“We could live in this town”
Happy Birthday to my little sister, Elspeth, who’s celebrating today in Scotland.
We did have a more interesting week, as promised at the end of the post last week, with a couple of impromptu evenings (the best kind).
The week started on an annoying note, with a clog and leak in the McKinney house from the upstairs plumbing. It gets used so little that it’s not a huge surprise, and we now have a new turn on all the faucets and flush the toilets schedule. The restoration/dry things out guys got everything installed on Tuesday morning, and we felt safe to leave to drive down to Austin in the afternoon.
Wednesday was a long work day for Diana, and I was determined to get her out of the apartment on Thursday night. We both have new eyeglass prescriptions, and so we headed to Warby Parker on South Congress to see what we could find in the way of frames. We put Vincente, the store manager, to work finding us the perfect frames and he did a great job. Within a few minutes we had five pairs picked out – regular and sunglasses. I have grey and blue frames and some nice sunglasses, while Diana has gold and very cool sunnies. We snapped these pictures int the photo booth before leaving:
The heavens opened right as we were about to leave Warby Parker, and so we ducked into the Italian restaurant next door. We’ve walked past Boticellis many times, but never tried it. The rain introduced us to a new great place – excellent back patio and food.
We sat in this covered patio area and enjoyed an amazing scallop and beet appetizer, with very fresh and perfectly cooked scallops. I hadn’t had enough beets, and so went for the beet salad while McD chose the meatballs and tagliatelle.
We will definitely be back to this delicious place.
It was still raining after dinner, and so we were “forced” into the Continental Gallery for some music. Monte Warden and his incredible band were performing as we relaxed on a comfy couch in the living room style setting. It turns out Monte is a famous songwriter, having written songs that have sold over 100 million copies, for folks like George Jones. I loved the trumpet playing of Erik Telford, and the entire band were great musicians. Here’s a #1 song that Monte wrote for George Strait, “Desperately”:
What a great impromptu evening caused by the torrential rain, and we got Diana out of the apartment and away from her emails for several hours.
I had just arrived home on Friday when a text came in from my Minnesota friend, Greg: “where can a guy find some good jazz in Austin tonight?” Greg and Kristan were in San Antonio for a conference next week and decided to drive up and experience Austin. We made quick reservations for Peche and the Parker jazz club. Kris Kimura, Parker owner, did not disappoint with an excellent set of classic jazz.
I love the sound of the bass flute on “Wonderful World”. After the Parker, we had a quick stop at the Elephant Room, for some more modern jazz and then called it a late night.
Saturday was a lazy day, recovering from the busy week and late Friday night. We did manage a workout and got some good quiet reading in.
Sunday began with the usual workout followed by coffee (or mimosa) and crossword at Opa, and then got more interesting with a walk up to the Continental Club and Jimmie Dreams. New Orleans music is all that Jimmie plays, starting with six excellent Allen Toussaint songs. Midway through the set, McD was heard to say, “We could live in this town”. Such great musicianship with no cover on a pleasant Sunday afternoon. Here’s a Toussaint song recorded by Ernie K’Doe:
We walked back to the Catherine to watch the Packers vs 49ers playoff game. Currently looking like the 49ers will win handily.
Trump was just observed causing a backup on Interstate 35 from our balcony. Apparently he came into town to address the American Farmers conference – telling them what a great new deal he had struck with China to protect them. Thankfully he was only in our town for a couple of hours.
I’m only half way through my new book this week – so more on that next week.
“A Certain Girl” is the song that Jimmie Dreams and his friends are playing up above.
How about this new solo song from Nathaniel Rateliff. This guy keeps getting better and better:
Monte Warden, Thursday night music, led a band in the 80s called the Wagoneers, and wrote this song for them:
Jimmie Dreams played songs by Lee Dorsey (also a boxer and mechanic) and Bobby Charles, classic New Orleans artists:
And finally, I was sad to hear of the passing of Neal Peart last week. He was the drummer extraordinaire for the Canadian rock trio, Rush. I love his drumming and was fortunate to catch a couple of Rush live shows. I also recommend his books, chronicling his travels by bicycle, car, and motorcycle, and his book blog “Bubba’s Book Club”.