August News

Hidy Ya’ll

I just got back from a week in the southeast. We had a great time and I played in Charlotte North Carolina for the first time.
We played at this real cool little bar called Pucketts Farm Equipment. I have a couple of pix courtesy of Patrick and Jenny Rine. Ya’ll may remember that the first time I went to the Finger Lakes region it was to play for Patrick and Jennys wedding. Well Patrick retired and they moved down to Asheville North Carolina, so when they saw we were playing in Charlotte they decided to drive down and hang out with us for a while.

Patrick has started to play the guitar. Now that’s the good life. A house in Asheville with a porch, a guitar and 4 or 5 bottles of beer. I expect with this combination Patrick will probably live forever.

Pucketts Farm Equipment

I would be remiss if I didn’t give ya’ll a little bit of detail about the bar we played in.
Pucketts farm equipment was started by the current owner Gary Pucketts grandfather. It started out as a farm equipment and tractor supply house. With the present day encroachment of strip malls, mini marts, and fast food joints, there isn’t enough land in the immediate area to actually farm anything. Gary Puckett decided that rather than sell out to Home Depot or some other big box organization that he would just hold on to the place that had been in his family for 3 generations and sell beer instead of tractor parts.

Some New Faces

I’d like to welcome Kurt McKinney and Warren Colter to the band. Kurt will be playing guitar and Warren is playing bass. I’m looking forward to working with these guys as they’re top drawer players and really easy to get along with. I can’t wait for all ya’ll to meet them. My old friend Phillip Achee is drumming with us and we have some dates already set up for the south.

Autism Speaks

I’ll be playing at the 2008 Greater Austin Walk For Autism event at the Dell Diamond on November 15. This will be my second year to be involved with the walk, and in honor of that Cassidy, my youngest daughter put together a video featuring Griffin. Ya’ll should check it out and leave her a comment if you have time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBoywe1qipo

You can donate to our team here.

The schedule is posted at myspace and billyeli.com

I’ll be seeing all ya’ll soon.

The Next Stuff Coming Up

Well we made it back from the frozen North. That would be Central New York for those of ya’ll who haven’t been paying attention.

The trip was great and I want to thank everyone for showing The Lovely Pamela such a good time on her first ever trip to the Finger Lakes region.

Recording

The recording is finally winding down with just a few dubs left to complete our project.

We’ve left the final dubs in the very capable hands of Chad Crumm, and Eric Aceto at the Music Tank studio in T-Burg.

New Guitars

Here’s a picture of the new guitar that Eric is building for me. Pretty cool huh?

Road dogs and gas stations.

Well after spending the last 18 months thinking about it, I finally had to get off the fence and decide whether or not it would be prudent for me to consider going back on the road for a real tour as opposed to the limited kind of roadwork I’ve been doing in the Northeast. After much deliberation and multiple consultations with Jim’s Magic 8 Ball, we’ve decided to go ahead and book a tour for this Spring. The first pass will be through the Southeast. I’ll be posting the dates as they get confirmed. This will be the first actual tour I’ve done in 13 years. I hope my enthusiasm holds up.

Jollyville Hayride

Starting in March we’ll be jumping back in to our once monthly show at BB Rovers.

We took a break for the Winter, but March really isn’t Winter so for those of ya’ll here in Austin the first show of the new season will be Tuesday March 4. More details can be found at the website.

One final thing: Kenneth Welch, if you read this….Call me.

On the Way Back to Austin

With the show done we hung around saying goodbye to everybody, and I just have to pass this on. The Pourhouse only sells wine and beer, but Liz (she’s the owner) told me she had heard that I like bourbon, and that she had a bottle of Knob Creek for her own personal consumption, and would I like a snort. I told her that yes I would very much like a snort, but since it was Knob Creek, and it’s pretty hot, would she please splash a little bit of branch on the top of it. She said she would be more than happy to do that. She left and was gone for 5 or 6 minutes then came back and said she needed a translation….what exactly did I mean by branch…..I forgot that I wasn’t in the South, and in Central New York they apparently don’t refer to water as branch. Still it was pretty entertaining at the time. Sorry if this lost something in the re-telling.

