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New York: Day 5 (and the 1st leg of a tour of holland)
New York: Day 4 (i play the rongo)
New York: Day 4 (wedding day for patrick and jenny)
New York : Day 3 (big party at jon & terrys)
New York: Day 2 nighttime hours (i visit the rongo and the pourhouse)
New York: Day 2 daylight hours
Back we
go to Moulton
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with the new york trip over, i didn't have much to do except hang out and recover. joe and jim came over under the cover of practice but mostly we just sat around and i told them about my trip. ric had left for a 10 day tour of spain with Mundi and we were just goin over a few things...i knew there would be an open spot that sunday at the ole moulton bank if we wanted to go and play a couple of sets.
pamela's family was visiting from michigan, and we thought it might be fun to take them to real life texas beer joint.
sunday finally rolled around and i wound up driving the van since pam was driving her mother, and uncle and her cousin evan in her moms car...her other cousin luke was riding with me and joe stack and our friend, hawkster and, roadie dave.
we timed the start pretty well it was a really nice day and being the 2nd day of a holiday weekend there were some folks hangin out and drinkin a few beers. jim and harvana had a grill fired up so there were fajitas too.
we started about 5:30 and played a while then stopped a while...then played some more.
it was different playing without a drummer, but it worked out alright. we were just breakin our stuff down when smokey wilson comes drivin up.
smokey is another singer songwriter from down in guerro texas. he had made the drive to catch our last set...and had only missed by about 20 minutes.
anyway we went back inside and smokey had his guitar with him so we traded some tunes and i had another beer.... and smokey had a shot. we just hung out till joe noticed it was getting pretty late, so we packed it in and headed for austin.
well it looks like i've mostly caught up the last couple of weeks...and that's a bit like putting down a heavy bucket you've been carrying.
i'll try to be a little more disciplined in keeping this blog current. i think i'm goin down to san antonio this thursday and play with smokey.
so till next time. ya'll be safe, have fun
adios
Boogie
back to Texas
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monday came a little quicker than i would have liked. it seemed like i had just gone to sleep when i was awake again. terry was up and moving and jon was moving, but jack was still down and julie jordan was awake but had put off getting mobile yet. terry had fried up a couple of pounds of bacon, and that was first time i had been hungry since thursday, so i was snarfin down bacon and we had beer left over but i decided to skip that since i had a plane to catch (actually i was almost afraid not to drink a beer, because i didn't want to throw my body into shock) jack came out and started helpin with the bacon and jon and terry decided to run into ithaca and drop off the sound system that had never even been set up, but still had to be returned. julie jordan had work that day so she burned off, and that left me and jack just hangin out tellin each other stories, about places we'd been and shit we'd got into, and other bros we'd ridden with along the way. the AM ripped by pretty quick and soon enough jon and terry were back from ithaca, jack was loaded up and leaving for willet (or is it willard....LOL) and we were off to the rochester airport.
there's not much to do on a ride to the airport except stare out the windshield, the trip is over for the most part, and you're saying adios to your friends till next time, it's kinda of sad because man we had a stone blast, but at the same time, there's some comfort in getting back to normal, and besides i was starting to really miss pamela, and the kids, and while new york is aces-up it had been a week since i'd eaten anything with pico on it so i was looking forward to a plate of migas and a breakfast beer.
we made the airport without incident. jon and terry walked me to the counter where a really sweet little cutie got my boarding pass, i checked my guitar and suitcase, said goodbye to jon and terry ,and then there wasn't anything to do but wait the 50 minutes for my plane to board............
this is where the whole thing turned to shit, my flight got delayed 90 minutes and i had to make a connecting flight in atlanta....i had 2 hours to make the connection, but for those of ya'll who have ever been thru the airport in atlanta, ya'll know 2 hours don't mean dick.....it can take that long to change concourses.
well we got to atlanta and i had 30 minutes to make my connection......here's the part where it went the rest of the way to hell......atlanta was besieged by a bunch of freak lightning storms so we were delayed an extra 3 hours HOORAY. the airport was like a fuckin zoo cos every flight had been grounded due to weather. we waited there for almost 4 hours, and there was no place to sit...people were sleeping in the walkways, all the bars were standing room only, and i was as sober as a judge....damn the bad luck. finally we departed and made austin in just a couple of hours, but by then my flight was 4 hours late. on the way from atlanta i sat next to a guy named michael and we chatted a bit he's a computer guy, and a photographer, i bought him a beer and we bullshitted about music and movies till the plane landed.
