The Nervebreakers flyer with the fetish model & the story of DJ's & The Hot Klub in Dallas

 

Pat Blashill posted this old Nervebreakers flyer yesterday with a note that said: “Nervebreakers show at DJs, Dallas, 1980. The much beloved Nervebreakers pre-dated punk in the Big D, and are said to have had a quasi-New York Dolls phase. DJs was one of the first punk clubs in the city, although not as well known (or funded?) as The Hot Klub. Poster by Nervebreakers singer T. Tex Edwards. The woman in the photo is Tana Louise, who was once known as the Cincinnati Sinner, and like Bettie Page, was also a fetish model for Irving Klaw (ID courtesy of the lovely Mae Barone.)” 

My two cents: DJ’s was before the Hot Klub. There was a very short period of time where they overlapped. "Better funded" is an understatment. Punk stumbled upon Delores Nolley, DJ’s proprietor (who had some sort of Jack Ruby connection in her younger days). When some punks in a band called The Infants (ex-Dot Vaeth Group members David & Doug Townsend on guitar & drums, Linda Shaw on bass, who later played with me in Tex & the Saddletramps ’79-’82 & the early version of Out On Parole ’84-’85, & a limey cat named Jeff Westley on vocals, who hung out at the clothing store next door on lower Greenville Avenue, approached Delores about letting them set up & play in her tiny bar, a scene was born. She was ill-equipped to be booking bands above the local punk level, who just wanted any place to play that would let them come in & bash away for tips. Eventually, bands from Austin would come up to play DJ’s. I don’t know what payment they were promised, someone from one of those bands would have to chime in on that. But I do know that the first time The Cramps came to Texas, they played Austin & Houston, but no-showed DJ’s in Dallas because the word had gotten around that she didn’t always come up with promised guarantee She also promoted what I think was the first “punk festival” in Texas, ‘DJ’s First Annual New Wave Retreat’ at the historic Yello’ Belly Speedway in Grand Prairie.

The Hot Klub was a venture run by much more experienced Dallas musicbiz guys, Mark Lee (who had managed & promoted Dallas garagebanders Kenny & the Kasuals in the late 1960s) & Danny Eaton, formerly of Eaton-Page who ran The Palladium, up on Northwest Highway in Dallas, where The Nervebreakers had opened shows for John Cale, The Police, & The Clash on their first run through Texas. Coincidentally, The Clash show was the same weekend as Dolores’ New Wave Retreat (October ’79?) & Joe Strummer referenced it onstage into the microphone on that night. Just months later Lee & Eaton astutely saw where music was headed, & opened up The Hot Klub on Maple Avenue in a building that had formerly been a good sized Hispanic Disco, right across the side street from a Jack-In-The-Box drive-through burger joint. Local bands now had a bigger, more organized room to gig at, with a built-in good sound system & soundman. And every new wave, ska, neo-rockabilly, post-punk, up & coming touring band that came through Dallas in that 1980-83 period played at The Hot Klub. From Jeffery Lee Pierce wailing on his bugle, to the Stranglers’ roadies tossing Bobby Soxx out of the upstairs dressing room & down the stairs & Soxx subsequently slashing all tires on their rented Ryder truck parked out front. It was always hopping at the Hot Klub…

Above is the original image of Tana Louise I recently ran across, that I swiped from Andy Warhol's Interview or another of those New York City rags for this flyer & was later used for The Nervebreakers' first album coverart...

Also, check out Pat Blashill’s great ‘Texas Is The Reason’ book, plus he is currently working on an oral history of Lone Star punk for UT Press.

