Texas music icon and lifelong San Antonian Augie Meyers will perform Saturday evening at the storied John T. Floore Country Store. While Meyers has performed at Floore’s – with the Sir Douglas Quintet, the Texas Tornados, and others – plenty of times, this will be the first time he fronts his own band there since the 1970s.
This show, billed as Augie Meyers’ Country Dance and featuring support from George Chambers and the Country Gentlemen, will find Meyers leading a backing band of longtime friends – all accomplished Texas country musicians – through a set focused on some of his best songs and a few thematically appropriate covers.
“I grew up with two-step, that’s where my roots are,” Meyers said.
“Most country today is like Keith Urban, you know, which I don’t consider country… I’m gonna reach back and play Ray Price and Merle Haggard and Hank Williams,” Meyers said.
Chuckling, the 79-year-old softened his traditionalist stance just a bit.
“Everybody’s got their own kick… just don’t kick me, and I won’t kick you.”
Just back from a playing a smattering of shows in Sweden and Norway with members of ABBA as his backing band, Meyers isn’t slowing down. He’s got a solo piano album with flourishes of violin and cello almost ready and is more than halfway through an album with fellow musical legend and Texas Tornado Flaco Jimenez.
The project with Jimenez, will eventually be released under the artist name Augie and Flaco, since the pair can no longer use the name Texas Tornados.
He explained that Shawn Sahm, son of the late Doug Sahm, another renowned musical groundbreaker from San Antonio, who was the leader of the Sir Douglas Quintet and a founding member of the Texas Tornados, has told Meyers and Jimenez that they can’t use the name anymore.
The younger Sahm, who became a member of the band for several years following his father’s passing in 2003, holds the legal rights to the name and, according to Meyers, he told the pair that he didn’t want to play with them anymore because they are “too old.”
Meyers, with his trademark mischievousness, said he told Sahm “that’s fine” and quickly booked a series of West Coast shows with Jimenez and a few other musicians using the band name. That’s when Sahm told Meyers that the Texas Tornados name can’t be used unless he is involved.
“I wasn’t mad,” Meyers said. “I was just hurt because I’m the one who brought him into the Tornados.”
Meyers laughed it off, sure that he and Jimenez will do just fine using their own highly recognizable names.
“Working with Flaco is great,” he said. “There’s no pressure or time limits. We just get together when we can, and we play and laugh and have a good time.”
Even after his more than six decades in the business, Meyers is eager for Saturday’s show.
“It always has a special feel to it, playing at Floore’s,” he said. “It’s like a homecoming.”
