Jasper Stone
Cultural Center Nekkersdal Laken (Brussels, Belgium)

by Marianne Ebertowski

They look at me as if I've just told them that the audience would appear in pyjamas and pull each other's noses during songs. It's Jasper Stone's first show in Europe. They come from Azle, Texas, a place where - so they claim - people stand on tables during their shows and fall off them. What I try to explain to them is that we don't do this sort of thing in Europe. Listen to the songs without talking is what we do and then clap politely. That means we appreciate a band or an artist. If we think they're really good, we go and talk to them afterwards and wait patiently in a queue to have our CDs signed.

Dan Stewart, Jasper Stone's bass player, stares at me with an amused and puzzled look on his face. "Well, thanks for the information," he mumbles from under his cowboy hat, but I can tell he doesn't believe a word I said. Fine, Dan, have it your way!

Jasper Stone are an unlikely line-up to watch. Singer/songwriter and guitarist Ed Voyles is small but sturdy and sports an apparently grim look under a dark-blue baseball cap. He handles the mic aggressively and moves around on stage like a pin-ball. Stoic bass player Dan Stewart proudly wears a tattoo the size of Ed's head on his right arm. The tattoo says "Jasper Stone." I hope they never kick him out of the band. Of course, with his 6 foot three inch frame and his general Dennis Hopper-Easy Rider appearance, he is not likely to be kicked out of anything. The two of them together look like the kind of guys you would want to avoid on a dark street. As they so often do, appearances deceive and I'm convinced they wouldn't hurt a fly unless the fly got really nasty with them. Drummer Henry 'Hank' Meyer looks like the quiet, well-spoken intellectual he turns out to be. He is the type of drummer who could play any sort of music and get away with it. Somehow I think he would sound and look real cool in a western swing band. And then there's young pony-tailed Ron Geida, the baby of the band. According to the other band members, they picked him from the streets just a few weeks ago. Ron, originally from Massachusetts and still training to become a real Texan after five years in the Lone Star State, keeps throwing in amazing solo's in the sort of self-effacing way which characterizes the greatness of a real team-player.

Jasper Stone tell everyday stories from their native turf against a backdrop of rootsy rock and country and blues, in short all the good stuff real Texan music is made of. The stories are sad, sometimes funny, sometimes both. Like in "Let 'er Smoke," the title song of their new CD, where Ed's uncle George blasts his two sons out of Jack County jail. Or "Jack Co. Fair," where the singer misses the annual fair because he's been a bad boy. There's a story about a failed bank robbery, "Me & Billy". And of course, there are all sorts of love went wrong songs.

Jasper Stone go through their songs like a fast train. Only Ron's guitar solos can slow them down and give the audience and the band a break. When they stop playing, we applaud politely. Ed thanks the good people of Brussels for coming out to see them. Then the lights go on. Nobody has fallen off a table, not even a chair. At the entrance, people are queueing up to buy Jasper Stone's CD. Then they queue up in front of the stage to talk to the boys and have their albums signed. I can't wait to ask them what they made of all this.

I wait for the band in the cafeteria with a big grin on my face.

"And?" I ask.

Dan shakes his head so hard his cowboy hat almost falls off. "Thank you! Thank you! You're a real life saver," he sighs. "If you hadn't warned us, we wouldn't have known what to think." Well, Jasper Stone wouldn't have been the first American artists to wonder whether they should continue to play a second song or grab their instruments and leave the stage quietly. And we honestly did like all of them....

"Well, the audience was really nice in a one on one contact. A lot of people came up and shook hands and, hey, that's a lot more personal," says a relieved Ed Voyles, who still looks as if he just woke up from a dream and can't quite tell whether it was a pleasant one or a nightmare.

Jasper Stone are only one day away from home and already seem homesick. I listen to Ed's raving about his native Lone Star state with bewildered amusement and even a touch of jealousy. I wish I could feel at home that much as he does where he comes from. Just before they all burst into tears, I get my packet of "Texas" cigarettes out of my pocket. Four pair of eyes light up. They don't sell this brand in Texas, of course. They don't seem to sell them very much over here either: the price is still indicated in Belgian Francs instead of Euro's. (For the American readers: the Euro is the new currency introduced on 1st January of this year in most member states of the European Union. It helps to make us pretend we're all one big happy family and to confuse American tourists about what country they're in). A picture is taken of me with my "Texas" cigarettes and I leave the packet for Dan. I hope it will take him through his two week stretch of homesickness in Europe. He looks touched by the gesture.

While the band finally have their well-deserved dinner, I make them talk to me in between spoonfuls of soup and Chinese 'Sweet and Sour'.

Ed, Dan and Henry have been playing together ten years in various bands. When the three of them started playing together again in 1997, they were looking for a band name which was "organic," explains Ed. "A band name which sounded roots music, but we didn't want it to be so confined as something like 'Cornbread Dad and the Trailerpark Kings' or something. We wanted a name with which we could play all the sorts of music we play: country rock and bluegrass and cajun and all that. So I came up with Jasper and Henry came up with Stone and that's how we became Jasper Stone. It's a good moniker we can attach a lot of stuff to."

