The Ameripolitan Music Awards are handed out during a show on Sunday night, but the four-day festivities offer more than that. Many of the award nominees, past and present, perform at venues around Austin Thursday through Saturday. 

For fans, this isn’t your typical music festival where you pay a few hundred dollars for a weekend pass. Rather, you pay $20 to get into showcase sets over three nights at four classic venues in Austin. Several shows earlier in the day are at the hotel and free, along with dance lessons, vintage clothing vendors and plenty of socializing. 

Dale Watson created the Ameripolitan Music Awards 10 years ago as a way to draw attention to some underappreciated types of country music, including honky tonk, western swing, rockabilly and outlaw country. The effort has grown, and after a couple years in Memphis and a year lost to covid, the show returned to Austin this year and into the Moody Theater, home of the Austin City Limits. 

The Ameripolitan weekender is a place to leave your boring job behind and get your honky tonk on, to revel in some great roots music that’s just as vital as it ever was. Here are a few highlights from this year’s edition Feb. 15-18. 

People watching

An opening night party kicked things off at the Wyndham Garden hotel, headquarters for the weekend. While bands played onstage, fans and artists alike busted out their retro finery and best dance moves. One woman passed by in a sparkly blue dress, another in glittery red, her bouffant halfway to the clouds. 

There were Nudie suits and rockabilly chic, women in silk evening gowns and men in Hamm’s shirts and Caterpillar ball caps. And cowboy hats. Lots and lots of cowboy hats. 

Men showed off facial hair in various extravagances. One woman wore severe black bangs, others sported hairdos in hues in red, purple, blue and white. The rockabilly folks showed off their tattoos and piercings, a reminder that rockabilly was punk before punk was punk. A very large man walked through with a very small dog.

The bands drew the dancers. While the Golden Roses played their meaty outlaw country, a young couple commanded the dance floor center, she with a twirly skirt and he all in black, both impossibly fleet footed and lighter than air.

Katie Shore plays fiddle with Asleep at the Wheel, but she showed she’s plenty capable of leading her own band. Her dancehall melodies filled the floor with high-steppers. 

Gabe Lee and the Wonder Women of Country at Waterloo Records

Folk singer Gabe Lee is a young artist of uncommon songwriting ability, a storyteller in the John Prine vein. He played a couple songs solo at Austin’s great downtown record store, including “Alright Ok” from his first album and the title track from his latest, Drink the River, before concluding appropriately with Prine’s “Speed of the Sound of Loneliness.”

Brennen Leigh, Kelly Willis and Melissa Carper took the stage to officially debut their new group, Wonder Women of Country. They’ve played some dates together previously, but they’ve decided to make it official with a name and an EP, Wonder Women of Country: Willis - Carper - Leigh, which comes out March 15. They played most of the EP’s songs, including the lead single, “Another Broken Heart,” released the day after this set. 

Boy, did they sound great. Supergroup efforts don’t always work out, but this group sure does. They share vocal duties and play to each other’s strengths. And when they harmonize together... wow. Truly enchanting.  

Theo Lawrence at C-Boys

Theo Lawrence is an unlikely country singer. He’s from France, not exactly a hotbed of country music, and trying to make a go of it in the U.S. as a classic country crooner. With a tan suit and a mop of brown hair, he drew in the semi-rowdy packed house. His originals, like “Liquor and Love” (Sad to say / But I'm dreaming my life away / And in time I will have to pay / For the liquor and love), fit nicely alongside such covers as Lefty Frizzell’s “Cigarette and Coffee Blues.” 

 The Birth & History of Western Swing

First-time filmmaker Mike Markwardt screened his not-quite-complete documentary The Birth & History of Western Swing. It’s a terrific bit of journalism that explores the origins and growth of a uniquely American form of music. Birthed in Texas and Oklahoma, western swing incorporated an amalgam of musical styles, including Mexican mariachi, New Orleans jazz and Dixieland, frontier fiddling, polka and big band, even Irish jigs – anything joyful that would get the people dancing. Markwardt is working on getting final financing and clearances and hopes to interest PBS. I hope he’s successful, because it’s worth seeing. 

Lovesick at the Broken Spoke

Lovesick is a trio of musicians from Italy, complete with charming accents, who play old-time country and western swing like native Texans. The spiked hair of frontman and guitarist Paolo Roberto Pianezza nearly brushed the too-low ceiling of the Broken Spoke while Francesca Alinovi kept time and supplied percussion on the double bass. Alessandro Cosentino’s fancy fiddling solo in “Until I’m Done” got the crowd hooting and hollering. The atmosphere was electric by the time their set finished, and Dale Watson coaxed them into playing a couple more with the crowd’s enthusiastic approval. 

Kaitlin Butts’ acceptance speech

Kaitlin Butts won the award for best honky tonk female, and the unofficial award for best acceptance speech. Fighting back tears, she paid tribute to all the women in music who came before and the ones trying to make it today. 

