5/30/22

 

Last of the three Bigfoot shows. Finally home in Austin.  It felt real good sleeping in my own bed last night! We were up at the Parlor with Gravyboat, hicks and Pat Todd for our third afternoon show in a row. 

We were second and quite frankly played a pretty great set. After three days, it’s to be expected. Kinda on fire. 

And the “boat” and Hicks were pretty great at well but Pat and the Outsiders just killed it again.  I know I’ve said that a hundred times, but it’s true. One of the best bands out there, in any style. 11 out of 10 and just fucking awesome. 

Here is where we come to the hard part. This was my last show in Austin. The wife and I are heading north to get the hell out of this state and away from the republicans that have been running it for the last ~30 years. It really sucks here. Austin in particular gets more depressing daily. So we made the decision and are headed to Baltimore. That’s right, we are choosing “murder town” over Austin and both of us are backflip thrilled for the move. 

I won’t dump too much but if you don’t already own a house or you aren’t going to school, there is no reason to be here. It never was what it wanted to be and it’s way worse than it was. 

Gonna miss the hell out of a bunch of people! But we won’t miss this city. 

So I’ve got one to go down in SA with Harvey and the Hicks and that is it. Boom!

RIP Lawrence Heads

We lost a good one the other day. Lawrence Heads died from some heart related complications after decades of being one of the biggest live music fans in Austin.

During the original run of the Hole in the Wall he would bounce between the Hole  and the Showdown (now the Local) drinking/music circuit and that's where I met him. It was after one of my early solo shows he walked up and started asking me about my act. Direct and serious questions that were incredibly well thought out, from a guy who was obviously soaring on a head full of something. We were pals almost immediately.

Over the next few years he'd seen me play several hundred times. No joke. If I was at the Hole doing anything, Lawrence was there. The man was gold.

The Hole closed then reopened a couple of years later, Lawrence was at my first show. I was thrilled he was out, even though I'd kinda expected it. After the set he came up to me and I jokingly said "Oh man, Good to see you, I didn't think you liked my shit anymore". He looked me dead in the eye and said "Fool, I love you."

I loved him too.

3/16/16

Last night was the first official night of the SXSW music festival/conference. I mostly know that because of the hour it took to get to the White Horse from my place. Usually that's a ten to fifteen minute job. I'm only playing twice this year. I was almost a little upset that I was barely playing the "most influential" music conference in the world, then I pulled my head out of my ass and realized it was gonna be nice NOT going in to the thick of it every night this week.

Hickoids were on at midnight. We've done this festival Wednesday at the Horse for a few years now and as usual it was a lot of fun. Our old pals the Beaumonts and Cunto were on the bill and an"all star" tribute act to Blowfly. Sad that he's gone, but the tribute was even sadder...

We played for about forty minutes to a spirited crowd. There were about half the amount of people as there were for the Beaumonts, but they were twice as drunk. Easy targets for our brand of stupidity. We even did a little Blowfly "Rap Dirty" in the middle of "Truck". It was lame, honky funk, but at least it had some spirit.

I was gone before Cunto started. It took about forty five minutes to make it home... There was too much stupid on the road and closing time hadn't happened yet.

Fucking Austin. Fucking SXSW.

 still love this fucking town...

10/12/15

Dave, the dude who owned Trophies died a few months back and someone decided it was time to have a memorial for him. It was at C-Boy's which was Trophies but they really cleaned the place up. It's the small things, like not having to stand in someone else's piss when your using the bathroom, that makes the new place feel better...

The tribute had a few bands on the bill and almost no one (other than the bands and employees) in the club. Hickoids were asked to do a little set and we figured we'd do "Stop It" for the whole fifteen minute set (we've talked abut doing the one song set for a while, but it's never happened, thank the lord I don't believe in!!) We get up after Chad Holt told another racially "rough" story about the departed. We did our fifteen minute tune and started packing up, but the two or three actual crowd members wanted more so we did a couple more.

