Denny arrived for his Austin “scouting trip” on Tuesday afternoon. His flight was delayed a few hours and so we skipped the David Grissom show at the Saxon Pub and headed straight to the Odd Duck for dinner.
The weather was nice and so we sat on the patio and enjoyed an outstanding meal. Some of the highlights of the plates we shared were: egg noodles with goat chili and avocado crema, nachos with grilled mushrooms and tahini chili sauce, and bavette steak with mushroom conserva and charred onion salsa verde. So many amazing flavour combinations! The scouting was off to a great start.
I shared the Austin Chronicle daily live music list with Denny before he arrived and was wondering if he would choose the same post dinner show that I thought he might. We share very close musical tastes and so I wasn’t surprised when he picked James McMurtry at the Continental Club gallery. The gallery is a tiny music room above the larger Continental Club that feels like a living room and has excellent sound. We both loved the intimate, solo acoustic show and Diana appreciated it as well.
James is the son of Larry McMurtry, the famous Western author (best known for Lonesome Dove), and his songs feel more like short stories than songs – so much colour and detail. His 12 string guitar playing was also very impressive. Here’s a clip of “Choctaw Bingo”:
And here’s my favourite from the evening, “Red Dress”:
We enjoyed the short walk back to the Catherine and then introduced Denny to the view from the Sky Bar. What a great start to the visit and perfect weather. We snapped this picture in front of the mural at Jo’s coffee to send to Anne.
Poor Diana had to leave on the bus back to Dallas on Wednesday morning – leaving the two of us unsupervised. She’s had poor luck on the bus trips lately and that continued as a truck dumped an entire load of lumber a few trucks in front of the bus. This caused Diana to be late for her client meeting in Dallas but at least she had a good story and accompanying picture.
I met Denny at El Alma for a yummy Mexican lunch on the rooftop patio. I think he enjoyed the food as much as I do.
After work, we took an Uber over to East Austin, a funky neighborhood that is rapidly gentrifying (like most of old Austin). We enjoyed a happy hour cocktail on Whisler’s patio and then walked to Kitty Cohen’s, another great patio with a small outdoor swimming pool to dip your hot feet in.
Our next stop was Rainey street – an area of Austin that I’d heard a lot about but hadn’t visited yet. It’s a street of historic houses that have been converted into restaurants and bars. I’ll let the pictures tell the story of our Rainey street ramble:
Now it was time for dinner and we chose G’Raj Mahal for a nice Indian. The food was very good with my only complaint being the watery sauces that were being passed off as chutney to accompany poppadoms. Even showing the waiter Google search images of chutney didn’t yield any helpful results. I did enjoy the meal and the patio setting a lot and look forward to visiting again soon. G’Raj Mahal is about a 15 minute walk from the apartment – just right for walking off a rich Indian curry.
We made one last stop on Rainey to listen to the Canned Beets at the Half Step. Apparently they’ve been playing every Wednesday night for 5 years. Another great music option for Wednesday night:
We finished up Wednesday just as we did Tuesday – with a visit to the Sky Bar. This time my friends Issac and Damon joined us – they had just finished up a work dinner with a vendor and I was impressed with their ability to gain entry up to the Sky Bar without the concierge calling me. Very resourceful boys.
Denny’s visit finished up with a very pleasant and relaxing lunch on the patio at Shady Grove. Denny bought himself a Continental Club t shirt that he’s sporting in this picture – he must have enjoyed that venue. Such a great visit but too short – looking forward to a return visit with Anne included.
I rode back to Dallas with Vinod on Thursday evening. These trips are hilarious as we share stories and educate each other on a myriad of topics. Vinod dropped me at 
Perry’s in Grapevine and Diana and Penelope picked me up there. We (Penelope was left outside glaring at a Jaguar parked in front of her) enjoyed some of their excellent steak tartare and then headed home. I complained about how spread out everything is in Dallas and McKinney after the compact, walkable area around the Catherine.
After the usual workouts and coffee and crossword on Saturday, we drove down to the Dallas International Film Festival.
We saw a film called “Nothing Stays the Same: The Story of the Saxon Pub”. This is an excellent documentary about one of my favourite music clubs in Austin and it won the Audience award at the South by Southwest film festival a few weeks ago.
A few years ago the land where the Saxon sits was put up for sale and the operators were looking for a new place to host music. The film director decided to create a record of the club, the owners and the musicians who call it home. He described it as his “love letter to the Saxon Pub”.
The film does a great job of telling the story of how people are attracted to Austin because of the great music and cultural scene. That drives up prices of everything and the musicians can’t afford to live there anymore. And the club owners can’t afford the rent either. It really is a tough problem. Many of our favourite performers are featured in the film and there wan’t a bad musical performance anywhere to be found.
There is a very happy ending to this particular story. Mr. Keller of Keller Williams realty steps in at the final hour and buys the land and tells the owner that he can continue to operate there as long as he wants. He also worked with the Austin mayor to put together a fund to help do the same for other iconic music venues. I look at Keller Williams in a whole new light now.
The documentary director, Jeff Sandman, and his team were on hand for a Question and Answer session after the film. This was an unexpected treat and it was obvious how much Jeff cares for the venue. A very nice experience and well worth the trouble we took to drive in extended thunder storms to get to the theater.
After the usual Sunday morning routine, we watched Tiger Woods pull off the amazing feat of winning his 5th Masters tournament. After that relaxation, I fixed Penelope’s windshield wipers and did some light weeding and trimming around the pool. Everything is in full bloom with all the rain and warmer weather. Our maple in front of the house seems particularly happy:
With all the activity this week, I was pleased to find a couple of hours of 
quiet time to finish up a book that I’ve been reading for several weeks. “The Unwinding of the Miracle” by Julie-Yip Williams is not a positive, uplifting book by any stretch. I won’t bring everyone down with a lengthy review, but it tells the story of Williams childhood in Vietnam, with cataracts that render her mostly blind, the family’s escape on a barely seaworthy boat, ultimate arrival in America, surgery to restore most of her sight, her graduation from Harvard Law and then, in her early forties, a 4 year battle with colon cancer. The book is very well written and brutally honest about all the challenges. The Epilogue by her husband is heart-breakingly hard to read. Let’s pick things back up now with some new music discoveries.
I love this song by Aretha Franlin with Duane Allman on guitar. It’s been on repeat play all week:
This live Ray LaMontagne song captured my attention and it sounds great on my home office system – I miss the Linn sound in my home office very much:
This Mellencamp song featured prominently in the excellent episode of “Billions” on TV this week:
And finally, an amazing song from Lukas Nelson and his band. You can certainly hear what they’ve learned from the last few years as Neil Young’s band: