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Ask anyone who’s been kicking around Lubbock for a few years and you’re sure to hear a story about the time they drank with either Stoney, Cody, Randy, or Wade while one or the other played on the Blue Light stage. Lately these guys might not come around as often as we’d like to see them but as their careers flourish, a new generation of bands take the stage in hopes of following in their hallowed footsteps.
Estelline is not one of those bands.
They aren’t trying to be like every Texas country band out there. They aren’t trying to be like any Texas country band out there. Founder and frontman Kenny Paul Harris makes no apologies for this, either: there is a depth to Harris’s material that most Texas country bands have yet to find an audience for anyway. Consider the words of a heartbroken man driven not merely to the honky-tonk on the edge of town but to the abyss at the edge of the world:
I am a monster, lock me away
Was her eyes that drove me insane
Black as hell, cold as ice
When she disappeared it was no surprise
“Old country was all story-based, and that’s what we do,” says Harris. Estelline takes the sad country song to an even darker place, both lyrically and musically.
Drums, bass, acoustic guitar, banjo, and a twangy guitar sound peppered with just enough delay to echo Harris’s haunting subjects characterize most of the songs they play. Says drummer Justin Lentz, “we’re going for something honest that people can understand. I personally don’t want to be that indie band that people don’t get.”
Rather than working to mask a vocal timbre that any pop-savvy vocal coach would seek to restrain, Kenny Paul Harris turns this into a defining characteristic of his performance, articulating each line with calculated drawl which sometimes borders on the dysphonic but always delivers with conviction.
“Playing at the Bluelight hasn’t been as tough as one would think,” explains Lentz. “We feel comfortable being the odd band out. We think that it comes across OK with the crowd. I’m sure that you’ll find the occasional cowboy who walks in and wonders what the hell we’re doin’ up there, but I think for the most part we’re accepted.”
Connect with Estelline at http://www.myspace.com/estelline1