Groundbreaking Los Angeles punk band X played the Charlene McCombs Empire Theatre Saturday night as a stop on its farewell tour. The energetic performance showed why the group remains influential nearly five decades after its formation.
X came straight from a sold-out show the night before at Austin’s Paramount Theatre. In contrast, the Empire was far from sold out, with large portions vacant. Just the same, the palpable energy of the band onstage and the exuberance of the crowd filled the room.
Jimbo Mathus, a founding member of the Squirrel Nut Zippers, opened the night, charming the audience with a homegrown, dressed-down set of American roots music.
Mathus and his two band members gathered around a single retro microphone as if recording for a Depression-era radio broadcast. One of Mathus’ accompanists played acoustic guitar and sang backing vocals while the other played upright bass.
For the final tune, Mathus called an old friend and collaborator, San Antonio high school vice principal Chacho Saldaña to the stage. Saldaña sang a portion of the song in Spanish, helping localize the Mississippi-based musician’s performance.
Then it was time for X to make its entrance. Guitarist Billy Zoom played Link Wray’s “Rumble” as the rest of the band walked onstage, setting the tone for a night of rockabilly-infused punk.
X’s tour is in support of its newly released final album, Smoke & Fiction. The release shows that the band remains just as vital as when it emerged from the LA punk scene of the late 1970s.
“Earlier this year, we put out a new record, and it was just as much a surprise to us as it is to you,” bassist-vocalist John Doe told the audience at one point in the evening.
X played a few songs from the release, including “Sweet Til the Bitter End” and “Ruby Church.” The band also played “Water & Wine,” a track from 2020’s Alphabetland, which it didn’t tour behind due to the pandemic.
The quartet also blasted through plenty of beloved classics, including several from its influential debut album Los Angeles. A performance of “Nausea” flowed into “Johnny Hit and Run Pauline,” two of that album’s most memorable tracks.
These were followed by “Soul Kitchen,” a Doors cover also from Los Angeles, which was produced by Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek.
Though the members of X are older now, much about the band remains the same. Doe’s bass playing was as driving and dexterous as ever. Singer Exene Cervenka hopped around in little cowboy boots, full of energy. The once-married couple’s harmonies were just as complimentary as always.
Though Zoom sat on a stool for all but one song, his turbocharged rockabilly riffs cut through with as much power as ever. His contribution to X’s sound is one of the band’s defining characteristics — an influence that set it apart from contemporaries in the LA punk scene.
DJ Bonebreak remains a precise and hard-hitting drummer, taking center stage with a solo that elicited shouts of “DJ!” from the crowd. For the genre-defying “Come Back to Me,” Bonebreak played vibraphone while Zoom switched between his Gretsch and a mounted tenor saxophone, sticking his guitar pick to his sweaty forehead like a third eye.
Admittedly, the concept of a seated punk show is a littler counter-intuitive. Punk is supposed to make you move. But X actually favored seated venues for this tour — something Doe told Billboard before hitting the road.
“I used to get pretty freaked out about playing sit-down venues,” Doe said. “And now, since we’ve done it enough, it’s not so bad. I mean, I like to sit down. I don’t necessarily like standing for an entire show.”
Some of the aging punks in the San Antonio crowd seemed to agree — though not all. As the night progressed, more people stood and danced spasmodically, defying protocol. After all, isn’t that what punk is about?
It was as if both the band and the crowd felt the same fatalistic urgency in the gathering. This might be the last time ever. Better make it count.
The members of X have said that even though they’re retiring from the road, they still plan to play festivals and one-off shows.
“So, that just means you’ll have to take a road trip to see us,” Doe said at one point in the show.
“We hope to see you again,” Cervenka said with a shrug. “Maybe someday.”
