Audrey Auld Mezera's third solo album isn't the first record in music history to be named Texas - and it certainly won't be the last. But let's go out on a limb here and assume it's the only one that has ever and will ever be released by a gal from the tiny Australian state of Tasmania.
It's also very likely the first album called Texas - to even have the word "Texas" in the title at all - on which the "T" word makes only a single appearance in the lyrics (the line in question, from "Missing Mez", a song for her husband.) For Audrey's Texas is not a record about a huge chunk of land or even that oft over-romanticized "Texas state of mind." It's a record about people.
It's about heroes, like Woody Guthrie, Harlan Howard, Billy Joe Shaver and Australia's Dead Ringer Band. It's about family, like her father, and lovers - like the aforementioned husband, for whom Audrey not only moved across the world, but also clear over her favorite city in the Northern hemisphere, Austin, in favor of Stinson Beach, California. It's about a "little girl lost"-turned-Texas Death Row statistic named Karla Faye Tucker. And it's also about people gathering in the studio to capture the magic moment when the here and now is transcended, and you come away with something timeless.
So why call it Texas? Audrey could certainly get away with pointing out that "Texas" is derived from the Caddo Indian word meaning "friends." But fact is, nothing about the album was that deliberate. The title actually came to her at the last minute - lifted from the funky mirror painting of a rattlesnake that graces the album's cover. True to the spirit embodied in the name of her independent label, Reckless Records (co-founded in 1998 with long-time musical partner Bill Chambers, of the Dead Ringer Band and "father of Kasey" fame), Texas was born on a whim.
"I really have an affection for this record," say Audrey. "But honestly, I hadn't planned to do this album. I had planned to do my next album in Australia, with Bill producing, and had sent him lots of demos so he could pick which songs he wanted to record. But I had all these other songs left over, and Gabe and I had wanted to work together for some time, so we set aside a little time when I was going to be touring through Austin ... and it just sort of happened."
"Gabe" is Gabe Rhodes, guitarist, producer and son of beloved Texas singer-songwriter Kimmie Rhodes. Audrey met him during her first visit to Austin, in 2001, when she was touring America for the first time in support of her solo debut, 2000's ARIA (Aussie Grammy)-nominated The Fallen. She had, of course, already "fallen" under the spell of Texas music - and Americana/country music in general - years before; but it was the sense of a true artistic community that impressed her most about the "Live Music Capital of the World." And though she was only passing through, this community accepted her as one of it's own.
And so it was that Audrey's first album made on American soil and released under her new married name (Mezera) came to be recorded at Gabe Rhodes' home studio in Austin over three days in late 2004. The core trio of Audrey, Gabe and Bill were joined by some of the finest musicians in town: Carrie Rodriguez, Darcie Deaville, Will Landin and Wally Doggett from Jimmy LaFave's band and, last but most certainly not least, Gabe's "mum," Kimmie.
"It was very casual," recalls Audrey of the sessions. "I'd teach them the song and then we'd sit and play it and get it in one take. I'd decided not to plan anything and to let people play what they wanted to play - as opposed to normally being really in control and having an idea of how it all should be. It was a really nice, relaxed way of doing things. And it was good to record it live, and not do heaps of drops-in and overdubs trying to get it all perfect. I think when you're playing, you're channeling something, and when you start chopping it all up and compiling it, that feeling you channeled can get lost."
One thing that was lost - albeit not by accident - was the dark introspection that marked both The Fallen and it's equally acclaimed 2003 follow-up, Losing Faith. Texas, though far from sunny all the time, stands apart as Audrey's warmest and most outward-looking record to date. "It's just from being in a different place in my life," explains the woman fellow songwriter Fred Eaglesmith has called "one of the most honest original artists I know."
"My previous two albums were very much about myself - the internal searching and heartbreak, all that stuff," Audrey continues. "I'm a lot happier now, and I don't feel the need to explore everything that's going on inside me as much. Plus, I find that just by living in America I tend to look outside myself more, and think a lot about other people's lives and stories."
Audrey's own story - a saga that began in Tasmania, spent a good deal of time on walkabout through the Outback desert in search of direction, transitioned into a successful career working for animation studios in Sydney and finally found its rhythm when she picked up a guitar and began writing and singing music "with the dirt left on," as she calls it - took on a bit of a fairy tale spin recently when she married one Daniel Mezera in the summer of 2003. The couple met more than 20 years ago, when she was a waitress at a cocktail bar in Hobart, Australia and he was in the U.S. Navy; she dated his best friend, another sailor, at the time, and stayed in sporadic touch with both through the next two decades. Then, two years ago, the sailor she dated - now married with children - suggested Audrey and Daniel meet again.
"That was in July '03, and we got married at the end of August, and then I moved to America in October," she says. "It was really quick, and of course you ask yourself, 'Gee, what am I doing?' But it felt absolutely right, and we're happier now than we were then, and it just gets better and better."
"It certainly changed my outlook on the future and planning," she laughs. "What I learned from that was, just relax, and don't worry about trying to know the outcome of something, because you're going to be closed off to the unexpected, which can turn out to be something really great. You know?"
Sounds a lot like Texas.
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