pamela was waiting at the baggage claim and then the trip was really over and we were on our way home, i had a show the next weekend in moulton texas so i needed to get somewhere and shut up for a couple of days.
that brings to an end my excellent new york adventure. i've been back 10 days now and i've already booked a few shows there in oct. i'll be posting up the dates as i nail down the details.
for all the people that i met in new york that read this....ya'll are the best, and i can't wait to see ya'll again. so till next time adios.
i'll be adding to this account as things happen, and i still have to add the moulton show last sunday, and all pam's folks from michigan who were kind enough to come out, but i have some things in dripping springs to do tomorrow, mostly hang out with my compadre rick ryan and his lovely wife kim, and i'm planning on sharing a beer with Don Bravo, so till then i'm off to sleep.
New York: Day 5
(and the 1st leg of a tour of holland)
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well sunday morning came quick enough. we got up and were just sittin around. jon had planned on leaving sunday as a recovery day, and that was a good idea...except we were all feeling pretty pert. terry called patrick and jenny to thank them again for inviting us to their wedding. we didn't have anything goin on so i suggested that if we had some free time and patrick and jenny were up for it...we should drop by...and i could finish the set i didn't have time to finish the day before. they were up for it, but had to leave by 2:00 to get adri and hilly to the airport. we said we'd be there by 12:00 or so, and that worked so i went to pack my guitar.
i'm not sure where jack was....i know he and a friend of his were doing a wine tour...so that may be where he was then...but i didn't see him again till later that day.
we loaded up and were on our way to pat and jennys. we were in the middle of ithaca, when jon spotted eddy dyer (the guitar player from the night before at the rongo) walkin down the sidewalk. we pulled over and i talked him into coming with us. so now we could do a real drive-by concert. pat and jennys place was perfect...on the side of a hill....lots of trees and featuring a big deck on the upstairs floor. we got fired up and played for a while and had a couple of beers....i wish at this point i could recall more of the details...but alas ....i'm blank. could've been the beer.....nah must've been road-fog.
we hung out till about 1:30 or so then headed back to jon and terrys. we didn't have any plans for that night as i was leaving the next day, but i wanted to see the smoke store cutie pat again so we invited her over for a beer and she came by and jack showed back up with his friend, and julie jordan stopped by so we fires up some music on jon's computer (by now i was gettin a bit wrung out having played almost non-stop since thur.) we just hung out and drank a few beers and listened to some tunes...there was some dancin and just a little bit of grab-ass....and then it was late and i took a couple of blue ones and went to bed....i had to negotiate a 2 hour layover in atlanta the next day the weather was gettin nasty, so i figured well rested was the way to go.
New York: Day 4 (i play the rongo)
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i made it to the rongo with a couple of minutes to spare.
there wasn't much to do in the way of a sound check....that's the upside of playing solo. i got set up and grabbed a beer. having never played there before i wasn't sure of their protocol. it turned out that there was another singer/songwriter on the ticket....it seems his band was scheduled to play and then couldn't make it..so he was working solo as well. his name was eddy dyer and since he was there first i figured it was his gig and i was a guest...so i started and played about 50 minutes...then turned it over to eddy, he said he would do about 50 minutes and then pass it back...hell that suited me perfectly...he was a pretty good player, and after i heard his first set i approached him about me and him doubling up for the last one.
while i was waiting on that fabled last set to start. mike and tamra showed up...and that was cool because you always feel better the first time you play a strange room if you know some faces. we revisited our earlier conversation about patron tequila and wound up having a few shots. mike was passing on the drinks as he had to drive home. they said they would stay through part of the last set, but would probly be gone by the time i finished up.
ok so it's show time julie jordan was there, and jon of course, and julie was kinda down having had a friend of hers pass away that day, so me and eddy just took it easy and played all the stuff that we thought would work in an acoustic duo....the bummer to those throw togethers is that the sets are almost always all covers, neither me nor eddy knowing each others songs. still it was really fun and i thought it went very well, it seemed like just a couple of minutes had gone by, but the lights were flashin and the bar was closin down. i would have liked the chance to hang out with eddy a bit more, but i was wearin pretty thin by that time so i told him i'd look for him if i ever got that way again, and me and jon packed it on in for home.
