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Hi there. Mary Cutrufello here. I'd like to tell you a little about the Havoline Supremes, which is my rocket to the past. It's a time machine permanently set on about 1995. With the original "who to love + when to leave" band, I get to play all the cool country stuff I was making my living with in those days. As they say, you can take the kid out of the honky tonks...
Here's the story:
In 1991, I moved from my native Connecticut to Austin, Texas to
learn and play honky-tonk country music. When I got there, I found a
fertile scene full of everything from staunch traditionalists like
Alvin Crow to rabble rousers like Two Hoots and a Holler to my favorites, Chaparral and Chris Wall. I soaked it
all up and soon began to play out with my own aggregation, which I
called The Havoline Supremes. I dropped the name soon after when people began to know who I was, and as Mary Cutrufello, we barnstormed Texas, playing every dive I could book...and integrating more than a few of the out-of-the-way ones!
The honky-tonk music we played was mostly of the 60s and 70s variety; covers of Buck Owens, Ray Price, Johnny Bush, Waylon Jennings, and Gary Stewart spiced our sets and gave context to the originals I was writing with an almost feverish intensity.
However, as the decade wore on and I began to feel more confident in my skills as a honky-tonk craftsman, some of the rock sounds of my youth began to creep back in. By the time Mercury Records came calling in 1997, I was ready to make a rock record, and in the record industry climate of the day, it was necessary to suppress my twangier leanings. This is how Rock Mary and Country Mary became two completely different things. Not that I ever stopped loving the twang, but there was a task at hand, and that was how it was done in those days. By that time, both honky-tonk country and heartland rock were equally huge parts of who I was, and focusing on either one was at once completely honest and a betrayal of sorts. But you gotta do what you gotta do.
Fast forward to 2005. I'm now 35 years old, coming off of 2 years of musical inactivity due to some vocal nodes that took a while to heal, and wanting to get back into the business. And as with most people I guess, the older you get, the less it makes sense to draw lines, and play games with who you really are. So I began bringing the old country tunes back. To no one's surprise except perhaps mine, they worked great next to the rock songs I was writing and performing. In particular, European audiences thought the whole thing was great, and were much less doctrinaire than I was about silly things like genre.
By 2006, I wanted more...and the Havoline Supremes were (re)born. I called Terry Kirkendall, who'd played with Cornell Hurd and the Derailers (and me), but was at the time semi-retired; and Roland Denney, who'd played with everyone from Nanci Griffith to Jerry Jeff Walker (and me), and was at the time leveling houses and jamming occasionally. Terry and Roland were the band on "who to love + when to leave," my very first CD, in 1996. In something right out of a movie, I suggested we put the old band back together, and the "Back to the Honky-Tonks" weekend was born.
In one incredible weekend in April of 2006, we played at Threadgill's in Austin, Rudyard's in Houston, and Dan's Silver Leaf in Denton, my old home Naomi's in Dallas being long gone. At the end of it, I suggested that we make this a regular occasional thing. To my delight, both Terry and Roland also thought it was a good idea...and so here we are.
We play a few times a year, if the gig is right. For me, however, the experience has led to a real rekindling of the honky-tonk flame. It's kind of a welcome home, but it's also fun to see how the miles and the years flavor the things I used to do back then. I've loved this music from the day my 10-year-old self heard Waylon doing the bumper music on the Dukes of Hazzard. (And Buck and Roy on Hee Haw--that was about all you got in the Northeast in the late 70s...not that I knew who any of those people really were.) I moved to Texas and jumped in with both feet, trying not to be a carpetbagger, full of respect and straight-up awed by some of the things I found here. Now, finally, I feel like I can bring some real meat to the barbecue myself, with thanks, of course--and maybe even add a little to the rich tradition of Texas honky-tonk music.
3:08 PM
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