Gilded Lows

photography by Michelle Bluhm / @furthercreativestudio

On any given night in Austin, Texas you can find a country band playing to two steppers at The White Horse, a punk band vibrating the dark interior of Hotel Vegas, and performers ranging from indie rock to drag queens under the pink neon lights of Cheer Up Charlies. Three distinctly different venues, with wildly different audiences, music genres, and atmospheres. What do they have in common? A band known as Gilded Lows can be found on a bill at all three.

Gilded Lows is the moniker given to a solo music project Boone Carter founded in 2017 while working as a writer and actor in New York and Los Angeles.

“Gilded Lows is an attempt to put a nice sheen on things - the gilding of the lows. Gilding is a thin layer of gold so there’s a facetiousness to it,” explains Carter.

When he moved back to his home state of Texas, Boone met guitarist Buckley Willis at a songwriter swap and the two quickly bonded and formed the band under the same name. After adding a bass player and drummer, they all started playing shows around Austin.

When you go to a Gilded Lows show, you can come to your own discovery of where the band gets its name and where their sound owes its debts. Boone’s style and vocal performance are reminiscent of the Golden Age of Hollywood, crooners, and silver screen cowboys of old. The lows are found not only in Carter’s bass-baritone vocals but also in the lyrics, exploring the depths of the ego through stories of yearning, isolation, heartbreak and love.

“One of my favorite things to do is present something with bravado and then undercut it- humor mixed with self-deprecating, dark dry humor,” says Boone who fittingly pairs his lyrical storytelling with a stage presence people have described as “like a disgraced Las Vegas performer helming a matinee show.”

Their song, “Last Cowboy,” is a perfect example, examining the perspective of an old outlaw revisiting his old haunts only to find the modern world has left him behind.

The band has described their early genres as anything from dark wave doo-wop, post punk, Americana to folk.

“We’re not afraid to bring in influences that we are excited about,” Carter says - citing The Cure, Johnny Cash, and Songs: Ohia as a few key ones.

After the original bassist departed from the band, Michael Germany joined the rhythm section after previously playing with Buckley Willis in a folk duo in Charleston. A licensed clinical therapist, Michael acknowledges another role he plays in the band,

“I have been the band’s therapist for sure. We have very healthy interpersonal relationships in this band.” In addition to helping the band harmonize their relationships, Germany also joins Willis and Boone vocally, often sharing a microphone for dynamic three-part harmonies.

As their sound evolved, Carter kept track of the fun taglines people gave his band- things like:

“Americana for ghosts” and “Country music for people who don’t like country music”. The band felt inspired to add another layer. So after some 4 AM “doom scrolling,” Boone Carter found Scott Boone (they acknowledge the name coincidence) on Craigslist seeking a new band to play pedal steel in. “We met up at a late-night gas station bathroom after close,” Scott jokes.

The addition of pedal steel further evolved the band’s already mystical sound. “People didn’t know what to call us (until we added pedal steel) and then they started calling us ‘some kind of country band,’” Carter remembers. The “some sort of country band” added their final member with Matt Browning after the previous drummer’s departure. Matt admired the band before joining. “I’d seen them in person at two different shows and then they messaged me. I was overextending myself playing in three bands at the time but I still was like ‘I have to say yes because I like what they are doing,’” he says. It wasn’t just

Matt who liked what they were doing, because soon after his arrival the band was asked to play their first ninety-minute set at The White Horse, a hallowed honky tonk where locals and tourists have danced Texas Two-Step for decades. “Growing up I’d see places like this and say, ‘That’s where I want to play one day!’” remembers Austin native Buckley Willis.

Though the addition of the pedal steel had them “going country” in some folks’ eyes, the band never lost sight of its post-punk influence as well. “We can go into The White Horse and play a different way than we would at Hotel Vegas. Scott can country up anything in a second and so can we, and it still feels authentic because we love that stuff. We all have an emotional relationship with the post punk elements in the band while also having this foundational love of western music,” Michael observes.

Steel pedal player Scott has another take on why they can play a wide range of venues. “No principles!” he jokes. “It’s a versatile band. It’s a band that’s both appreciative of what makes people dance (which is harder than it sounds) and what brings people to the floor and brings them in (close to the stage). We also are able to create a texture of sounds. Apart from the rhythm, we’re able to make noises that sound unusual, different, scary, terrifying or enticing and work in a variety of contexts. Learning to play all these different venues has made us a very versatile band.” Noting the difference between his style of play and other traditional pedal steel musicians, Scott jokes, “It’s a string section on molly.”

Boone Carter has had a love for the unusual and haunting sounds that Scott describes ever since he was a kid. “My grandpa left me a record player in his will. I’d never used one so I didn’t know how to change the speed of it. I played ‘My Prayer’ by The Platters and didn’t realize it was too slow. It was low and reverbed, almost demonic, and I was like ‘This is crazy!’ It became one of my favorite songs. I’ve always been trying to capture something like that.” As a result, Carter’s guitar play when writing often consists of dynamic, unexpected chords with dissonance and various tunings. Carter often brings his initial song ideas to Willis, who has extensive music theory education and a groovy guitar style that paradoxically contrasts, complements, and expounds upon Carter’s initial artistic vision. Willis describes their songwriting relationship, “Boone is vinegar and I am extra virgin olive oil, we work together but there’s a distinct split.”

While the bulk of the lyrics come from Carter’s spellbook, each member of the band brings their own ingredient to the spooking, boiling brew that is the Gilded Lows sound. Everyone in the band is a multi-instrumentalist and the distinct sound of the Gilded Lows is a recipe of multifaceted collaboration. “Creatively we aren’t each sitting in a pocket just to be supportive. Everybody brings nuance to it,” Michael says. “Gilded Lows is a little bit ethereal like in a groove,” says Carter.

The “ethereal groove” is what makes the band so captivating in a live setting. Boone commands the stage like a crooner of old, simultaneously in control and unpredictable. The cohesion of the band is evident as they channel the energy of the room, inviting the crowd on a journey that is as unique as the blend of genres and eras their music encapsulates. Within the same setlist, the room around you can transform from an old west saloon to a 50’s ballroom to an underground 80’s punk dive.

Gilded Lows encapsulates everything that Austin is, was, and will be. You can’t put them in the box of any time, place, or genre but at the same time their sound is uniquely “Austin”.

“The mixture of genres couldn’t exist without being in Austin, soaking up all sorts of influences. It’s hard to not be influenced by your peers” referencing Austin bands like Pelvis Wrestley, Rattlesnake Milk, and Virginia Creeper. No doubt their music will leave you under a spell, delightfully haunted by stories of cowboys, punks, and derelicts of old. Simultaneously, you will be struck by visions of the future, where bold combinations of music from traditionally siloed genres make for a mesmerizing new sound.

With respect to the future of the music scene in Austin, guitarist Buckley Willis says, “I’ve seen three bands in Austin that have played to ten or twenty people here that have done European tours now. Every time someone from Austin gets recognition outside of this city they make it better for the rest of us.”

Gilded Lows released their last album New Cult, Old Cure on October 13, 2023 of last year. New music is in the works and expected to be released before the end of the year along and the band expects to tour soon after.