October, 2001
Beaver Nelson Live at the Double Door Inn
Charlotte, NC
By David Pilot, rockzilla.net

The second entry from the Charlotte Files on rockzilla.net comes your way from a barstool in the back of the Double Door Inn, a legendary dive bar on the outskirts of downtown Charlotte, NC that rivals some of Fort Worth's best beer halls for pure music enjoyment. The joint used to be a house, but was renovated a whole lotta years ago and the downstairs area turned into one hell of a place for artists to put on a show. The bar is wooden, long and well-stocked. The stage is a crackerbox assemblage of plywood nailed together and raised maybe six inches off the living room floor. The listening area is a hardwood floor two or three times the size of the stage and littered with old-time metal schoolhouse and theatre seats. The ceiling is a mass of exposed wooden beams covered with pictures of the bands that have played there over the years. Stevie Ray Vaughn. Joe Ely. Webb Wilder. The Derailers. B.B. King. The Turtles. Leon Russell. The Drive By Truckers. And a coupla hundred others who have showed up to weave magic on a thousand nights over the last twenty-six years. This is a joint that books the best, a place that cares about the sound, a bar that knows its customers and appreciates 'em. Also a place where people come to hear the music more than to shoot the bull. There's plenty of the latter to be found, and also enough room to do it without taking away from whoever's singing their heart out on stage. And the last two people in Charlotte who are actually from Charlotte say this is the place the real people choose to be when it's time to take a break from the whirlwind.

Given that, Beaver Nelson and his band had to feel a little bit like they were home last Tuesday night. The boys from Austin know these bars intimately, and know the lives of the people who frequent them even better. Beaver writes truly intelligent and insightful music, and he and Scrappy Jud Newcomb, Cornbread and Mark Patterson have spent enough time on Sixth Street to know how to play that music with authority and subtlety all at once. On this particular crisp fall evening the band hit Charlotte as part of a swing through North Carolina promoting their new CD Undisturbed on Black Dog Records. Eighteen days into a road trip that started at Poor David's Pub in Dallas and had wound through locations as varied as Chicago, Buffalo, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Raleigh with four more days to go before closing out this leg at the Continental Club in Houston, the fellas were tired. You could tell it from Beaver's eyes and gait when he walked in near the end of the opening band's set, and in his voice as he said hello and played the lead singer drinking in the audience role to a T. But when the guitars plugged in and the amps fired up, tired went out like a carrier pigeon on crystal meth. Nelson has a rough tenor, and many of his tunes push the limits of his vocal range. That tends to come across with raw intensity on a CD, and the same is true when he plays a solo acoustic gig. I wondered how it would translate over electric guitars and a drum kit. The answer? Every bit as solidly, that's how. The show was short, a combination of the grueling tour and the fact that it was a Tuesday night in a town where everybody works at a bank. But the 90 minutes or so they played, the Double Door Inn was on fire. Nelson obviously has some dedicated fans in North Carolina, as the room held near 40 people who knew the words to a great number of the tunes on display. There was a good mix of songs, many pulled from Beaver's 1998 The Last Hurrah and the rest for the most part from his new Undisturbed. The new songs were largely unknown to the crowd, myself included, because of some apparent distribution problems with outlets in the Carolinas who hadn't received their copies yet. Several in attendance appeared to at the very least have heard cuts from the MP3 samples on www.beavernelson.com, however, and were to some degree marginally familiar with what was coming with each new song's opening riffs.

Nelson himself pretty much stayed with the basics of concert formula, not talking much and putting his energy into each song. Every one of 'em came alive, driven by Newcomb's excellent guitar work and thriving on the foundation laid down by Cornbread and Patterson. Beaver likes to say the new disc fits his style, because "I'm just philosophizing up front with a killer band backing me up." That's a far better perspective on the show than I really have the words for. Bottom line is hearing Beaver Nelson sing live is an experience everyone should have at least once. In a room like the Double Door, he's a presence to be reckoned with and a musical sage who'll stop you smack dead in your tracks. Wish I'd been more familiar with Undisturbed and could offer some insights here as to what you're missing if you haven't heard it. What I can tell you is this: this kid is one of the best songwriters working in Texas today and has a chance to go down as one of the greats. He believes in what he's doing and does it absolutely unapologetically and with a single-minded approach that tends to mark the ones we'll all remember. Reminds me of Chris Wall's lyrics about the up and comers,

In some south Austin music store
A kid buys a guitar
He only knows one thing for sure,
He's gonna be a star.

And you wanna scream
Kid don't do it
You can't stop it once it starts

But something old inside your soul
Say God bless your precious heart

On Tuesday night in Charlotte Beaver countered with a lyric of his own:

Too much moonlight makes you crazy
It cuts right through our disguise
The part of you the night has hidden
And the part of me that I despise

And I'm thinking of a story long ago
Is it someone else's memory or mine
I feel something in this moonlight
Passing over me Or is it only time

It only got better from there, folks. Whether the band was ripping holes in souls with another late night bar love story or Beaver was singing a capella or acoustic by himself, this was a night full of magic and mystery and love and war and joy and pain. And in the back of the room was this reviewer, a homesick Texan sipping Jack by the glass and for an hour and a half getting absolutely lost in the tapestries Beaver Nelson weaves when he picks up a guitar. Here's hoping you get a chance to see himself yourself real soon, before he and the boys are gone on down the road.