Contents
Music--Cajun Aces, Diane Coffey, The New Pornographers, James McMurtry, Bill Kirchen, The Marmalakes, Lissa Hattersley, Dale Watson
Also--Eatin' and sleepin' and drivin' in Austin, and other stuff to do besides he music scene in Austin
A Week in Austin
My wife and I escaped the snow and cold in Minnesota for “a week” in Austin, TX—actually nine days from February 9 to February 17, 2020. It was meant to be an outdoor trip and a music trip, full of hiking and birding and Texas tunes. Well, it rained the first four days we were there so it turned out to be mostly a music trip, well, and a foodie trip, and I’m OK with that.
Sunday February 9—The Cajun Aces at The Continental Club
We arrived on Sunday and immediately got conflicting information about James McMurtry playing at the Continental Club. Tuesday, we heard, but, no, we also heard, Wednesday. So, we headed down to the Continental, described in a particularly good example of truth in advertising on the Web as a “dive bar,” to ask them ourselves. Which was it?
Well, while we were there we saw the Cajun Aces, who were terrific, a four piece band with accordion, fiddle, guitar and drums, playing Cajun dance tunes—jjgs, jitterbugs and two-steps—with lots of energy and enthusiasm. We hadn’t paid the cover charge, however. We said we just wanted to know about James McMurtry and they let us stand around while they figured out when McMurtry was playing. So we didn’t feel right about hanging around for too long. We needed dinner right then, anyway, so we left. Still, if I had had another opportunity to see them this week, I would have grabbed it. Grade: B+.
Monday February 10—The New Pornographers and Diane Coffey at Emo’s
We had bought tickets to see the New Pornographers before flying down. They played at Emo’s, a big, modern concert hall, a hanger, with no reserved seating. Well, no seating. It was standing room only.
Diane Coffey, from Indianapolis, we heard, opened. Diane is “Diane” in the way that Alice Cooper is “Alice.” Diane is in fact a female impersonator with a really strong, expressive voice, a glam rock look and a batch of hard rock songs. His/her band was solid, the songs were very dynamic with lots of changes in volume and mood. Diane was a lot better than the New Pornagraphers. Grade: C+.
The New Pornographers are described as indie rock, which is accurate enough. To me, they were always Neko Case’s band, but now I see that they’re not. They’re Carl Newman’s band. He’s written almost every song on eight albums now. Case was always a member of the band, but over the years Newman has added Kathryn Calder and Simi Stone on backing vocals as well, and their trademark has become dense four-part harmony singing of Newman’s rising, anthemic melodies, creating a wall of sound.
But, you know, the songs aren’t that interesting and the musical accompaniment is rudimentary. They’re all about the singing, yet they bury the vocals under a pounding rock rhythm. There are no leads to speak of and the singing isn’t even that great, certainly not Newman’s. We didn’t stay till the end. Grade: D.
Tuesday February 11—James McMurtry at the Continental Gallery
This, we were told, is a quintessential Austin experience--McMurtry at the Continental. We are long-time fans of McMurtry, whom we’ve seen twice in Minneapolis, and he was first on our list of local artists we wanted to see. Normally, he plays at midnight on Wednesday with his band. This week, for whatever reason, it was just James and his acoustic guitars in the upstairs Gallery above the Continental, which was fine with us.
The Gallery seats maybe 30 with room for another 20 or 30 standees. We were maybe 15 feet back in the second row of seating. The cover was $10, so I figure the take was $500 or $600, plus liquor, of course. Sales were brisk.
McMurtry sang some familiar songs—“St. Mary of the Woods,” “Red Dress” and “Choctaw Bingo”—and many that weren’t familiar. “The State of the Union” was a highlight: The state of the union being division and contempt, even within families. He sings about his fascist brother and his sister and his mom, etc., but whether the family McMurtry describes is his or whether it’s fictional, I don’t know. But, it’s dark and it’s sad, and McMurtry sings it with his familiar sneer. It was great.
Steve Goodman once described country music as songs about “farms, mother, prison, trucks, trains, getting drunk, dead dogs like Old Shep, and a big holiday like Christmas.” With McMurtry, there’s moms and fascist brothers; there’s trucks, there’s lots of getting drunk; there’s an occasional birthday. Oh, and lots of sex, almost all of it illicit, and lots and lots of guns. So, no, he’s not really country. Wikipedia says he’s rock, folk-rock and Americana. No, not country at all. His politics would be anathema to country music radio and country music fans, which is of course what makes him a quintessential Austin experience. Grade: A.
