I had to look at the band's website to remember where we played Friday night...we played 4 full shows this weekend and I couldn't remember that far back...it was at Texans Sports Bar&Grill in LaPorte, right next to Deer Park, the birthplace of Texas. The Battle of San Jacinto was fought and won there by General Sam Houston, who was wounded there. They captured Santa Ana up the road, wearing the uniform of a private. They brought him to Sam Houston, who was laid up with a bullet in his leg, and Sam Houston gave Santa Ana a good talking to...Santa Ana thought he was the Napoleon of the West...he was responsible for the massacre at the Alamo, the battle of Gonzales, the Mexican empire that he envisioned as his own claim to New World domination...anyway, Sam Houston let him go. He told him just get out of here and leave us alone, willya? And don't ever come back...then he was elected president of the Republic of Texas once the government got put in place...he resigned when the senate voted to secede from the Union when the Civil War started, a while after he signed statehood papers...but I digress. Texans is a nice place, what I saw there were a lot of pretty young girls with tattoos all over their arms, legs, hindquarters, hands and necks, and the boys there are dripping with tattoos...they don't seem to realize that the skull-and-crossbones sitting on top of a marijuana leaf on the back of their hand will not only help to determine their career path, but it will also determine the social strata of their choice of mate. I saw a dozen girls who were actually quite pretty walk past and their tattoos were revolting. Can't actually envision one of them in a wedding dress unless she was swigging a beer with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth...but that's just me. I'm old-school. Getting a tattoo was forbidden to me when I was in my youth and now I'm too old to give a damn about getting one. But there's something about those girls that kind of made me sad for them...they're marked for LIFE now...
Saturday afternoon we played at the Galveton Convention Center for Congressman Ron Paul's birthday party. It's a cavern there, and it was packed. Thousands of people. We played, went through the motions, so to speak, for one hour and then the politicians took over and we left. That night we played in Pasadena at the Lone Star Club and had a great night, we caught second-wind and tore the place down.
I got to the Cock-Eyed Seagull yesterday at 11:30AM, brought my amp in and set it up so anybody who wanted to could use it and they did. The music went all day, it was hot as an oven in there and even worse outside because there was no shade to speak of and what precious little shade there was, was being polluted by thick columns of barbecue smoke. It was a gruelling ordeal...we played last, at around 7:45 and our set ran till around 8:30. The place was packed, they jumped, we played our best, they had a light show on us and it was like floating in space, but we got through it...the whole band was soaking wet at the end and we were all pretty glad to leave because it was so godawful uncomfortable there, but we did our part for Jim Shortt and I appreciated us being the headlining act. Jim was smiling down on us.
Many of the acts that played yesterday were at Blues For Becky...Dave Nevling and the Blues Katz, Ronnie Hall and Green Onions, Lynn Raggio and Slide Effect, The Grateful Geezers were there, Tommie Lee Bradley sang with the Delta Flyers, Annette Metoyer and Trudy Lynn were there and sang, it was a great tribute to a truly great man. We should do it once a year from now on...but in the Spring or Fall, when it's cool...
One thing stood out yesterday...there were a lot of standout moments but there is a guy here in town called Mean Gene Kelton. He's one of the hardest-working Southern Blues players around. He's got an image...long-haired guy with a cowboy hat, biker shirt, slinging a guitar and being "Mean Gene"...somehow he ended up sitting with me, Debby, Kyle and Nick at the benefit and we visited for half an hour with him. He is one of the most intelligent, articulate, creative and compassionate people I've met in a long time on the music scene. We made friends. We had laughs, shared stories, he talked to the boys and he talked to me and we just had a great time with Mean Gene Kelton. Just goes to show ya, folks often aren't what and who you might think they are! Gene's a great guy and a big supporter of the Bay Area music scene.
http://genekelton.com/
Funny thing happened Saturday. After we played at the convention center, me and Sylvester decided to stop off at the Chinese restaurant on 61st street in Galveston on the way out of town and grab a nice buffet meal. Well, the band has these Hawaiian shirts that all match...so we're walking in there with matching outfits...floweredy shirts, black pants, sunglasses...I said ya know, we could pass for a same-sex marriage here. "His-and-His outfits". All we'd have to do is hold hands and they might give us a discount! We didn't hold hands, though. Otherwise it would have been a perfect little scenario...
Cheers, WC1[/url]