Cover Bands

PAYING TRIBUTE

FOUR PREMIER AUSTIN TRIBUTE BANDS DISCUSS SUCCESS, ARDENT FANS AND PLAYING THEIR IDOLS’ SONGS

By Darcie Duttweiler

heartbyrne.org

HEARTBYRNE

After participating in a Talking Heads “hoot” night at Momo’s on West Sixth Street in 2010 with several different bands and musicians, it took almost a year for the official tribute band HeartByrne to formally take shape. Formed by Andy Harn, Evan Bozarth, Dustin Bozarth and Josh Pearson, the band went through several iterations before locking its current lineup, which also features Grego Loboz, Casey Byars, Erin Stein and Tricky Jones.

While the chemistry and friendship are very apparent during their performances, the love of Talking Heads and David Byrne is ultimately the touchpoint that holds the band together and comes through in their showmanship.

“Once we actually played the music and felt this sort of shared connection and joy from the people who came to these gigs, it was just a very infectious feeling,” Evan says.

With regular gigs at Antone’s Nightclub, Scoot Inn and 3Ten, including their last five New Year’s Eve parties, as well as the band’s annual SunByrne boat party, there are plenty of ways for even the most casual Byrne fan to catch the live version of their favorite songs, which are more numerous than one might think and span over several different decades and genres of music.

“I think they have such a wide range with so many years of so many different hit songs that it’s like in our subconscious as pop culture in America,” Pearson says.

The band is looking forward to finally celebrating its 10th anniversary properly with a huge party at the historic Paramount Theatre on April 2 with special cameos by Kevin Russell (ShinyRibs) and Walker Lukens that will benefit the Other Ones Foundation, a nonprofit that offers aid to people experiencing homelessness.

DEADEYE

deadeyeaustin.com

HEARTBYRNE PHOTO BY STEPHEN OLKER DEADEYE PHOTO BY NATASSIA WILDE.

There’s a lot of gray area when it comes to the formation of DeadEye as well as HeartByrne. Started by Joseph Faulhaber, who also performed with the Bozarth Bros in his band the Trim at the Talking Heads “hoot” night in 2010, the two bands are longtime friends and have mostly played together in some iteration or another. But it was a fateful Stubb’s Bar-B-Q show of Chicago-based Grateful Dead tribute band Dark Star Orchestra with Shadd Scott that sent Faulhaber back down memory lane to his first Dead concert at the tender age of 17 and gave him the realization that no one was doing something similar in Austin.

So with simply a word-of-mouth approach, the two musicians played a packed show at the Whip In, where everyone had “a hell of a time.” That was enough to get DeadEye off the ground. Now, with permanent bandmates Trevor Nealon, Lee Braverman and Keither Perkins, the band frequently performs at Antone’s, Parish, The Far Out and the Belmont, and they throw a yearly bash for Jerry Garcia’s birthday – in addition to their weekly Dead Club rehearsals, where they are constantly exploring the thousands of Grateful Dead live tapes and developing their skills as purveyors of what they consider to be sacred music.

The Grateful Dead are known as being the ultimate jam band. According to Faulhaber, the band never played the two songs the same live, and his band strives to achieve that same mentality, by having shows flow organically and feeding off the crowd’s energy. They play the songs, but they never regurgitate them, and with a large catalog of around 250 songs, it’s very easy to go to multiple DeadEye shows and have very different experiences.

“The Grateful Dead was so focused on being a live band, and that’s a big part of their longevity. As artists they’re able to get on stage and express themselves in a different way every night, so playing the same songs as the Grateful Dead gives us room to be exploratory and take chances and try different ideas but still sound like Grateful Dead music,” Faulhaber explains.

No big tour is currently in the works for DeadEye, but the band continues to plan on performing around Austin and be “there for the people the music is so important to.”

If you had ever gone to a Motown Night at The Highball or, more recently, at The Far Out Lounge, then you’ve seen the PDA Band’s predecessor, the Matchmaker Band play an energetic ’70s show.

While that band is still successfully performing its catalog of retro soul and funk jams around town and at weddings, founder and guitarist Amos Traystman saw a need for a younger-focusing band to play newer songs for brides yearning to recapture the high-energy boy band bops of their middle school and high school days. Hence, PDA

Band was born in 2016.

While originally starting out as exclusively a ’90s and ’00s boy band, PDA Band quickly evolved to include a roster of headlining vocalists who take turns crooning danceable tunes from Boyz II Men to Lizzo. Featuring

Anthony Hubbard (aka He-Yonce), Miggy Milla, Johnny

Scott (aka Vegas) and Drew Davis (Traystman’s wife), the eight-piece band, which also includes Zack Morgan, Chris

Mead and Josh Arredondo, prefers to be known as a “party band,” rather than a cover or tribute band.