Wednesday, February 12—Bill Kirchen at the Saxon Pub
The Saxon Pub, we were also told, was one of the quintessential Austin music venues. It’s a medium sized club, bigger than the Continental, but not that big. I suppose it seats 75 people and there were another 40 or so standing around the bar. James McMurtry had made a point the night before of saying that Austin doesn’t pay wait staff the minimum wage, so "they depend on tips to be able to afford to serve you." Bill Kirchen made the further point that his band was being paid out of the tip jar, too. (There was no cover charge.)
Kirchen’s claim to fame is as the guitarist with Commander Cody and His Lost Plant Airmen. He is described as “the master of the Telecaster,” and plays folk-rock and rockabilly more than country-rock. He played a couple of Bob Dylan tunes, a nice, understated version of “It Takes A Lot to Laugh, It Takes A Train to Cry” and then one of the best versions of “The Times They Are A-Changin’” that I’ve ever heard. Both of them were filled with tasty Telecaster filigree. On the latter, he ad libbed that one day “our now 45 would later be last,” which brought a huge hoot of approval from (most of) the crowd.
On one tune, he brought up a buddy, Dave Chappell (sp?), to play guitar. He just handed the guy his guitar and then he pulled a red trombone out of a bag and proceeded to charge out into the audience to play a trombone solo. And, while James McMurtry specializes in songs about guns, Kirchen’s speciality is truck songs. After one such song, he noted that along with the truck driver song genre, there is also a sub-genre of truck songs and that this particular song was from the sub-genre of ghost truck driver songs.
It also turns out that he wrote Commander Cody’s second-biggest hit, “Down to Seeds and Stems Again Blues,” which he of course sang for us. But, his big climax was Commander Cody’s biggest hit, “Hot Rod Lincoln.” If you remember the song, he’s passing other cars on the highway. About two-thirds of the way through, he goes into a thing where he passes a series of famous guitarists and inserts their most famous licks—B.B. and all the other Kings, including Elvis; Duane Eddy and Link Wray and the Ventures; the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton, and so on. It’s a crowd-pleaser as was the whole show. Grade: B.
Eatin’ and Sleepin’ in Austin
OK, here’s the deal. Austin is really expnsive. Yes, you can hear some really, really good music for free or for $5 or $10. But, if you want to eat or sleep afterward, well, that’s a different deal.
A friend who lived down here for many years, but many years ago, told us, “Oh, you’ve got to stay at the Driskill Hotel.” So I looked it up. $350 a night. And, most of the other name hotels downtown were $250 to $350. Now, I’m accustomed to spending $100 to maybe $150 for a bed, so I kept on looking. All the hotels and motels in my price range were 30 and 40 miles away or more. So we looked at AirBnB. In our price range, we found a one bedroom unit in an apartment complex that was set aside for AirBnB. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it was nice, or clean. But, it was, well, it wasn’t cheap. I guess it was affordable because I booked it, didn’t I?
Eating out meant at least $30 for 2 people even at chains (above the fast food category). Anything nice meant $50. “Fine dining” meant the sky’s the limit. So, now you know. But, hey, a person’s gotta eat, so….
I don’t claim to be much of an expert on eatin,’ though I know what I like. And, while we sampled maybe one-half of one percent of Austin’s live music scene, we probably sampled less than one-tenth of one percent of its eating establishments. Still, I can say this. Eatin’ in Austin is a pretty easy thing to do. There are food trucks and trailers everywhere. The only problem is that most of the listings on the internet don’t say whether a particular establishment is a sit-down or a trailer. Compared to Minnesota, of course, there’s lots of Tex-Mex and any and all varieties thereof but of course you can find any kind of food you desire.
We were lucky enough to stumble on to a little bakery and deli north of the UT campus called the Sour Duck. It turns out that it is a farm-to-table establishment and, as such, they cater to people who are really picky about what’s in their food and how it’s prepared and all of that. As it happens, I was on a special diet at the time. No red meat. No cheese or dairy. No fried. The folks at the Sour Duck were incredibly helpful and knowledgeable about what I could or couldn’t eat off their menu. What I did eat was wonderful. Grade: A.