With everything packed, and the Pourhouse getting ready to broom us out anyway (see entry titled "NY in the Winter"), we headed for Hall Rd.

The next morning we got loaded and said goodbye to Jon & Terry, and started the long drive back.

Only one thing on the way back could be considered interesting. We stopped the first night just south of Cincy right across the Kentucky state line. We got a room and being pretty wiped out from driving we ordered a pizza from take out, ate it and went to sleep. When we woke up the next day, some weird phenomenon had made Pamela’s hair kind of expand. My theory was that in the South almost all the women have “Big Hair” and now that we were back in Dixie the Cosmos was trying to help.

NY in the Winter

January 30, 2008

Howdy Ya’ll

Well we got back to Texas Monday, and after spending yesterday unpacking and generally getting back to normal I thought I’d sit down and relate the events of our trip while I can still mostly remember them.

The Lovely Pamela and I departed Austin for Central New York on Monday January 21.

The drive was mostly uneventful until we got close to Erie PA where the Lake Effect was making it dump snow all over us. Both Pamela and myself have had some experience driving in snow, but this was more like trying to drive inside a snow globe.

Anyway we did make it into T-Burg, although we were about 12 hours later than we thought we would be.

I had a recording session the first afternoon we were there with Chad Crumm at The Music Tank. Me, Chad, and Eric Aceto went over the tracks that we recorded at Pedernales and 5^th Street Studio and took a lot of notes, and nodded our heads a lot. Then I turned the whole thing over to Chad and Eric to get the remaining tracks recorded and Pamela and myself took off for Jon & Terry's place.

Eric had a show that night with his gypsy swing band Djug Django at the Lost Dog Café, and since it was an early show Jon and Terry were able to go with us. As I’ve mentioned in these pages before, I always have a great time at the Djug Django shows because it’s a real departure from most of the live music I usually get to see. Tonight was even better being as it was Django's birthday; the band was wearing white tuxedos in his honor. The place was full and the swing dancers were going full tilt boogie. We saw our friend Julie Jordan, and I got to introduce Pamela to Harry Aceto and Chad Lieberman. We had dinner and some beer and then it was time to head back to Hall Rd.

Thus ended our first day in T-Burg.

I had another session the next afternoon, but since it didn’t start till 2:00 I decided to ride into Ithaca with Pamela and sit in on her meeting with a local Autism group.

Pamela's meeting went pretty well I guess, I’m not sure how such things are judged, it went well from my end as all I had to do was drink coffee and eat a couple of donuts. With the meeting done and my session still a few hours away we went by Ithaca Guitar Works so I could lay in some extra guitar strings (for those of ya’ll that pay attention to such things, ya’ll know I break lots and lots of strings.) I was looking forward to seeing my friend Chris Broadwell, and Pamela was looking forward to seeing the Moose Wood Restaurant, having already bought a copy of their cookbook.

Chris was in the store so I got to BS with him a while, and listen to his son Ash test drive some acoustic guitars. Ash was once in a band called The String Busters. I can only assume I wasn’t invited to join because that was before I ever went to New York for the first time, but I can easily claim the title “String Buster”

I bought my strings and a chart showing how to make mandolin chords. (Jon, having given up on making his right hand work in the necessary way to strum a mandolin, had offered me his mandolin if I would promise to remove it from his house forever.)

I got to my session, and since we hadn’t lined up any of the musicians I had come up there to play with, and Eric was fighting off a cold, me and Chad decided to work on a few tracks that we had recorded back in October when Phil Achee was up there with me.

We tracked some vocals and some guitar parts, drank a few beers, watched it snow for a little while, then called it a day and went home.

