Archive for the tag "austin"

• Daddy’s Kindle shipped! Whereas my Amazon is no longer showing an est. shipping date, just a “don’t call us, we’ll call you” type thing. Meh #
• Back in touch with Mike Lee, an old pal from Austin High punk-rock days. Good guy. I think he turned me on to the Stranglers “Meninblack”. #

• Oooh I got a box from JJ! But I can’t open it, so I gave it to Wil to hide. Otherwise it might start talking to me. #
• Finally made the appointment for my ultrasound. Sounds like a *great* bargain for the uninsured, and LOTS of fun, I can hardly wait! Pfffff. #
• From Kindle Korner: Amazon now allowing MP3 and Unbox downloads to be purchased with gift cards… Kindle books coming soon too, hopefully? #
• “A Christmas Memory” by Truman Capote: http://tinyurl.com/6qfyu …I had a teacher at Austin High who would read this aloud every year. #
• Twitter will be down all day for maintenance tomorrow, so I won’t be blathering as much about the Kindle, talking boxes and bug-candy. Enjoy #
• Ran into friends, they asked what I’ve been up to, I couldn’t think of anything! Afterwards I thought of LOTS of things. How embarrassing. #

• AustinHigh.org (best of the 3 high schools I attended)
• Macek Furniture (an ol’ buddy from AHS)
• Oh, look what the cat dragged in… #

With the Zincs, Knife in the Water

At Emo’s
603 Red River, Austin TX 78701

My band: Nathaniel Braddock (guitar); Ryan Hembrey (bass); Jason Toth (drums)

Hey y’all, I’m back home in Chicago again, totally buzzing about what a great time I had playing with Calexico & Iron and Wine.  It was so, so, SO much fun, I’m so psyched I got to do that!!  I was visiting my folks in Texas the weekend before last when I got the call to do those shows… our booking agents had been talking about it for months but it all came together wham-bam at the last minute.  They needed me to play solo so that’s what I did… not my normal preferred way to play, but I pulled it off pretty well I think!  They flew me down to Tulsa (”I’m too young to marry…”) for the show at Cain’s, and then I rode with them from there to Fort Worth and then to Austin.  Flew black home from there.  They paid me well and bought me those plane tickets and fed me and put me in HO-tels, loaned me a guitar, the whole bit.  See, that’s what I’m talkin’ bout!  That’s the life.  I sure don’t get that kinda treatment every day as a musician.  I was joking with Howard (who road-managed) that the very lowest point for me on that tour was when we sat down in a Japanese restaurant and I looked at the menu and said "Huh.  I don’t eat Japanese food that often; I’m not sure what to order…" Yep, that was the worst, heheh.  Such hard times on the road… ;-)

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Opened for Calexico and Iron and Wine
at Stubb’s Bar-B-Q
801 Red River, Austin TX
(512) 480-8341

With Paul Niehaus (pedal steel)

Photo by Mary Sledd

A few shows have been confirmed for THIS WEEK, sorry for the last-minute notice!  I’ll be opening for Calexico and Iron and Wine in Tulsa on Friday, Fort Worth on Saturday and Austin on Sunday.  Or rather I’ll be playing in the middle, between the two I&W / Calexico sets.  Just a 30-minute solo set, but still.  It’ll be lots of fun and I’m really excited and honored that they asked me to join them.

(I JUST got back yesterday from a few days visiting the folks in Austin / San Antonio, so it’s pretty funny I’m going right back a week later.)

Thomas, an old friend from high school, just sent word about Biscuit’s passing yesterday.  There’s an article about it in the Statesman but it doesn’t give much info.  (Use BugMeNot if you can’t get in to read that.) Biscuit was absolutely one of the key leaders of the music scene I first jumped into (as a fan) as soon as I was old enough to pass for drinking age (even if I wasn’t).  In the early 80s I saw the Big Boys countless times at the Ritz, Club Foot, Liberty Lunch and God knows how many other joints in Austin.  They were probably my favorite band to see live just because they were SO MUCH FUN, and that had everything to do with Biscuit’s infectious enthusiasm for the music, the kids, the whole scene.  The motto went "Now go start your own band!" and I wouldn’t be surprised if that one phrase helped to spawn hundreds of other bands directly or indirectly.  I remember thinking at the time that it sounded a little corny, but the phrase stuck in my head from then on.  There was no denying he was right… you have to get out there and do it, there’s no other way in this world but to just do whatever it is that you love.  Biscuit, wherever you are, god bless ya for giving us that kick in the ass!  You were an inspiration to so many kids like me.  I only wish I could’ve said all this just a few days earlier. :-(

The Dictionary.com Word of the Day is "ephemeral"….

