New West Records To Release Sir Douglas Quintet & Doug Sahm Performances As Part of Its Acclaimed Live From Austin, TX Series April 13th, 2018

Vintage Performances from 1975 & 1981 Issued On Vinyl For The First Time

Rolling Stone Country Shares “Mendocino” From A Reunited Sir Douglas Quintet

New West Records will release two archival Doug Sahm live recordings as a part of its acclaimed Live From Austin, TX series on April 13th, 2018.  Both live recordings were originally filmed for the legendary PBS television series Austin City Limits and will be issued for the first time on vinyl as 180 gram double LPs housed in gatefold sleeves.  The LPs have been remastered from original sources, feature liner notes from Austin City Limits founder and producer Terry Lickona and are available for pre-order HERE.  Recorded on October 14th, 1975, Doug Sahm – Live From Austin, TX was filmed after Sahm had temporarily retired the Sir Douglas name and features original member Augie Meyers along with Martin Steitle, John Barber, Steve McDaniels and Harry Hess.  It features the Sir Douglas Quintet classics “She’s About a Mover,” “Mendocino,” and “Rains Came,” with Sahm venturing into other musical territory ranging from T-Bone Walker to Bob Mills.  Recorded on January 21st, 1981, Sahm reunited with original Sir Douglas Quintet members Augie Meyers and Johnny Perez, along with the legendary Alvin Crow on guitar and Speedy Sparks on bass.  Producer Terry Lickona stated in his accompanying liner notes, “Back in the day, the Sir Douglas Quintet was Texas’ answer to the British Invasion.  With the arrival of the Beatles, Sir Doug & Co. saw their chance to break out of the rough, Chicano-influenced rock they had been playing in the joints around San Antonio.  They donned English-looking suits and hit the charts with ‘She’s About A Mover’ in 1965.  Nobody was quite sure where they came from, but they rode the English-pop wave to fame.”  Rolling Stone Country has shared a performance of the reunited band’s 1981 set opener “Mendocino,” today stating, “There are few figures in country music as influential and perhaps as underappreciated in modern culture as Doug Sahm, who changed the climate of the genre when he fused psychedelic San Francisco rock and gritty soul into his breed of Texas music with his band, Sir Douglas Quintet.”  The continued, “‘Mendocino’ was one of the band’s best-known songs, climbing the charts stateside upon its release in 1968 but seeing even more success abroad – and whose influence can still be found in artists like Margo Price, who recently recruited some mariachi players for a performance of ‘Pay Gap’ that conjured up Sahm’s Chicano spirit, or in the psychedelic riffs of Aaron Lee Tasjan.” See the performanceHERE and please also see both album track listings below.

The Austin City Limits archives hold more than 400 concerts, many of them one-of-a-kind performances of rare television appearances by some of the world’s most acclaimed artists.  In addition to DVDs, separate live, audio-only CDs are also available for many of the performances.  New West’s Live From Austin, TX series, presenting more than 50 critically acclaimed titles and multiple Gold and Platinum-certified releases, continues its impressive run.  Previous releases include Merle Haggard, Jerry Lee Lewis, R.E.M., Steve Earle, Guided By Voices, Widespread Panic, Dwight Yoakam, Fats Domino and many more.