Tex & the Saddletramps find a home at The Lyon's Pub in Dallas

Ahhh, the Lyon's Pub!!! Tex & the Saddletramps straddled some eras. First gig as a rockabilly/C&W side-band from The Nervebreakers was opening for Joe King Carrasco and The Crowns at Big D's little punk hangout, DJ's. Then lots of gigs followed at The Hot Klub. As that fizzled out, alot of the Hot Klub bands transitioned over to the new wavey Ground Zero, off Upper Greenville Avenue, (DJ's had been at Lowest Greenville Avenue), but not us. Somewhere in the middle of all this Mike Haskins & Bob Childress left The Nervebreakers & the Saddletramps to form Bag Of Wire with Curtis Hawkins & Clarke Blacker. Paul Quigg & James Flory (from the band Superman’s Girlfriend) replaced them in both bands, & then both bands ceased to exist. Sometime in 1982, I met & started jamming with a cat named Key Kolb. Well, one thing led to another & we got together with Mike Haskins again & started a new Tex & the Saddletramps, recruiting the supremely talented Donnie Ray Ford to play bass & bringing back Russell Fleming, the only Saddletramps drummer through all these incarnations. Ford was more self-destructive & an even worse drunk than I was. So one Sunday after a gig at the tony 8.0 bar in which Ford had repeatedly grabbed the microphone slurring & cursing, BOTH guitarists called me separately & said, "we gotta find another bass player." The original Saddletramps' bassist, Linda Shaw, was given a call & she consented to return to the fold. Kolb soon left too & it was back to the original Mike, Linda, Russell & I. Sshhuuw! Enough background info...

Tex & the Saddletramps at Zebo's "Rockabilly Night"...

So we bounced around playing gigs wherever our manager, Curtis Hawkins, could scrounge one up. Out of town we played in Denton, at The Bowery in Oklahoma City, or Steve Dean's AusTex Lounge in Austin. In-town, at the aforementioned 8.0 Bar, "Rockabilly Night" at Zebo's, & the old Circle Theater on the infamous Harry Hines Blvd, a spectacular old movie theater, where I had attended movies on Saturday afternoons as a child, that had been converted into a massive hard rock/metal bar. Where after one set, they asked us to not play our scheduled second set, just take a less-than-agreed-upon amount of pay & leave...

Tex & the Saddletramps posing in front of the Circle Theater on the infamous Harry Hines Blvd. (Left to right) Mike Haskins, me, Linda Shaw, & Russell Fleming...

Finally we ended up at the Lyon's Pub, in a kind of shabby older building on Yale Blvd. across Central Expressway from SMU. There, we found a home. A place that actually liked us, ALOT. At our first gig there, we learned the local Rugby team, the Dallas Harlequins, drank there after practices & games. They whooped & hollered with wild abandon, & swung from the light fixtures hanging down from the ceiling during our set. It was there I met some really fun gals who both worked & hung out there, a redhead named Carol Box & Dallas Alice, whom I'm still friends with & correspond with to this day. It was at the Lyon's Pub that I first met Bubbles Cash's wild offspring, the mohawked Keiley, that I ran with for awhile back then. She was probably then underage, but I never asked. I remember one night she & Bobby Soxx & I were stopped by the cops, with me driving. Bobby & I were experienced enough to "yes sir/ no sir" to all their questions, but Keiley was pissed off that we'd gotten pulled over. They found a tomahawk in her purse & arrested her on-the-spot. Which left Bobby & I to have to drive over to Keiley's mom's apartment & inform her, "Bubbles, your daughter's been hauled downtown for a concealed weapon." 

Things were going well with our regular gigs at the Lyon's Pub. We got some of our old punkabilly crowd, but also regular folks too. Add in some bikers & rugby players & we generally had a good time. Until one night right in the middle of one of our sets, a gentleman in a suit approached the stage, flashed a badge & cut us off mid-song. He was from the TABC, the state alcoholic beverage commission & they were closing the bar down. He informed us that "this gentleman here," pointing at one of his cohorts, "will watch you unload your equipment from the stage & out the back door. Do not remove anything else from this bar, just your own belongings. Do not finish your beers or take them with you." I later learned we were lucky. When they shut down a bar, they generally padlock the doors & can confiscate everything in there. We were lucky they let us leave with our gear. I later heard that Chris, the bar owner, had been passing around one alcoholic beverage license to several other bars at different locations, to have on hand for scheduled inspections. How that worked, I don't know, but that was the end of the Lyon's Pub...

(Special thanks to Curtis Cottrell for brightening up the first & third image)