Austin Sound

What do you do when you’re so damn retro that even the vintage-infatuated hipsters of Austin are scratching their heads at your sound? Release a series of 45 singles, duh! T Bird and the Breaks, the funkiest bunch of white kids since Roy Head and the Traits, don’t shy away from their influences, but they sure as hell give them a good kick in the ass, as evidenced with by this year’s debut LP, Learn About It. But CD is so…turn of the century - and let’s not even get started on that digital stuff! No, T Bird is all about the old school, so it’s not really surprising Tim Crane and Co. decided to reissue their album on vinyl this fall, and are now dropping this run of 45s at a rate of one per month for the next six months. (They’re no fools, though, the singles are available for digital download too). The crew kicked it off this month with two new cuts, “Monkeywrench” b/w “Nightshade Mary,” and next month’s will apparently be led by a tune called “Juju Baby.” Esmerelda, Nightshade Mary, Juju Baby? We don’t know what kinda women ol’ T Bird’s been hanging around, but we recommend that boy gets himself checked out asap. And buy a 45 from him - those STD tests ain’t free!

It’s probably inevitable that T Bird and the Breaks will be compared with Black Joe Lewis, as both are bringing soul back to Austin with a wild energy, so let’s get those comparisons out of the way right off the bat. Both are gritty and powerful, horn-blaring, high-stepping takes on soul and funk that melds the classic sound with more contemporary flair. Yet whereas Black Joe unleashes his soul-shouting with a more rocking and bluesy bent, T Bird taps into a bit more faithful vein, smoother but without compromising the raw, direct emotion. Ultimately, it feels that if Black Joe, who has been riding the Red River scene, hearkens James Brown, T Bird’s Tim Crane, who has generally come up among the Antone’s scene, croons with the rugged swagger of Joe Cocker.

Now that we’ve gotten that obvious and necessary local equivalency test out of the way, T Bird and the Breaks’ debut LP, Learn About It, is a fantastic burst of Memphis-tuned, white-boy soul.