We didn’t have any plans for the evening but it was really cold, so we decided to just hang out with Jon & Terry. Anyway, I had to get up the next day and run down where we were supposed to rehearse for the show at The Pourhouse.

On Friday morning we got up and slowly started moving. I had to be at Eric's place at 3:00 for a rehearsal, but nothing much was happening besides that.

At 3:00 we went to Eric's and Doug was already there. Eric was still fighting off a cold and to be honest he looked a little rough. We ran a couple of sets and called it, on account of not wanting Eric to get any sicker before show time.

We went back to Hall Rd. where we were meeting Jon & Terry, and then we were off to dinner with our friends Mike & Diane. There was this huge group of old people from the senior center. Tammy, that was the lady's name who waited on us, said they were about 40 of them and they did this once a month or so. It was pretty cool watching the seniors get out and have dinner, it was however a bit slow as they tend to not be the speediest demographic. Anyway, I couldn’t stay for dinner as I had to get to my sound check, so I left Pamela with Jon & Terry and bailed.

This was the first time I had played at the Pourhouse, but I had drank in there lots of times so I was fairly familiar with the place. The roughest part of the gig was unloading the PA in the cold . . . man I hate cold.

Ok. So we got set up and then fired up the set about 8:00. Eric was still fighting off his cold so I tried to take it easy on him. We just kind of eased into our set, and that worked pretty well anyway because the place isn’t real big.

Our drummer for the evening was Mike Wellin. I had played a show with him last year, and was looking forward to playing with him again. We plowed through the first set, then stopped for a while, then played a second set.

Chris "Tex" Broadwell had brought some guitars with him so he sat in and played some really cool cowboy songs. We had beer and played a few more and wrapped it up early because Eric and Doug had an early afternoon show the next day in Southern Pennsylvania, and thus had to be on the road really early the next morning.

Of Road Dogs and Twangfests

I'd like to take a minute here and mention the guys who have agreed to quit their day jobs (HAHAHAHA - these guys never had jobs) and do a little bit of roadwork with me this spring. Joining me on guitar is Tom Cuddy, I haven't known Tom very long but for a boy from NYC he's got some pretty good country licks.

Kent Cooper will be playing bass. I met Kent through Phil Achee, and when I first met him, he was playing two nights a week five sets a night in this little all night dive in Montgomery AL. Kent's got a pretty good voice and has been fronting that beer joint band, unfortunately beer joint bands aint what they used to be, so after chatting him up on my way back from NY last time, I got him on board by reassuring him that we never play till daylight anymore.

Philip Achee
Most of ya'll already know about Phil. He was the drummer for Lost In America . . . way way back in the 80s & 90s. Me and him have logged thousands of miles together, and he was the drummer on my first album "Something's Going On." He's also drumming on the new recordings. I was a little bit surprised, and a whole lot happy to find out he wasn't committed to any band at the moment so we went and played a couple of shows in upstate NY back in October. It worked out so well, we decided to try it again as soon as the snow melts up there.

After getting the chance to work with the Autism Speaks group, I was talking to my friends and sometime bandmates Eric Aceto & Chris "Tex" Broadwell, about the event here in Austin, they allowed as how we should do something like that in Ithaca, and after thinking about it for a couple of minutes I agreed, after all I'm working more shows in NY than I am in Texas at the moment. So we're looking into a fundraiser for the summer of '08.

Right at the moment we've titled it Twangfest, and it would be a concert obviously with the loudest honk & twang bands we can find. All the profit money would go to Autism Speaks. The way I see it this is a win win situation, we get to play some honkin tunes,
everybody gets to have a few beers and a "Shoot Out The Lights" party, and help out some really great kids. Anybody interested in getting involved please don't be shy . . . just step right up.

Damn Austin to Ithaca Is A Long Drive

Well my trip to Buffalo is over. I landed back in Austin Sunday night around 9:30
This may have been the best trip I’ve had since I started these excellent New York adventures.
The first 2 days aren’t much to hear about. I left Austin and drove to Montgomery, Alabama, where I picked up Phil Achee. Me and Phil have been playing music together in one band or another for almost 20 years, so I was looking forward to taking him with me.

I got into Montgomery about 10:00PM and we decided to go ahead and take off , figuring that we’d probably spend the next few hours catching up, so we might as well do that while we were driving. Other than to say that the scenery was beautiful there’s nothing much to mention about the drive from Atlanta to T-Burg. We reached our general destination Tuesday morning.

Our first stop on Tuesday was out to see Eric Aceto, and let him know we had made it. Eric and his brother Harry were working the show in Buffalo with me on Thursday, so I figured it was common courtesy to let him know that I had actually showed up, and would in fact be playing the show.

Now, for any of ya’ll that have read my previous writings, ya’ll know that Eric is an exceptionally talented luthier. (For all you readers, who like myself don’t know a whole lot of big words, a luthier builds stringed instruments. In Eric's case, guitars and fiddles mostly. Actually I guess he makes violins, 'cause a fiddle maker builds fiddles, a luthier builds violins.) Anyway, Eric is building a guitar for me, and I figured since I was there, I could get him to tell me how that whole process works. It turns out it’s pretty complex. So much so in fact, that I’ve already forgotten most of what he told me. I did, however, get to look at some different kinds of wood that the guitar could be made out of. With Eric's help we chose a real pretty chocolate looking wood whose name I can’t pronounce, but Eric tells me it’s a form of African Walnut.

With the wood for the new guitar picked out, and a rehearsal scheduled for the next afternoon, we were at loose ends for anything to do, so we trucked on out to Hall Road to wait for Jon to get home. The rest of the day we mostly just stood around till it was late enough to justify going to bed.

Wednesday

So we got up Wednesday morning and started moving around a little bit. We went into T-Burg and drove up and down. I stopped in to see Kari and she cut my hair (the haircut was great, except she was wearing flats instead of pumps). We went on over to meet Eric and knock the rehearsal out of the way. We wanged around the set list for a couple of hours, and it was like most rehearsals . . . really boring. Eric and Harry were playing their regular Wednesday night gig at The Lost Dog Café, with their gypsy swing jazz band Djug Django. Not having anywhere else we had to be, me and Phil decided to go check out the Djug Django gig. This worked out pretty well, because I got to introduce Phil to Doug Robinson and Chad Lieberman. Doug will be here in Austin later this week to play bass on my new record, and since Phil will be beating the drum on the sessions, well I just figured it would be good to go ahead and introduce them sooner as opposed to later.

I had seen Djug Django perform on my previous trip to Ithaca, and I like watching all the swing dancers (not being a dancer of any kind myself, for me it’s a bit like watching a magician, it’s cool to watch, but I have no idea how they manage to pull it off). For some reason the swing dancers weren’t there that night, but I did get to meet Karen Kucharski. Karen is an artist, and a Tango instructor. Now I’ve only ever seen anybody dance the Tango on television, but it looks like it’s more of an Olympic event than a dance. I can’t imagine being able to do it myself, let alone teaching anybody else how to do it. Still Karen was really nice, and seemed a lot more “not crazy” than I would have guessed anyone teaching amateur dancers how to Tango would be. She said that she often came for the swing music. The closest you’ll ever get to swing at one of my shows, if is somebody swings from the rafters, but I went ahead and invited her out to a “Drive By Concert” we were planning for Friday night. More on that in a minute. Anyway I had a couple of beers and hung out with Djug Django, and then we went with Eric to a little bar that has a giant neon rooster on the sign out front, where we had another beer, until it was time to go back to Hall Road.

