Kevin Russell

Kevin Russell built his reputation chiefly through his work as a tunesmith and multi-instrumentalist on guitar, mandolin, and banjo inside the eclectic Austin, Texas, roots-rock outfit the Gourds. Stepping forward under the name Kev Russell’s Junker, he issued the album Buttermilk and Rifles on Sugar Hill Records in 2002; the sessions included contributions from several fellow Gourds along with other Austin notables such as Jon Dee Graham.

Russell’s childhood unfolded amid constant movement because his father worked in the oil industry. During junior high the household relocated from Beaumont, Texas, to Houston, an abrupt shift from a working-class district to affluent suburbs that left him unsettled. In response he picked up the guitar and began composing songs. He also gravitated toward local skateboarders, whose influence steered the Southern-rock- and country-oriented teenager toward punk. Through the columns of Austin music journalist Marty Racine he next encountered the Replacements and the Beat Farmers, bands whose approach would leave a lasting mark on his own trajectory.

That path took clearer shape once the family settled in Shreveport, Louisiana, where Russell started the Picket Line Coyotes. The band later relocated to both Dallas and Austin before breaking up, yet its members planted the creative seeds that became the Gourds. After the split, Russell performed around Austin in a duo with Ron Byrd while former Picket Line Coyotes colleague Jimmy Smith refined material in a small East Texas town. The pair eventually reunited, their partnership supplying the core songwriting for the Gourds. Earlier, in the mid-’90s, Russell had cut solo tracks that stayed unreleased yet ultimately helped reconnect him with Smith. Both musicians asserted themselves as strong writers on the Gourds’ 1996 debut Dem’s Good Beeble, whose layered instrumentation and compositional reach prompted frequent parallels to the Band.