his teen years in Zakary Thaks. Check out his stickwork on “Bad Girl” (1967), which some have credited as the template for punk drumming. Here’s another great slice of crate-digger gold.
“Stan was easily the best drummer in Corpus,” said David Fore, the original Thaks snare whacker. Every Sunday afternoon at Six Points in Corpus, teen bands would take over the Carousel Lounge. Watching Moore do his thing in the Last Five, the other Thaks turned around, looked at Fore, and said, “Why aren’t you this good?” Bands can be so cruel, but don’t feel sorry for Fore, who went on to have a huge hit with Bubble Puppy (“Hot Smoke and Sasafras”), then made the new wave scene with D-Day.
“Stan was a rich kid, who had the nicest drums, the biggest rehearsal room, the nicest car, the hottest girlfriend,” said Fore. “Plus he practiced five hours a day.” Stan’s father Lester bought Zakary Thaks a new station wagon for touring, and paid for the studio time. The band was signed to Mercury, but didn’t take off.
After Thaks broke up for good after a 1972 tryst, Moore drifted to Los Angeles, where he played with various blues, jazz and new wave bands, including Dred Scott. A gig with Teddy and the Talltops, featuring fellow Corpus native Ted Roddy, brought him to Austin in the ‘80s. Bassist Michael Maye, who came down from D.C. with Evan Johns around the same time, put a roots cover band together to play a biker bar that had just opened on Sixth Street called the Black Cat Lounge. The Ferocious Five were Roddy, Moore, Maye, guitarist Joe Dickens, and singer Joe Doerr of the Leroi Brothers.
Going through a divorce and writing some heavy material, Doerr didn’t want to sing “Treat Her Right” with a bar band anymore. Maye was also on a songwriting streak, so they took Stan with them and added Bill Anderson from Poison 13 on guitar and formed Ballad Shambles, to play originals. The name came from Maye, who remembered (or misremembered) it as the title of a musicologist’s lecture. “Michael’s the one who got Bill in the band,” said Doerr. “He dragged me to Liberty Lunch to see him in Shockhead, and we agreed he’d be right for us.” Anderson said he was “kinda tricked” into joining this new quartet, with an offer of session work that turned into a late night jam. “Michael Maye was a really great bass player,” said Anderson. “With Stan, that was some rhythm section.” That they both had demons would become clear later on.
Onstage they were locked in, but offstage they locked horns. Moore was intense, and Maye could be bluntly irreverent, especially after he’d had a few. “There was no in-between with Stan,” said Anderson. “We were either the world’s greatest band or the worst band that ever lived. He could’ve been bipolar.” The drummer was especially hard on himself, shooing away compliments by listing all his little fuckups during the set that nobody else noticed.
When he committed suicide in Corpus in 2000, friends recalled that Stan had become increasingly paranoid, and hearing voices. He had dedicated himself to rescuing kids from satanic cults, he told them in the late ‘90s. Though he wasn’t that far gone with Shambles, there was some erratic behavior. Doerr recalled that Moore quit the band several times, but then would show up at rehearsal the next day as if nothing happened. “One time he said ‘I quit’ and it was real,” said Doerr.
Maye’s exit still puzzles the singer. “We were on a little I-35 circle tour to St. Louis and Kansas City and back, and Michael stopped talking to us. For days. I don’t know what it was about, but when we dropped him off at his little apartment in West Campus, he said, “Fuck you! I’m done, and I hope our paths never cross again.” Doerr would see Maye in a club and try to talk to him, but his former best friend would turn his back and walk away. Interviewed about the split, Maye said he just wanted to sing the songs he wrote, but there had to be more to it than that. We’ll never know. Back in Falls Church, VA, Maye died of liver cancer in 1997. His Austin exit in the early ‘90s was to a prison cell, for a charge of sexual assault.
Ballad Shambles signed to New Jersey-based Skyclad Records and released an EP in 1988. But they were practically over just as they were getting started. “It didn’t make sense to keep going as Ballad Shambles because that was Michael’s band,” said Doerr, who formed Hand of Glory with Anderson, Moore’s replacement Mike Navarro on drums and Tim Swingle of the Vertibeads/ Doctor’s Mob on bass. After Pearl Jam broke in ‘91, Doerr started being compared to Eddie Vedder, though he’d been singing that way since ‘85. Doerr’s last band with Anderson- Churchwood- put out six great albums, and is currently on hiatus. Their comeback LP, Doerr teased, could be one of Ballad Shambles covers. “We had so many original songs that were never released. That might be fun to revisit.” That’s an album I’d buy! Here are a couple samples of the Skyclad record:
“Dangerous Girl” by Ballad Shambles
“Yer So Mean” by Ballad Shambles
CLARA’S Journey
The Knitters and Dan Baird each hadn’t played in 10 years before Saturday March 16’s Final Mojo Nixon Mayhem day party at the Continental Club, but the most inspiring comeback was when Clara Reed jumped onstage to dance and hype up the crowd. For years, the best review a band could get was when Clara, overcome by the rhythm, jumped up on her perch at stage right and started frugging like a party gal possessed. Any band that feels upstaged by Clara, doesn't belong at the Continental. But as she noted in a March 9 post on her Clara’s Shake, Rattle & Roll Journey Facebook page, Clara is battling “a couple of neurological diseases that have been progressing rapidly and aggressively over the last few years.” The married mother of four has been diagnosed with Essential Tremors (neurological movement disorder) and also Dystonia, which is similar to Parkinson's but is not lethal.
“At first, it was easy to dismiss my symptoms as being tired, or having had one too many, etc,” Clara writes. “It was only when my primary care doctor noticed muscle mass loss that we became worried. Thus began a series of consultations with different doctors where my symptoms were dismissed, minimized, and ignored. I left in tears from these appointments - not just frustrated, but confused and discouraged. But I was not defeated.”
Clara finally found a movement disorder neurologist “who conducted every test imaginable and correctly diagnosed me.” Her neuro team has recommended a procedure called DBS, Deep Brain Stimulation Surgery, which Clara will undergo soon. Benefits are being planned.
Boy this takes me back. I loved loved loved Ballad Shambles and Hand of Glory. Doerr, Maye, and the incomparable Bill Anderson rocked my world. And Tom Swingle in HoG rocked that bass. Thanks for bringing this back to me.
Stan was a friend. He seemed to idolize Jim Gordon. Stan talked about Jim frequently and said they were roommates in LA at a point during Stan’s stay on the West Coast. He was the best drummer in Corpus I’d say. Bad Girl is pretty mind blowing considering Stan was 14?, 15 years old when they cut that record. What a tragedy. Good stuff Michael. I missed a lot of that period being on the road.