Ciao, Nini by The Enablers

The Enablers were a Dallas band that formed in 1993 and faded away sometime around the turn of the century. They played out extensively in and around the city, including a year-long Monday-night residency at The Balcony Club on the front end of their lifespan, and during their prime, a three-year Wednesday-night residency at The Dark Room in the heart of Deep Ellum.

The group began as a trio, with band leader and principal songwriter Neal Caldwell on vocals and Fender Rhodes, Bart Chaney on bass guitar, and Chris Dirkx on drums. Mark Griffin, fresh from recording and touring as MC 900 Foot Jesus, guested regularly on trumpet. Later the band welcomed Davis Bickston on percussion and Phil Bush on guitar. This became the "classic" 6-piece line-up featured on The Enablers' two full-length, independently-released CDs, The Enablers (1997) and Ciao, Nini (1998).

Deliberately low volume, deceptively minimalist, The Enablers' music resisted categorization. Influences included Burt Bacharach, Curtis Mayfield, the Jamaican music of the 1960s and 70s, Sly Stone, and Antonio Carlos Jobim. Many of the songs were instrumental; otherwise, Caldwell supplied a straightforward, heartfelt lyric: "Sitting in a Boat," "Time," "I See an Ocean," "It Feels Like I'm In Heaven," and "Do the Best that You Can." The Enablers created a nightclub sound that gave listeners a choice: you could give it your full attention or simply enjoy the mood it created: relaxed, content, aware, romantic.

"Look up the word 'cool' in the dictionary, and you just might see a photo of The Enablers," said The Dallas Morning News, "Dallas hipsters whose mere presence infuses a room with a chillin' groove." "Prozac for the ears … anti-depressing," wrote Mike Emery of The Met. Malcolm Mayhew of The Fort Worth Star-Telegram described the band's sound as "haunting and mesmerizing." In The Dallas Observer, Robert Wilonsky gave the group its most thorough description: "loping and lazy, a soft and ingenious blend of surf and spaghetti western and 60s pop turned down and toned down for the late cocktail hour." Although post-punk 'lounge' was a short-lived and ironic genre of the period, The Enablers were not that, Wilonsky (and others) wrote, but something "much more complex—a cross between the work of Italian soundtrack composers Nino Rota and Ennio Morricone, surf-rock guitarist Dick Dale, and funk." Matt Weitz, in the same publication, simply called The Enablers "a local treasure."

Everyone involved had already made contributions to the local scene and beyond. Caldwell owned VVV Records in Oak Lawn. He had led the punk band NCM, and Dirkx had played with his brothers and Griffin in the Telefones, both bands popular at the old Hot Klub. Chaney had played in the ska-band Feet First and was concurrently working with the Americana group, Lucky Pierres. Bush was the lead guitarist in Princess Tex, and Bixton had drummed for Spot and Mildred. Caldwell, Chaney, Griffin, Dirkx, and Bush had all been involved in various versions of Whiteman, the late 1980s spoken-word, found-sound, experimental funk band, which would inspire Griffin's work as MC 900 Ft Jesus. When The Enablers finally disbanded, Dirkx went on to make music in Austin, Caldwell and Bixton formed The Young Millionaires, and Chaney continued to perform and record with Lucky Pierres.

These recordings are available for the first time this century.

The Enablers, of Dallas TX, were "a soft and ingenious blend of surf and spaghetti western and 60s pop turned down and toned down for the late cocktail hour … a cross between the work of Italian soundtrack composers Nino Rota and Ennio Morricone, surf-rock guitarist Dick Dale, and funk" (Robert Wilonsky, The Dallas Observer). Their two albums have never before been available this century

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