And for a good reason ... PDA Band is incredible at whipping up a crowd into an upbeat frenzy. The audience will vacillate between belting out all the words to “Gangsta’s Paradise” or do all the dance moves to “Bye, Bye, Bye,” along with the band during their high-energy performances at Icenhauer’s on Sundays, which also sometimes includes a full-blown traffic-stopping dance to Beyone’s “Crazy in Love” from Hubbard.

“Because it’s a party band, it’s all about the interaction with the crowd, so it gets really wild and super fun,” Traystman says. “And then, with the boy band covers, they hit all of the boy band choreography, and the band morphs through the different personalities that we have on stage and how they pair up to their favorite stuff.”

At weddings, the band is unparalleled at getting everyone on the dance floor, from brides and grooms to even moms and dads, who tend to also get nostalgic about songs they were forced to listen to on repeat when their kids were teenagers.

“We watch both generations enjoy it equally when they’re on the dance floor, which is a really cool experience,” Traystman says.

PDA BAND

wearepda.com

bidibidibanda.com

BIDI BIDI BANDA

Although Stephanie Bergara always loved to sing since childhood, the start of her professional singing career — and the creation of Bidi Bidi Banda — was born on a lark. Tasked with helping to promote Pachanga Festival in 2014 as part of her job for Giant Noise, Bergara needed a lively band to kick off the festival in style. Thinking she could essentially kill two birds with one stone, she realized she could easily perform the songs she loved to sing as a girl and even sang in the same range as one of her idols: the “Queen of Tejano music,” Selena Quintanilla-Pérez.

“Next thing I know, I’m in full Selena costume at Empire Control Room, getting ready to play to a sold-out crowd. It just kind of started out bigger than life, bigger than I even could imagine. It was just supposed to be a one-time thing,” Bergara reminisces.

Throughout the last eight years, Bergara’s band has shifted dramatically, as well as their performances. Now with her full-time bandmates — Rocky Reyna, Luke Salas, Mike Aguilar, Coby Ramirez and Luis Sanchez — Bidi Bidi Banda no longer attempts to simply recreate Selena’s songs and style — Bergara got quickly tired of painting her bleached blonde hair black and painstakingly sewing rhinestones onto jumpsuits. Rather, the bandmates infuse their own personalities and creativity into their songs, and while Bergara sounds an awful lot like Selena, it’s very clear that it is Stephanie on stage.

“We want to capture the spirit without giving a carbon copy of what she did. I always say there would need to be three of me to do what she did with the dancing and the designing her own costumes,” Bergara says.

Much like the trailblazer Selena was, Bergara is also paving the way for future Latina singers. She was the first Latin female singer to headline Blues on the Green in front of 25,000 people, and in 2018 she was the first female-fronted band to win the Best Cover Band Austin Music Awards.

This fall Bergara is looking forward to the band’s first East Coast tour, as well as heading out West again. But it’s the moments when she meets her fans, especially after singing her favorite Selena song “No Queda Mas,” that she treasures the most.

“I talk to so many people who have Selena stories, and stuff like that is always going to be so special to me,” Bergara says. “I think a huge part of our audience comes to the shows to just feel those feelings again. Our shows will tell you that Selena is still as popular as ever.”

Wild Times in East Austin

BRETT LEWIS OF THE MAGNOLIA NETWORK SHOW “VAN GO,” IS AUSTIN’S NEWEST TELEVISION STAR

By Amanda Eyre Ward Photos by Brittany Dawn Short

THE 1958 WINNEBAGO PARKED IN FRONT OF A warehouse on East Cesar Chavez is the first clue that I’ve reached my destination, Chewy Design Company. I’m greeted by two dogs, Bobby and Tito, and Brett Lewis, a bearded carpenter and the star of “Van Go,” a Magnolia Network television show about Brett’s work converting vans into tiny homes on the road, innovating creative solutions and tackling the many challenges that come with custom outfitting each vehicle for his clients’ lifestyles.

The show was developed by Austin company Rabbit Foot Production Studios. “Van Go” marks Rabbit Foot’s first foray into television after creating commercial content for Texas cult brands like Yeti, Shiner Beer, Frost Bank and Whataburger.

Brett, who grew up in Austin, got hooked on van life years ago when he turned his first 1983 Vanagon into a fully functioning home on wheels. I’m able to peek into Chewy, Brett’s company namesake, which is as brown as Chewbacca in Star Wars. Brett has outfitted Chewy with handmade wooden tables that slide out and an area for sleeping.

“I got Chewy off Craigslist, and it was in rough shape. I wanted to live in a van, so I bought this and made it a bit nicer, hoping that I would live in it,” says Brett, who wears jeans and tortoiseshell glasses. When he advertised his customization services, he says, “I drove around for two or three years building these out on the road in Chicago and Boulder and Reno.”

