Jesse Sublett (born May 15, 1954) [1] is a musician, writer, and visual artist from Austin, Texas. As a musician, he is best known for his long-running rock trio, The Skunks. His essays and journalism have appeared in a wide range of publications, and he is also known for his mystery novels featuring a bass-playing sleuth named Martin Fender. [2] [3]
Jesse Sublett was born in Johnson City, Texas, where he was valedictorian at Lyndon B. Johnson High School. He attended Southwest Texas State University for two years, then moved to Austin in 1974. [1]
Sublett and his wife, Lois Richwine, were married in 1984. They have one son, Dashiell Sublett, who was born in Los Angeles in 1993. [4]
Sublett founded The Skunks in January 1978 with bandmates Bill Blackmon and Eddie Munoz. Soon thereafter, The Skunks and The Violators (a band that included Sublett on bass guitar along with Kathy Valentine (later of the Go-Go's), Carla Olson, and Marilyn Dean) made their Austin debut at a University of Texas area club called Raul's, [5] [6] marking the beginning of the punk/new wave scene in Austin. [7]
Sublett left The Violators after six months to concentrate on the Skunks, and the Violators disbanded thereafter, but the Skunks recorded numerous singles, EPs and LPs, and played across the US, including the punk meccas of New York City, CBGB's and Max's Kansas City. Sublett sang and played electric bass in the band. He also wrote most of the band's original material. [8] Munoz left the band at the end of 1978 to join the Plimsouls. With his replacement on guitar, Jon Dee Graham, the band saw some touring success as headliners and as opening act for The Clash, The Ramones, and John Cale. [9] The band more or less disbanded in 1983, [10] but more recently have performed annual reunion shows at their favorite Austin club, the Continental Club. [11] The Skunks were inducted in the Austin Music Hall of Fame in 2007. [12]
Sublett is credited with naming the "New Sincerity" movement of alternative rock bands that arose in Austin from about 1985 to 1990, and who were perceived as reacting to the more ironic outlook of punk rock and New Wave bands. He used the phrase during a casual conversation with his friend, local music writer Margaret Moser. Moser began using the term in print, and it ended up becoming the catchphrase for these bands. [13] [14]
Sublett played in numerous other ensembles over the years, including Secret Six, Flex, and a stint playing with ex-Rolling Stones guitarist Mick Taylor and Carla Olson, as well as a band called World's Cutest Killers featuring Kathy Valentine, Kelly Johnson (Girlschool) and Jebin Bruni (Public Image Ltd.). [10] [4] Sublett currently performs in various club ensembles, variously known as Jesse Sublett's Big Three Trio and The Murder Ballad Show (the latter featuring his longtime collaborator and friend, Jon Dee Graham). His most recent musical performances feature his upright bass work, a grittier vocal style and an ongoing fascination with the work of Howlin' Wolf and various jazz, blues and traditional composers. [15]
Sublett began writing seriously in the 1980s. As of 2024, 12 books have been published under his name. [16] [17] His first novel, Rock Critic Murders, was published by Viking Penguin in 1987, followed by Tough Baby and Boiled in Concrete.
Sublett's 2004 memoir, Never the Same Again: A Rock 'N' Roll Gothic, [4] relates the story of his girlfriend's murder when he was 22, his career with The Skunks, and his battle with throat cancer. Writing in the Los Angeles Times , critic Marion Winik described the book as "riveting" and chose it for the Times' list of "most surprising new books". [18] Austin Chronicle critic Greg Beets described it as "a gripping memoir that never feels forced or emotionally manipulative... Sublett's prose remains rich, fierce, and humbling." [19]
"Adaptation," Sublett's 2008 piece in The Texas Observer , chronicles his years-long work researching and writing a book about the Austin underworld of the 1950s-1970s, centered largely upon a group known as the Overton Gang. [20] Sublett's nonfiction book on the gang was published in 2015, titled 1960s Austin Gangsters: Organized Crime that Rocked the Capital. The Austin Chronicle called it "a remarkable piece of scholarship" that "makes you think that Sublett should be hailed as an Ellroy-level master of modern crime writing." [21] Sublett mined the history of Austin crime and corruption in the 1970s for another true crime chronicle in Last Gangster in Austin: Frank Smith, Ronnie Earle, and the End of a Junkyard Mafia, published in 2022 by University of Texas Press. The book is "a rollicking narrative of a criminal underworld," wrote critic Jason Mellard, as well as "an exemplary microhistory with close attention to currents that broader accounts of modern Austin have missed, if not outright ignored." [22]
Sublett's essays and journalism pieces have appeared in the New York Times , [23] Texas Monthly , [24] and Texas Highways . [25]
Sublett's adaptation (written with director/producer Stephen Purvis and Tom Huckabee) of the Austin play In the West was produced as a feature film entitled Deep in the Heart (of Texas). [26] [27]