When we booked the gig in Buffalo we intended to put a few more shows around it, so as to avoid driving from Austin to Buffalo for one Thursday night gig. However due to our scheduling indecision, we wound up with one verified show that we couldn’t really re-schedule. I wanted to book the Rongo, but we had waited too late, and Mike Barry already had his calendar full for the month. As it turned out, we managed to squeak another show in anyway. Eric recently opened a gallery with his friend Mike Stiles, who is an extraordinary painter, and they were planning on having an open house that Friday. Since we were there anyway, I was able to talk Eric into letting us play a couple of acoustic sets. Earlier that day I talked to Chad Crumm about the possibility of recording a couple of songs I had that had never been demo’d. Chad is the owner operator of The Music Tank recording studio; he’s also a monster fiddle player, ya’ll should check out his group The Chicken Chokers. Chad had a few free hours on Friday, so now we had two gigs and a recording session (that made the whole trip a little bit more respectable).


Thursday Shuffling Off To Buffalo

Thursday afternoon we drove over to Buffalo. This was the first time I’d ever been to Buffalo, and the only thing I knew about it was that Buffalo wings were invented there, and it snows a lot. We were booked into a place called the Sportsmen's Tavern, and it turned out to be a cool place to play. I’m only sorry that I didn’t draw more for them, but I can’t say I was surprised at the light crowd since I had never played there before.

The owner, Dwane, also has a really nice state of the art recording studio, along with a sound stage and video facilities. Dwane's real love however seems to be Honky Tonk music, with a honkin twangin Tele. We obliged that, honkin and twangin thru a couple of sets, and even tho the crowd was light, we rocked all 8 of em. We finished up a bit before midnight and me and Phil headed back to Hall Road. Eric and Harry were staying over in Rochester, and were meeting us at the Music Tank the next afternoon.

Friday Part 1

On Friday I got up and drove into Ithaca. I had to get some guitar strings for the sessions and the gallery gig. I dropped in at the Ithaca Guitar Works, it’s a really cool music store on account of they gave me a free t-shirt. Ithaca Guitar Works is owned by my good friend Chris “Tex” Broadwell. His friends call him Tex because even tho he was raised and still lives in Ithaca, he was born at Ft. Hood in Killeen, Tx. When Chris was a kid and his parents told him he was born at a fort in Texas, well he naturally assumed he was born at the Alamo. Hence the nickname Tex. I met Chris on my first ever trip to Ithaca, and since then we’ve struck up a friendship. When he was in Austin for the NAMM show a few months ago, he sat in with us at our regular BB Rovers gig.

Since the gallery thing was pretty casual I talked him into coming out and playing some songs with us. Besides the music store, Chris is a pretty monster guitar player. I would probly have hung around Ithaca for the rest of the day, but I had a session that I was already late for. So I bailed out for T-Burg.

I got to the session almost right on time. Harry Aceto was playing bass, and Eric was playing fiddle, and I figured at the very least we could get the bass and drum parts for 2 songs, and with any kind of luck it would have the added bonus value of giving us 2 new songs for the show later.
The sessions went better than I expected. We got basic trax for 3 tunes, and the fiddle was a real plus. I haven’t used a fiddle in any of my stuff since the very first record I ever made. We could maybe have added some overdubs, but Chad had somewhere he had to be, so we settled on basics, and wrapped it up.

Friday Part 2

I was pretty stoked about Friday's show at the Aceto/Stiles Gallery. It was more like a party since the audience was mostly made up of friends of ours, but still it was the first art gallery gig I had ever done, and those always look good in your bio.

We got the band fired up about 8:00, and except for the fact that the lead guitar parts were acoustic, it was basically the same set we had played the night before in Buffalo.
Chris Broadwell was there and he played some tunes with Eric playing fiddle. We played a couple of sets to a wildly enthusiastic room, and then retired next door to the Pour House for some post gig beers. I wish I could have stayed till the lights all came on, but me and Phil had to be on the road pretty early the next day, so instead of drinking a bunch, we drank a few, said adios to all our friends till next time and bolted for Hall Road.

