It takes city cowpokes of all types to make the native honky tonk scene really feel welcoming and artistic.
There’s a honky-tonk scene in Houston, however like most gems nestled on this huge, lovely sprawl, you must know the place to go to seek out it. It’s not in a stereotypical barn with sawdust on the ground. Neither is it in one of many metropolis’s sun-bleached strip facilities. As a substitute, it’s nestled in Midtown in Shoeshine Charley’s Large High Lounge.
Head to the Large High on any given Tuesday night time, and also you’ll discover dancers bathed within the delicate glow of crimson neon. Pedal metal guitar rings out over the chirps of the light-rail simply outdoors. “You stroll in that door, it doesn’t matter who you’re,” says Christopher Seymore, Horni Tonk’s cofounder and present ringleader. “It doesn’t matter what you appear like, the place you’re from. It’s simply being there within the second, collectively.”
The world inside is nostalgic however new, area of interest but inclusive, free but usually downright virtuosic. The musicians and regulars who collect within the bar name themselves the Houston Horni Tonk Society.
Tall and lean with a pompadour, self-deprecating wit, and a rising catalog of good unique songs, Seymore satisfied the Large High’s Allen Hill to ebook him for a Tuesday-night residency in 2022. He wanted a reputation for the weekly present. “Calling one thing ‘horni’ is a Tweek-ism,” Seymore says with amusing, referencing his musician buddy South Texas Tweek. “Tweek’d use it to explain something nice, from tacos [to] Johnny Paycheck. There are approach too many ‘Honky Tonk Tuesdays,’ so we thought, why not take a danger?”
Seymore and different artists started referring to themselves as members of the Houston Horni Tonk Society, and the title caught. “All of us turned card-carrying members,” Seymore says. And he’s not simply talking figuratively: They made bodily playing cards, in addition to matchbooks and different merch with mascot Buford the sexy toad.
Western Cosplay takes the stage at Shoeshine Charley’s Large High Lounge.
At the moment, Seymore nonetheless presides over Horni Tonk Tuesdays and, in some unspecified time in the future within the night time, takes the stage alongside together with his band, the Western Cosplay. Avery Davis, the group’s drummer, says he incessantly stands in awe of his firm—Caleb Lindley on pedal metal, Randy Lindley on upright bass, and Damian O’Grady on keys. “Usually, I’m simply smiling onstage whereas I’m enjoying,” he says. “I’m listening to everybody round me, [thinking], ‘I can’t consider I get to play with these guys proper now.’”
Along with a cadre of native artists supporting each other, Horni Tonk Tuesday attracts scores of inked-up revelers donning classic denims, sundresses, and boots, able to shuffle and be seen. “When Horni Tonk first began, there have been a handful of regulars who’d come each week,” says Leslie DeHaven, a visible artist and longtime bartender on the Large High. “Each time any individual new would present up, they’d stroll as much as them and say, ‘What’s your title?’”
All of Houston exhibits up, be they building employees, astrophysicists, classically educated musicians, restaurant veterans, nurses, writers, enterprise vacationers, plumbers, or artists. “It’s just a bit slice of Americana,” Seymore says. “Individuals need to see the actual factor, and we’re a spot the place you possibly can.”
Constructing a scene that stays
Horni Tonk began three years in the past, however its communal roots run deeper. Through the top of the pandemic, Seymore and fellow Houston musician Patrick B. Ray launched a tune swap dubbed Seymore’s Sunday Shootout and the Getting Free and Killing Time podcast, which featured interviews with different indie nation songwriters. The duo devised the right draw for road-weary troubadours who served as visitors: $250 pay, a spot to crash, and the promise of a home-cooked meal—steak, swordfish, and vegetarian feasts, plus the occasional boon of untamed recreation Ray hunted himself.
When Seymore started his weekly residency on the Large High, he introduced his hospitality with him. Horni Tonk Tuesdays have been born.
Swing yer associate round-n-round each Tuesday at Large High.
Whereas he acknowledges—and actively combats—challenges plaguing Houston’s artistic financial system, Seymore can also be blunt concerning the metropolis’s property. Whereas varied music scenes in New York or Los Angeles are nicely entrenched, Houston provides a extra inexpensive different. “The price of dwelling right here is unbelievable for artists. There’s freedom in that,” he says, although he acknowledges that it’s nonetheless arduous to make a dwelling anyplace as a full-time musician.
Seymore praises collaborative Houston venues, just like the lately reworked Dan Electro’s, as an integral a part of the scene’s spine. Whereas satisfying locals, Horni Tonk’s one-two punch of venue infrastructure and built-in viewers additionally created a reliable platform for mid-tier touring bands to play in Houston, which could be a powerful marketplace for even established artists to crack. “I had been making an attempt to play Houston for years,” says Dylan Earl, an acclaimed singer-songwriter primarily based in Northwest Arkansas, noting that he as soon as thought of areas between New Orleans and Austin “a lifeless spot” for music bookings. “You look again at Houston within the ’60s, ’70s, [and] ’80s, and a few of the biggest songwriters—Townes Van Zandt, Man Clark—have been hanging on the market. I believed, ‘The place will we play? Thousands and thousands of individuals reside there now. Absolutely, there’s a factor.’”
However for Earl, discovering that “factor” proved elusive. Cue Seymore and his crew, who introduced Earl into the Horni Tonk fold. Now Earl, who launched a brand new album, Stage-Headed Even Smile, in September, has a standing Houston invitation—and he’s been spreading the phrase concerning the metropolis’s DIY music scene. Touring musicians like him, who cease in Houston to carry out somewhat than coasting by means of on I-10, are a present to native music lovers and gamers, and never simply due to the exhibits they placed on whereas they’re right here. The connections cultivated permit Houston bands like Seymore’s to take their songs to different locales, and reinforce (and even introduce) the truth that, sure, Houston is a music city.
“Actually, I might by no means have been in a position to go on my first tour have been it not for Dylan,” says Seymore, noting that Earl booked him as his opening act, which accounted for half of Seymore’s tour.
The soundtrack of a neighborhood
The friendships could also be sturdy, however so is the music. That’s a part of what has emerged from Horni Tonk’s camaraderie and consistency: a signature Houston sound, constructed on swampy metal strings, devastating traces, and the resurrection of the waltz. Right here, the danceable tear-jerker in 3/4 time that outlined Golden Period nation music stays romantic, however with a daring wryness coursing beneath. As a substitute of adopting Nashville’s high-gloss end, Houston lets its waltzes, barroom parables, and ribald shuffles snake and breathe—like a bayou.
Seymore, now a central voice in Bayou Metropolis honky-tonk, data near residence. Pedal metal maestro Kevin Skrla produced Seymore’s debut album, King of Nothing, at his Wolfe Island Recording studio in Dayton, Texas, lower than 40 miles northeast of Houston correct. Seymore writes and collaborates repeatedly with locals, too, together with associates and characters like South Texas Tweek. He sees no cause to relocate to Nashville or one other one of many better-known music hubs—not as a result of he can’t, however as a result of he doesn’t have to.
On this metropolis—the birthplace of City Cowboy’s slick redneck cool, Lightnin’ Hopkins’ free-form blues, and DJ Screw’s chopped-and-screwed sound—musical actions don’t simply echo the previous. They’ve reshaped native listening habits and international sounds.
For some, Horni Tonk’s late weeknights really feel just like the successor to a different bygone Houston custom: Whiskey Wednesdays at Fitzgerald’s. Round 2010, a inexperienced (however already good) Robert Ellis and different ferocious younger musicians, together with a baby-faced Will Van Horn, have been sharpening their sound. Davis says a comparability to Ellis, Van Horn, and the remainder of the Whiskey Wednesday crew is the very best praise he can consider. “I used to be in highschool once they have been at Mango’s and Fitzgerald’s, and Whiskey Wednesdays have been blowing up. They have been very influential for me,” the drummer says. “I simply keep in mind pondering, ‘That is so cool. I need to be part of this.’”
Embracing that longing to really feel like part of one thing undergirds Horni Tonk’s magic. When bartender DeHaven was identified with breast most cancers in 2024, the Horni Tonkers rallied, organizing a fundraiser to assist offset the price of therapy. “I don’t know too many communities like that—that may pull collectively in such a approach,” DeHaven says.
Regardless of Horni Tonk’s accomplishments, Seymore’s response to any reward isn’t simply humble, it’s sensible. Constructing a community and creating significant artwork are inseparable.
“The product needs to be good. It takes time to domesticate your self as an artist—to interrupt your tendencies and study new methods of doing issues,” he says. However greater than that, “it takes relationships—not unadulterated self-promotion,” he provides. “That solely will get you thus far.”
For those who go: Horni Tonk Tuesdays, 8pm; Shoeshine Charley’s Large High Lounge in Midtown, 3714 Principal St; $10, ages 21 and up except accompanied by a guardian.
