Today we’d like to introduce you to Lonnie Trevino & Chris Beall.
Hi Lonnie & Chris, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Lonnie: In April of 2021 The South Austin Moonlighters celebrated ten years as a band. I am the only member left standing of the original six members that started in 2011 performing cover songs for a Happy Hour set at The Saxon Pub. Many of the original six are hired gun, sidemen, touring with other well-known artists hence the title “Moonlighters”, and the band was born at The Saxon Pub hence “The South Austin” declaration. There, pretty quickly, we felt and heard something special. We started introducing original music and it took off. At 2015 I asked Chris Beall to join us and by all accounts his presence and talent legitimized the band from a bar band to a True Americana original music touring group to be reckoned with. Chris upped our game and inspired us to be better songwriters. With that we recorded the 2016 release “Ghost Of A Small Town” and garnered radio airplay and a European distribution deal. In 2018 we hired Daniel James to fill the then available drum seat and went straight in to record our 2019 release “Travel Light” in Maurice Louisiana. Produced by Anders Osborne “Travel Light” was released nationally on Station House Records, and got major radio airplay and was number 1 for week on the Alternative Country Album Charts. We were set to travel overseas to perform a festival in the UK, a run through Europe, and end with a festival in Spain slated to happen the summer of 2020. And then the world closed down. The upward momentum we were experiencing came to a complete stop. We had zoom meetings checking in on each other, trying to guess when the world would open back up and if live music would be allowed. In that process a founding member found it all too hard to bare and decided that this was a good enough time if any to step down, settle down in Bastrop TX and marry his now wife. And as luck would have it Hunter St. Marie fell into our lives and he’s been our second guitarist since the fall of 2020. Almost seamlessly Hunter fit right in and has added a youthful kick in the pants we needed to shake off the COVID Blues. In July of 2021, we went into a studio in Austin to work with Producer Steve Berlin of Los Lobos to work on three songs. It was a major success, but then the COVID numbers went up again so we postponed further recording. Now, in March of 2022, we are meeting in Austin, TX. to finish that record with Steve Berlin. We are very excited and can’t wait to spread joy through music again. The South Austin Moonlighters are alive and kicking and have no expectations of quitting.
Chris: I had heard of this band, The South Austin Moonlighters, that my friend Lonnie was in back in 2011. I had a short-lived band called “The Gin Mill Hymns” that was a “family-style” band a lot like the Moonlighters were during that time. (That “Gin Mill Hymns” name ended up being a solo album of mine, but that’s another story… ) We were all attempting to join friends together over the joy of making music, me and the Moonlighters. Lonnie knew that I was on the backside of that record release in 2014 and kinda looking for the next thing to do. When one of the original guys stepped down and they needed someone, Lonnie asked if I’d like to join up. We all agreed on the “original music” and album approach, so we joined-forces —overcoming life’s hurdles together for almost eight years now! About 800 shows together, give or take a few.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Lonnie: Absolutely not! At 54 years of age, I can tell you the music industry has changed tremendously over the years. I personally think it can be traced back to 9/11 2001, when the file sharing craze took off and attendances dwindled for about a year after the towers went down. Needless to say, the rules keep changing. The industry keeps moving the goal post. The target seems to get moved side to side while our arrow leaves our quiver or it gets moved further away leaving the impression that we aren’t making any progress at all. When in fact on paper, we can see otherwise, but still, in the “real world” it can all be very disheartening. The artists now are expected to don the roles that were once filled by PR firms, promoters, advertisers, etc., when we should be focusing on the “art” itself. That’s a major change. I would say founding band members leaving was a struggle, however with every new member we brought into the fold, the band improved tenfold. So I guess that’s in the eye of the beholder. Losing Management and struggling with booking agencies is a struggle, but we’ve done well so far with and without. We are in the process of trying to find both now again since the Pandemic. We hope that this new album with Steve Berlin Producing will open those doors again.
