10/24/19

Crazy ass night of driving yesterday.  The Harvey band was playing at the Lonesome Rose in San Antonio at 9, a little earlier than usual.  That kinda guarantees a a traffic heavy slog from Austin.  I’ve done it enough times I’m used to that, but this rain came out of nowhere right at the beginning. And it came down hard the whole drive...  

Even when I loaded in and out it was a mad dash to avoid getting soaked further. It also got cold as fuck....  joy of joys.  

Our set was pretty good. First full set as a four piece and we played pretty good. The sound was a little weird and on occasion there would be some loud distortion coming through the monitors. It actually took me by surprise a couple of times and I screwed up what I was playing.  Weird. 

Then on the drive home 35 was closed heading north because there was a lake worth of water on the interstate.  So a usually less than three hour round trip turned in to a white knuckle six hour trudge.

Should be better going back tonight.  

10/12/13

ACL Week Two Day Two

It was the last night of ACL, the corn will be scarce until next year. We all played at the White Horse under the threat of the sky opening up and dumping buckets on us. It had been trying to do it all day, but there was nothing other than light rain so far.

First up was Rosie Flores. HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love her. I'd never seen her before, but I knew I'd be in to it, I just didn't realize how much! She is a total bad ass with her Bigsby whammy bar on her old as dirt Telecaster. She can play all of that surf stuff that looks (and sounds) really easy, until you actually try to play it. She can sing her ass off and I think she wrote at least 80% of her set. She was backed by an upright and a drummer who were tight as shit and complemented her style perfectly. They even started the set with an instrumental!

This was my favorite show of the whole festival.

Some point near the end she popped the high E string. She made a couple of jokes about sticking with the five string while she re-tuned and then she did a few more! Talk about rolling with the punches, I'd be 70% fucked without all six on my guitar.

Churchwood were up. They really whipped things in to a frenzy (as usual/expected).

We were next and had a good but short set and the Beaumonts were after.

They started in on their first tune and I decided to run my gear out to the car... right when it started raining... HARD! It's dumping rain and my phone is screaming at me that there is a flash flood warning for... NOW! But I'm already outside and not that far from the truck so I go for it.

I'm about to take a left down the sidewalk when I see it's a pothole with two feet of water in it. Since I'm trying to think fast and attempting to stay as dry as possible I head straight across the street. Comal is a river and I step in past my ankle... and then my other foot goes in... It's too late, my shoes are filled with water and my socks are completely drenched.

By the time I made it to the truck all of my gear was wet and I was soaked to the skin. I was finished for the night. ACL was officially over for me and the Beaumonts were probably on their second song...