The Sour Duck is one of three restaurants owned and operated by Bryce and Dylan Gilmore. Bryce is the chef. So, the next day we sought out the Odd Duck. It was the first of the three properties and in fact it started out as, you guessed it, a food truck. Now, it’s a fancy, modern, sit-down bistro and the food was every bit as good as at the Sour Duck. In fact, based on my wacky requirements, the waiter brought back an annotated menu highlighting everything in each dish that I couldn’t eat. There were a couple of things that I could eat, but in the end, the chef threw together something that wasn’t even on the menu. It was a mushroom/vegie taco with a zesty orange sauce with just the right amount of verve. Grade: A-.
Both of these properties are highly recommended. Their third property, for the record, is their “fine dining” venue, Barley Swine, and we couldn’t get in. It was Valentine’s weekend and they were sold out pretty much as far as the eye could see. I can see why.
We also discovered a place called Kerbey Lane Cafe and by total happenstance, I think we discovered their original location, which is a nice out-of-the-way one-off type of space with real personality, and it’s located on a little one-block street called Kerbey Lane. Little did we realize that people liked the place so much that there are now 30 of them. We tried to return but our map app took us to a different Kerbey Lane, with an ambience more like Denny’s. Oh, well. Grade: B- and D for the two different locations.
But, we also picked up a $15 coupon at Kerbey Lane for the property from “the Kerbey Lane team.” It’s a breakfast/brunch place called the High Note. It was similar to Kerbey Lane and in fact it was somewhat similar to the Odd Duck. Farm-to-table, lots of exotic vegies, at least, exotic to us folks from Minnesota, a bit of a bite to almost every sauce. It was good, but the Ducks were better. Grade: C.
Other Stuff to Do in Austin
We had decided to come to Austin because of the music and the potential for some hiking. We decided where to stay based on hiking the Barton Creek Greenbelt. So we stayed south of the river, and there was an entrance to the Greenbelt about a third of a mile from our place. Luckily, South Lamar and Congress, where all the dive bars we visited are located, were five or ten minutes away, too.
Along the Greenbelt, you can also find the Zilker Botanical Garden and the Umlauf Sculpture Park. Paul Umlauf was a sculptor and a professor art at UT from 1941 to 1981. He specialized in classical bronzes—Madonna and child, Icarus, and all of that. Some of them are huge, twelve-15 feet tall. It’s cool to see them outdoors. We saw everything in about 45 minutes, but of course we don’t stand over a piece of art for very long.
Grade: B.
The Zilker Botanical Garden is only about 26 acres. The Minnesota Arboretum is more than 150. So, we saw pretty much everything in an hour-and-a-half. And, it was out of season for most plants. Still, it’s a very nice little garden We especially liked the so-called Prehistoric Garden with its dinosaurs sculpture. Grade: C.
We didn’t do as much of the museum scene as we usually do. The music was too good. But, we did make our way up to the Harry Ransom Center at UT. They mostly collect literary stuff and they do exhibits. It’s not paintings or anything, what you see is written documents and of course information about the manuscripts and their authors. It was fascinating, especially the exhibit about David Foster Wallace, author of The Infinite Jest and other books. He never had a damn thing to do with Texas, but UT bought all of his stuff after he took his own life in 2008. It was really, really terrific, and I would trust the Ransom Center to do right by any subject it might choose to exhibit.
Thursday, February 13—The Marmalakes and Daphne Tunes at the Cactus Café
OK, so today we made our way over to the Cactus Café in the student union at UT. There were posters everywhere showing artists who had played previously at the venerable venue—Lyle Lovett, Townes Van Zandt, Joe Ely, Iris DeMent, Jorma Kaukonen, you name it. Well, the Marmalakes are not any of them. In fact, they have nothing whatsoever to do with anything you would think of when you think of Austin music. Nothing to do with cactus.
Then again, the Cactus Café has no food. So, what the hell.
Now, that’s just me, of course. Obviously, there’s an indie rock scene here. But, seriously, the Marmalakes could be from anywhere. Their whole reason for existing is the songs/lyrics and vocals of Chase Weinacht. Everything else is superfluous. He reminds one of Paul Simon, well, a little tiny bit. Also, maybe James Mercer of the Shins, a little tiny bit. But, he mumbles his lyrics, you can’t understand a thing. So, what’s the point? Grade: F.
And, the really weird thing is that the opening act, Daphne Tunes, was a clone of the Marmalakes. (There was nobody named Daphne.) Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I guess. Actually, the two bands had the same drummer. They also had the same bright, trebly, dreamy guitar sound. Think Santo and Johnny. And, each band played approximately one song that could be described as up-tempo. It was a big night for insomniacs. Grade: F-.
Friday, February 14—Lissa Hattersley with the Trip Trio at the Elephant Room
Don’t believe everything you see on the internet. We went down to the Elephant Room to hear jazz saxophonist Elias Haslanger at 4 p.m. Well, Haslanger wasn’t playing until 9, and nobody was playing until 6. So, we went across the street for dinner, then came back at 6 to hear Lissa Hattersley and the Trip Trio, subtitled The Trio That’s A Quartet: Lissa on vocals, Mike Barnes on guitar, bassist Brad Taylor and percussionist James Fenner.
Now, I don’t know who picks the songs and makes the arrangements and all of that. Nominally, this is Lissa Hattersley’s band, and she’s been singing around Austin for 40 years, so surely she can do what she wants. Her old band, Greasy Wheels, once opened for Bruce Springsteen. But, on stage, this is Barnes’ band. He was a founding member of Steam Heat, a funk and soul band that goes back to 1975.
Now, they’re playing and singing light jazz and I mean that in a good way. Barnes’ plays exquisitely though the style is familiar enough. It’s what jazz guitarists do when they’re called on to accompany a vocalist. But, here you’re hearing a real master of the genre of jazz and jazzy pop. The only songs I recognized, frankly, were by Steely Dan, which gives you some idea of what they were up to. Grade: B.
Driving Around Austin
I have to mention that the traffic in Austin really sucks. Part of the problem is the Colorado River, which cuts through town, west to east, separating the southern one-third of town from the northern two-thirds. There are precious few streets that cross the river, so those streets a terribly congested anywhere near the river. Actually getting across on Congress or Lamar is torture at least 10 hours a day.
But, the other part of the problem has nothing to do with the river. If you never, ever cross the river and live your life entirely on the north side, well, for one thing you’re never going to see James McMurtry play. But, more than that, the traffic anywhere and everywhere north of the river is terrible. Downtown is located centrally on the north side of the river. The UT campus is immediately north of that, and the state capitol is stuck in there somewhere, too. All roads leading toward campus and the capitol and downtown, whether from the north, south, east or west, doesn't matter, they’re all congested as hell, almost all day long.
So plan your outings accordingly. Spend your days north or south, but not both. Grade: D.
Sunday, February 16—Dale Watson and His Lone Stars, and Chicken Shit Sunday at C-Boys
A fellow at C-Boys told me that everyone in Austin is and has been flabbergasted that Dale Watson never became a country music superstar. He’s got a wonderful singing voice, a bit of Johnny Cash, a little bit of Roger Miller, a dash of Merle Haggard. But, of course, he persists in playing “classic country” like in the ’50s and ‘60s with a dash of rockabilly even. Not the highly polished “gems” they do in Nashville these days.
So here is Dale Watson, playing at C-Boys every Sunday for 100, maybe 150 people, and some of them aren’t even there for Dale Watson, they’ve come for chicken-shit bingo. It’s not really bingo, of course, it’s more of a raffle. You buy a ticket and whatever number the chicken shits on…. Well, maybe I should mention that there’s a chicken—yep, a real live chicken—in a cage over in the corner being watched very carefully by the chicken lady. Oh, and the floor of her cage is divided into two-inch squares, each one with a number in it. And, when they close the ticket sale in each round of the raffle, the next time the chicken shits, whatever number the chicken shits on wins.
Every winner has to go up on stage, then, to be interviewed and badgered by Dale Watson. Actually, Watson does his impression of Monte Hall on Let’s Make A Deal. If you win, you win $108. Now, do you want to keep the $108 or do you want to trade it for the money that Dale Watson has in his pocket—and which pocket? Left front, right front, left back, right back? The first winner traded his $108 and got $110 back. The second winner kept the $108, whereupon Dale showed her that he had $156 in his back left pocket. And, so forth.
Still, the main attraction was Dale Watson and his band, the Lone Stars, playing country hits from the ‘50s and ‘60s. Check him out.
What Else?
Oh, yeah, everybody in Austin has a dawg, and there’s a veterinarian or a dawg-park or a dawg-wash on every street corner. Come for the music, stay for the dawgs.
