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Show V v Hoyt Axton stirs crowd at Cowboy His voice is like a sweet-funny sweet-funny rumble from a huge volcano. singers who made it big with his tunes. In fact, he can't name a single version of an Axton song he dislikes. He's got a thriving club-TV-movie career, and as a result, he hasn't had a day off in four-and-a-half months. He has been filling club dates on weekends away from his current movie. And the Cowboy Bar date is part of a 13-day break from filming. Fortunately, Axton managed to squeeze a Record interview into his schedule. (Incidentally, we couldn't have done it without the personnel of the Cowboy Bar. They were constantly cooperative, while dealing also with the Labor Day crowd, Axton road crew, and the MD organization. And special thanks to the guy who kept trying to find us a vacant chair in the jammed barroom.) Axton's current picture is "Gremlin," which he called "an E.T. with teeth." The executive producer is Steven Spielberg (who makes a cameo appearance in the film) and the director is Joe "Twilight Zone" Dunde. He said he knows his limitations as an actor. "I'm like a little kid pretending, only I'm speaking someone else's lines." He readily acknowledges that he's not a Gielgud more a "personality "person-ality actor" in the vein of Slim Pickens. In the mid-1960s he made a few acting appearances on a segment of "Bonanza" and in "Smokey," a Western with echoes of "Flicka." He found, he said, "I was a better critic than an actor," and afterwards avoided acting act-ing for 10 years. A guest part on "Mc-Cloud" "Mc-Cloud" brought him back into dramatics. And it led him to his favorite role, in "The Black Stallion," as the father who introduces his son to the stallion legend, and soon after dies in a shipwreck. Axton said the makers of "Stallion" wanted to bring him back as a ghost in a ploy that sounds like Ben Ken-obi's Ken-obi's appearances in "Star Wars." Recalled Axton, "When the boy is stranded on the island, I was gonna come out of the water, dressed in an old straw hat, pants, and Hawaiian shirt, and say, 'Don't worry, son. Everything's gonna be all right!"' "Stallion" was the only role, he said, that gave him anything like the feeling he has songwriting. Make no mistake, composing is his first passion. "It's spontaneous, spontan-eous, organic!" he said. "The Muse doesn't come regularly and tap me with a magic wand," he said. He "When the Morning Comes," was done with Linda Ron-stadt Ron-stadt "before she stuck her hair on top of her head," he told the audience. These songs were beautiful, beauti-ful, if a shade all in the same vein. But Axton really sunk his teeth into "Never Been to Spain." The band put on a throbbing, hand-clapping version of "The Devil." And they gave a hurtful rendition of "Geronimo's Cadillac," a lament for the American Indian. He also showed how he handled other peoples' material. His "Battle of New Orleans" was rousing, but undistinguished. However, the band's version of Chuck Berry's "Maybelline" transformed trans-formed the old rocker, and was a highlight of the evening. Axton retired from the stage briefly, while some of his nine-piece band took turns in the spotlight. In the set we saw, Jana Lee Baer caught fire in her solo, guitar-player Michael Curtis sang a funky tune called ''By the River," and the fiddler put on a dazzling display-though, display-though, by that time, I wasn't really in the mood for technique. The star kept wondering Hoyt Axton by Rick Brough Hoyt Axton looks like a mountain, dresses as if he were going on a fishing trip, and sings in voices of the backwoods he can growl like a bear or sigh like a wind through the trees. On Sunday night, Axton and his band put on two sets that left 'em shouting for more at the Cowboy Bar. (The program was part of a country marathon to help the Jerry Lewis Labor Day drive against Muscular Dystrophy.) Axton has a huge pot belly, but, as with John Wayne, it only makes him look larger than life, not grotesque. He wants to trim it down, he told the Record after the show. He can feel it after he runs 100 yards or so, he said. His standard joke in every show is that he needs his guitar strapped around his shoulder to hold his gut in. And yet .it fits. His voice sounds like a sweet-funny rumble from a huge volcano, as he runs through his hits ("Bony Fingers") or other folks' material, or songs he wrote that others made famous, like "Joy to the World." He's never had a Number One record, Axton said not even one in the Top 10. But he's not jealous of the other has written songs in minutes or months. Some he has worked on for years and still hasn't finished, he said. Axton has his own studio, record label, and road unit. As an actor, he works for others, but as a traveling singer, "I'm as autonomous an entertainer as there is in this country." His entourage proved to be talented and responsive. (One security man blocked our way when we tried to interview Axton, but apologized apolo-gized profusely when we showed we were press.) Axton was introduced by KSL anchorman Dick Nourse, who was waving (could it be'!) a mini-bottle, and said, "This guy comes out of my era, but he still sings a hell of a song!" Axton shone with the easy romanticism of songs like "Evangelina," "The Bluebird," Blue-bird," and "Lion in the Winter." In songs like this, Axton is unmatched at blending with female singing partners. One of his biggest hits, out loud if he was off-key. (Later, he told the Record he couldn't hear his voice feeding back to him.) But he could hear the audience, and he kept them yelling, clapping, and stomping their feet as much as possible. When a voice yelled for rock 'n' roll, he said, "Don't pass out yet! We're gonna do some." t And when they yelled for one of his famous tall tales, he responded with the yarn about how he accidentally swallowed a huge bag of little potent pills. In this version, the bag was stamped, "Property, City of Ogden." He ended his first show with "Joy to the World." The second set was cut a little short, however, by an apparent ap-parent power black-out. All was noise and chaos for a moment, and then Axton's voice soared in the darkness with a bluesy lament. With that, he exited, too soon for the crowd, But then, Monday night would have been too soon for the crowd. |