Meeting The Black Angels

The beginning

Me and Christian at Austin Psych Fest 2011.

The first time I met Alex and Christian, they didn’t even have a name for their band yet.

We'd officially met Anton and BJM the previous summer, and by that November he'd already had us out supporting them on a run of Ontario dates. So by the time SXSW 2004 rolled around, we were somewhat in his orbit already. This one was an unofficial day party at the Bayou Lounge on Sixth Street. The High Dials were supporting the Brian Jonestown Massacre, with a band called Vietnam also on the bill. We went on first. The venue was packed, no room left anywhere, so when we got to "Things Are Getting Better" as our closer, I ended up playing sitar sitting in the doorway, spilling out onto Sixth Street. It was a vibey show. I remember singing the "Who!!!" (or is it "Wooo!?") part of, you guessed it, "Who?" alongside BJM and Jason "Plucky" Anchondo, who was the tambourine man for this tour. Joel, if I recall, rejoined in 2006 for what I called "The Honeymoon" tour. I'll tell you all about that in a future post.

After the set I was at the back of the bar when two guys came up to me. They said they’d never seen a sitar before and thought it was great. We started talking. They seemed genuine, sincere, easy to talk to. At some point the conversation drifted to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Then they mentioned they were starting a band of their own. No name yet. They introduced themselves as Alex and Christian. I wished them luck and that was that.

That summer, the High Dials were back on tour through the US, and we ended up in Austin again. We were staying at the Embassy Suites hotel on South Congress courtesy of our label, Rainbow Quartz, who’d put us up there for SXSW. They had a manager’s happy hour, an all you can drink situation with vodka and cranberry juice, and we were taking full advantage of it now. As far as we knew, we had the night off. Our Austin show wasn’t until the next day.

The hotel was close to the Congress Avenue Bridge, where the bats take off every evening. Robbie and I had a few drinks and went and laid in the grass to watch them go. It’s a pretty spectacular thing to see if you’ve never witnessed it, this huge cloud of bats pouring out from under the bridge at dusk.

While we were lying there, I got a call on the band’s emergency cell phone. It was my dad.

“Hey Dad.”

“How’s the tour going?”

“Good.”

“I see you have a show tonight.”

“What? Nah, we don’t,” I replied with a slight drunken slur.

“Yeah, you’re playing Austin tonight.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. I went back, checked the schedule, and sure enough, we had a show that night. I don’t know how I missed it. We piled into the van, I wasn’t sober, but I got us there. It turned out the opening band that night was the same guys I’d met at the Bayou Lounge, now christened The Black Angels. Alex, the singer, wasn’t able to make it that night, so Christian, the guitar player, sang instead. We missed their entire set. I felt terrible about it. We caught up with them a little afterward. Nice guys, I remembered. Too bad I’d missed it.

We’d cross paths with them again the following year, at SXSW 2005. This time, we actually stayed at their house at 1300 McKinley. It was arranged through a guy named Adam Dimitri, who was putting together something called Austin Psych Fest (no association with the eventual APF/Levitation). We played a handful of shows that week. I remember Christian constantly strumming The Verve’s “The Drugs Don’t Work” during our stay.

Around this time, the Black Angels were working on their first EP, playing more shows outside of Austin. When we made it back down to Texas, we stayed with them again and played a run of shows together, Denton, Dallas, a few others.

Then we had a Montreal show coming up, November 1st, 2005, at Petit Campus, and the Black Angels were touring at the time in support of said EP, so we asked them to open. Their manager, whose name happened to be Brian Jones (I kid you not) sent word that they were stuck at the border. There was a curfew at the venue, so we made a call: we’d just keep playing until they showed up.

So we played. And we kept playing. And then we got word they were close. When the Black Angels finally arrived, I told them to just come straight on stage, plug into our gear, and play. They did. About twenty minutes, no setup, no soundcheck, nothing. And the entire room went silent. They sounded unbelievable. Christian was wearing a poncho. It was raw and powerful in a way I hadn’t fully understood until that moment.

That was the first time I really saw what The Black Angels were capable of. And it was just the beginning. My story with them continued from there…