New York: Day 4
(wedding day for patrick and jenny)
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man saturday morning, i woke up way too early, took some aspirin and another blue one and konked out for another couple of hours. i could hear people moving in the house a few hours later, so i got up and wandered into the kitchen. jon was up and moving, i didn't have any idea where jack was, julie jordan was still down for the count. so me and jon got some coffee goin, jon told me that terry had one of those 10 squared hangovers. all i could do was feel sympathy...because outside of death or getting drunk again....well nothing cures those. unfortunately for terry.... the bride.... jenny was coming over to get her hair done...as julie jordan pointed out later it's a good thing we've all learned to do our work drunk. me and jon were sitting out on the deck, hell it must have been 3 hours later, when jenny and her friend hilly drove up( i remember hilly's name because as she pointed out....it's billy with an H.) poor terry she did a terrific job with the brides hair, all the time feeling like death eating a cracker. so the wedding was at 2:30, and i was holding off on my breakfast beer because wedding gigs can go any different number of ways....i figured clear-eyed was the best way to approach this (in real life i was pretty calm as i had already met jenny and hilly when jenny came to get her hair done) once again my respect for terry tripled she came thru like a champ. i had told her that if she was feeling too bad she could burn off after the ceremony and jon could come back for me.....i wasn't sure what my slot times were... i knew i was contracted from about 3:30 till about 8:30, and 5 hours is a long time when you're hungover, and not drinking. it turned out to be no biggie as terry managed to mount a rally.
we got to the park where the wedding was being held, and i had a look around, there was another musician booked, his name was todd and i never did get anymore than that. he had a sound system set up and was kind enough to let me use a couple of channels on it, so i didn't have to screw with the one i had brought. we sat around for a bit talking to people we didn't know, that's how i met adri ( i hope i spelled that right) i'm not sure of their legal status but he was with hilly, it was really cool meeting all these great people from holland who knew as much about texas music as i did. in between waiting and smoking, jon pointed out the groom (patrick) to me...so i went over to thank him for inviting me to his wedding, this next part is classic....his first words to me were....and i swear to god this is the truth "oh, glad you could make it....i need a beer"
so the ceremony started ( at this point i want to say that the bride was breathtaking) and we all formed a circle and the official who i believe said she was a poet laureate somewhere, did the service and it was very touching, and i was in a pretty good space standing at parade rest and watching the newly weds.....then it was done and everybody started drifting in the direction of the beer keg.
todd was going to play first, which suited me fine, as he already knew some of the people there.....at this point i have to say that weddings are my least favorite things to play, because it's hard to know what to do.....everybody's attention is on the bride and groom (and rightly so) but it leaves you out of sync as to what to do....it's not like a club date, where they want certain songs or a particular style of music....you're backdrop....which is cool except it's a hard line to walk between being engaged and being over-engaged......i found out really fast that i was thinkin too much....i started and everybody....including pat and jenny were into the stuff i was playing....damn it was like a clubdate.... well i may be just another dumbass cowboy from houston....but when people want a storyteller.......hey, i'm up for that. man it was so much fun....and the coolest thing was that i was playing all this obscure stuff, the kind of stuff i play for my own enjoyment, and the folks knew all of it. i played about an hour and a half then took a break.....that's when i met mike (yes, another mike) and tamra. they were friends of patricks and really rockin. they were both into gram parsons and byrds stuff, and i could play that for the rest of my life and be happy, but i had taken a chance and done "cheese enchiladas" and they seemed to like it. i hung out on my break with them, and found out that they got the PATRON reference and they had been drinking patron the night before, which made me wish i had met them about 14 hours earlier.
i was in the middle of a break when julie jordan showed up, and since i'm always happy to see her, this time was no different.....but....she.....had a message for me. it seems that the band that was supposed to play at the rongo that night had cancelled and mike barry wondered if i would be interested in doing a couple of sets..........WELL SURE........what time, and i was told about 9:30.....not a problem i'll see ya'll there.
i was really stoked about the rongo show, but i still had a set to play for pat and jenny. todd was just finishing his set, but he had to motor and now i didn't have his sound system.....i had the one i had brought, but it seemed like more trouble than it was worth to spend an hour setting it up, just to play 45 minutes or so...anyway.....i did what i used to do back in houston when the power failed..... i bunched everybody up and played a true acoustic set....no electricity. i played till i was in danger of missing my sound check at the rongo....then we packed up and hauled ass...... i made it to the rongo with almost 2 minutes to spare.......more on that later.