Saturday

The drive back to Montgomery was everything you’d think a 17 hour non stop drive would be. We got to Montgomery just before 2:00 in the morning. Phil said there was a bass player there that he wanted me to meet, as I’m looking for one for my road band. I figured why not since I was already there. The bass player's name is Kent Cooper, and at the moment he’s working in a band that plays 5 sets every Fri.&Sat. in an all night dive in Montgomery. Phil drove us to the club where Kent's band was playing, and we hung around till he got his break. Kent’s a good bass player and I managed to strike a deal with him for this spring's road work. The downside was that by the time I got out of there it was 5:00 AM . . . I drove about an hour south toward Mobile down the Hank Williams Memorial Lost Highway, finally stopping for the night just after 6:00 AM in Greenville Alabama. The next day I finished the last leg and got to Austin about 9:30 PM.

That was yesterday. I have a rehearsal for the Dell Diamond Walk for Autism gig in about an hour. For anybody reading this, if I misspelled your name, I apologize. If the events are not like you remember them, then next time you can write the Road Blog.

For anybody that I forgot to mention, I’ll try to get ya worked in at the first opportunity, and for all the rest of my friends not in the Central New York Area, I’ll see ya’ll real soon.

Until next time,
Adios

Corpus Christi

I just got back to Austin. I was in Corpus Christi yesterday to play at the Water Street Festival. This year was the fourth year they’ve had it going, so me and Jim went down Friday afternoon and played a spot there. We got to see our old friend Sue Donaho. Sue is the major mover & shaker behind the festival. Sue has been a friend of mine for years and years, she and her husband Mike used to have a this funky little record shop down on 5^th St. here in Austin, before they decided that life at the beach would be less stressful, after our trip , I can see why…Corpus has everything you’d ever need….there was lots of shrimp….and lots of beer, and the Texas Surf Museum. I should add at this point, that I like almost any kind of museum, and the southwest has lots of attractions like this…..The Texas Ranger Museum in Waco for instance has lots of old guns and stuff from the history of the Rangers, Waco also has the Dr. Pepper Museum, with a still operating soda fountain, but the Texas Surf Museum is the tops. It’s got a good collection of surf boards of course, but it also has a general history of surfing, and for my money the best attraction there was the recreation of what a surfers bedroom should look like…a single bed with a green fuzzy bedspread, 2 Fender guitars (1Jaguar, 1 Strat) a TV with a Pong game attached, and a turntable. It was like a trip back in time.

Anyway that was about all that happened except for it being really hot, and hot weather in Texas in June, isn’t really news.

Wow That's a Really Big Apple

I got up wed morning and got my stuff packed, having never been to NYC I didn’t know how long the drive down might take, and given that I hadn’t slept much I figured I should get there early enough to cop a few zzzzs before meeting with the band that night.

The drive down was easy enough, right along the southern edge of the Catskill Mountains. So far, I’ve had pretty good luck as far as scenery goes.

I stopped in Hancock New York, and had lunch at the Hancock Family Restaurant
I know this is a shameless plug, but the food was good and the people working there were really friendly. You can find them at exit 87 on HWY 17 about 35 miles east of Binghamton.

I made it into Jersey City (that’s where I was staying) found my motel and checked in.

I had spoken with Jon Lundbom, (he was the guitarist and band leader for this show)
And he had given me directions to his place in Brooklyn, where I was going to meet the other guys and we would make a set list. The directions seemed easy enough, and he only lived maybe 12 miles from where I was staying…..I gave myself 45 minutes to get there.

Now for those of ya’ll who have never driven in NYC, and this included me till that night, it’s not as hard as you would think….but it is in fact harder than the locals let on.
I was told more than once how easy it was because the streets are laid out in square grids,
That part is true…what they don’t tell you is that just like everything else in the universe…it’s easy if you know how, or in this case where….everything is.

