11/8/14

Back before this show was booked I'd heard all abut the eventual demise of the Triple Crown, San Marcos' finest place to play. It was falling victim to the same kind of property development that's been happening up here in Austin, clear out the old crap and build the new/fancy and rich folks will buy it up as fast as they can.

So it was a bittersweet drive when I headed down for the show. After (literally) hundreds of late, sweaty nights the last time I would play there would be with the Hickoids and we were opening for the Beaumonts.

Since the Dog and Duck closed on Halloween (and with this last show looming) I'd been bummed out about all the change in central Texas. I was getting all sentimental and missing cherry picked parts of my past. I even Tweeted about the show with the hashtag #anothergreatbarcloses.

I pulled in to the parking lot and loaded my gear then headed outside to talk with the fellas. At some point I said something about our last night here and I was told...

"Oh no, it's staying open. The guy that owns it decided not to build condos."

I was thrilled! The Crown was staying! And I had just posted the stupidest tweet possible in that situation...

It probably wont be the last time.

11/1/14

Bigfoot Chester was back for an "All Saints Day" show. We went on at the Longbranch around 11, first on a bill of three.

With Davy still "out of the loop" we played as a four piece, like it was 18 (or so) years ago when I first started out in the band. Except we are all older and the drummer is a different guy.

The crowd was good and our set was solid as we rocked through our regular stuff. A couple of songs were a little on the lean side, but I think that kind of thing can get ironed out with practice and we didn't practice for this show... It's a recent theme.

Speaking of themes, a bunch of people dressed up, including us. A few hours before the show (and twenty minutes before we were gonna practice) the texting began. "Are we gonna dress up?" Over the next hour there were forty eight texts about it... Literally, 48. FORTY EIGHT TEXTS ABOUT DRESSING UP FOR THE DAY AFTER HALLOWEEN!!!! (I wish I was kidding...) it was decided (and not by me) we were dressing up for the evening.

Bill did Lucha Libre, Walter did Harpo, Trey was some kinda fighting guy (I barely talked to him off stage and I couldn't figure it out on my own) I wore a suit and told people I was in Churchwood.

El Pathos and the Flash Boys played off in to the night and I stayed for both 2AM closing times (DST was over so we saw it twice). I got home at 4AM, but it was really 5AM in yesterdays reality. I was whipped and slept most of the next day.

10/18/14

The second South Filthy show was up in Memphis at a place called Hi-Tone (not to be confused with Hi-Tones in SA.) I made the drive from down in the Delta and wandered around Memphis for a few hours. It's weird to be touring with a band and your by yourself most of the time. Usually there are a couple of other folks around to help keep you from boredom. Not this trip... I did a lot of napping in a few parking lots around town to eat up some time.

Eventually I hit the club and hooked up with the other fellas. We went on 11ish to a decent crowd and had a set similar to the night before... Not so great, but it had some moments. One in particular was when we did "When the Saints..." and they threw me a solo.  

Bass solos are the worst. Especially if I have to play them. We did that tune seven years ago when we were touring Europe and I'd totally spaced that I was gonna have to step out for a verse until Walter pointed at me and shouted over the mic "Rice Moorehead". I made it to the end and I don't think I was too awful...

We finished up, got paid (poorly, Memphis is like Austin) and Jack offered me a place to crash, but I wanted to get on the road back to Little Rock. On my drive in I saw the interstate headed west had a couple of long construction spots that had traffic backed up for miles so I wanted to avoid that (even at 4 AM all traffic ended up being stopped...)

I got to Downtown LR and found a spot next to a building that would block the sun when it came up and I slept for a few hours. Then I bounced around "the rock" for a bit before I headed home.

Hopefully it won't be another five years before we do South Filthy again. I really like playing in that band. And, maybe, just maybe we can practice once before the show.

10/17/14

South Filthy hadn't played in over five years and we were booked for a reunion set at the "Deep Blues" festival in Clarksdale MS. This fella, Chris has put this thing on for the past few years up in Wisconsin but now it's down in the Delta. And it's out in the delta, as in out in the sticks at a place called the Shack Up Inn. Look it up online. You can stay in a spruced up sharecroppers cabin out by the cotton fields and your not expected to work and that's a huge plus. 