New York : Day 3 (big
party at jon & terrys)
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so friday started out on a pretty good note. we didn't have any particular things to do so we were just kinda hangin out, we had a couple of beers to get primed. i was out of smokes so jon drove me to a little store for camels and coors. i got to meet pat there.....talk about a sweetie.
anyway we just kinda hung out and before long it was creeping up on dark. eric aceto who i had seen with his band the night before showed up early for the party with his wife. i asked eric if he played mandolin and he said he could find his way around one ok, so i went and got the one i had given jon 2 years before, we made a pass at getting in tune and got close enough to play a few songs. i asked him what he liked to play and he said he didn't care that i should just pick something....well i know lots and lots of songs, but my mind kinda blanked and i couldn't think of a single thing to play. that's when eric said he liked gram parsons....sweet, that's all i needed was benchmark, we played most of the songs on GUILDED PALACE OF SIN, then some from GP, after that it got easy, i just played the same stuff i play with my band.
it had started to rain a little bit so we moved the whole thing inside. by now there were a fair amount of people there, and we were all having a large time, i wish i could remember everybody's name but the time when my short term memory worked is long past.
terrys son lance had brought an amp and guitar, and eric had a fiddle and jon had a fiddle, so i figured we were as set as we could get, hell i've gone on tours less ready than that. we played a few things that were group friendly, and it was working out pretty well. we let lance take some solos, and he did great after he settled down a bit.
we played probly a 13 song set mostly dylan and stones songs....i did a couple of mine and they went off ok. we took a break and eric said he had to leave as he had an errand early the next day, i asked him to play the wedding party with me and he said he was interested but wasn't sure he was free, i said i'd call him the next day and check.
it must have been right around then that i met terrys friend kari....i just remember thinking "lord lead me not into temptation....i'll find it on my own" man she was tall, that's a tall girl, and she was pretty, and she had some other very obvious assets.
we took a break and had a few beers. julie jordan had prepared all the food and it was fabulous or so i was told....along with not sleeping....when i travel i tend to not eat much. anyway after a time (i'm not sure how long) we started the band back up, and had a few new players. we played some more songs and mike (at least i think his name was mike....i met lots of guys named mike) sang some tunes. mike's a truck driver so we did all the truckers favorites. i have a dim memory of a banjo player, but by then i was as fucked up as a snake in the road, so i'm gonna skip over that part. jack had already racked out for greener pastures, or taller corn if you prefer, so all i could do was raise my glass in his honor (i've found another bro, and he lives in willet ny) i decided i should probly hit the rack, so i took a blue one and faded to black.
New York: Day 2 nighttime hours (i visit the rongo and the pourhouse)
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we got into t-burg and i'm not sure what time it was....but it was already dark, so i was starting to wake up a bit (dark does that to me, it's the only upside to that insomnia thing) we headed to the rongo. the rongo is a place i've heard a lot about because i have a bunch of friends here in austin who have lived in t-burg. so for me it was a lot like the first time i saw the troubador club in LA. i was really knocked out. the place is great. it's exactly what a live music venue ought to be, dark and kinda funky, all that was missing was smoke and i'm used to that since austin is smoke-free now. i met mike barry who owns the rongo. i had spoken to him on the phone, because when i found out i was going to new york i tried to shoehorn a gig in the rongo but mike already had his calendar full. i introduced myself in the hopes of playing there sometime in the future( it turned out to be sooner than i thought) ted was there and he introduced me to some folks he knew.....it's times like this i wish i was better at remembering names, but i'm not so my apologies to anybody whose name i've spaced on. i did meet clint swank who jon already made me hip too. i also met eric aceto because his band was playing. i'm not sure what the bands name is but they were pitching a fit. good acoustic bands are always impressive. being an out of towner i was expecting to have to bull my way into meeting people....not to worry tho, jack knew everybody in town, so i just stood next to him and before long i knew some people too.
we hung out in the rongo for a while and jack had disappeared, i went outside for a smoke and there was jack standing out front of another bar a few doors down called the pourhouse. i'm not sure if he wandered down there on his own or if he was lured there by a little "cutie" but either way i followed him down the street.
