14 minute read
PROFILE
THAT’S SO DADA
How opening at Club Dada kick started Clay Pendergrass’ career ›
If Clay Pendergrass and his brother opened the windows of the converted attic bedroom in their Anita Street childhood home, from one direction they could hear the music pouring out of the Granada and Arcadia. In the other direction, once the old Dr. Pepper Plant shut down, they could hear the music from the Dyer Street clubs. It was a different time, when you could still smell fresh bread from the Mrs. Baird’s plant at Central Expressway and Mockingbird Lane all the way down Lower Greenville. Pendergrass would slip out of his window and stand outside the bars he was too young to get into, just listening to the music. “It’s not as crazy as it sounds,” Pendergrass says. “I don’t think we could do things like that now.”
Pendergrass, a guitarist, bassist and percussionist who also dabbles in visual art, has been a mainstay in the Dallas music scene for over two decades. He’s recorded and toured with the likes of David Garza, Jackopierce, American Horse and Jack Ingram . Longyear, released by his label Clay Sounds last year, is “psychedelic, funk, pop, noise, ambient, electronic, Tex-Mex and flute rock.” It’s a combination of original songs, a New Bohemians cover, a church hymn and the
national anthem. Created with New Orleans-based producer Danny Kadar, the album was made over the course of several years with tracks being sent back and forth virtually. It features a lot of guests, mostly friends. It encapsulates Pendergrass’ career — a collage of genres and collaboration.
HOW’D YOU GET YOUR START IN MUSIC?
Some of my first memories are singing in church with my family. I played trumpet throughout elementary school and high school. And I probably didn’t get my actual start until probably about my senior year of high school and then (until) David Garza. We started a little band in high school called The Happy Farmers. We got really serious about playing and writing songs. I had taken some bass lessons with Brad Houser, who’s a musician and bassist who plays with Edie Brickell & New Bohemians. He was really instrumental in helping me get started. And then that was probably the first big break, being able to open for them at Club Dada as high schoolers. It’s just kind of crazy to think about.
WHAT WAS THAT EXPERIENCE LIKE, OPENING FOR THEM AT CLUB DADA?
It was pretty amazing because we were huge fans. They were really encouraging of the musical community and helped out a lot of young players — I mean, loaned instruments, allowed people to open up for them. It was thrilling. Club Dada was a profound influence on me. When they started, they were really a dada club. It was a surreal place, and the calendar and the acts reflected that. So you’d have New Bohemians, you’d have Tiny Tim, you’d have Cafe Noir, you know, playing this brilliant gypsy jazz. That’s the Dallas I came up in. We were really lucky to be fostered by our musical older brothers and sisters.
HOW HAS YOUR MUSICAL STYLE CHANGED?
I think if you talk to the high school self, he might have been content to be a session player or a sideman only playing bass. I think that’s how it evolved, you know, constantly trying to learn, put yourself in new situations, being fearless about picking up new instruments, making sound and allowing it to be fun. I also moved over into production, and mixing, and all that sort of thing, too. I’m constantly trying, striving to be maybe a fuller musician that can understand more perspective with each day that passes.
WHY DO YOU THINK VINYL IS SUCH A BIG PART OF THE MUSIC INDUSTRY IN DALLAS?
I think people fall in love with it. It’s a great sound. I think so many people these days experience music through tiny headphones or Bluetooth connected speakers. Usually if you’ve gone through the trouble of getting vinyl, you’ve gone also gone through the trouble of getting a somewhat decent system. It’s going to represent the full spectrum of what was put into that music on playback. I’m in love with the way that at a certain volume, when you send that sound through the air, it’s gonna move you and make you feel a different way than if it’s not there. There’s magic in the music that you’re going to get no matter what medium you take. But I do think vinyl delivers a really impressive and sustaining dose of that magic.
WHAT TYPES OF VISUAL ART HAVE YOU BEEN DABBLING IN?
Mainly collage, that’s my favorite. And it kind of correlates to the music, because I do a lot of instrumental music as well, in a style that I call sonic collage. So a lot of the same concepts like interspersing samples, or cut up music, concrete tape loops. And then, you know, also applying organic sounds to them, like live performance or field recording.
WHAT DO YOU LISTEN TO WHEN YOU GO ON A ROAD TRIP?
Well, it would depend greatly on who’s on the road trip with me. But if I get to choose, I love the New Avalanches album We will Always Love You. My main artists I returned to would undoubtedly be Miles Davis. Joni Mitchell. Daniel Lanois is another big one for me.
NOWADAYS, YOU GO TO A CONCERT, AND EVERYBODY HAS THEIR PHONE. HOW HAS THAT INTERACTION WITH THE AUDIENCE CHANGED?