After I started hearing about how the apartment complex next door is now the "grandfathered" business so when they complain about noise from C-Boy's the are actually listened to. Huge change. At points during SXSW there would be three bands at Trophies. Two of them outside! Big loud Marshall and SVT amped bands with distortion pedals and Les Paul's. And the complex couldn't say shit.

So now you can move in to one of the big entertainment districts of Austin and legally complain about the noise... Can I start complaining about the train that passes my house? If you live under the flight path of the Austin airport and you complain enough about the jet noise will ABIA get shut down? The answer to both of these questions is obviously no. But (apparently) it's ok to bitch about the noise of a nightclub you moved next to... That's some screwed up shit.

Ten years ago there were hookers walking on the sidewalk out front and a porno theater a block away. Sometimes I wish that crap would come back. At least then the rents would go back down.

SXSW Wrap Up

Here it is, the big wrap up. As always it was a clusterfuck of a weekend. I had a lot of fun running myself in to the ground and I saw some pretty cool bands, but the festival is just too big for Austin. It's been that way for the past ten(ish) years and it's just continued to multiply. If you've read any of the post-festival fallout (examples here and here) you've probably noticed a trend towards the negative, there are some very good reasons for that. Austin and SXSW are changing and it may not be for the better.

It's not easy to see the changes when your living here, they can be too small and/or subtle. It's like plastic surgery. At the beginning you may notice one or two small changes here or there then suddenly one day you look up and you can't recognize Joan Rivers anymore and it scares the hell out of you. She may have the same personality but something isn't right... That's what Austin is like right now. I still love her and I don't want to move, but the grievances are stacking up. I know I'm gonna sound like a pissed off old man by writing the next few paragraphs, but they are accurate and my grievances need to be aired.

Read this first http://i.imgur.com/KRWNNiR.jpg

Imagine that in the "land of the free". The city is forcing a business owner to dedicate one of it's parking spaces (on private land) to another businesses vehicle. It isn't even an Austin (or US) based company, they are from Germany. I like the Germans a lot, but they should not be able to force another business to store their cars and prevent an actual customer from using a parking space and the city shouldn't be writing policies for it to happen in the first place.  The Car 2 Go folks have also taken a number of the regular downtown street parking spaces and converted them into Car 2 Go only spaces (as in if I park my truck in one I will get towed.) If you drive a Car 2 Go you can park in any of the regular spaces and not have to pay for it... So one Car 2 Go can prevent two regular cars from parking. Are you pulling your hair out yet?

Last year I pad $20 to park, all night,  downtown a week and a half before the music fest. It was a total ripoff, but I justified it because it was very close to where I was playing and I was getting paid. This year I saw signs that were offering $35 parking for three hours. When did this become Manhattan? I parked on the street in San Fransisco for three hours for less than five bucks just a couple of years ago. The last time I checked there are a lot more people in a lot less space in SF and NYC then there are in Austin, why are we paying this much for parking?

We have the metro rail. It was screwed up as a concept when I moved to town twenty two years ago, now it's a screwed up reality. This is a two parter.

#1

They never bought the proper sensors for the trains. They are loaded with the gear that is meant for freight trains. The sensor is different because a freight train travels long distance at a fast speed, so people at an intersection a half mile away will be stopped from crossing the track when a freight is barreling down. This makes sense. Metro Rail trains don't travel at freight train speeds. They also stop at multiple stations along the track, so they need a different kind of sensor. Currently when a metro rail train is stopped at a station you are not allowed to cross the tracks anywhere near it.

On my daily (bike) commute to work I cross Guadalupe at Airport four times a day. This intersection has two stations about a quarter of a mile on either side of it (this is also pretty stupid, it's miles in between the stations on either side of those.) If there is a train at either station I am not allowed to cross the tracks. There have been days where I have literately spent a total of twenty extra minutes out in the sun waiting on the metro rail to leave it's station and go past. It sucks in February, it is misery in August.

