Mike Viola & The Candy Butchers

by Linus Gelber (Home Office Records)

After Stargazer Lily I adjourn for a quick margarita break up to The Ritz, with acoustic bluegrass accompaniment by Jim & Jennie and the Pine Barons from Croydon, PA. A lucky few of us regroup at The Blind Pig across the way for a 1:00 a.m. set by Mike Viola & The Candy Butchers. Mike Viola, a near-Boston native (Stoughton, MA) is based out of New York these days, and I had not seen him before despite his many downtown shows. Here he headlined a late-running showcase for RPM/Columbia (Sony), which left him starting off far too close to Austin's 2:00 a.m. closing to do any justice to his powerful material.

Mike Viola
Saturday morning, 2:00 AM
pickup truck

A few songs in, The Candy Butchers blow the sound system, and Viola leads the audience in a singalong while the bar staff digs around for relevant circuit breakers. Mod-suited and bespectacled in fine tinted-glasses Roy Orbison chic, he radiates early Elvis Costello energy and showmanship, minus the bitter hostility but with every erg of confidence and drive. His voice and melodies draw from the finest of Costello's (and, by extension, Orbison's) impulses, mellowed by a softer sensibility that reminded me of Joe Jackson's early work. It's skinny-tie stuff, all right, but in a fresh direction, spilling out of a slightly-bent urge to share rather than from geeky chips worn proudly on jerky shoulders. Power restored, the band charges through another few tunes before the circuits snap off again on the verge of their last number. Viola has had it by then, and grabs his guitar; the drummer snatches up his snare, and we all pile out onto Sixth Street. Some kind soul has parked a pickup truck in front of the Blind Pig and Mike jumps into the empty bed, acoustic in hand, and sings another short set (including "All I Have" and "I Don't Know Anything") out in the street, in the company of the in-the-knows, the newly converted, and the drunken passersby who have no idea what's going on but know a good thing when they see it. RPM label brass is there taking it all down in digital video and there's a t-shirt giveaway for the girl who knows the words to "The Cow Goes Moo" (damn, I missed another shirt).

Check their creative but hard to navigate Web site for a new spin on "home" pages, and don't stop til you find the photo of Viola with Jennifer Love Hewitt. If ever there was a reason to get into music...

Not long after this our cab drops us off on distant Oltorf by our cheap digs, nearly in sight of downtown Austin, and as luck will have it there are Mike Viola and the boys unloading their gear in the driveway of the La Quinta hotel. Forgetting in the haze of the late hour and the margaritas that Mike has no idea who we are, we rush him with bubbling praise about the pickup truck set. He nearly runs away but realizes that we're mostly harmless, and graciously accepts our enthusiasm. "That," says MC Webmaster J, "was the spirit of rock and roll." "That," counters Viola, "was the spirit of survival."

And so a good night.