In the pilot episode of “Van Go,” Chef Rolando Garza III, who makes vegan Mexican tacos at his food truck Cool Beans, challenges Brett to help him transform the truck (formerly a mail van, currently a “hot tin can,” according to Brett) into a restaurant on the outside and livable home on the inside.

Brett, who calls himself an artist and earns the title more and more with each episode, raises the floor and adds a slide-out kitchen, an overhead awning (and an external salsa shelf) and an interior that’s more lovely than most new Austinites’ first apartments.

Brett was working in Austin when his friend, Chad Werner, called from Los Angeles and asked Brett if he’d be willing to make a “sizzle reel” to pitch.

“I didn’t even know what a sizzle reel was,” says Brett. (It’s a short promotional video.) “So Chad flew down that night and came and filmed me. I figured, we’ll see what happens. I mean, I feel like most things don’t actually work when you’re trying to make a TV show.”

Brett laughs and shrugs. He gestures to his new, large warehouse with a big grin.

“Yeah. And then he called me like two months later, saying, ‘We’re going to film a pilot.’ So that was a crazy time because then of course I was building vans out of my car in people’s driveways. I was like, I gotta get a little more legit! So I got a shop. And then we started the show. It’s been wild.” magnolia.com chewydesignco.com

On the Set

WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT AND PROFESSIONAL PASSION WITH DIRECTOR EMILY HAGINS

By Britni Rachal Photos by Brittany Dawn Short

WHAT STARTED AS A PROJECT FOR A 12-YEAR-OLD IN A North Central Austin neighborhood in the early 2000s with a boom mic made of a paint roller, has turned into more than a decade’s worth of professional experience, including an upcoming 2022 reboot of that first original film, “Pathogen.”

Passion for films hit movie Director Emily Hagins at an early age, and thanks to her own personal drive, along with support from her parents who have no background in film, her career now spans to more than one dozen credits, including a most recent, and first international film, titled “Sorry About the Demons.”

Filmed in Toronto, the recent production is about a young man struggling with a broken heart who learns that his new place is full of restless spirits.

“I would describe myself as a hyper-focused nerd,” says a very modest Hagins. “Even as a small child, I loved movies and writing, so my parents bought a home camera and started showing me that I could write stories and edit them together.”

Inspired by horror movies, Hagins and her crew of middle school friends filmed her first film “Pathogen” in 2003 and never could have imagined that nearly 20 years later, it would be rebooting on Blu-Ray. The honor is from American Genre Film Archive, which preserves quirky, independent movies.

“It’s a zombie movie made by a kid. It’s really goofy. It doesn’t totally make sense. AGFA isn’t releasing it to make fun of all that; they’re releasing earnestly, in a ‘we think this is a cute little weird indie Austin-made film’ kind of way. I appreciate that,” says Hagins, who adds there have been times when people maybe wanted to screen her movie for the wrong reasons.

Keeping close with her core group of friends, most interestingly, some of Hagins’ crew from those earlier days are still working with her. In “Sorry About the Demons,” one of them plays a demon voice. Another friend writes original songs for the end film credits.

Empowering others on the set is a fun aspect of directing movies, and Hagins is known for advocating for gender diversity in an industry that is still considered male dominated, with women recently only representing 20% of behind-the-scenes roles on the top 100 domestic grossing films, according to a study by Women in Television and Film at San Diego University.

“I try to hire women in crew positions and as producers, writers and in lead roles. I’d like to see equal representation at 50% — if not more. I just don’t want this to be a thing anymore,” explains Hagins, who has her own experience of unnecessary comments about her gender. “Industry peers have told me, ‘I look at you and I don’t see a director.’ But there’s no real look of what a director is,” says Hagins. “They have said that when I show up to a meeting for the first time. It’s amazing what people feel like they can say, maybe because they are not aware of the situation or how hard it is to just be seen and heard.”

Another area of support for female leadership? Her boyfriend, a Beaumont native turned Austinite and graduate of University of Texas, Ben Hanks, who several years ago moved from the ranks of crew, to now producing. Hagins caught Hanks’ eye when they first met in 2013 at a documentary screening.

“She ordered a cheese pizza — a kid’s pizza — and I was like oh, I would do that too,” said Hanks.

“Yes. He is trying to leave out that I was trying to be cheap and ordered a kid’s pizza,” laughs Hagins. “He thought that was interesting.”

A brief friendship, followed by a first date at Ramen Tatsu-ya and Spider House, and the two have now been together for almost 10 years.

“Emily loves to collaborate, but she’s also incredibly independent,” says Hanks. “I admire that she likes to not lose control of certain aspects of writing and directing, because this kind of work really does require a singular vision. If there’s too much debate or too many voices, sometimes it can stall things for too long.”

With roots planted in Austin, the duo spends most of their time in Central Texas, but occasionally travels to Los Angeles or other remote locations for work. Both are excited for the future of film and movies, especially as Bastrop gets ready to open a new 546-acre film set in 2023.