Like all things South Filthy it was a seat of the pants kind of affair. I flew in to Little Rock Thursday afternoon and drove down to Tunica where I stayed for a couple of nights *

We played the Friday night after Guadalupe Plata and Scott Biram, both put on great shows then we went on. The first five or six tunes were fine. But once we got into some new material we were pretty lost and it ended anticlimactically. Thats what happens when I am hearing half the set for the first time on stage AND I met the drummer for the first time a couple of hours before we went on...

It wasn't horrible but it could have been better. But once again I need to just shut up about how I think things  went, a lot of people had fun and told me it was great and that's all that matters. 

We have another show tonight, up in Memphis. Now that we've had a practice maybe the crowd AND I can agree how things went. 

* quick aside here. According to my phone it's an hour between Clarksdale and Tunica and I figured it would be no big deal since I make the  Austin/San Antonio drive all the time. I was dead wrong. Austin to SA is a busy highway with a ton of traffic and business all along the route. Tunica to Clarksdale is a four lane state road that is surrounded by cotton fields with very few business along the route. It's also dark as hell at night and the landscape is flat. Flat flat flat. And is so bleak out there at night that you could easily drift off to sleep. I had to fight it most of the way. 

10/11/14

ACL Week 2 Day 2

Once again the last night of the Austin Corn Lovers Fiesta was at the White Horse. I got there after Stevie T had finished and Mitch Webb was setting up. I shot the shit with Stevie and Joe Reyes (Mitch's lead player, truly one of the best guitar players in Texas) for a bit, hung out and watched some rock. Then the Hickoids were up.

We had a decent set and by the time we went on the crowd was packing in the front of the stage. They needed our love and or corn... and we gave it to them. Good.

The night want on an on. Javier Escovedo, Sean and Zander (really great work on the 12 string and bouzouki) and the incomparable Cunto! They were doing their last set with the "new" bass player. Those guys have has some shit luck keeping bass players. They also did a bunch of cool new songs (and many of the hits!)

There was a threat that we were gonna finish things off, The Beaumonts had the last spot on the bill, but Steve Vegas had a kidney stone so there was a decent chance they wouldn't make it. Apparently he loaded up on whiskey and pain pills and was driven to the show like a strung out fake country music superstar. They ended the fiesta in a blaze of spilled beer, oxy and irreverence, just like they should.

10/10/14

ACL Week 2 Day 1

The show was at AGBG and I didn't play! Hell, I didn't even show up until the last two bands were on, lazy lazy. The Gay Sportscasters (without Bill) did the Sportscastin thing with all the boobs flying everywhere and they played all the hits (even though it was odd without Bill.) 

The Pocket Fisherman played five new songs! They had enough of the "good old stuff" in the set so the regulars didn't miss out on all of the big hits, just some of them. The the five new tunes were really strong and had the Fisherman sound in spades. Beautiful.

It was a good night. Having some beer and watching some bands is fun. No wonder people do it all the time.

10/4/14

ACL Week 1 Day 2

The bill was packed with bands at the Lost Well, at least it started out that way... When I pulled up Tom was walking out and he told me we were on , NOW! I thought I would be there for the start of Black Salve but they didn't play... I knew I'd miss the openers, We are the Asteroid, because day jobs suck.

Tom was wrong and we waited for our scheduled start time of 7. It's early for Hickoids, but apparently it was a good time for the Swishbucklers fifth practice/second show. Lance got to sing! "Shame, shame, shame" went off reasonably well. I started playing the chords while there was some "banter" going on. Then I popped on the tuner without realizing they had counted it off. Oops.

We finished up the pirate booty shake and I hung out to the bitter end for some beautiful music. I really wanted to see Texacala's "new" band, Hey and  the Poor Dumb Bastards. They didn't disappoint. There was a pie stand out front so I spent some quality time luxuriating in some sweet and sticky goodness in between beers and bands.

At the end of the night Byron from the PDB found his window smashed out. What a shitty end to a decent evening.

More next weekend.