Like a Lighthouse to Stormy Seas

This comment - part of a review of Eiza Gilkyson’s latest album, Secularia - really resonated with me
as we watched, with due reverence, awe, and massive enjoyment, the performance by Three Women and the Truth on Sunday evening. The reviewer’s commentary had referenced the profound, if often deceptively simple, wisdom-filled lyrics which Eliza so frequently creates in her song-writing - comments which could equally be attributed to the writing of the other two of this particular threesome, Gretchen Peters and Mary Gauthier. All three, intentionally though not universally, put female characters and the female experience to the fore in so much of their writing, with great subtlety and wonderful melody.

You can probably guess from the above that we HUGELY enjoyed the gig which had brought us to Austin this year - it was everything, and more, that we’d been hoping for, and well worth the trip. What was unexpected was the hilarity of the exchanges between the three women in their between-song repartee amongst themselves and with the audience - they frequently had us all in stitches, and it made for a very intimate and personal, almost house-concert, atmosphere. Truly wonderful.

As an added unexpected bonus, after the gig was over, and we’d managed to have brief one-to-one conversations with each of the three artists at the signing desk, we were offered a lift back into the City by a young couple with a typically Texan pick-up truck. (the One World Theatre is a full 15 miles from the Centre, with no public transport, and, it transpired, unreliable wi-fi which scuppered our intended taxi ride back) Much to our amazement, it turned out that Bella (her boyfriend driving the pick-up was Noah) is one of Eliza Gilkyson’s granddaughters, and a fledgling musician herself. You can just imagine how much we enjoyed our conversation on the 25-minute ride home! Since then, Bella (Castillo) has been kind enough to forward us a link to her first recorded song ‘On Your Way Home’, which is quite beautiful. So, maybe the start of a fifth generation of great musicians and poets in the family!

This being Austin, of course, we’d already had some truly great music at the weekend. At the suggestion of and accompanied by our wonderful hosts, Veronica and Jay, who almost feel like old friends already, we went to a great rock ‘n’ roll session courtesy of the Denny Freeman Band, who played a ‘Happy Hour’ gig at the Saxon Bar on Friday evening - for free! A good many venues in Austin will have two or three separate gigs each evening, some of them 7 evenings a week - maybe starting at 6, 8 and 10, and often featuring truly world-class musicians, and often, as in this case, with no cover charge or charge for the first of the bands of the evening. It’s no wonder Austin is known as the live music capital of the world. Within maybe 3 or 4 beats of the opening number of Denny’s band on Friday, more than half of the audience was up and dancing - despite there being no specific dance-floor - and the band rocked the whole place to the rafters for the first two hours of the evening. Amazing! We learned, too, that Denny, a brilliant player of electric blues guitar, amongst other instruments, was a one-time teacher of one of Austin’s most famous guitarists, the late Stevie-Ray Vaughan, whose statue we see most days as we walk into town from our ‘home base’. We’re hoping to see older brother, Jimmy Vaughan, later this week, thanks to a tip-off from Veronica and Jay.

The Denny Freeman Band

 Saturday was a relatively music-free day for us, though. We were lucky enough to be invited to dinner at the home of Donna and Phil, the parents of our friend, Danny, both of whom we’ve met before, so a great treat to get together again with these warm-hearted and fascinating people. Danny and Maizy Rae collected us mid-afternoon from our accommodation, so that we could get there in time to watch the football match between Danny’s team, Texas University Longhorns, who were playing the Christian University of Texas. We did our very best to understand the rules and strategies of American football, though I think more practice is needed! It didn’t help, of course, that we were enjoying our conversations with Phil and Donna, at the same time as being hugely entertained by the antics of the gorgeous and charming 2-year-old Maizy. We didn’t see the whole of the game before it was time for dinner, so Danny was keen to get Maizy back home to bed soon after dinner, in order to watch the final part of the game on ‘catch-up’ TV. He took his leave of the four of us, with warnings NOT to reveal the result of the game to him before he could watch it at home. We learned, though, that Danny would have needed to take a circuitous journey home, to avoid being tipped off about the result by the lighting on a massive spire on the University’s campus - which always lights up with the team colours when they win (as they did), to broadcast the result to the whole of Austin!

Danny and Maizy Rae.

Only three full days left in Austin now, until we fly to New York on Wednesday. Still lots of time for plenty more music ….

Three Women and The Truth ...