“I think the more that Austin can grow and not just this little indie bubble, that’s great! But I also the indie bubble is great,” says Hagins. “It will also be interesting to see what kind of movies continue to come out of the pandemic, especially as we go through this collective experience, together as a society.” imdb.com/name/nm2035204

Boot Scootin’ Boogie

MEET DAVE WRANGLER, THE MASTERMIND BEHIND DISKO COWBOY AND VINYL RANCH

By Darcie Duttweiler Photos by Jamie LaCombe HEAVY GLOW Disco photo by Emily Jaschke YES, WRANGLER IS DAVE WRANGLER’S REAL LAST NAME. HE ADMITS IT’S a little serendipitous given his “Urban Cowboy” lifestyle and his lifelong love of country music. Also coincidental: The day Wrangler was born in 1979, Donna Summer’s hit “Bad Girls” was No. 1 on the charts.

“What’s that saying? Like, you always idolized the area you were born into?” Wrangler laughs. “There’s something about something like that.”

With a fascination with both country and disco music growing up in Blanco County — he would listen to 1990s country radio hits in his family’s car on road trips but also dance to disco tunes in his room with his friends — Wrangler says his foray into deejaying was also quite by happenstance. He would spend his days watching MTV on the floor in his parents’ house and hum lyrics to other songs over the videos he was watching.

“I didn’t really know what deejays were or what they did or anything when I was a kid,” he says. “It was just kind of something that I naturally did, and then I ended up becoming a pretty prolific mash-up remix producer.”

After moving to San Antonio at age 20 and learning how to use professional equipment from working deejays who graciously took him under their wings and taught him the ropes, Wrangler quickly made a name for himself. Eventually he relocated to Houston to immerse himself in the nightclub scene and “reinvented” himself. He became known for his multi-genre remixes and deejay sets that helped to define the dance music culture of the late 2000s. Wrangler jumped onto the national radar in 2008 with the release of the mixtape, “Life Of The Party,” which was called a “goldmine of dance floor-friendly indie rock, hip-hop and electronic music” by “Rolling Stone.” Wrangler went on to release bootleg tracks and mixtapes at a rapid rate, and in 2009, his remix of the Animal Collective single, “My Girls” thrust him onto the international stage.

During this time, Wrangler was also becoming prolific at Houston clubs, spinning tunes at local hotspots and deejaying high-profile parties for the likes of Lady Gaga, George Strait, Tom Ford and more. He also created Vinyl Ranch, which was originally slated to be a one-time gig to celebrate his birthday, but word spread quickly, and after a chance meeting on an airplane with nightlife legend Mickey Gilley, Wrangler reimagined Vinyl Ranch to juxtapose infectious country classics and the hedonistic disco lifestyle. Two months later, the party became one of the biggest in Houston and the start of something new for Wrangler.

Nowadays, Vinyl Ranch is more of a lifestyle brand, churning out streetwear, t-shirts, boots and other goods perfect for any “urban cowpoke.” Think shirts brandished with “chattahucci” in the iconic Gucci font and other fun plays on sex, drugs and country music. In order to maintain his own identity, Wrangler decided to separate Vinyl Ranch as its own entity and took up the mantle of Disko Cowboy, where he continued to spread his gospel of neon-loving dance party remixes. He says he derived the name and vibe from his memories of visiting the Midnight Rodeo 18-and-up dance nightclub as a high school kid.

“I’ve just been really nostalgic about that time in my life,” Wrangler explains. “The deejay would play a mix of top 40 hits with general club classics from the ’70s and ’80s, mixed with a little rap music and some country music. It was just like a multi-genre dance party. And that’s what the Disko Cowboy set is, more or less.”

Although he has had roots in Texas his whole life, Wrangler has extensively traveled and played major festivals, gigs and parties all over the country, including the Super Bowl and Bonnaroo, as well as opening for headlining talent like Empire of the Sun, Talib Kweli, Ghostland Observatory, Passion Pit, Psychedelic Furs and more. Following a stint in Tulsa after winning a grant from the Tulsa Remote program, in which he lived in Tulsa for more than a year while working remotely, Wrangler is finally settling down in Austin, where he hopes to make his “own cultural tweaks to the Austin matrix via collaboration with the local tech and creative communities.”

After an electrifying set at ACL Music Fest last fall, Wrangler is looking forward to a busy year with gigs already booked at Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, South by Southwest, Stagecoach Festival, Third Man’s Blue Room in Nashville and Mercury Lounge in New York City, where his bumping genre-bending dance parties will always encourage partygoers “to wave your freak flag, to dance, absorb the music, wear a big hat, two-toned boots, gold chains — whatever you need to feel like yourself.” diskocowboy.com vinylranch.com