Marcia Ball warms up for Ray Wylie Hubbard June 2 at blues fest in Eureka Springs

Marcia Ball still commands the keyboard

Austin-based blues piano icon Marcia Ball opens for fellow Texan and musical legend Ray Wylie Hubbard at 7:30 p.m. June 2 during the Eureka Springs Blues Party. Tickets for the show at The Auditorium are $39 at eurekaspringsbluesparty.com; marciaball.com. (Courtesy Photo)
Austin-based blues piano icon Marcia Ball opens for fellow Texan and musical legend Ray Wylie Hubbard at 7:30 p.m. June 2 during the Eureka Springs Blues Party. Tickets for the show at The Auditorium are $39 at eurekaspringsbluesparty.com; marciaball.com. (Courtesy Photo)

You can hear the nearly half-century of singing in Marcia Ball's voice when she speaks. The gentle cracks, the even dynamics, her easy laugh. Her voice is well-worn but strong.

When it comes to the keys, she plays with the ferocity of an athlete: quick, agile, measured and intense. She says that she laughs when I ask if she's still as rowdy on the stage as she was in her early days when she would shake the stage and the piano.

"Yeah," she says almost sheepishly, with a laugh. You can tell she's proud, and grateful.

The Austin City Limits Hall of Famer, coming to Northwest Arkansas June 2 for the Eureka Springs Blues Party, says she's been fortunate to be able to keep her skills.

"I'm lucky," she says. "I have not had problems -- not hand, not wrist. I've been doing this a lot and a long time. And I do [play] heavy.

She jokes that after playing a gig with her mentor, the infamous Dr. John, he told her, "You a noisy piano player!"

At this point, Ball could probably play in her sleep.

She grew up in a musical family with an aunt and her grandmother playing piano while her father was a composer and horn player.

"When I was 5 or 6, about to start school, the piano appeared in our living room, an upright piano, and lessons began," she says. "I have a friend, a great accordion player here named Ponty Bone, who always said: 'By the time I said I didn't want to, I already could play.'"

Even after she stopped taking music lessons at 14, she says she still poured over her grandmother's Tin Pan Alley sheet music and her aunt's music steeped in the "American Songbook" style of the 1940s-50s.

"We didn't have a lot of records," she says, so cousins would visit, and the family would play music for each other.

"I have a cousin, they lived down in Corpus Christi, I lived in Louisiana. When they'd come to visit, we were always competing to see who had learned the most -- who was playing better -- and we played duets," she says.

In the meantime, Ball was soaking up the rich musical heritage of Louisiana and Texas that would later become a quintessential part of her self-described "Gulf Coast rhythm and blues."

"Growing up in Louisiana, especially at the time that I was growing up, was wonderful," she says. "I grew up in southwest Louisiana, which was down near the Texas border. We got the blues from Texas -- Albert Collins and Lonnie Brooks, but we also got Clifton Chenier, who spent a lot of time in Port Arthur, just across the river. And the Cajun bands that played and the local bands that played solo music -- they were getting their music from New Orleans."

In turn, those musicians were influenced by Fats Domino, Jerry Lee and Little Richard.

"All those guys were piano players, so it was just this wealth of good solid soul music that I loved and that New Orleans influence," she says.

By 1974, Ball had dropped out of college and had a successful run with a country band during the early part of the progressive country heyday that was happening in her new home of Austin, Texas.

"The hippies were playing country music, and it was called 'Progressive Country' with a capital P and a capital C," she says. "That was the scene here for a while, and it really put Austin on the map."

While the early education and access to the scene were great, she says that the blues was her calling.

"I used to say I know this country thing is real popular, and it's really happening, but the blues thing is coming along."

Since she started her solo career in the blues, Ball has garnered five Grammy nominations and 21 music awards including Best Blues Album of the Year, Best Blues Instrumentalist/Keyboards and the Pinetop Perkins Piano Player Award.

She's released more than a dozen albums over the past 49 years and has played with everyone who's anyone. These days she plays festivals and live shows with a band that includes Johnny Moller on guitar, Michael Archer on bass, Eric Bernhardt on saxophone and Mo Roberts on drum. She adds that she hopes to get come back to Arkansas with them soon.

She still enjoys the music scene in Austin that she's seen grow and change over the last half-century, but she wishes it was more accessible.

"There was ... a really wonderful creative world in Austin. And unlike what's going on now, it was affordable. Even in the context of being 30 years ago -- a musician could live in Austin," she says. "Of course, that's a lot more difficult now. But it's also still very creative in Austin. There are still wonderful musicians playing here."

She's also working on a musical theater project about Texas politics with author and journalist Lawrence Wright, who wrote "The Plague Year," "God Save Texas," and "The Looming Tower," which won a Pulitzer Prize.

Again, Ball is humble and doesn't want to brag about the project that they are still "figuring out." It's the first time that she's made music for a play.

For her Eureka Springs show next weekend, she'll be solo when opening for fellow Texan, Ray Wylie Hubbard, at 7:30 p.m. June 2 at The Auditorium.

Even though she's solo, she plans to tear it up.

"I still play the same music! I just play it all by myself."

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FAQ

In Concert:

Marcia Ball

WHAT-- Austin-based blues piano icon Marcia Ball opens for fellow Texan and musical legend Ray Wylie Hubbard during the Eureka Springs Blues Party.

WHEN -- 7:30 p.m. June 2

WHERE -- The Auditorium in Eureka Springs

COST -- $39

INFO -- eurekaspringsbluesparty.com; marciaball.com

  photo  "Growing up in Louisiana, especially at the time that I was growing up, was wonderful," Marcia Ball says. "I grew up in southwest Louisiana, which was down near the Texas border. We got the blues from Texas — Albert Collins and Lonnie Brooks, but we also got Clifton Chenier, who spent a lot of time in Port Arthur, just across the river. And the Cajun bands that played and the local bands that played solo music — they were getting their music from New Orleans." (Courtesy Photo)
 
 
  photo  "When I was 5 or 6, about to start school, the piano appeared in our living room, an upright piano, and lessons began," says Marcia Ball. "I have a friend, a great accordion player here named Ponty Bone, who always said: 'By the time I said I didnt want to, I already could play." (Courtesy Photo)
 
 

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