Chris: Haha. It is LIFE, after all! I don’t know that there are any completely “smooth” roads. The main struggle hasn’t been making the music, that’s for sure. I think the struggle for all of us has been on the business side of things: We struggled early on getting management and booking support, and since the pandemic, we’re kinda handling it all ourselves again. That’s A LOT of stuff—too much for any of us to be really good at, so that’s the real struggle I see. (We’ve got so much more that we want to do!) I mean, it’s hard to keep a “family” together like the Moonlighters; it takes work, and compromise, and sacrifice. And there have been difficult times—having to replace a member is always hard when it happens, but we have been pretty fortunate; Daniel when he came on board and then more recently with Hunter, too. I feel so good about our current line-up that it’s hard to remember the times when it was interpersonally difficult. We get along really well, and we trust each other. The road is pretty smooth in that respect right now, and I’m thankful for it.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Lonnie: The South Austin Moonlighters are an ensemble of four veteran musicians writing, recording, and performing True Americana Music. The Band often gets compared to The Eagles or Crosby, Stills, & Nash because of our tight vocal harmonies. Think Little Feat meets Tom Petty and your find The South Austin Moonlighters nestled in there. We are known for our live performances that often leave the audience up standing cheering for more. With both myself and Chris Beall trading off to sing lead you get the best of so many worlds that will leave you wanting more. I am most proud of our perseverance and our continued childlike wonder and love for music and the desire to share it with the masses. Quitting is easy, staying is hard. In the long-standing tradition of Austin Texas bands with multiple lead singers, we stand apart because of our careful songwriting, arrangements, and the ability to play the quietest of ballads and then turn around and play a blistering Blues Rock infused barn buster of a song. We can cover so much ground in a 90 minute set. I hope we can continue until we are all dead and gone while the newest members continue on with the name and it survives us all.
Chris: I think we’re known for our harmonies, songs, and arrangements. We’ve always had two very-capable “roots” guitarists, so we lean on classic guitar sounds a lot, too. I think we’re like a brand-new old-school band; a beacon in the night guiding wayward listeners to the ways of old…but with all-new material. We’re compared to Tom Petty, Crosby, Stills, Nash (and sometimes Young, haha), The Eagles, Poco—you know, the “album” era greats. I think I’m most proud of “Daylight Again/Find the Cost of Freedom” that we did on Travel Light. It’s a Steven Stills tune that was two separate songs, actually. Lonnie had come up with a way to connect the two—I’m surprised that Steven never did that because it was PERFECT. There was a point in the studio when we were “cutting” (recording) it that was just completely overwhelming—that’s when you know you’ve got something. Anders (the producer) had decided that we needed percussion in one of the sections—-it would be the sound of all of us joined together in a “march”. The song is about war and peace; it’s about the sacrifices that selfless men and women have made throughout history. Marching along to that really made the song sink in. Still gives me chills thinking about it.
We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
Lonnie: As I’ve stated before, founding band members leaving was a struggle however with every new member we brought into the fold, the band improved immensely. With every struggle of change, a lightness comes and soothes us from worry or doubt. The Pandemic was bad luck, however as stated before, the changes have only made us stronger and more willing to persevere. The silver lining of these past two years has been a reawakening of why we started to create music in the first place. When the ability to create and share gets taken away, you realize how much you took it for granted. We would get private messages on social media from fans saying how much we were missed, how much our music kept them sane during the lockdown, and we realized how loved we were by the outpouring of generosity from folks all over the world. What a blessing to have experienced the lowest of lows and highest of highs through the love of the people we make music for. I can’t express this enough, the relationship between Audience and Artist is as important as any two things you can think of that go together. The lockdown proved that when we were forced to perform live streams in a room with no applause, no smiles, no feedback whats so ever, we can’t do this alone. This is a joint effort, and wearing our hearts on our sleeves is a job requirement and one I’m so very proud to be a part of and share.
Chris: That’s a matter of perspective, I guess. I think we (at least most humans) are always looking for “reasons” why things happen—the “order” of things to help define our stories. Obviously, the pandemic took away any momentum we had from the Travel Light album and all the work that we’d done to even get to that point. Maybe that was bad luck; but it was widespread bad luck for millions of folks. “Good luck” to me is Tim McGraw hearing one of our tunes over the Cracker Barrel radio and wanting to record it; just a complete random chance that would have almost nothing to do with our efforts. We haven’t had a lot of THAT sort of luck! But think about all the times at 4am on the way home from God-knows-where that we didn’t have a blowout…or a crash…or a theft. There were plenty of times. When you look at it like that, we’ve been very fortunate. Just lucky, I guess?! We are fortunate. In spite of bad things that happen. It’s much better than the other way around.
Contact Info:
- Email: bookthemoon@gmail.com
- Website: www.thesouthaustinmoonlighters.com
- Instagram: @samoonlighters
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/southaustinmoonlighters
- Twitter: @samoonlighters
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtfz9ZPs1ZKD1IFyH-CLH9g
Image Credits
Studio Shots by Mark Del Castillo Live shot from the Trevino Archives
