Micky & The Motorcars - Live at Cactus Theater

Thursday, April 18, 2024

Doors 6:50 pm • Showtime 7:30

For a handful of summers about 30 years ago, tourists who wandered into a large dancehall in Stanley, Idaho, witnessed a family tradition finding new life. Young and old sat shoulder-to-shoulder, taking a break from the town’s mountain hikes and river campgrounds to take in Muzzie Braun and the Boys - a local family band who’d made it to the Grand Ole Opry, effortlessly spouted cowboy poetry and Western swing at gatherings around the country, and featured Muzzie’s four young sons––precocious boys with rock-and-roll futures.

“There were kids running around, people dancing,” says Micky Braun, the youngest brother who first climbed on stage to join the family when he was about five years-old. “That’s how we got started playing.”

The Braun brothers never stopped. Big brothers Cody and Willy started Reckless Kelly, and Micky and Gary left Idaho for Austin and started Micky and the Motorcars, a road-dogging favorite whose nonstop tour for the last 17 years has defined not just the lives of the brothers, but also shaped Austin’s roots-rock resurgence that has played out over the last two decades.

For the Motorcars, the question is never really whether to tour but where to play next. Gary––who handles guitar, mandolin, harmonica, harmonies, and occasionally lead vocals––and Micky, lead vocalist and acoustic guitarist, are joined in the Motorcars by Joe Fladger on bass, Bobby Paugh on drums and percussion, and new bandmate Pablo Trujillo on guitar. The combination of familiar and fresh players has reinvigorated the Motorcars’ live show, which buzzes through a low-key rock-and-roll rapture built on grooves and the Brauns’ signature harmonies.