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Singing back home Stephanie Urbina Jones’ grandmother was on her deathbed in the spring of 2000 when she grabbed her grandmother’s hand and squeezed it hard. “It felt like she was talking from the other side. She said, ‘Mi’ja, you have to use your voice to tell our story,’” aid Jones, at the time an established Nashville songwriter at a crossroads. “I knew right then there was no turning back.” Indeed. Jones quit her $31,000 a year writing job, returned to her roots in a West Side of barrio near downtown San Antonio and began a quest of self-fulfillment and self-discovery as one of the few female artist on the burgeoning Texas Music scene, a rebellious, male-dominated musical gumbo that’s steeped in country but flies in the face of mainstream Nashville. She began putting her grandmother’s dying words into action, infusing her music with images of her family, her culture and her state. “The story is the pride of this beautiful, multi-cultural history,” Jones said. “It’s a story of faith, a story of hope, a story of reaching out and helping other people.” Three years later, Jones, 35, is the first female artist without the backing of a major recording label to score a No. 1 song on the Texas Music Chart, which tracks spins of some 70 independent radio stations. The song, the aptly titled “Shakin’ Things Up,” stayed
at the top of the chart for five consecutive weeks, slipping to No.2
last week. Tonight Jones is giving back to a community group that helped her p the first rung on the ladder to success and the validation of a dream. She will present a check for funds raised on her six-city “Spirit of Tejas Celebration Tour” to the Mexican American Unity Council at the KJ97 County Line Live Music Series at 8pm at the barbecue restaurant on Interstate 10 West. The last stop on the tour will raise money through donations and raffles for items such as tickets to the Willie Nelson Fourth of July Picnic and restaurant meals. Admission to the concert is a donation of a nonperishable item to the San Antonio Food Bank. “I can honestly say that I would not have had the courage to come back here and try to do this without MAUC,” said Jones, whose self-titled debut album on her own label blends contemporary country rock, traditional Mexican and Tejano songs and sounds. Mexican American Unity Council officials thought Jones’ song “Adios Mi Amigo” would be a perfect tribute for US Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez, who had died a few weeks before her bid debut performance at the group’s annual banquet in December 2000. The event also was honoring Rosita Fernandez, known as San Antonio’s “First Lade of Song” for her six decades of entertaining, including 27 years as the star of Fiesta Noche Del Rio on the River Walk. So MAUC funded a souvenir CD of “Adios Mi Amigo” and “The River of Love,” for Fernandez, with Jones backed by El Mariachi Azteca. Jones wowed the high-profile audience. “You should had seen them-everyone just stood up,” recalled Yolanda Arellano, chairman of the board of MAUC. “Combining the cultures of Texas, and being from San Antonio and the barrio, all of this came together.” Jones, nervous about acceptance was overwhelmed. “It validated what my family and what MAUC said-that I had a unique interpretation of the experience of Texas, and it needed to be heard,” she said. With the winds of revolution stirring in Mexican, Jones’ great-grandfather, Manuel Anaya Urbina, moved to Texas in 1901 and eventually studied at Baylor University. He became a Baptist minister and founded a church on Buena Vista Street, a few blocks from away from the MAUC building. Her grandmother, Virginia Urbina Jones, grew up at 115 N Cibolo St. So did her father, attorney Charlie Urbina Jones, and her uncle, notary public, Rudy Urbina Jones, and they all attended nearby Crockett Elementary School, which now houses MAUC. Jones recalls spending many childhood days in the modest home as her grandmother babysat her, surrounded by a close-knit, extended family. After her parents divorced, however, Ones moved with her mother and new stepfather to Fredericksburg at about age 9. She lost touch with much of her father’s side of the family. Fearing discrimination in the small, largely Anglo community. Jones kept her Hispanic heritage hidden until reconnecting with her father at about age 18. “What ad been suppressed became this voracious appetite and passion to tell the truth about this beautiful culture,: she said. After graduation from UT Austin with an advertising degree, Jones landed a job with a booking agent and later moved to Nashville with the Texas Tornados’ management company. There, she worked several music industry jobs before setting on songwriting and joining Sony Tree Publishing. Her songs were picked up by several major-label artists, including Lorrie Morgan, who recorded “Shakin’ Things Up”, which became the name of Morgan’s 