Ya see direction means nothing if you lose yourself in time and space, I never had any clear idea where I was or how to get there because I didn’t know where there was, or for that matter where here was either, it’s been years and years since I’ve felt truly lost, but I couldn’t seem to find North….so I felt like a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that wasn’t there.
It took me just a bit under 2 hours to go 12 miles……..

I made it to Jons place and the rest of the band was already there, Aaron was playing bass and Amiet was playing drums. We ran thru the intros and breaks, made a bit of a list, had a few beers and called that it…..I got back across Manhattan to Jersey City about 12:30 AM and decided to just stay put till gig time the next day.



Thursday April 12

The show that night was scheduled for 9:30, or maybe 10:00, I’m not really sure and it doesn’t really matter anyway since I was there well before hand, I had decided not to drive, but instead take the subway. Again I had been told that taking the train was a cakewalk, and again I’m sure that’s right if you do it everyday….or even every once in a while, but having never taken the train I figured I’d better give myself a bit of a margin for error. It turns out that was a good move. The train turned out to be an excellent choice
Even tho I still didn’t know where I was trying to go. I did what I always do….I asked somebody.
Now I was a little apprehensive about asking for directions (for my friends in NYC, ya’ll already know the reputation that ya’ll enjoy) so I’d like to take a minute here and add my own observations to that reputation.
I personally found all the people I met in NYC and the surrounding area to be as friendly as they are anywhere else. I think their national reputation on lack of manners is unfairly applied…first of all Manhattan is on an island that’s only 16 miles long and 7 miles wide
(I was told this….I didn’t actually measure it myself) now add to that the fact that there are like 4 million people there….ya can’t really stop and talk to everybody, also with that many people in that small a space….you can’t ever just stop moving…..there’s too much momentum going in all directions.
Anyway there was a fellow on the train that I asked where I should get off, after telling him where I was trying to go…he gave me the best directions I have ever heard
“After I get off….you get off at the next stop” those were the kind of directions I was hoping for….not “go east to 115th street across the bridge…….” And so on and so forth.
One last note on NYC and the people there, I’ve never seen a group that knows more about their city than New Yorkers, they know every street by name even the alleys, and how far they are from landmarks and even what stores and window displays are there.
So for example I heard directions that went like this
“Keep going up this street, go 6 blocks, and turn left, there will be a store with a rubber life raft in the window, 2 doors past that will be an unmarked wooden door, go thru it take the first right and you’re there.”


I was playing that night at the Rodeo Bar in Manhattan. Now I know that seems like an oxymoron until you remember that one of the biggest rodeos in the world was the one at Madison Square Garden.

I got to the bar and got everything set up and fired up the show.
This was only the second time I had ever met that nights bandmates, so the odds of sounding like a tight rehearsed group are pretty much zip….still the guys knew some of my stuff from the recordings, and they also knew a lot of that cosmic/hippie/folk rock/country stuff from the 70s. We played it loose and kind of rambled thru the set. It worked amazingly well, I had asked the sound guy (a fellow named Eric from the tarheel state) to keep my guitar and voice as hot in the monitor as possible, so I was kind of leading the way…..my bandmates that night were really good at that whole fake and bake thing.
We played as much of my stuff as we could then went into Little Feat and The Band, Dylan and Johnny Cash covers, with some Merle Haggard thrown in for luck.

We played a couple of sets to an enthusiastic crowd, and then my NYC adventure was over….except for the getting back to Jersey part. I wound up taking a cab back, it was too late and I was too tired to monkey with taking the train, one last observation about NYC. I was standing on a corner in lower Manhattan when it hit me that it was 2:00 AM, and there were still thousands of people out on the streets, and if I lived there I would never sleep at all.




Back To T-Burg


I got up Friday morning and drove back to T-Burg, I did manage another stop in Hancock for lunch.

I landed at Hall Road early in the afternoon; it was a travel day so there wasn’t much I had going on, except a vague plan to go see the Tar Box Ramblers who were playing at the Rongo later that night.