That’s a tough one. I mean, it’s definitely noticeable from the stage. I don’t even carry a phone personally so it’s kind of difficult for me to even relate to. But, you know, I don’t want to put on any limitations of what it might mean to other people. I have a 16-year-old daughter and to her that’s part of the experience. And, and that’s OK.
WHAT HAS BEEN THE WILDEST EXPERIENCE AT A CONCERT OR A RECORDING?
I was pulled off the stage and arrested one time in Houston at a Baptist high school dance, which kind of tells you everything you need to know. That’s probably the craziest live music experience. A few years ago, basically I did a 24-hour, all-day, all-night session with Andre 3000. Because he was in town. This is something he’ll do from time to time, which is book a studio wherever he is, and bring in local musicians and just try to get creative. Luckily, the owner of the studio invited me in on this. And we needed a drummer and wound up with Michael Hale, who also plays with David [Garza]. The touring life is amazing, just all the random moments that you have there. Like driving through, the outskirts of Yellowstone on an overnight from El Paso to LA or something like that. The recording of the Jackopierce’s Finest Hour. That was another amazing studio experience because we got to work a producer, mixer and musician named Don Smith, who’s done records with Rolling Stones, Eurythmics, Aretha Franklin. That was a really special experience because he was really kind to us. When we were at his house in Agoura Hills, California, working on the record, he had just gotten back from the Stones. We’re sitting in this room full of gear with the preamps, marked Mick or Keith.
WHAT’S INTERESTING ABOUT THE DALLAS MUSIC SCENE?
How diverse it is and how eclectic it is. And it does seem to be an ability to reach across age and genre here. Lately, I’ve been feeling there’s another good era of musical community coming up. There’s such a rich history and timeline here — that is something worth celebrating, and being tapped into and aware of, musically. To be aware of Blind Lemon Jefferson, all the way up to MC 900 Ft. Jesus and beyond. That’s pretty exciting. That’s a good musical history to be seated in.
the pawnbroker’s daughter
Honest Joe’s Pawnshop as it appeared in the 1970s. Photos courtesy of Evelyn Goldstein.
Evelyn Goldstein stayed up drinking wine and listening to Miles Davis to write her dad’s eloquent obituary for the Jewish Post earlier this year.
She called David Goldstein the last of the Deep Ellum Jewish pawnbrokers.
“I’m not a writer,” she says. “People have tried to write a book on my family so many times, that I’m like, ‘You know what, I’m going to write this’ ... because dad was everything to me and to a lot of people.”
Her great-uncle was Honest Joe, aka Rubin Goldstein, whose pawnshop, with its glorious jumble of hand-painted signs, was a fixture of Deep Ellum for generations.
Honest Joe grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and dreamed of owning a pawnshop like the ones lining Delancey Street in the early 20th century. In 1931, he moved to Dallas, where he had relatives in the pawn business, and at age 23 opened Honest Joe’s at 2524 Elm St.
Once he was established, his kin started moving here, including brother Rocky Goldstein. That was Evelyn’s grandfather.
Rocky’s Pawnshop was at 2018 Elm St. Evelyn’s dad worked there starting in childhood and later co-owned it with his dad.
The place was crammed with stuff, an organizer’s nightmare. One of Rocky’s signs read, “Stop dropping cigarette butts on the floor, the cockroaches are getting cancer.”
They did business with wise guys and petty criminals, but also musicians, housewives and working stiffs.
“When I was a kid, I always wanted to be at my dad’s shop,” Evelyn says.
She grew up in Garland and graduated from Dallas Academy in Lake Highlands.
David Goldstein worked all the time. He never took days off or went on vacation, so Evelyn and her brother, Jordan, have tons of childhood memories from the shop.
“There were gangsters in there all the time,” she says.
Guys she knew as East Dallas Louie and Johnny Tomato used to pick her up from school. Rocky put her into business around age 10 with gumball and candy machines. She had several in East Dallas, like at laundromats and Garland Road Thrift Store, and those drivers would take her around to collect her profits and refill them.
The Goldsteins received national attention for a couple of presidential incidents.
Honest Abe helped the FBI with tracing the rifle Lee Harvey Oswald used to assassinate President Kennedy in 1963. The pawnbroker reportedly had ridden in JFK’s motorcade, and he is mentioned in the Warren Commission Report.
In 1981, Rocky Goldstein sold a
.22-caliber handgun to Highland Park’s own John Hinckley Jr., who used it in an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan.
Every media outlet in the country wanted to interview him about that. The notoriety he received over it was so intense that they moved Rocky’s from Deep Ellum to East Grand about a year later, Evelyn says.
She remembers vividly the time, when she was 7 years old, that the shop on East Grand was held up.
“I was put into a back room,” she says. “That kind of stuff was very common then.”
David Goldstein, who was a staunch Republican his whole life, moved the shop to Garland Road at Peavy around 1990. He turned it into a police supply store, selling uniforms, holsters and vests to cops, while his dad also ran a small pawnshop inside the store.