Sublett has also written extensively for non-fiction television, contributing to numerous series broadcast on History such as The Great Ships, Search and Rescue, and Boneyards: The Secret Lives of Machines." A two-hour documentary, The Killer Storm (chronicling the so-called "Perfect Storm" of 1991), which Sublett wrote, aired on the History Channel in 1999 and also premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin. He wrote the original book for a stage play called Marathon which debuted in 2007 with music by Austin-based singer-songwriter Darden Smith. [28] In 2009, however, Sublett asserted his sole authorship of the play and announced that future productions would feature his own original score. [29]
Broke, Not Broken: Homer Maxey's Texas Bank War, by Broadus Spivey and Jesse Sublett, published in 2014 by Texas Tech University Press, is one of several works co-authored by Sublett. [30] Armadillo World Headquarters: A Memoir, by Eddie Wilson with Sublett, published in late March 2017, tells the history of the famed music hall affectionately known as "the 'Dillo" which served as an Austin music industry stage and incubator of Austin culture far beyond the decade it was in existence (1970-1980). [31] And, in Esther's Follies The laughs, the gossip, and the story behind Texas' most celebrated comedy troupe, Sublett chronicled the colorful history of Esther's Follies, Austin's longest running comedy, magic, and political satire stage show, which debuted in 1977 on the city's infamous downtown Sixth Street. [32] [33]
Sublett has also written a history of the Texas Turnpike Authority. [34] [35] His papers are collected in the Southwestern Writers Collection of the Wittliff Collections of Alkek Library at Texas State University–San Marcos. [1]
Texas Monthly is a monthly American magazine headquartered in Downtown Austin, Texas. Founded in 1973 by Michael R. Levy, Texas Monthly chronicles life in contemporary Texas, writing on politics, the environment, industry, and education. The magazine also covers leisure topics such as music, art, dining, and travel. It is a member of the City and Regional Magazine Association (CRMA).
The Birthday Party were an Australian post-punk band, active from 1977 to 1983. The group's "bleak and noisy soundscapes," which drew irreverently on blues, free jazz, and rockabilly, provided the setting for vocalist Nick Cave's disturbing tales of violence and perversion. Their 1981 single "Release the Bats" was particularly influential on the emerging gothic scene. Despite limited commercial success, The Birthday Party's influence has been far-reaching, and they have been called "one of the darkest and most challenging post-punk groups to emerge in the early '80s."
The U.S. state of Texas has long been a center for musical innovation and is the birthplace of many notable musicians. Texans have pioneered developments in Tejano and Conjunto music, Rock 'n Roll, Western swing, jazz, punk rock, country, hip-hop, electronic music, gothic industrial music, religious music, mariachi, psychedelic rock, zydeco and the blues.
Outlaw country is a subgenre of American country music created by a small group of iconoclastic artists active in the 1970s and early 1980s, known collectively as the outlaw movement, who fought for and won their creative freedom outside of the Nashville establishment that dictated the sound of most country music of the era. Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Paycheck and David Allan Coe were among the movement's most commercially successful members.
Austin's official motto is the "Live Music Capital of the World" due to the high volume of live music venues in the city. Austin is known internationally for the South by Southwest (SXSW) and the Austin City Limits (ACL) Music Festivals which feature eclectic international lineups. The greatest concentrations of music venues in Austin are around 6th Street, Central East Austin, the Red River Cultural District, the Warehouse District, the University of Texas, South Congress, and South Lamar.
Kathryn Valentine is an American musician who is the bassist for the rock band the Go-Go's. She has maintained a career in music through songwriting, recording, performing and touring as well as additional academic and creative pursuits. Valentine was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in October 2021 as a member of The Go-Go's.
Big Boys were an American pioneering punk rock band who are credited with having helped to create and introduce skate punk as a new style of music, which became popular in the 1980s. They also were famous for bringing elements of funk into their hardcore punk style.
Douglas Wayne Sahm was an American musician, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist born in San Antonio, Texas. Sahm is regarded as one of the main figures of Tex-Mex music, and as an important performer of Texan Music. He gained fame along with his band, the Sir Douglas Quintet, with a top-twenty hit in the United States and the United Kingdom with "She's About a Mover" (1965). Sahm was influenced by the San Antonio music scene that included conjunto and blues, and later by the hippie scene of San Francisco. With his blend of music, he found success performing in Austin, Texas, as the hippie counterculture soared in the 1970s.