... and the truth is that it is three women who have lured us back to Austin, Texas, for the start of another of our 'major retirement adventures'.   We have several times been to see each of the three women in question - Mary Gauthier, Eliza Gilkyson, and Gretchen Peters, all truly great singer-songwriters in their own right - when they've been touring in the UK with their own bands.   We've long known that they occasionally gig together under the title of Three Women and the Truth, and have been waiting for several years to see them together.   Seems, though, that they can never organise time in their busy schedules to gig together anywhere outside of their home country - they're residents in Nashville (Mary and Gretchen) and Austin (Eliza).   So when, earlier this year, we saw that they were gigging in Austin this coming Sunday (23 September), we decided to stop waiting and just go for it.

So, on Tuesday (18th Sept), we flew out on a direct flight from Gatwick to Austin, courtesy of Norwegian Airlines and their wonderful Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane (we can recommend it, y'all), and are now happily ensconced in our quirky/artsy/slightly bonkers Airbnb accommodation, just slightly south of the Colorado River, within walking distance of downtown Austin just across the bridge.

 Already, our host, Veronica (who matches pretty well the descriptive words we've used for the property itself!), has invited us to join her, her partner and some friends, at a little jazz cafe on Wed evening.   That sounds like fun.   We've also already heard from our Austin-based singer/songwriter friends, Danny Schmidt and Carrie Elkin, who've invited us for cocktails and dinner at their house on Thurs evening, when we'll have a chance to re-acquaint ourselves with their just 2 years-old daughter, Maisy Rae.   How great is all that?!   And how lucky are we?!

Our Airbnb Place in Austin

Talking of Danny and Carrie, we had a really spooky coincidence within minutes of our arrival here in Austin.   Our Quadrangle next-door neighbour, Becca, posted us a photo of her Uncle Mike (a music promoter in the UK whom we've never met) together with Carrie, whom he'd 'bumped into' at the Americanah festival just this past weekend!   How coincidental was that?!   We hadn't even known that they knew each other (why should we really?).   However - and, sorry about all the exclamation marks - but OMG! 

Outside Our Airbnb Place

Six Degrees of Separation

It seems that Frigyes Karinthy was right!

As you will of course know, he's the Hungarian author who posited the theory, way back in 1929, that any two individuals in the world could be connected through, at most, five acquaintances.   Well, after our first spooky coincidence with Becca's Uncle Mike knowing our friends, Danny and Carrie, we experienced another similar, if slightly less surprising, coincidence when we went out to a lovely open-air jazz cafe (Juliet's Italian Kitchen, on Barton Springs Road) with our host, Veronica, and her partner, Jay, on Wednesday evening.   He'd asked us about our plans for the week, and we mentioned we were visiting these two friends of ours the following evening.  "Oh, sure" he said casually, "I know Danny and Carrie.  I've interviewed Danny for my radio programme before now.   Lovely people".   Through that conversation, we learned that Jay is a well-known presenter/DJ on Austin's KUT radio station, a well-known and popular local figure in the music scene, though not a musician, himself.   So, chain-link network theory is alive and well, it would seem.

The music and food at Juliet's were both wonderful, and we were introduced to several friends who gradually squeezed themselves onto our table as the evening progressed.   The conversations between us all centred mainly on the twin disasters of Brexit and Trump and, fortunately for us, this being Austin, the least red-necked, most liberal place in the whole of Texas - there was much meeting of minds and mutual commiseration going on.   

Juliet's Kitchen: Andy's Forefinger; Barbara; Our Host Veronica; Jay the DeeJay

Our next evening, with Danny, Carrie, their 2-year-old daughter, Maizy Rae, and their friend, Phil Collins (no, not that one), was equally wonderful, with similar conversational themes, interspersed with much more focus upon the music scene, gigs or artists we enjoy in common, or wish we'd seen live before it was too late.   This talk, of course, mainly after Maizy Rae had been put to bed: until then, all 5 of we adults just focused all our attention on this sociable, gorgeous little girl who had us all eating out of her hand! 

Maizy Rae

During the day-time on both days - searingly hot (mid-30s) and steamingly humid - Andy and I had mainly ambled about, re-aquainting ourselves with the City's sights, monuments, art galleries, riverside walks, and Texan bars.   

The Changed Austin Skyline

We could clearly see, especially looking across at the City skyline from the south bank of the Colorado River, the proof of the headline we'd seen some while ago, that Austin is the fastest-growing City in the whole of the US right now.   Indeed, we were disappointed to note how many of the sparkling new, chrome-and-glass high-rise buildings have now obliterated, from that riverside viewpoint, some of the once most iconic of the not-so-old-themselves skyscrapers, including Frost Bank Tower, which had once appeared like a giant owl-like figure glowering across at the Congress Bridge bat roosts. Progress, I suppose.

Mexican Gallery on Congress

Guess Who: Mexican Gallery on Congress

This evening, we're off for some more, highly-recommended live music at the Saxon Pub on South Lamar - a place we visited with our long-time friends, Dave and Steph, almost exactly 12 years ago.