Published in the Austin American-Statesman on Monday…

Dan R. Toomey
Dec. 16, 1911 — April 17, 2005

Dan R. Toomey, who died Sunday in Austin at age 93, led a colorful life and leaves as his legacy a grove of pecan trees he helped plant off Barton Springs Road. A jack-of-all-trades, Dan was a machinist, truck driver, shrimp boat captain, dam builder, farmer and newspaper photographer. In World War II, he was a gunnery instructor in the Army Air Corps and recalled that his main task was training recruits to "shoot behind their planes and not in front of them."

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To catch up a little with my blogging, here are just a few highlights from the past few weeks:

• Playing a really fun show with Eric @ Mother Fool’s in Madison
• Seeing the Wisconsin Dells for the first time driving around at two in the morning during off-season
• Bottle of wine at the top of the Hyatt in downtown Dallas (the one with the big ball on top)
• SXSW — seeing Michelle Shocked, Harvey Sid Fisher and the Ditty Bops, among others
• Seeing Mama, Lucie, Marshall, Lilly, Lindy, Mimo, Uncle Dan, Lee & Lisa… anybody else I forgot?
• My own SXSW showcase
• Feasting w/ Eric @ Golden Corral in Texarkana
• Back in Chicago, seeing Blackbird’s Patty Red Pants at the Chopin
• A wonderful lazy Easter weekend with you-know-who, starting with an off-the-cuff dinner at Mi Tierra

Low point of our Austin trip: Taking Eric to the top of Mount Bonnell and finding a BUILDING under construction up there, WTF!?!?

Tonight (=last night) we saw the movie Heat at the Gene Siskel Center. Fuckin’ awesome — almost three hours long but I never thought about the time.

SXSW showcase at Latitude 30
512 San Jacinto St., Austin, TX 78701
21+

My band: Via Nuon (guitar), Ryan Hembrey (bass), Jason Toth (drums)

Lineup:
8pm  Faceless Werewolves
9pm  Novillero
10pm Sluts of Trust
11pm Manishevitz
12pm Edith Frost
1am  The Shells

Daytime show: Chicago Pop Renaissance Party
Held from 1pm to 6pm at MOMOs Club
Upstairs above Katz’s at 618 W. 6th St., Austin, TX 78701

My band: Via Nuon (guitar), Ryan Hembrey (bass), Jason Toth (drums)

Lineup:
1:10 pm - 1:50 pm  Head of Femur
2:00 pm - 2:40 pm  Manishevitz
2:50 pm - 3:20 pm  Edith Frost
3:30 pm - 4:10 pm  Canasta
4:20 pm - 5:00 pm  Grizzly Bear
5:10 pm - 5:50 pm  Scotland Yard Gospel Choir

I just noticed that KVRX in Austin posted a couple of MP3s from a performance I did there on 5/10/1998… "Dreamers" and "The Very Earth".  I found ‘em on my own, I wonder how long they’ve been up there?  I wish people would let me know about these things, jeez! It was a difficult show, I think mainly because there were no monitors or headphones.  The tracks don’t sound quite as bad as I remember, though the ol’ guitar’s pretty tinny-sounding (my fault, not theirs) and I screwed up the words a little on "Dreamers" too.  Ahhh… live radio, terrifying and horrible, but yet… not that bad in retrospect I guess.

Go giddum…

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p>You can buy real Mexican pralines online at Mi Tierra in San Antonio.  I’m a junkie for these things.

A semi-crappy review of WONDER WONDER by Elizabeth Nottingham that appeared in my very own hometown paper, the Austin American-Statesman…

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