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Last weekend in Austin (for now)
Oct. 3rd, 2005 09:00 amSaturday was the "barn dance" benifit in south Austin, on some nice land towards the end of Slaughter Creek Road. It started at noon; H & I got there about 1pm. The beautiful setting is called "Freedom Oaks". It includes someone's private house (or perhaps their "country house"), with various outer buildings and sheds, two stages, a goat pen, and more land running down to a creek and boat-launch. The crowd was sparce when we arrived. There were various barbeque trailors going.
Most of the music was Texas folky/Country rock, some of it quite good. A gal named Leann, I think, led a fine group singing some Janis Joplin style vocals. Some clever original "folk song" lyrics from a couple of performers. One fellow was rocking out on some middle eastern string instrument.
The schedual was quite loose, some folks who were supposed to show up didn't, and others not schedualed played.
The other New Orleans group was a trio of keyboard, clarinet, and drums. Marcel the keyboardist was excellent, with much Professor Longhair influence. They met as evacuees here in Austin. Afterwards one of the organizers was saying they couldn't belive they'd never played together before-- with all due respect to those fine musical gentlemen, I could, but the music was still enjoyable.
We never decided on a name for our group in advance. I refered to us as "The New Orleans Evacuees and Friends", Doc as "The Mystic Orphans and Misfits of Austin", and I heard Ben refering to us as the "Bayou (something...)". Doc alternated on percussion, tuba, and valve trombone. Mark Rubin (Reuben? I dunno he never gave me his card dispite my asking), the leader of the Ridgetop Syncopators (with which he plays tenor steel guitar) was on helicon (a relative of the tuba with 4 rotary valves), Ben Schenck on clarinet, and me on trombone. Another tuba player sat in with us for part of the time, so we had some bits of 3 brass basses, and others of 2 trombones. It had the feel of the type of backyard jam at a pool party or BBQ in New Orleans. We played shortly after it got dark, the crowd was filling out, and audience was quite enthusiastic about us, I think in part because it was something fun different from the obligitory guitar groups of Austin. Doc insisted we close out with KMFA (aka "Do What Ory Say" etc) which he'd heard on my cd.
Sunday morning my amazingly gracious host Bonner was even more wonderful, and dubbed me a set of dvds of early Betty Boop, from a limited edition laser disc set in his collection taken from best availible original negatives. (Anyone with only passing familiarity with Betty Boop who has never been impressed needs to know that the best stuff is the 1931-1933 cartoons, which is not what is most commonly seen in bargin bin videos).
In the afternoon over to Kim's for a jam & soak. The party was a bit slow in starting, with neither jamming nor soaking for the first couple hours, but good food and nice people. When it started going some of the folkie music was too depressing for more people than Hollie & I (I heard Robbie also requesting "how about something more upbeat") until Kim's housemate Effron, a very good straight-ahead jazz tumpeter, started playing good stuff with a string bass and guitar accompanyment.
I had to leave for a while-- gig at the Flamingo Cantina on 6th street, pretty much the same people as the previous night. We were one of several groups, billed as a "New Orleans Austin Gumbo Ya Ya". We planned on various trad numbers to play, but we wound up doing none of it. A Mardi Gras Indian (who I'd met at Nubian Queen Lola's) was there, and Ben suggested we do Professor Longhair's "Big Cheif" together, which we did. Marcel joined us on keyboards, Oscar Rouzan on clarinet. Good, though went on too long; the brass front line tried to stop it a few times but the Indians are wont to do very extended versions of stuff. A couple more Indian tunes-- "Shoe Fly" again going on way too long, it's basically one chord, but a sax player named Hilton and an Austin trumpeter came up and did some modernistic stuff against it which worked nicely; Ben went to the back and played congas.
Back to Kim's for a bit before crashing.
Today errands, errands, and packing up; head out tomorrow morning.
Most of the music was Texas folky/Country rock, some of it quite good. A gal named Leann, I think, led a fine group singing some Janis Joplin style vocals. Some clever original "folk song" lyrics from a couple of performers. One fellow was rocking out on some middle eastern string instrument.
The schedual was quite loose, some folks who were supposed to show up didn't, and others not schedualed played.
The other New Orleans group was a trio of keyboard, clarinet, and drums. Marcel the keyboardist was excellent, with much Professor Longhair influence. They met as evacuees here in Austin. Afterwards one of the organizers was saying they couldn't belive they'd never played together before-- with all due respect to those fine musical gentlemen, I could, but the music was still enjoyable.
We never decided on a name for our group in advance. I refered to us as "The New Orleans Evacuees and Friends", Doc as "The Mystic Orphans and Misfits of Austin", and I heard Ben refering to us as the "Bayou (something...)". Doc alternated on percussion, tuba, and valve trombone. Mark Rubin (Reuben? I dunno he never gave me his card dispite my asking), the leader of the Ridgetop Syncopators (with which he plays tenor steel guitar) was on helicon (a relative of the tuba with 4 rotary valves), Ben Schenck on clarinet, and me on trombone. Another tuba player sat in with us for part of the time, so we had some bits of 3 brass basses, and others of 2 trombones. It had the feel of the type of backyard jam at a pool party or BBQ in New Orleans. We played shortly after it got dark, the crowd was filling out, and audience was quite enthusiastic about us, I think in part because it was something fun different from the obligitory guitar groups of Austin. Doc insisted we close out with KMFA (aka "Do What Ory Say" etc) which he'd heard on my cd.
Sunday morning my amazingly gracious host Bonner was even more wonderful, and dubbed me a set of dvds of early Betty Boop, from a limited edition laser disc set in his collection taken from best availible original negatives. (Anyone with only passing familiarity with Betty Boop who has never been impressed needs to know that the best stuff is the 1931-1933 cartoons, which is not what is most commonly seen in bargin bin videos).
In the afternoon over to Kim's for a jam & soak. The party was a bit slow in starting, with neither jamming nor soaking for the first couple hours, but good food and nice people. When it started going some of the folkie music was too depressing for more people than Hollie & I (I heard Robbie also requesting "how about something more upbeat") until Kim's housemate Effron, a very good straight-ahead jazz tumpeter, started playing good stuff with a string bass and guitar accompanyment.
I had to leave for a while-- gig at the Flamingo Cantina on 6th street, pretty much the same people as the previous night. We were one of several groups, billed as a "New Orleans Austin Gumbo Ya Ya". We planned on various trad numbers to play, but we wound up doing none of it. A Mardi Gras Indian (who I'd met at Nubian Queen Lola's) was there, and Ben suggested we do Professor Longhair's "Big Cheif" together, which we did. Marcel joined us on keyboards, Oscar Rouzan on clarinet. Good, though went on too long; the brass front line tried to stop it a few times but the Indians are wont to do very extended versions of stuff. A couple more Indian tunes-- "Shoe Fly" again going on way too long, it's basically one chord, but a sax player named Hilton and an Austin trumpeter came up and did some modernistic stuff against it which worked nicely; Ben went to the back and played congas.
Back to Kim's for a bit before crashing.
Today errands, errands, and packing up; head out tomorrow morning.
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