I had heard a couple of things about the Tar Box Ramblers, but nothing had really prepared me for their live set…..HOT……. is probably the best adjective to use.

They were playing Great American Cosmic Music with lap steel as the lead, and dominant instrument, and it was just smoking. I got to meet the band thanks to Tracey Craig from the radio show None Such on WVBR.
I wanted to hang out a bit longer but, I was starting to fade and I had two shows the next day, Jon was looking a bit faded as well, so we decided to roll it up for the night. We went back to Hall Rd and had a couple of beers and watched the Dodgers game on Jons computer. The Dodgers won.



Two More Shows

I had a show that afternoon with Eric Aceto, just a two acoustic guitar vocal thing at Burritts Cafe over in Weedsport NY.
I had played there on the trip last Oct., and it had gone well enough that Darryl and Sherry(the owners) had agreed to have me come back. It’s a nice little gig to have….good stage……good sound system…..and really good sandwiches. We got there a bit late but that didn’t seem to be a problem since today was the first day in a week that it hadn’t been snowing, and the sun was almost out, there wasn’t anybody there anyway.
I felt kind of bad for nor drawing better but in New York in April I don’t think anybody could compete with an almost sunny….not cold… day.

We played 2 sets and wrapped it up….thanks Darryl and Sherry….maybe we’ll draw better next time.

We got back to T-Burg about 5:00 PM….we had a show that night with a whole nother different rhythm section. I had hoped to sleep a little bit before the show…but that didn’t really work out….so around 7:30 we saddled up and headed for Ithaca.

We played our first set till I broke a string (just one this time) then we stopped for a bit…and it was while we were stopped that people started to drift in…Tracey from None Such was there and Chris from Guitar Works…and a lot of people dressed in boots and cowboy hats, there had been a cowboy party somewhere close by and when it broke up the partiers had joined us.
Up until that point I had been feeling a little bit shaky…hell I hadn’t even had any beer, but we took the stage and played all the songs we knew….and a few that we didn’t.
Man that was a party crowd…I haven’t seen that many people on a dance floor in a long time….and it was more like a mosh pit than a dance floor….but we played till I was completely out of songs and then we played two more…and called that it…I love it when the last show in the stand is the best…and that’s how this one worked out.
A big thanks to everybody who drifted in and stayed to party.


Sunday was a recovery day, and since the Nor Easter was blowing in, there wasn’t much to do anyway…..we hung out at Hall Rd and recovered, I did sneak down to the Rongo that evening to have a beer, and tell Mike Barry I’d see him next time

Monday

I woke up and looked out the window and there was snow everywhere….like in a Christmas Television Special…..I was afraid my flight would get grounded, but Pamela was checking it every 30 minutes and it was still listed as on schedule.

I still had an hour or so before I had to leave for Rochester, and Eric had told me that the factory for Hipshot b-benders was located in Interlaken…..I would have figured them for a California company and they were founded there….but that aside I just had to go visit the place….if for no other reason than to one-up Mr. Hemphill.

Jon drove us over….what with him being used to driving through snow drifts and all….and I got to meet David Borisoff….the inventor Hipshot B-Benders, and owner of Hipshot Products…..it was just as cool as I would have thought…getting to meet a pedal steel guitar player who was working in LA in the early 70s…..he knew and played with about half the people in my record collection.

I loaded up from there and drove to Rochester…where my plane got delayed…I missed my connection in Cincinnati….had to spend the night there and got back to Austin just in time for lunch on Tuesday.

Man it was a great roadtrip, and I can’t wait till next time. Thank you to everybody I met…especially you city dwellers who took pity on a lost hick from Austin.
I also want to thank all the players on the shows….ya’ll are the best.

If any of this is not how ya’ll remember it…well….it’s been over 2 weeks since it happened and I’m just now getting around to writing it down….so feel free to send in corrections.

Till Next Time
ADIOS