Tish Hinojosa
Austin, TX
The Broken Spoke, December 5, 1996
Antone’s, December 6, 1996
La Zona Rosa, December 7-8, 1996

The Broken Spoke has a lot of Texas honky tonk atmosphere...a dance floor behind a basic beer and burgers joint, plenty of LoneStar neons and Bud Lite signs, a big state flag on the wall, some tinsel for holiday decoration, and a ready crowd of dancers and drinkers. Honky tonk heroes aren’t usually women, though, and they don’t usually sing in Spanish — but on a Thursday night in December Tish Hinojosa brought her music to The Broken Spoke. She presented her most danceable tunes, and soon the crowd responded, enjoying doing the waltz, the two step, the promenade, and especially the polka.

Hinojosa’s band — Marvin Dykhuis on lead guitar and mandolin, Paul Pearcy on drums, Glenn Kwamamoto on bass and Chip Dolan on keyboard and accordion — are so good you could probably spend a set listening to them each individually, and they had a lot of fun with extended dance arrangements of the songs. Hinojosa had a good time too, even hitting the dance floor for a turn while guest fiddler Amy Tivin took over the vocals for a song.

Those who’ve seen Hinojosa only in her singer/songwriter tours in folk clubs might be surprised to hear her rockin’ out fronting a dance band, but the singer is no stranger to that — she made her living doing it earlier in her career. The song selection has changed, though. In those days she’d hide songs she’d written among cover tunes in a dance set. For almost all of the two sets at the Broken Spoke, the songs were Hinojosa originals.

Not much was hidden the next night as she played an acoustic show with Dykhuis and Pearcy at Antone’s, across town near the University of Texas campus. Warm, funny, and relaxed, Hinojosa took the stage in an intimate venue where the focus was on the beauty of her voice and the power of her songwriting ideas. The audience seemed more like a group of friends than a gathering of strangers, enjoying Hinojosa’s wit, offering her good wishes (it was her birthday), giving her a standing ovation and calling her back for an encore.

Saturday night in the music hall of La Zona Rosa downtown, some of the crowd came to listen, some to drink, and some to dance. The seating, and Hinojosa’s song and presentation choices, were arranged with thought for that variety. Variety was a key — the two sets comprised completely different songs, drawing on older material as well as more recent pieces from Hinojosa’s current disc Dreaming from the Labyrinth. As the second set drew to a close the musicians took notice of the approaching holiday season by including several songs from their Christmas album.

Lively holiday spirit was in evidence Sunday afternoon back at La Zona Rosa, when Hinojosa and her band, augmented for several numbers by Hinojosa’s son Adam Barker and daughter Nina Barker, played a concert for families. There were plenty of dancers at this show — mostly three foot high ones, as kids responded to the music enthusiastically. Though she’s recorded a children’s album, this wasn’t a concert of children’s songs. Respect for her audiences is one of Hinojosa’s hallmarks, and it was evident in this set, as she straightforwardly placed her songs in context for the children — and incidentally for those adults who couldn’t follow one of the languages in her bilingual presentation. She described how she came to write “Chanate El Vaquero” after seeing a Mexican cowboy on television, and then later got to meet the 90-year-old hero of her song and sing it for him, but she also went for the economical remark, “This is about the journeys the heart makes” to introduce the love song “Corazon Viajero.” Soon parents were rocking their babies to the music, teenage girls were waltzing with their fathers, and families were dancing in circles holding hands while the pint sized group continued with their own steps.

She later invited all the kids in the audience to join her on stage to sing the last song. A rousing version of the Christmas song “Milagro” was the result, and it was really fun — as were all the shows of what Tish Hinojosa wryly called her “December Austin Marathon.”

— Kerry Dexter (Tallahassee, FL)