What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/1432826
BECCA MARTIN-BROWN NWA Democrat-Gazette I n the middle of the phone call was an interview. At the beginning and end were Baby Boomer contemporaries chatting about life. Ray Benson, one of the founding members of Asleep at the Wheel and the constant keeper of the flame, lives in Austin, Texas, where my granddaughter lives. He excitedly told me he'd just had his first grandchild, a boy, two weeks previous. He loves Northwest Arkansas and remembers playing here way back in the 1970s at the Swinging Door, a bar on Dickson Street, with bands like Zorro and the Blue Footballs. And he casually mentions that he was having a meal with Alice Cooper not long ago and they were talking about how stages used to encompass all kinds of music on the same night. Asleep at the Wheel's first big gig was opening for Alice Cooper on Aug. 25, 1970. All that is now "Half a Hundred Years" ago, as the title of the new album, released this year, points out. Over those 50 years, the members of Asleep at the Wheel have come and gone, but the vision Benson had for the band has remained the same. He wanted to play everything from big band swing to country western to country blues and beyond, but he wanted the band to be a country- western "music outfit." "By instrumentation, Asleep at the Wheel has always been western swing," he says by phone on a Monday morning. That means guitar, bass, drums, saxophone, accordion, piano, violin and steel guitar, an instrument known for what has been described as its "distinctly emotive Western whine." But Benson brought a little bit of everything to the table. He was a child performer with his sister, singing folk music from Woody Guthrie to Peter, Paul and Mary. Growing up in Philadelphia, he listened to jazz on www.malco.com www.malco.com www.malco.com www.malco.com 10 WHAT'S UP! NOVEMBER 28-DECEMBER 4, 2021 FAQ Asleep at the Wheel WHEN — 7 p.m. Dec. 8 WHERE — Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville COST — $21-$39 INFO — 443-5600 or waltonartscenter.org Wide Awake And Swingin' Asleep at the Wheel celebrates 50 years Asleep at the Wheel started on its "Half a Hundred Years" album before the pandemic stopped everything. To get it finished in 2021, Ray Benson says, he used all the newest technologies and had musicians contribute from California, Australia, Vermont, Nashville, Rome and at his studio in Austin, Texas. (Courtesy Photo/Mike Shore) Ray Benson remembers playing on street corners during the lunch hour in Berkeley, Calif., hoping to make enough money to eat lunch himself. Fifty years later, livestreams during the pandemic drew thousands of viewers, "so it's obvious that a world without music is kind of a colorless place." (Courtesy Photo/Nathan Edge) FAYETTEVILLE