#2

But part of me was ok with it. Since I live near two stations I would head downtown on Mondays and get my mail from the PO box and get a little lunch and head home. It was nice and it was $2 a person to do the round trip. That's all changed. Now it's $5.50. There is no longer any "local" service. If you come in from the Lakeline Mall stop (the northern, end of the line) it's $5.50 for the round trip. If your headed all the way downtown, you will save a lot of money on the 30-40 mile round trip and you won't have to pay for parking or screw around with traffic, it's a great deal when you factor in everything. But when you get on in my neighborhood and your charged $5.50 for the ten mile round trip that was $2 a month and a half ago it can piss you off.

The train is no longer meant for local use. It's only purpose is to move people who don't live in Travis County, or pay taxes in Travis County to and from their Travis County jobs. Sure there is a little less congestion on the roads and that's a good thing, but it does very little for the people who actually live AND work in Travis County. It just makes it harder for the "locals" to get around.  Why are we making it easier for people to use the services of Austin when they don't pay the taxes that fund them?

I am not even gonna get in to the toll road fiasco... it is awful and depressing on a whole different level.

So how do I feel about this year's SXSW? I liked getting to see a few new bands, but I didn't really take advantage of anything. If I wasn't playing I wasn't gonna be in the middle of it. Especially since there was no easy way in or out of downtown (or parking when you got there.) It was too easy to say fuck it and just stay home. So that's what I did.

Hickoids getting in to the Hall Of Fame was pretty cool, but it wasn't that special and we had to pay for booze and food. Sure they had us stand for pictures in front of a banner covered with booze and food manufactures names and now my picture can be used for advertising, but we couldn't get any of those products for free... I would have had more fun if I stayed back at the White Horse watched some music.

One of the stupidest things I saw had to be the SX Subway thing that was set up right next to the convention center. It was a little, fenced in "village" with banners all over the place.  I'm guessing that since there was all the bad press over having rubber in their bread they spent some cash trying to make Subway "hip" and "friendly" again... Pitiful. Don't forget that SXSW let Subway coop part of the name so they got paid and allowed to allow it to happen. Pitiful times two.

So all of this bitching is coming from someone who still loves Austin. I have no desire to move and I have no idea where I'd move to if I did. I am also an optimist (believe it or not). No matter how many times my nose is rubbed in to the figurative shit that is humanity, I still want to believe things will turn around for the better. I'm hoping my grievances are just Austin's (and SXSW's) growing pains and that things WILL improve in the future. Let's just hope that we as a city can grow up enough to fix some of this before our souls are gone.

The show I'm gonna miss

On Saturday night this is gonna happen. As a last minute addition, the Hickoids were asked come and play a Dicks song on a huge bill. Hot Damn! Look at that lineup! Lucinda, Rosie, Butch, Terry, Alejandro, Roky (and so on...)  What a show!!

But there is one little problem. I'm headed to New Orleans on Saturday and I can't do it. This trip has been planned for a while now and there is no getting out of it (not that I really want to, it's been months since I've been to NO and we are only playing one song and it ain't even ours.)

So, what happens? The Hickoids do it without me.

Hunter Darby is stepping in. He was a Hickoid before I lived in Austin. He's also a bad ass player who will pull it off with ease.

We split the practice last night, the first half with me the second half with Hunter. It was really weird leaving with everyone else still hanging around ready to play, but since there are a few shows I won't be able to do this year, it's time to get use to it.

I'm still in the band, 100%. And if you see us in the US (other than this weekend) I will be the bass player. But this summer we head to Europe and I'm only gonna be there part of the time. They are planning to go for four weekends and between my day job and personal life there is no way I could swing that amount of time away. If I was getting paid (as in PAID, not $50 a show) it would be a very different story, but that's not how things work in our end of the pool. So we move forward.

I'm gonna be in Europe for some of the tour, but someone is gonna come and replace me (or I'll replace them depending on the schedule.) It will be cool, I'll get a chunk of time playing over there without fucking anyone over in the band or fucking up my life and finances (not to mention The Ladies!) It's not the best of options, but it's as close to a win/win as we're gonna get.