1997 album. While her publishing company pushed her to co-write songs, which she says led to watered down lyrics, Jones wanted to write from her unique perspective-and her heart-and become a singer as well. “She had a hard time describing her music in Nashville, and we finally realized it was because it’s a bicultural music, not bilingual,” said her uncle, Rudy Jones, who became her biggest fan and supporter and handles a number or facets of her career. “Her music validates the hoe South Texas experience, whether you’re Hispanic, Irish, German, Polish, Italian-this is all part of the stuff we grew up with.” Like the late Tejano star Selena, Jones is not completely bilingual. “I write phrases that come to me-that’s all the Spanish and the rest is in English, so everyone can understand, she said. “But the music underneath has the culture.” At about the time she was wondering whether there was wondering whether there was an audience for her music the MAUX benefit and CD came along, and she began believing there just might be. At her wedding to computer programmer Jason West in Nashville, she told her uncle of their plans to honeymoon in France. “Two days later she was in San Antonio, and the honeymoon was off,” Rudy Jones recalled, “She said, ‘We’re going to do this aren’t we?’ I though her husband was going to hate me. Here she was in San Antonio, and I’m totally unprepared.” Her uncle, with n background, began looking for band members and compiling an email list. Together, they started pounding the pavement. Katie Key chart editor for Houston-based Shane Media’s Texas Music Chart, recalls the Joneses visit to learn about the Texas music movement in early 2001, shortly after the weekly chart began. “Because the audience is more skewed toward males, it’s harder for females to get into the door because the young guys don’t want to hear the folky acoustic stuff,” Key said. So females have a hard time unless they get me into the honky tonks and belt out songs the guys want to hear. “You don’t have to sing about drinking, but you have to do something that catches their ear: She has that ability, and there are only six or seven females who are doing it.” A big plus in Jones’ favor is that her music is not like anything coming from Nashville or Texas, Key said. She had me and Ed and Pan Shane listen to the demo CD she had and we were of course blown away,” Key said. “She’s an incredible talent and we told her so-and she was kind of surprised to hear that.” The encouragement reinforced Jones’ earlier reception at her first big public performance, at San Antonio’s New Year’s Eve celebration downtown. Jones and her husband got a second mortgage to finance her debut album, which was release last September. “It’s been an amazing nine months,” Jones said. Wile unconventional wisdom is to be grateful if a song hits the top 20 on the Texas chart and hands there for a week, Jones’ first single, “God Love It When We Dance,” went to No.4 and was on the chart for six months. The second, “Shakin’ Things Up,” hit quickly after its release Feb. 28 as her career fathered steam. Prestigious invitations to perform followed, including the Kerrville Folk Festival, Robert earl Keen’s Texas Uprising, Larry Joe Taylor’s Texas Music Festival in Stephenville and Fan Fair in Nashville. Coming up is the Willie Nelson Fourth of July Picnic on July 5, Larry Joe Taylor’s Island Time Festival in Port Aransas on July 6 and a solo USO Tour to Japan in late July. Sitting at the kitchen table of the small family home on Cibolo Street with her uncle, Jones is both excited and humbled. “I realize that this next level of acceptance gives me a broader light to shine out into the world,” Jones said. “That’ s why I wanted to do something with the Mexican American Unity Council to help someone who helped me. You’ll see that continue as my career grows.” MAUC lends a hand to individuals and families through social and business services and encourages pride and participation in the economic mainstream. Jones’ father; who today sits on the MAUX board, and uncle both work out of the family homestead. Now she does, too-for Texicana Entertainment; her own label, Casa Del Rio Records; Spirit of Teas, a product line that includes candles, cards and calendars combining art with lyrics from her songs; and a co venture with a Nashville song publisher where she specializes in Texas talent. “I’m totally behind her,” said Arellano, the LAUX board chairman. “The fact that Stephanie is from this area, that her grandparents lived here-it’s exiting to see someone come back to their roots and thank the community for helping her to get to this point, to give a little bit of themselves back.” Jones gives back to her grandmother, too. IN a song on her album called “La Reina (Queen of the Angels)’” she pays a joyous, bouncy Latin-flavored tribute to Virginia Urbina Jones. The Chorus goes:
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