What they did not know at that moment was that there was already a Christian singer who called himself Jasper Stone, but both acts managed to co-exist without getting into trouble with each other. Only sometimes people think Jasper Stone is one guy. "We walk into a record store and find our records under 'Stone' or we walk in somewhere where we play and people ask, 'Which one's Jasper?' I always say, 'That's him!'" grins Ed, pointing at Dan.

Ed was born in Jacksboro, TX, a place even smaller than Azle where the band is located now. I tend to be rather suspicious when Americans tell me they come from small towns. These small towns are usually called Louisville, KY and count half a million inhabitants. I come from a small town and I lived there with 12,000 other people. In the Jacksboro and Azle case, I believe even I can't compete. When I came home I tried to check these places out on my world map. They're not on it, but they seem to be near Fort Worth. "I always liked music," Ed says looking pensively down at his soup. "When I was a kid I used to sing along to "Chantilly Lace" and "Hey Good-Looking" and all that old stuff, went through my period where I rebelled against it, and then came back to it. In my family we had a lot of hootenannies where musicians came up and they played steel and they played fiddle and they played stand-up bass, and my grandma used to stand me up no matter what I was playing and say 'My grandson is gonna play you a Hank Williams song.' My other main influence was the Beatles. My mother had three sisters and they had a bunch of girls and they had all these 45s. Nobody told me what's good music. I just naturally caught on to those Johnny Cash records, and Beatles records and Buck Owens records and just played them. And they always wanted me to listen to Captain & Tenille and I was just not the type (laughter) to listen to that sort of music. One of my most traumatic things from youth is when I brought this Beatles music to a party when I was just a kid and that record got busted. And the next thing was (sings) 'reunited and it feels so good...'( shouts and laughter by the rest of the band). I just love music. I build furniture for a living. I run my own furniture company. When I build my furniture, I just listen to music ten hours a day and I'm fortunate I live out there in the country. I'm my own boss and I am with my best friends making music. No one tells me what to do. Well, Uncle Sam has a few things to say April 15th every year (laughter). Other than that, I don't get bothered."

The rest of the band also got involved with music at a young age. Hank Meyer's grandfather was a well-known trumpet player who used to play with Tommy Dorsey and other bands, made it to Band Stand, and encouraged young Henry to play an instrument. Meyer's choice was the drum kit, because he 'liked to bang on things."

Dan Stewart is a trumpet player by origin. 'When I moved up to Seattle as a young kid," he recalls, "I was playing trumpet and I ran into this little girl who was also a trumpet player, and we got really competitive. When I came back to Texas, I kept playing trumpet in high school jazz bands. I wanted to play in other high school bands, but none of them needed a trumpet player." So he picked up a bass and started playing in cover bands, then in a ska and reggae group called The Trying Season, which also featured Meyer and Voyles, before he switched over to country and had to learn the "walking bass."

Newcomer Ron Geida started playing guitar at 14. "At high school I had to choose music lessons and it was either choral or guitar," he grins, "and I couldn't sing, so I chose guitar and I just fell in love with it. My mom played a little bit. She was a finger picker. I played all sorts of styles during the years."

I ask the three proud Texans if there's really such a thing as 'Texan music' and how they would define it. Ed answers my question with three words: "Billy Joe Shaver."

"It's the story-telling which is characteristic for Texan musicians. I'm hoping that I can catch a few ideas of Billy's. There's definitely Texan music. There's definitely a Texan scene. And I think that Texas is the only state where you can play independent music and it will support you. Texas and Louisiana have their own kinds of music."

"Yeah, but Texan is better," shouts Henry.

I'd rather not interfere with southern rivalry and ask them for a message to the good people at home. "Well, if you don't mind the 24 hour flight, make sure you come and see us here in Europe the next two and a half weeks and bring a little slice of Texas overseas."

Jasper Stone will be home by now. They will have played in Holland on Queen's Day, the day the whole nation celebrates the queen's birthday (only it's not really her birthday). I did not explain this to Jasper Stone. I didn't want to puzzle them again with strange European habits. I figure, seeing the usual alcoholic state of the nation on that particular day, they probably actually saw some people stand on tables and falling off them. Maybe they stood and fell off some themselves. I'm pretty sure they had a good time in the end, even Ed who has never traveled very much more than 45 minutes from the place he was born.

Jasper Stone's not the sort of band who will conquer the world, but I guess they haven't set out to do that. They're happy to tell their small town life stories from Jack County and surroundings to an audience which, as they will know by now, does not necessary have to fall off tables to show appreciation. We liked you over here, guys. Let 'er smoke!

*Check out Jasper Stone's very cool and hallucinating website www.jasper-stone.com
For concerts at Nekkersdal, Brussels go to nekkersdal.vgc.be/roots.html


Contact Marianne Ebertowski at: ebertowski-at-rockzilla.net

 
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