Rayward Powell St. John was an American singer and songwriter, active on the mid-1960s Austin, Texas campus folk/bohemian music scene. He was an occasional member of various Austin rock groups, including The Conqueroo, and wrote some songs for The 13th Floor Elevators, including "You Don't Know ", included on the band's 1966 debut, The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators.
Armadillo World Headquarters was an influential Texas music hall and beer garden in Austin at 5251⁄2 Barton Springs Road – at South First Street – just south of the Colorado River and downtown Austin. The 'Dillo flourished from 1970 to 1980. The structure that housed it, an old National Guard Armory, was demolished in 1981 and replaced by a 13-story office building.
Club Foot was a large live-music venue in Austin, Texas, in the early 1980s. Located downtown at the corner of 4th and Brazos Streets, it had a reputation as a punk rock venue for its support of local and touring punk bands, but it also booked a wide variety of other types of music.
New sincerity is a trend in music, aesthetics, literary fiction, film criticism, poetry, literary criticism and philosophy that generally describes creative works that expand upon and break away from concepts of postmodernist irony and cynicism.
Jon Dee Graham is an American musician, guitarist and songwriter from Austin, Texas, United States. Graham was named the Austin Musician of the Year during the South by Southwest (SXSW) music conference in 2006. He was inducted into the Austin Music Hall of Fame three times: as a solo artist in 2000, again in 2008 as a member of The Skunks, and again in 2009 as a member of the True Believers.
Raul's was a live music nightclub at 2610 Guadalupe Street in Austin, Texas in the late 1970s and early 1980s, which started off as a Chicano music venue, but then specialized in punk rock music. The location is near the University of Texas campus.
Russell Allen "Rusty" Wier was an American singer-songwriter from Austin, Texas. Wier's career dates back to the 1960s and covers multiple music genres. Wier was the drummer in the Austin garage rock band The Wig, whose 1967 single "Crackin' Up" was included on volume 1 of the Pebbles series of compilation albums. Wier had a major local Texas hit in 1968 with "Watchout" with Gary P. Nunn and The Lavender Hill Express on Sonobeat Records. This was one of the first stereophonic 45s.
The Skunks are an American three-piece rock band formed in 1977 in Austin, Texas. The band debuted in early 1978 at Raul's, quickly became a mainstay of the Austin music scene. They rapidly expanded their fan base beyond early punk/new wave into clubs whose audiences crossed the spectrum, including the Armadillo World Headquarters, the Continental Club, Dukes Royal Coach, Club Foot, Liberty Lunch, and many others in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Skunks music channeled classic rock influences, such as The Rolling Stones and The Who, with 1970s cult figures such as the New York Dolls and The Velvet Underground.
Edwin Osbourne Wilson is a former concert promoter and co-founder and owner of the Armadillo World Headquarters (1973–1980). The music venue led a music movement in Austin to national prominence from 1973 to 1980 as the birthplace of Texas progressive country, aka "redneck rock" – a fusion of country music and rock – later, more blues than rock. It was a popular venue for Willie Nelson. Wilson is the owner of two Threadgill's restaurants in Austin. The original, which he purchased in the mid–1970s from John Kenneth Threadgill (1909–1987), was where Janis Joplin got her start.
A.C. Greene was an American writer – important in Texas literary matters as a memoirist, fiction writer, historian, poet, and influential book critic in Dallas. As a newspaper journalist, he had been a book critic and editor of the Editorial Page for the Dallas Times Herald when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, which galvanized his role at the paper to help untangle and lift a demoralized city in search of its soul. Leaving full-time journalism in 1968, Greene went on to become a prolific author of books, notably on Texas lore and history. His notoriety led to stints on radio and TV as a talk-show host. By the 1980s, his commentaries were being published by major media across the country. He had become a sought-after source for Texas history, anecdotes, cultural perspective, facts, humor, books, and politics. When the 1984 Republican National Convention was held in Dallas, Greene granted sixty-three interviews about Texas topics to major media journalists. Greene's 1990 book, Taking Heart – which examines the experiences of the first patient in a new heart transplant center (himself) – made The New York Times Editors Choice list.
Lawrence Leo King was an American playwright, journalist, and novelist, best remembered for his 1978 Tony Award-nominated play The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, which became a long-running production on Broadway and was later turned into a feature film starring Burt Reynolds, Charles Durning, and Dolly Parton.
Margaret Moser, or Margaret Moser Malone, was an American journalist, music enthusiast, critic and historian, groupie, and backup singer. She was best known for her work as the director of the Austin Music Awards (AMA) in the South by Southwest festival and for her career in music journalism and criticism, which lasted more than thirty years. Moser also supported young artists, helping them get started and finding appropriate venues where they could play. She has been called the "patron saint of Austin music" by the Paramount Theatre.
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