Ford AutMus Fest 2007 stirs up mixed emotions and reviews between students and the band members of those who attended and were involved in this year’s event. The musical line up included rock group Honky from Austin, TX, pop singer/dancer Erin Marie stationed out of Dallas, TX, the lovely JD Natasha from Miami, FL who offered Laredoan’s a new sound of pop rock, and other bands who contributed their time to this year’s annual event.
Honky, a band who self-proclaims their style of music as “Texas Superboogie,” is one of the most hard working bands according to guitarist Bobby Ed Landgraf stating, “We’ve played over 250 shows since September. We certainly work hard; we certainly are one of the hardest working bands that I know.”
Although, the crowd was small during Honky’s performance compared to the larger and more upbeat crowds during JD Natasha’s performance and tejano group Costumbre’s live show, the three band members still played with enthusiasm and even began joking with one another between songs and laughing with one another on and off stage.
Barefoot and tattooed, drummer Justin Collins, a former member of Go Fast who once toured with Honky still remembers the day he received a phone call asking him if he wanted to become the bands new drummer. “The band as a whole has been around 10 years. I’ve been around 9 months. They changed drummers after the latest album. I took over for this other guy. I’m from Arkansas, and they just called me out,” remembers Collins.
Honky is a band with different musical abilities and their musical influences contribute to their own unique style of music with a variety of blends from old rock to new.
Bass player, JD Pinkus has a tattoo on his neck of a paddle with the words “Come and Take It” underneath it and a tattoo on his left fist with the word “ROCK.” He is the former bass player for Butthole Surfers.
At times, Pinkus frequently gets asked if he will ever play a reunion show with his previous band members. He simply replies, “They’re not really doing too much now. They don’t quit; everybody asks me if I’m going to play the reunion. I’m like, ‘They have to break up first.’ I did that from the end of ’85 and I did that until ’93.”
When asked what type of message does Honky portray to their fans, Pinkus states that, “Everybody experiments and does their thing. But when you’ve heard enough of a certain kinds of music, sometimes it just comes easy, and it’s refreshing. All this stuff you can’t tap to and you got to count, those are musician’s bands. You know the ones that come out and they’re like: ‘1-2-3-4-5-1-2-1-2-3-4-5,’ they’re math rock. We’d rather just kick back and do something like this and get the chick’s butts wiggling and the people drinking.” However, at the end of the night, university students were still begging or at least expecting to hear more live rock bands in hopes of having a bigger rock scene. Therefore, some students were disappointed in this year’s turn out as opposed to last year’s AutMus Fest.
Former graduate, Ricardo Guardiola who is currently pursing his Master’s Degree states, “The rock scene needs to be supported and other types of advertisement should be used also as opposed to traditional advertising. We need to utilize technology.”
Senior, Luis Blancas is in agreement as he mentions, “People need to be more involved.”