we went inside the pourhouse and it was another way cool place they had a bluegrass/traditional/acoustic band going, they were pretty good, but i missed most of their set, because by that time i was drunker than a fuckin monkey. we hung out a while tho and i met the owner whose named i've lost somewhere. i sat there at the bar and drank a few more and then jon and terry were kind enough to pour me into the car and we took off for home.
i got home and spotted up a couple of blue ones (this time without incident) and day 2 came to a close
New York: Day 2 daylight hours
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well like i said before i woke up thursday and discovered the wood rack incident, but me and jon restacked it all and everything was close to normal.
we had to get into ithaca at some point that day because i needed guitar strings and we had to pick up the sound system for the party on sat (the wedding party was the reason i was there officially) jon and terry had a party planned for friday night at their house so we weren't planning on a very big day thursday. terry had a few clients come by for haircuts and one of her clients was ted....whose last name i never did manage to find out. me and jon were sitting on their back deck (we did this a lot) drinking beer and i was holding my guitar when ted showed up for his haircut....it turns out ted is a pretty good musician so we explained the perpetual rotating vacation theory to him, that theory where whenever you're hanging out with someone who is on vacation....vacation rules are in affect for everybody present. anyway we talked ted into having a beer and he said he'd go home get a guitar and come back later. in the meantime me and jon decided to get the trip to ithaca out of the way. on the drive down to ithaca we stopped by and saw my old friend julie jordan i was really happy to see her since she had missed her annual trip to austin this past spring and it had been almost 2 years since i had seen her last. we had a happy but brief reunion and she said she would be at the party friday night.
i wasn't sure what i expected ithaca to look like. like most texans the idea of "new york" conjures up a whole mixed bag of visions, i think people mostly think NYC but ithaca is as pretty a little city as i've ever seen . jon took me to ithaca guitar works so i could grab some strings. i met the owner chris and we started talking about texas songwriters. chris let me test-drive one of the guild guitars he has in the store. he also mentioned that this years namm show was in austin so i tried to talk him into comin on down. we bullshitted for a while and then came back to hall road. we were just getting into our beers really good when terrys brother jack flint come drivin up. now i've known jon and terry for a few years now, having first met them in santa cruz CA and for as long as i've known them i've been hearing about jack, so i was pretty stoked at getting to meet him. i knew straight off that me and jack were going to be fast friends he's a bullshit artist and i have some experience in that area myself. we amused ourselves for most of the afternoon by telling each other stories and singing johny paycheck songs i was starting to wear down a little tho when ted showed back up. he had a guitar and we wanged around for a while ted knew a fair amount of steve earle tunes so we had some stuff in common. i asked him where he played and he told me about a couple of places in t-burg. as i hadn't really seen anything of the town yet we decided we'd go check out a couple of spots and maybe hear a band play. ted said he'd meet us at the rongovian embassy known locally as the rongo. ted took off and we had another beer and then jon, terry, jack, and myself loaded up and headed for t-burg.
let me start by saying i'm writing this a week or so after the fact so if part of it gets vague that's the reason.
i left austin 6 AM wed morning june 21 the flight was on time and not much happened. i arrived in rochester new york and jon and terry picked me up and took me back to their house. we had stopped on the way and picked up beer of course and we spent the rest of the afternoon sitting on their back deck drinking beer and playing a few tunes....jon was playing his fiddle and we were having a large time faking as many songs as we could think of. not much of note happened and after a while it was late enough and i was starting to feel a bit jet lagged.
now those of ya'll that know me, know i suffer from insomnia i have a hard time sleeping in the best of times and being in a strange place isn't the best of times....so i decided to take a couple of "blue ones" i figured the blue ones with the beer, and the tequila shots as a catalyst would have the desired effect of inducing a restful night.
good plan....wrong outcome. i woke up about dawn the next morning on the couch (i had gone to bed in their spare bedroom) i started back to my bedroom and found the hallway blocked by a stack of firewood that had fallen out of their wood rack after i fell over it in the middle of the night. now i don't sleepwalk much, in fact pamela says she's only known me to do it once and she won't tell me what i did for fear that i'll die of embarrassment. well i was about ready to die of embarrassment then. damn here my friends had invited me into their home and in the middle of the night i did my best to destroy it. i wasn't exactly sure what had happened. i had a vague recollection of tripping over a fire extinguisher and falling into a wood rack. i was more than a bit nervous waiting for everyone else to wake up, it all worked out, apparently i'm not the first person to trip over the wood rack. we all got good and awake drank coffee and started laying out the rest of the day.
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