Pig races at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. They swam too. Number Four at the front there was “our pig”. He won. That’ll do, pig. Heather was kind of skanky at the rodeo. She rode a bull and snuck into the pig races. I don’t know WHAT got into her.Melissa and Matt Harlan.after the rodeo we headed over to the open mic at the Cosmos Cafe in Houston, Texas. On top there you see Heather drumming with Hank Woji and the host of the open mic, Mark Zeus.Neil Sargent, mandolin creator extrodinaire, is deep in the innards of my Alvarez……while his cat has it’s way with my Saturn… I really liked his shop. While I’m in Maryland, guitar repairs tend to go through Steve Carmody (through the House of Musical Traditions – though he’s now turned to full-time luthiering rather than repair-work). I liked visiting his shop too, but where Steve’s shop is neatly organized and everything lines up and everything is laid out, Neil’s workshop is studied chaos with piles of instruments and skeletons of fretboards and the bodies of old dead guitars lying strewn about, awaiting their time or cannibalized for parts.Stacks of wood for his line of mandolins – they are heavy and sturdy and sing out beautifully, and are often made from wood stripped from old fences ripped up locally. THAT’S cool.
Wandering South by South West makes me feel old. The downtown events of the “real” South by South West are basically a huge bar crawl as people go from venue to venue drinking and listening to different bands. It took us about an hour to wander the length of the main street, and then we turned around and caught an entirely different selection of artists on the way back through. Most places you could hang around outside and listen through open windows and open doors – I don’t think we actually ended up going INSIDE a venue (except once for George to go to the bathroom).
Heather’s been a hat-making FIEND!!! Picachu’s charisma is in his ears, however, and refused to keep it, so she’ll have to send it on to someone else. It’s been a good past-time, but I fear that everything Heather knit in Texas will probably smell of cigarette smoke and beer.Heather tuning up for our last night at JP Hops before we leave Houston, Texas. It was a very relaxed night at Pam’s Lava Lounge Open Mic. Jim (the J of JP) had already left for Austin, but we got our hugs from Pam and even saw a lizard out on the deck! It was a cute little gecko kind of beast. If it had tried to sell me insurance, I would’ve squished it, but as it was I tried to catch it and Love it. It evaded me. Sigh.
Playing South by South West, however, was cool. Pete Simple of Houston, Texas actually hooked us up with the showcase HE was booking, and I’m more thankful than I can express for the experience alone. As we wandered SxSW proper, like I said, I saw that we weren’t anything LIKE what they were looking for, but the entire city of Austin goes into music festival mode and almost every restaraunt and bar (and there are a BILLION of them) in the city has got Live music from 2 in the afternoon to midnight or later and there at least, the variety is stunning. This is the “unofficial” South by South West that is still advertised in all the SxSW publications, you just don’t get the little stamp thingie. This is where our audienc lay, a little older, a little more eclectic. Dreadlocks and homemade clothing were back in evidence, as well as most of our friends from Houston (as well as, suprisingly enough, Maryland as well).
Hrm… I’ve posted my pictures slightly out-of-order… in any case, on Wednesday the rains doth cometh and before we knew it, a lot of George’s street was underwater. I tried to go out and pick him up (he’d ridden his bike to work) and as I was pulling out into the downpour I noticed I had a voice message. I checked my voice mail as I was driving down the street and just as Del’s voice said “You might want to move your car, Institute ALWAYS floods!” I SLAMMED in to a good 6 inches of standing water. Though I could SUVs driving through it ahead of me, I realized I was way in over my head, or at least over my tires and started backing out. Brakes SORT of worked, and the engine kept guttering… I tried making my way out another way but it was just as deep, and soon I called my brother and reported the bad news. I moved my car to high ground and sat and waited it out.Heather and I went to the local Houston dog park, which was also flooded, much to the dogs’ enjoyment. It was deep enough in some places to swim and muddy as Hell.
Heather and I walked up to Gueros early in the day to catch our new friend and Love Matt Harlan. Think of a new Bruce Springsteen with Americana lyrics and tales of friendship and the wrestlings of Love, all delivered with a delicious unpretentious honesty that’s hard to resist. We’d met him a couple of nights ago at Cosmos and have been listening to little else but his CDs. We were pleased to catch a full set, but horrified to hear that his car had been broken into. (DAMN – I forgot to give him another copy of the Fifth Circle). Some thief somewhere is wandering with an ilyAIMY CD… ANYONE BUYING USED CDs IN AUSTIN!!! ANYONE SELLING OUR CD IS A CRIMINAL!!!!
This guy specifically wanted to play with us. And then shake on us. A lot. He pretended to want to play fetch…But it was a lie. I miss Will and Corinna.
After him was an excellent heavy act with cello and a violin… Heather and i wandered up and down the street catching mandolin players with singers with great voices, (possibly) Russian folk music, DJs spinning from rooftops… Heather and I took the stage and run rampant over it. Heather had cut her finger earlier in the day and bled all over her djembe (Heather wants to note that it looks like a Pollack painting and she is NOT washing it off), and I sang my voice coarse and then downed tequila. The monitors were crap and we got cut off 15 minutes early and Heather’s hand slipped on the blood and my voice was variable, but the audience Loved us and we got some pretty decent attention. It was a packed courtyard and we held them rapt under Christmas lights and threatening skies. Perfect weather for us. Perfect night. Afterwards Heather and George, Del and Brett all went out to a bar and I went back to the apartment to have some alone rob time. Heather seems to believe that this means naked time and I’m not going to ruin her illusions, but mostly I sat in the quiet and enjoyed being alone and in stasis for a couple of hours.
Going to bed early… got to drive to Carlsbad, New Mexico tomorrow.
One of the really spectacular side effects of all the flooding is the mass ant evacuation. All the ant hills were just boiling forth with red ants (eesh!) escaping their flooding nests.Yup. Sooner, I’d say.They formed bridges with their bodies and transported their eggs and larvae across the water and across the road. Rivers of ants. It was bad news for a passing beetle, and almost bad news for me. I would NOT have enjoyed their response to my stepping into the stream… as Amy put it “a tiny kingdom in crisis” indeed… pretty spectacular little natural phenomenon there…Wandering further into… yes… George Bush Park (and Shooting Range, of course) this is all flooded too. Beautiful grounds, but apparently the whole patch of land was bought cheap because they were old rice paddies and prone to…. well… being underwater. Continuing the tradition of “not thought out”