“Have you ever heard of a pawn shop inside of a police store?” Evelyn says. “You had the police rubbing elbows with the criminals.”
The Garland Road store was safer than the two previous locations, she says. Evelyn started working there when she was about 15, mostly helping with inventory. In high school, her friends always wanted to hang out there, even when they could’ve been at the mall or Wet and Wild.
The magnetism was in her dad’s stories of old Dallas, and he also gave them candy.
David Goldstein, who grew up in Preston Hollow and graduated from Hillcrest High School, practiced painting and music and loved to romance beautiful women. He was married four times, and his final marriage, to Laura Levy, lasted 17 years.
He was known as a Jewish matchmaker and even introduced one of his exwives to the man she would marry and have kids with.
In 1986, he started a club with his three best friends, Bernie Schuster, Larry Strauss and Howie Miles, called the Weiss Guys.
“Every Thursday night, they would go out — women weren’t invited — and they’d have a dinner,” Evelyn says.
The Weiss Guys grew to include about 200 men, and 40 or 50 would often show up to the dinners.
“My little brother was working in a restaurant, and he didn’t want to wait on them,” she says. “Separate checks, Diet Cokes, coffees with cream ...”
About once a year, they’d have a big party at the Stoneleigh and invite the wives, she says. After her dad died in May, they held the last Weiss Guys dinner.
“They invited me and my brother and had us sit at the head of the table,” she says. “Almost all of them came. It was very touching.”
Evelyn still has two cousins who worked at Rocky’s back in the day. But so many of David Goldstein’s close friends and family members have died, she says. It’s a shame nobody wrote that book.
Life behind the bar
“Ididn’t set out to be a bartender my whole life,” Evelyn says.
She’s lived all over Dallas, completed college courses and worked in several industries. But she always comes back to slinging drinks. She recently started at Al Biernat’s, a restaurant her dad loved.
Her first job was working as a bar back for the owners of Desperado’s Mexican Restaurant, who were friends of her dad.
But her favorite job of all time was at the Granada Theater.
“I was the first bartender they hired,” she says. “I have so much love from that family, it’s unbelievable.”
She worked there until 2013, when she had to quit because she was near death before receiving a kidney transplant.
“I was working a shift there one night, and it was real busy, and I thought I was going to have a heart attack,” she says. “I’ve never felt anything like that before.”
She went home and then drove herself to an urgent clinic, which rushed her to the hospital because she was minutes from stroking out. At age 28, she was diagnosed with a rare kidney disease.
First, she took nine months of chemotherapy, followed by six-and-a-half years of “grueling” dialysis. By the end, she weighed 70 pounds, and the dialysis, “felt like it was sucking the insides of me out.”
She received a kidney transplant Sept. 23, 2014, on Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year.
After that, she returned to work at the Majestic Theater, an easier job with fewer dates, and over the years has worked her way back into the restaurant business.
Eater interviewed her last year for their national publication after she contracted COVID-19 at work in a Dallas restaurant. The virus attacked her kidney and put her in intensive care.
Working in restaurants during the pandemic has been among the most stressful times of her life, she says. At a previous job, a customer threw a glass at her (and missed) because she told him to put on a mask. Around that time, “things were going on in Israel,” and she received antisemitic harassment from a customer who noticed her Star of David charm.
“Everyone was in a bad mood. No one wanted to be there,” she says. “It was a horrible time.”
And then her father died.
A few days before, he told her he thought she should be working at Al Biernat’s.
“He knew,” she says. “He was just a character.”
• Board Certified in Family Law by the Texas Board of Legal
Specialization • Experienced in high-conflict custody and divorce suits, involving estates of all sizes • Practicing litigator and collaborative law attorney • Over a decade of experience practicing only in the area of
Texas Family Law
The Best Lawyers in America©
in family law as recognized by Best Lawyers, LLC
Texas Rising Star Honoree
(2016-2020) for five consecutive years by Thomson Reuters Elite Lawyer by Elite Lawyer
1717 McKinney Avenue, Suite 1500 Dallas, TX 75201 214-871-2727 • koonsfuller.com
MARKETPLACE CITY VIEW ANTIQUE MALL
One of Dallas’ oldest antique malls It’s FALL FLEA MARKET time! Save the dates for our huge Store Wide Fall Sale & Outdoor Market Wed., Oct. 27 thru Sun., October 31. Save 20-50% in store, and shop the tents on Saturday, 9-5 only, for even bigger deals! Over 100 dealers. Rain or shine! 6830 Walling Ln. (off Skillman/Abrams) 214.752.3071 cityviewantiques.com
DON’T PANIC, CALL DAN.
COMPUTER TROUBLESHOOTING No job too small or too large.
972-639-6413
