Elvis T. Busboy

I think I am going to work backwards on these posts. On Saturday, Carol and I went to the Blackfinn in Arlington to see Elvis T. Busboy and the Blues Butchers in concert. I am not real sure when the first time I saw ETB. I know it was in Lubbock after a football game at the Texas Café or as we called it “The Spoon”. I think I was still in graduate school at Texas Tech. The point is, it was a long time ago. I have seen him many times since then. A few years back, I took Carol to see him at J. Gilligan’s in Arlington and introduced Brett to them at Gameday in Mansfield. In fact on Sunday, I got Aedan to dance with me to ETB’s version of  “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love Baby” So three generations have now enjoyed ETB.

Steven Shaw, aka Elvis T. Busboy, is quite talented and the Blues Butchers are phenomenal musicians, Below is the cut and paste from their reverbnation.com page.

I know, you're probably asking yourself, where did the name Elvis T. Busboy come from? Well, did you ever see the Elvis Presley movie King Creole, where Elvis plays a busboy who becomes a hit when nightclub fans learn he can sing? Same deal here.

Elvis T. Busboy (aka Stephen Shaw) started out a roadie for the P.J. Belly band & went with him in '89 to the Arts & Crafts festival in Kerrville, where P.J. Belly asked Shaw if he wanted to get up on the stage & sing. "I didn't have time to think about it long enough to be nervous," Shaw says. He got up & sang the only tune he knew, Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup's 'That's All Right Mama' & it worked. The following year Belly opened up his own Lubbock club & Shaw became the singing cook there. Shaw would stop cooking, come out & sing, then go back & cook some more. Friends started calling him Elvis because of his unique voice & would holler 'You wanna hear the busboy sing?' So he became 'Elvis the Busboy' which was eventually shortened to Elvis T. Busboy....voila!

The Texas Blues Butchers were a side version of Lubbock's premiere '80's band The Nelsons, which had 1 LP & 1 CD released. The Nelson's toured with Culture Club & played on Farm Aid, but were struggling & thus formed the Blues Butchers to get blues gigs. Shaw started singing with the band and before they knew it they were getting gigs all over town. Shaw recalls, "they were a terrific rock 'n' roll band trying to play the blues, and they literally were butchering it.

That's not the case anymore however. Jobs have been coming so steadily, they are booked several nights a week in blues bars from Dallas to New York, and when they play it is almost always to a packed house.

This band is packed with talent and has such a tremendous energy...it is no wonder their fans are willing to drive across the state of Texas to see them! And if you've ever been to Texas, you know that's saying a lot.

– Source http://www.reverbnation.com./#/page_object/page_object_bio/artist_362689

We met two of my college friends, Lauren and Steve Moore, Brett (who brought a lovely young lady named Ashley) and fun was had by all. Carol will argue that I time travel back to my younger days when I am with my college friends and even more so when we see ETB. I did not time travel to much, but it was an awesome way to end a great Saturday that started so early in the morning.