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The
Texas Philistines
One fateful day Bourland was
looking in the Austin Chronicle's musician's referral when he
happened upon an ad looking for a cowpunk guitar player. He thought to
himself, "Hey, that's me!" Bourland auditioned and it was his infamous
blano-nano-la-now riff that got him the job with The Texas Philistines.
The Texas Philistines were one of Paul Crosby's many brain children.
Paul is one of those big brained folks. He's a creative machine. The
best writer Bourland have ever known. The Texas Philistines recorded a
CD called Honky-tonk Sabbath,
Bourland got a great write up in the Austin Chronicle for his Growler guitar effect and
then BAM! he was fired.
The Texas Philistines were
originally formed in Gatesville, Texas by Paul Crosby, Clint Caldwell,
Riley Claborn and John Davidson. When Riley up and joined the military
without so much as a note to the other guys, Paul and Clint took
matters in their own hands. They moved to Austin and recruited
Bourland.
Bourland played with the band for about a year as a 3 piece
(Bourland-guitar, Clint Caldwell-drums, Paul Crosby-bass) and recorded
the album Honky-tonk Sabbath,
in Mark Maynard's home studio.
Since Clint was a talented guitar player in his own right, Bourland
convinced the band to bring Mark Maynard in on drums and move Clint to
guitar. The band was a regular fixture on 6th Street, taking up
residency at the Bates Motel.
The Texas
Philistines played a few shows at the famous Black Cat Lounge,
but Paul
Sessums only liked three of their songs. Now he liked those three
songs a lot and always treated Bourland well, mind you, but decided The
Texas Philistines were not Black Cat ready. He gave Bourland some good
advice, though. He said "Bourland, you go write a bunch more songs like
that one (referring to Breaker
Breaker Jesus) and you can play here anytime." Well the problem
with that advice
was Bourland did not do the writing in The Texas Philistines and those
that did were not about to subject their creative energies to whims of Paul
Sessums. This is
how the band ended up at the Bates Motel instead of
the Black Cat Lounge. As fate would have it, Bourland has gone on to
follow the advice of Paul
Sessums. You can
still hear Bourland
performing Blano-nano-la-now/Breaker
Breaker Jesus around the clubs of Austin. Anyhoo, as is
often the case with bands, there were creative differences. Basically,
Bourland wanted to take Paul
Sessums advice, the
other guys
didn't. Bourland got fired, but not before being video taped on
Virtual Noise. So here for the first time in 10 years are videos from
one of Bourland's last performances with The Texas Philistines.
Interestingly enough, Mark Maynard decided to stay with the band.
 Live Performance On
Austin Cable Vision's Virtual Noise: April 1995
- The Texas
Philistines
- Bourland-lead
guitar; ;
Clint Caldwell-rythm guitar, Mark
Maynard-drums; Paul Crosby-bass, vocals
Another interesting note is that
all of Bourland's guitar effects, including his invention The Growler, were stolen out of
Bourland's truck two days before the Virtual Noise show. Bourland spent
one day and a sleepless night acquiring all the necessary components
and building a new Growler. This did not bode well for his performance,
but what the heck, it's all water under the bridge now.
Cheers,
Bourland
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