So this weekend, when my band mates (and Hunter) are hobnobbing with some of the biggest big shots of the Austin music scene (at the Moody Theater no less, where they film ACL) I'm gonna be in NO watching a bunch of brass bands at The Howlin Wolf.  This show will be one hell of a substitute.

8/31/12

And another one bites the dust...

Last night the Hickoids were the final band to play at the Scoot Inn. Today they are closed, sad. I liked the place and played there often. This is the current state of Austins "progress".

There was some band playing outside when I got there and the place was packed. Loads of good looking women, way more than your average Hickoids show so I knew something was fishy. They came for the outside band and most of them left when they stopped. El Pathos ran out the remaining stragglers so by the time we started so it was just a room of Hickoid fans. Let the party begin!

Our set was pretty wild. Roger was there and he showed great restraint by only getting up to sing on two songs and at no point did he fuck with Davy (which is actually a shame). It was Davy's birthday and there were a million old man jokes flung around. There was enough sweet cruelty to bring a tear to your eye. Jonnie Hell is back from the dead. He showed up and sat in on the Fruit Fly. It was a pleasure to play with him again. It was a mini time machine. The way I play my parts with Lance is a little different than the way I played them with Jonnie, so when I started the song it began in "Lance" style but quickly shifted to "Jonnie" style. A strange music geek thing and I'm sure I was the only one that noticed...

Breakdown

I got a ton of drink tickets at the beginning of the night AND I had several drinks handed to me by various, kind people. !
Most of my beers that made it to the stage were spilled by Hickoid stupidity and/or Rodger... oh rodger... It's OK, I really didn't need any more at that point.

The Scoot is gone. It's going to be replaced by a bar with no music.

And another one gone and another one gone...

6/29/12

Not much to report. Just off a holiday on the east coast where I had the pleasure of waking up in 58 degree weather in Manhattan and coming home to 102 in Austin.

Miserable...

More stuff soon.

5/2/12

Apparently Trophy's is getting remodeled. Of course no one knows who is paying for it and if remodeled really means torn down, time will tell. It's a total crap hole. The way the stage lights are set and the color of the stage area makes it nearly impossible to see the fret markers on my bass (I've been thinking about glow in the dark stickers, but it's only happens at Trophy's and it's closing). Last night the ladies room door was off the hinges and smelled like an open sewer and that was on my side of the stage. Delicious.

This is the same old crying about is the transition from "old" to "new" Austin. There is about a three percent chance of that place reopening as Trophy's. I guarantee someone with a shitload of money (maybe even the current property owners) will want to bulldoze the place and build condos or shops or some of that "mixed use development" developers are so hot on nowadays. It happens all over town and it REALLY happens on south Congress. Ten years ago and two blocks away there was a fully functioning porno theater (that's right a theater that showed porno MOVIES) now it's an office building and I'm not even sure the cleaned the semen out of the carpet.

Breakdown

Each band gets a free six pack of PBR. Not too bad. The sound was (once again) shit. The sound man had mics on everything and he is a legit sound guy, but that room just sounds like shit. I'm still gonna miss it.

3/10/12

This town is ready to explode. It's so obvious already, and we are just in to the interactive stuff. I know they are WAY bigger than the movie and music, but they don't come with vans full of idiots with gear that makes loud noises. I happened to score a pass to the convention center parking lot. It wasn't completely full, but close and I got there at 8 PM. When I left at 11, it was beyond clusterfuck. Ten minutes to get from the Gas Pipe on 5th to the 35 access road. One block in ten minutes and I don't live in LA...

Ideals played. I haven't played with them in a year. I used my cheat sheets and it all worked out fine. The show was at the Legendary White Swan and I like the place a lot. It's an eastside joint with a lot of badassed soul and blues posters all over the place. They have a nice courtyard that was surprisingly nice even on a shitty, rainy ass night like tonight. I've been to Holland and as much as I'd like to live there, I live in Texas 'cause I couldn't stand the weather.

Breakdown

Two beer tickets and I was the one who hit the mute button on the PA. Hell of a good night!