Not just any given Sunday

Let’s face it: Sports metaphors are overused in journalism. The touchdown/field-goal/home-run cliches ring all too familiar. Rest assured that in this piece, we will not need to resort to such methods. Any time we mention football, we will actually be talking about … football.

And so, speaking of football … one has to wonder, during the homecoming scene in the critically applauded TV series Friday Night Lights, how many target viewers recognized the homecoming act as Austin’s raucous group The Gourds. But have no doubt—the band, a huge draw here as well as in their hometown, was right at home in that element.

“We are all huge football fans,” admits singer/guitarist Kevin Russell in a slow, measured tone that’s intended to convey the seriousness of the subject. The unavoidable urge to keep track of games led the band to install satellite radio in their tour van, and schedule studio time around play offs. (The day before the recent games that determined this year’s Super Bowl contenders—the Colts and the Bears, as it turned out—the band was still deciding whether it would spend play-off day watching football or recording in the studio, where they’re currently laying down tracks for a new album. The Gourds decided they would certainly watch the Saints/Bears match-up, but would probably record during the Colts/Patriots game.)

By their own admission, the Gourds’ music is hard to explain without the obligatory long chain of adjectives, musical references and word-association exercises. It’s certainly front-porch music, rooted in thigh-slapping, high-energy funk-folk. But that doesn’t do it justice, so here goes: If the Gourds recipe is an extended list of ingredients simmering in a stew pot, their live shows are a raging boil.

It makes sense, then, that the band’s warm-up act at their Grey Eagle appearance will be the most-watched TV show of the year (American Idol not included).

Asheville is home to some mighty unlikely football fans, including dreadheads, indie artists, emo-literary types and just about everyone in between. As the big game closes in, the crowds get more and more muddled, and you find out that the hippie chick you’ve been drinking next to not only likes her football, but is so enamored of a certain team she shows up wearing a jersey and shouting at the television like Braveheart at the English.

Which brings us back to that amalgam of influences known as the Gourds.
“Gourds fans in general are football fans,” confirms Grey Eagle co-owner Brian Landrum, who says he was hesitant to schedule the band on a night when people typically are at house parties chowing on chicken wings. That is, until the Gourds’ manager called back and encouraged him to do the show. Enter Orbit DVD and its movie projector, a TV installed in the bar area for the occasion and a spread of free food, and you’ve got a match-up to be reckoned with.

As their Friday Night Lights cameo so effectively displays, the Gourds are steeped in Texas football heritage—but for Russell, the game is more than a Lone Star State of Mind, or even a Southern Thing.

“I think it’s an American thing, really,” he says.

Russell points out how football is passed down through generations—not unlike the rustic, chugging music that distinguishes the Gourds, whose most recent release is Heavy Ornamentals.

“Food, politics, football—everything comes from the family and the community, and music is the same way,” Russell continues, helping the metaphor. Such contemplation backs up the band’s self-assessment as “music for the unwashed and well-read.”

As for the as-yet-unrecorded release put on hold to see the Saints eventually lose to the Bears, Russell claims it’s a departure from their previous form.

“You’re gonna hear a more mature Gourds, believe it or not,” he says. “A little grayer, a little wiser.” But we may not hear those songs on Super Bowl Sunday, a time reserved for a more rambunctious sort of revelry.

The band’s concerts, like a football game, are a bit untamed, the singer says—and the band may or may not decide to indulge its mellower side.

“Once you get the momentum going, you don’t want to keep running the ball,” he offers, inevitably. “You want to throw the long passes and keep exciting the crowd.”