The experimental Vonlane bus service to Austin early Monday worked out well. I enjoyed avoiding security and all the other airport hassles. It was nice to be able to spread out and relax for the 3 hour trip. I’ve booked my next few trips on the bus. Thanks to Diana for getting up so early to drive me to the bus.
The Uber driver who shuttled me from the bus drop-off point to work provided several useful tips – suggested a great local radio station, told me about a music club that sounded appealing, and an unannounced show at that venue by a group named “Sis DeVille”, comprised of Carolyn Wonderland, Shelley King, Floramay Holiday and several others – these are several of our favourite performers that we’ve seen at the Kessler and Poor David’s Pub and I bought a ticket later in the week.
The hotel this week was the Sonesta Bee Caves which is located about a 20 minute drive from the office and next to the Hill Country Galleria outdoor mall. It took some time to get back and forward to the office but the view from the 6th floor restaurant was very good. It’s a Tapas Bar at night and has an amazing wrap around deck – nice when the weather is warmer than it was this week. I enjoyed the sunrise views in the morning with an early breakfast. This hotel also featured music art in the rooms:
Our friend Gonzalo was scheduled to interview at my office on Wednesday and came in on Tuesday night to be ready for the morning. We enjoyed an excellent dinner at the Second Kitchen and Bar – the truffle grits with G’s short ribs were amazing. I started with smoked salmon rillettes (way better than I anticipated) and then had a delicious beet salad with big chunks of brie – right up my alley.
After dinner we tried a new place that I had read about – The Townsend. This is a speakeasy style bar up front and a small music venue in back. One of the owners is an acoustic engineer and this showed up big time in the quality of the sound systems in the bar and the concert space – amazing sound! The concert in back by Charlie Hunter was sold out and so we enjoyed the music in the bar and then snuck into the music venue for the last few songs.
Charlie Hunter is a pretty unique performer – he plays an eight string guitar with 2 bass strings and 6 lead guitar strings. He maintains the bass guitar rhythm and plays lead guitar at the same time. Hunter’s music is mostly classified as jazz but has a lot of rock, blues and other genres mixed together. This performance was with a trio of singer, guitar/bass, and percussion. Here’s a short video followed by a recent review of the show that describes it much better than I could.
“Lucy Woodward almost stole the show. And she might well have done so, wholly and completely, if her two bandmates had not demonstrated the same touch for nuance she did throughout the two sets. In turns insouciant and sultry, saucy and winsome, the woman was the aural/visual picture of well-practiced discipline wherein the notes she belted out on a Nina Simone song were as finely-phrased as those she breathed so softy on one from Teresa Brewer circa 1959, “Music! Music! Music! (Put Another Nickel In)”.
If the guitarist/frontman had not so obviously relished her participation, he might not have so keenly complemented Woodward’s performance by savoring the moments his fingers ran up and down his own instrument. But plucking those ringing harmonics, bending some bittersweet notes and dropping the low-register bombs were subtleties similar to the singer’s, but also to those that appeared in the percussion work of Keita Ogawa”
I highly recommend The Townsend if you’re ever in Austin and looking for a great bar and small music venue. There was a book about Austin music in the bar that had articles on both Alejandro Escovedo (lives in an apartment above the check in desk at the Belmont hotel) and Marcia Ball (see post last week about her amazing concert at the Kessler).
On Wednesday I took Gonzalo to lunch at the nearby TacoDeli which has a very nice woodsy location near a Zilker Park trail-head. I tried the chile relleno taco special and loved it. It was nice to catch up with G on Tuesday night and Wednesday – we spent a lot of time working on tough issues together at my previous job and I’m hoping that we’ll get an opportunity to work together again.
In the afternoon we had a town hall at work for all the Information Technology employees where I was introduced. I enjoyed the view of my boss with a long horn cow in the background from where I was sitting.
Thursday was the Thanksgiving Potluck at the office – I had meetings all the way through the lunch hour and wasn’t able to participate but it looked like folks were having a great time.
I had dinner at the Hill Country Galleria mall – empanadas and salad at the Buenos Aires Grill Argentinian restaurant and then a drink at a Texas themed place that had a good guitarist/singer and the football game showing.
Friday was back on the bus to Dallas. I was interested to see a Basset hound joining our group and claiming to be a “service dog” to be allowed on the bus. HGTV was annoyingly playing on the TVs on the bus – this is the home buying/improvement channel that I had to block at the house because McD was playing it incessantly. Thankfully it hasn’t been on in a long time now.
Diana picked me up from the bus and took me to a lovely dinner at the Neighborhood Services restaurant on Lovers Lane. I loved my haddock and Diana her lobster dish.
This place has such good food and such a relaxed ambiance – we need to go more often.
After dinner D had arranged a recognition event for her team at the hockey game at American Airlines arena. I was starting to get tired and grumpy by this point. It was funny to see the Mary Kay cosmetics company suite next to D’s company suite.
The weekend was pretty quiet with workouts, coffees and crosswords- nice to settle back into our normal routine for a few days.
I finally finished a new book this week – “Half Blood Blues” by Esi Edugyan. This was a very enjoyable book about jazz musicians, the second world war, and race relations. Here’s the Amazon review:
“Berlin, 1939. The Hot Time Swingers, a popular jazz band, has been forbidden to play by the Nazis. Their young trumpet-player Hieronymus Falk, declared a musical genius by none other than Louis Armstrong, is arrested in a Paris café. He is never heard from again. He was twenty years old, a German citizen. And he was black.
Berlin, 1952. Falk is a jazz legend. Hot Time Swingers band members Sid Griffiths and Chip Jones, both African Americans from Baltimore, have appeared in a documentary about Falk. When they are invited to attend the film’s premier, Sid’s role in Falk’s fate will be questioned and the two old musicians set off on a surprising and strange journey.
From the smoky bars of pre-war Berlin to the salons of Paris, Sid leads the reader through a fascinating, little-known world as he describes the friendships, love affairs and treacheries that led to Falk’s incarceration in Sachsenhausen. Esi Edugyan’s Half-Blood Blues is a story about music and race, love and loyalty, and the sacrifices we ask of ourselves, and demand of others, in the name of art.”
It was nice to spend some time reading again this week after the busyness of the new job.
Here’s some more music from Charlie Hunter – he has many interesting albums to sample. And a great track I stumbled upon from Jimmy Smith on the Hammond organ.