Album Notes

WHEATFIELD HISTORY
Turning the knob, changing the channels the old-fashioned way one evening in 1976, I landed on KUHT, Houston's PBS station-the country's first PBS station- and saw a band on a stage in front of an enthusiastic audience. Two tall, skinny men with long, blond hair, one on each end of the stage, stood playing acoustic guitars as a beautiful dark-haired girl sat on a stool between them in the center of the stage, singing, "The lady has no heart...."

"What is this?" I thought. I sat down, mesmerized, arm's length from the television, and didn't touch the knob again until after Gary P. Nunn's "London Homesick Blues" played and the credits for the show ran.

The band was Wheatfield. The tall, skinny men were Craig Calvert and Chris (Ezra) Idlet, the dark-haired girl was Connie Mims and what it was, was Austin City Limits in its first season.

-Lyle Lovett, January 1999, from the foreword to the book "Austin City Limits-25 Years of American Music" by John T. Davis.

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Wheatfield began in 1973 in Houston, Texas, with Ezra Idlet, Craig Calvert and Connie Mims. The trio quickly established themselves at the forefront of the then emerging Texas music scene and continued to stretch their musical influences from country, bluegrass and folk into jazz and rock genres as they added bassist Bob Russell in 1974 and drummer/percussionist Damian Hevia in 1975. The group toured extensively until 1976, when they changed their name and musical direction into the band St. Elmo's Fire, which disbanded in 1979.
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"As a reviewer, I found myself enamored with the fact that I was listening to music created thirty years ago that still had the stuff to be a big hit right here, right now, today. You must own this album."- Lucky Boyd, MyTexasMusic.com
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Review: Wheatfield scores with heyday tunes


11:49 PM CST on Friday, January 7, 2005

By MATT WEITZ / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

Future gray-haired techno-'rents will consider themselves well-served if their reunion shows come off as well as Wheatfield's.

Reduced to the band's creative core - vocalist and guitarist Connie Mims, guitar/flute/mandolin player Craig Calvert and guitar/banjo guy Ezra Idlet (the tall half of Trout Fishing in America) - the trio delivered dovetailed harmonies and acoustic strumming that ably presented their legacy.

The pop side consisted of long-ago radio standards such as the bluegrass-y "Waxahachie Woman" and sultry "The Lady Has No Heart."

Ms. Mims' voice was as rich and full - perhaps even more so - than in the band's heyday (Wheatfield, which started in 1973, morphed into St. Elmo's Fire and was over by 1979). Her covers of Joni Mitchell songs such as "Carey" and "Conversation" were her own, full-bodied and mature.

They performed other signature songs such as Steve Young's "Seven Bridges Road" and their own "Cardinal," but the real evidence of the attention they once garnered were the numbers from the scores they did for the Houston Ballet.

"Drifting Along" and "Roll Over Dave Brubeck" (with tasty flute work from Mr. Calvert) were from Caliban, a retelling of Shakespeare's The Tempest from the point of view of Prospero's slave, Caliban.

But the trio has kept up with the times, and fans who no longer trek to live venues to see old favorites can check out sound clips from a new album of '70s recordings by going to the band's site, www.wheatfieldband.com.

Better late than never.

E-mail mweitz@dallasnews.com