Rudz Turns 40, This Weekend: VODI, The Wheel Workers, Jealous Creatures, The Hates, Poor Dumb Bastards, & More

Being a music fan in this city is a hard, heartbreaking thing. As good as things are now when it comes to the people making music in and around Houston and the breadth of venues those people can play, I can’t help but feel a little weepy when I think back across the past couple of decades.

When the news hit that venerable club Fitzgerald’s was recently sold to developers — no concrete word on what they’ll do with the place, but the fact that the group is called “Easy Park” doesn’t give me a warm & fuzzy feeling — I felt a little part of my soul get hollowed out. I think back to all the clubs and bars and whatever else where I’ve either seen bands over the years or played in my own band, and…well, damn.

Now that I’m thinking about it, Fitz going the way of The Abyss, The Blue Iguana, The Mink, The Fabulous Satellite Lounge, Walter’s, Emo’s, Shimmy Shack, Mary Jane’s, The Axiom, The Unicorn, Harvey’s Club Deluxe, The Engine Room, Mango’s, Goat’s Head Soup, and a couple dozen more that slip my fuzzy memory right at the moment means that of the places I once played at in my misspent indie-rock/emo youth, only two are left standing. There’s the Avant Garden, long may she wave, and the now-grandpa of the whole bunch, Rudyard’s.

This weekend, Rudz is celebrating being around for 40 damn years, first opening its doors back in 1978. And like with Fitzgerald’s, I’ve got a whole crapload of memories tied up in that place.

I saw Okkervil River there once, early on, when only Will Sheff and his mandolin player were able to make the drive down from Austin to play a truly intimate, stripped-down set to a small, reverent crowd; that version of “Westfall” beats all others, for me, even having seen the band multiple times since.

The one and only time I ever saw the incredible Mark Linkous and his band Sparklehorse play was at Rudz, too, only a handful of years before he would take his own life. My lame-ass band once opened for Spoon once, mind-blowing as that it is to even think about right now, on that same stage (FWIW, I don’t think they liked us much).

I was fortunate enough to catch J. Robbins‘ post-Jawbox band, Burning Airlines, at Rudyard’s, complete with a surprisingly intense mosh pit, and witnessed the awesome spectacle of the now-gone Linus Pauling Quartet there, as well.

I saw gone-too-soon band News on the March there, and Springfield Riots, and The Linoleum Experiment, and The Wholesome Rollers, and Clouded…and a whole bunch more, but dammit, I’m old, and my brain doesn’t work so well anymore. I do remember loving playing there, because the sound was always so damn good, and they were always pretty cool about not-well-known bands like ours getting on a show (although flyering in the Rudz parking lot was always a risky thing, even if it was for a show at the bar).

In short, for as long as I’ve lived here, Rudz has always been there. It’s been one of the few icons to hold tight to in a city that changes its own landscape seemingly every six months. As the city shifts and mutates, Rudyard’s stays the same, like your curmudgeonly uncle who gives you a sarcastic eyebrow every time you try to explain some newfangled modern thing to him. And I’m damn glad about that.

Now, it wouldn’t be a celebration of the place without music, right? So naturally, tonight and tomorrow night, Friday & Saturday, August 24th & 25th, will see a slew of awesome H-town music-making folk roll through, all for the best price of all: free.

Tonight has cool, soulful roots-pop supergroup VODI playing (the band includes folks like Tom Lynch, Haley Barnes of Dollie Barnes, & Austin Sepulvado of Buxton, and David Lascoe of Poor Pilate, for four), plus awesomely angry (these days, anyway) politico-pop crew The Wheel Workers and laid-back, gritty, windswept rockers Jealous Creatures, which makes this honestly one of the best band lineups I’ve seen — that’s three of my favorite bands, right there.

And hey, VODI has a cool, fun video up of themselves all street-dancing their way through Montrose (pretty sure they’re walking on Welch Street at one point, appropriately only a handful of blocks the other side of Montrose Blvd. from Rudz itself) for their song “Pressure”. It’s sweet and gentle and playful and ’70s-ish as all hell, and I’m loving it. Check it out:

Tomorrow, then — that’s August 25th, calendar-challenged people — sees a bit of a heavier bill, with perennial loud rawk dudes Poor Dumb Bastards (who have literally existed the entire fucking time that I’ve lived in Houston), punk heroes The Hates, who are up there with DJ Screw and Bun B and ZZ Top and Beyoncé as real-life Houston icons for me, snotty police-punks (duh) The Cops, and Killer Hearts, a band I’ve yet to hear but which includes members of The Wrong Ones & Electric Frankenstein(!), among others.

Just for fun, here’s a video punk chronicler David Ensminger put together for The Hates’ “No Talk in the Eighties”, which includes shots of a very, very young Christian Kidd, sans his trademark Mohawk:

And again: freeeeeee. Both nights are free. So go hang out at Rudz, one of the last bastions of the old/real/grimy Montrose, celebrate the place’s 40 years of existence, and hope for many more. Because if this town teaches you anything, it’s that nothing last forever, so you’d better grab onto it while you can.