“You don’t let the comment like ‘I don’t normally like girl singers, but I like you’ – you don’t let that stop you. You don’t let the lowball offer at the noon o’clock first set of the festival stop you, or the unconscious or conscious bias in this industry stop you, or the car breakdowns or the mental breakdowns stop you either. You get in the dress in the back of that stinky-ass van in the parking lot of the venue, hoping no one will walk up to your untinted windows and see that you’re wearing your ugly bra to the show tonight. You put on your lipstick in that rear view mirror and you get onstage like it’s nothing. But I know it’s not nothing, and I see each and every one of you honky tonk women, and I admire and I look up to you more than words can express.”

Recalling the first show she ever saw, the female duo the Wreckers at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma, she encouraged parents to buy tickets and take their kids to see women playing music. 

“The women in this room are balls of fire and we need them to inspire future generations, but we can’t do that without your support.”

Flaco Jimenez and Augie Meyers

Flaco Jimenez is 84 years old and looked frail as he was helped to a chair at center stage. But when he and fellow Texas Tornado Augie Meyers ripped into “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights” with Big Sandy taking Freddie Fender’s place, Jimenez’s fingers flew across the accordion keyboard like it was 1990 again. And when the band played “Soy De San Luis” and “(Hey Baby) Que Paso,” not a butt in the house wasn’t wiggling. 

The awards show

The move to the beautiful Moody Theater downtown helped make the awards show into a big-time production, ready for TV. (The Ameripolitan people are hoping to attract a channel to show it.) Outside of a few glitches, it was well produced, and honorees raved about the whole experience. 

And it was often a hoot. Here are a few memorable moments: 

– The Lucky Stars playing the slyly humorous “One Hundred Dollars and No Sense.” 

– Ray Benson joking that he and Dale Watson were such good friends that “he bought two of my old buses.”

– Tammi Savoy’s show-stopping rendition of “I Want Your Good Lovin',” making great use of the 10-piece house band. 

– Junior Brown playing a roaring “Too Many Nights in a Roadhouse” on his unique combo steel and electric guitar, the “guit-steel.”

– Monte Warden’s touching tribute to Texas musician Charlie Robison, his best friend and “loveable rascal” who died in September at age 59. One time, Robison saved Warden’s son from drowning. Another time, Robison borrowed Warden’s guitar, and “that son of a bitch sold it at a pawn shop... And then he was pissed at me because I was pissed at him... But I can’t tell that story without laughing.”

– Les Greene’s exuberant acceptance speech and subsequent performance. “I didn’t expect to win – I just came here to have a good time!” he said, then, musing about the trophy, “How am I going to get this in my luggage?”

Here’s the list of nominees, with the winners marked in boldface: 

Master Award Honoree
Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel

Founders of the Sound Honorees
Original Members of The Texas Tornados:
Augie Meyers
Flaco Jimenez

 Honky Tonk Female Nominees

Cristina Vane

Emily Nenni

Hannah Juanita

Kaitlin Butts

 Honky Tonk Male Nominees

Dylan Earl

Gabe Lee

Johnny Falstaff

Sterling Drake 

Theo Lawrence

Honky Tonk Group Nominees

Teddy & the Rough Riders

The Deslondes

The Golden Roses

The Shootouts

Western Swing Female Nominees

Brennen Leigh  

Sweet Megg

Melissa Carper

Stacey Lee Guse

Western Swing Male Nominees

Cory Grinder

Kevin Mauzy Martin

Kyle Eldridge 

Mitch Polzak

Western Swing Group Nominees

Carolyn Sills Combo

Lovesick Duo

Sad Daddy 

The Cowpokes 

Rockabilly Female Nominees

Angie Monroy

Gizzelle Becerra DeAnda

Mozzy Dee

Svetlana "Zombierella" Nagaeva

 Rockabilly Male Nominees

Eddie Clendening

Les Greene

Oleg "Guitaracula" Fomchenkov (aka Oleg Gitarkin)

Omar Romero

 Rockabilly Group Nominees

Black Kat Boppers

Messer Chups

Televisionaries 

The McCharmlys

 Outlaw Female Nominees

Kat Hasty

Kelsey Waldon

Taylor Hunnicutt

Stefanie Joyce

 Outlaw Male Nominees

Billy Don Burns

Dallas Burrow

Jason Boland

Willy Tea Taylor

Outlaw Group Nominees

Banditos

Kyle Nix & the 38’s

Reckless Kelly

The Supersuckers

Musician of the Year

Eleanor Whitmore - Fiddle

Floyd Domino - Piano

Jason D Williams - Piano

Kullen Fox - Multi Instrumentalist: Horn, Piano, Accordion

Lisa Pankratz - Percussion

 Ameripolitan Venue of the Year

American Legion Post 82 - Nashville TN

Gruene Hall - New Braunfels, TX

Skinny Dennis - Brooklyn, NY

Southgate House Revival - Newport, KY

 Ameripolitan DJ of the Year

Ashli Dansby on KMHT RADIO 103.9 - Marshall, TX

Del Villareal on WCBN FM - Ann Arbor, MI

The Morning Crew on KCWM 1460 - Hondo, TX

Tracy Pitcox on KNEL RADIO - Brady, TX

 Ameripolitan Festival of the Year

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass - San Francisco, CA 

SYMCO Weekender - Symco, WI

Outlaw Country Cruise

Western Swingout - Tehachapi, CA

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