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Monday
March 15, 2010 Since 1922 |
Mean Gene’s back in town
By Jane Howard Lee
Contributor Published August 27, 2009 Not too long ago I wrote a couple of pieces about a Baytown musician who pretty much stumbled into an opportunity to be part of very exciting.
Gene Kelton, AKA Mean Gene Kelton, blues guitarist, lead singer and lead guitar player for Mean Gene Kelton and The Diehards, has been a big part of the music scene for decades. He and the band are well known at clubs, festivals and events well beyond the bounds of Baytown and Gene has been a big part of the Houston Blues Society as well.
Gene played an acoustic set every at Rooster’s Steakhouse every Tuesday night for months and months, then suddenly announced that those gigs would come to an end earlier this summer.
That’s because he was going to star in a movie and that’s a pretty big happening for a musician.
It happened because a couple of years ago Gene took steps to try to get his band’s music into films and maybe even get the band a part in a movie as the band in some scene shot in a club. That seemed like a reasonable thing for a musician to try for and so he gave it a shot, posting info, photos and songs on Internet sites related to independent movie making. Truly, the most he hoped for was a chance for the band to play themselves playing music in the background on film just like they do in real life, while the actors said their lines in the foreground.
He got a big response.
Most were e-mails from people who wanted him to send them money, of course, before they would deign to help him in the quest to get his music into film but then a query came in that was different from the rest.
Gene tells it best in an e-mail he sent around to friends and followers of his band. It is also posted on his website.
“The e-mail was from award-winning Italian filmmaker Robert Minervini. He was looking for someone who looked like Mean Gene to play an ex-convict named Jack in his upcoming movie “Marfa Red.” We met for coffee and the rest is history. Instead of looking for an actor that could be a character, Roberto found a character that could be an actor. I got the part!”
During July and the first two weeks of August, Gene had a blast, he says.
“I logged over 4,000 miles in 30 days traveling from Houston to Brownsville, Fredericksburg, Del Rio, Marfa, Alpine, the Big Bend Country and point in between. We swam in the Rio Grande River trudged through the deserts of West Texas in 120 degree heat, got freed from jail in Richmond … walked the streets of many small, historic Texas towns, watched the mysterious Marfa lights at midnight, had many real-life encounters with the law and covertly filmed my character at an Asian massage parlor.”
Gene kept a promise to his band to get them all in a movie. Bass player Wolff Delong and drummer Ted McCumber, along with Gene’s sons Jamie and Sid and his grandson Conner, were recruited to be extras in the movie, as were many of his close friends.
Now with filming done, Gene working on the movie’s score, thus accomplishing that major point of his dream to get the band’s music into a film.
The movie should be ready for release in December and Roberto Minervini told me he planned to show it here in Baytown first.
Gene says this has all been a dream come true but it didn’t happen by accident.
“By posting songs and photos on the Internet, preparation crossed paths with opportunity” and something extraordinary resulted.
“Do something every day to prepare yourself for whatever it is you want in your life,” he said.
So now Gene is back playing his Tuesday night acoustic sets at Roosters but he has a lot of new tales to tell. You can probably hear some of those at Roosters but you can get a lot more by visiting Gene’s website at www.meangenerocks.com.
Jane Howard Lee is a reporter for The Baytown Sun.
Contributor Published August 27, 2009 Not too long ago I wrote a couple of pieces about a Baytown musician who pretty much stumbled into an opportunity to be part of very exciting.
Gene Kelton, AKA Mean Gene Kelton, blues guitarist, lead singer and lead guitar player for Mean Gene Kelton and The Diehards, has been a big part of the music scene for decades. He and the band are well known at clubs, festivals and events well beyond the bounds of Baytown and Gene has been a big part of the Houston Blues Society as well.
Gene played an acoustic set every at Rooster’s Steakhouse every Tuesday night for months and months, then suddenly announced that those gigs would come to an end earlier this summer.
That’s because he was going to star in a movie and that’s a pretty big happening for a musician.
It happened because a couple of years ago Gene took steps to try to get his band’s music into films and maybe even get the band a part in a movie as the band in some scene shot in a club. That seemed like a reasonable thing for a musician to try for and so he gave it a shot, posting info, photos and songs on Internet sites related to independent movie making. Truly, the most he hoped for was a chance for the band to play themselves playing music in the background on film just like they do in real life, while the actors said their lines in the foreground.
He got a big response.
Most were e-mails from people who wanted him to send them money, of course, before they would deign to help him in the quest to get his music into film but then a query came in that was different from the rest.
Gene tells it best in an e-mail he sent around to friends and followers of his band. It is also posted on his website.
“The e-mail was from award-winning Italian filmmaker Robert Minervini. He was looking for someone who looked like Mean Gene to play an ex-convict named Jack in his upcoming movie “Marfa Red.” We met for coffee and the rest is history. Instead of looking for an actor that could be a character, Roberto found a character that could be an actor. I got the part!”
During July and the first two weeks of August, Gene had a blast, he says.
“I logged over 4,000 miles in 30 days traveling from Houston to Brownsville, Fredericksburg, Del Rio, Marfa, Alpine, the Big Bend Country and point in between. We swam in the Rio Grande River trudged through the deserts of West Texas in 120 degree heat, got freed from jail in Richmond … walked the streets of many small, historic Texas towns, watched the mysterious Marfa lights at midnight, had many real-life encounters with the law and covertly filmed my character at an Asian massage parlor.”
Gene kept a promise to his band to get them all in a movie. Bass player Wolff Delong and drummer Ted McCumber, along with Gene’s sons Jamie and Sid and his grandson Conner, were recruited to be extras in the movie, as were many of his close friends.
Now with filming done, Gene working on the movie’s score, thus accomplishing that major point of his dream to get the band’s music into a film.
The movie should be ready for release in December and Roberto Minervini told me he planned to show it here in Baytown first.
Gene says this has all been a dream come true but it didn’t happen by accident.
“By posting songs and photos on the Internet, preparation crossed paths with opportunity” and something extraordinary resulted.
“Do something every day to prepare yourself for whatever it is you want in your life,” he said.
So now Gene is back playing his Tuesday night acoustic sets at Roosters but he has a lot of new tales to tell. You can probably hear some of those at Roosters but you can get a lot more by visiting Gene’s website at www.meangenerocks.com.
Jane Howard Lee is a reporter for The Baytown Sun.