Kennard delivers a gem-in-the-rough

So new to the market that Amazon-dot-com hasn’t picked up on it at this writing, Guthrie Kennard’s CD-album Unmade Beds (NewTex Records) is a sustained exercise in the rough-hewn delicacy we used to take for granted from such artists as Tom Waits and Taj Mahal and Jesse Edwin Davis and — sure, even Bob Dylan.

Some wag, for that matter, once accused Kennard of sounding like “Tom Waits trying to get out of Bob Dylan’s body.” No doubt in recognition of the gruffness inherent in the voice, which achieves beauty without affected prettiness. Vocal likenesses might also be drawn to Mac “Dr. John” Rebennack or Dave Van Ronk, or maybe a John Hiatt 45-rpm played at LP speed. But the exercise proves futile: Kennard sounds like Kennard — an artist commanding enough to snap an arena-size audience to attention, and friendly and rambunctious enough to impose peace upon a rowdy honky-tonk barroom.

Most roots-music enthusiasts know Kennard as a rock-solid bassist for other artists’ endeavors. The career ranges from an early-1960s twist-craze band at New York’s celebrated Peppermint Lounge, to a long-term affiliation with Ray Wylie Hubbard — who also has produced Kennard as a featured recording artist to good effect.

Connected now with Duncanville-based producer Steve Satterwhite, Kennard has shaped Unmade Beds as a decisive outcropping of Deep Southern rock, influenced in roughly equal measure by blues and country but achieving a distinctive style in the process. Kennard’s lyrics suggest the down-home poetic wisdom of Billy Joe Shaver, and his small-ensemble instrumentation recalls the big sound that such pioneering rock ’n’ roll ensembles as Gene Vincent & the Blue Caps once achieved, simply by thinking big in a compact context.

The CD also appears in track-by-track downloadable form at www.cdbaby.com. It’s a jewel overall, with such especially striking facets as the title track and “Cadillac Sheryl,” “Wiggle,” “No Turning Back” and “Monkey Wrench.”

Satterwhite, one of the roots-savviest producers in Texas, notes that Kennard’s re-emergence as a singer-songwriter has put him on a trail of “venues as large as big European festivals and as small as Fort Worth biker bars where he knows the name of every patron in the room … He ain’t gonna stop.” And more power to him.

At large at the Museum

of Science & History

By the time these words appear in print, I’ll be taking part in an invitational press preview of the newly constructed Fort Worth Museum of Science & History at 1600 Gendy St. — at 166,000 square feet, the largest museum in the Cultural District, and soon to join the Carter–Kimbell–Modern art-museum axis as an international destination. A museum to compare with the Field in Chicago or the La Brea in Los Angeles, not to put too fine a point on things.

The new Museum of Science & History serves as a skyline-altering capstone to the Cultural District — the nation’s third-largest such arena of artistry and heritage, showcasing architectural masterpieces by Tadao Ando, Buckminster Fuller, Philip Johnson and Louis Kahn. The Science & History building, designed by the Mexico City-based architectural firm of Legorreta + Legorreta, will premiere an array of interactive exhibits and programs, ranging from prehistoric life to forensic crime investigation.

The museum’s Omni Theater is the only structure that was preserved from the previous building. It is attached to enable guests to enter the theater directly from the museum. The Omni itself was renovated in 2008 as a prelude to the new construction.

The opening is due Nov. 20 — right on target, given the complexities of such elaborate construction and the home-stretch complications brought on by the recent run of heavy weather. And more on all that as things develop.

Michael H. Price is a programming consultant to the Fort Worth

Museum of Science & History, specializing in demonstrations of the connections between the popular culture and scientific and historical interests. Contact: mprice@bizpress.net