Austin360 blogs > Bottlecaps & Wingnuts > Archives > 2008 > July
July 2008
The last B&W blog
Thank you, everyone, for your kind comments. It has been a fun 502 blogs and an interesting run.
We’ll see you down the road.
Dave, Shannon and the boy
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: By Dave Thomas
The (almost) last B&W blog
After more than three-and-a-half years, 501 blogs and 514 comments … it’s time for this blog to come to an end.
I know, despite planning this for about half a year now, I’m a bit sad myself.
Since the boy was born, this blog has been about him, my reactions to being a father and the occasional looks back at wilder times. But it didn’t start that way. Back in the early months of 2005, I volunteered to be a sort of John Kelso Jr.
You know, the everyday guy who eats hamburgers and drinks cheap beer and watches football on TV. I was supposed to offer my would-be (but not quite) blue-collar take on culture to help balance out the, uh, embrace of things trendy you’ll find elsewhere on this site.
But the blog morphed as I did. There were music reviews. A stretch of mountain biking commentary (with endless gushing over the Barton Creek Greenbelt). Then triathlon training. There was bar commentary, high school football poetry and more blathering about Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July Picnic than anyone but me cares to read. There was a bit of travel, but not enough.
I found a core group of readers, and then another when I started blogging about my son. I appreciate all four or five of you — even those whose constant suggestions and advice I found to be sometimes overbearing.
In the past year, this blog has offered no real value to Austin readers — at least not what you’d expect from a staff blog on Austin360.com. No, it’s simply been a personal blog of sorts, and that’s not a role I’m really comfortable with.
So, I move on.
There’s a few loose ends:
I never did get back to you on Joe Nick Patoski’s Willie Nelson biography … because I’m still reading it. But it’s excellent once the history hits Austin, full of little details to enthrall the most dedicated fan: Did you know that it was artist Jim Franklin who introduced Willie and Leon Russell?
The boy walks the walk, but talking the talk? Not so much. He’s getting there.
Did I lose the 45 pounds I gained since spring 2005 and return triumphantly to triathlons? No. But I’ve lost 15 and did manage to jog nearly a mile this morning (a far cry from the 7 miles I could jog two years ago … but, it’s a start).
And, finally, a not-forgotten request from a longtime friend. Back in August 2006, my buddy Scott asked me to write a blog about the Nutty Brown Cafe, heading out toward Dripping Springs. He had grown up just a mile or so from there, back when that area was “in the middle of nowhere.”
I said sure, I’d go there and write a blog about it. But pregnancy (Shannon’s … not mine) and fatherhood distracted me. Next thing you know, two years have passed.
There’s something in there about not going home again, life moving quickly and the increasing difficulty of slowing down enough to look back. Or maybe it’s just that I’m lazy, I don’t know.
Either way, we’re moving forward.
Here we go …
Permalink | Comments (7) | Post your comment Categories: By Dave Thomas
Wobble the line
When I asked the pediatrician why the boy wasn’t walking yet, he did not say “come on, look at the size of that boy’s head!”
But he pretty much said that between his noggin and belly, it was harder for him to balance on his own than it was for slimmer kids without a bowling ball for a head.
The boy didn’t like that answer, I guess. Within a week of that 15-month appointment he was walking all over the house, wobbling like a tiny drunken fratboy (if that’s not redundant).
He also likes to climb on top of the coffee table when I have my back turned, thrusting his arms triumphantly after reaching the summit. Pretty soon he’s going to learn some hard lessons about gravity. We already have had a wee busted lip.
Sorry about leaving that self-indulgent birthday blog up all last week. Things got complex around here and I couldn’t return to the blog. I can already see that I’ve only a few weeks before the boy starts running and chasing him will become my full-time fitness routine.
The boy examines dad’s new running shoes to see if they are up to the challenge.
And, hey, this is Blog No. 500. Thanks for reading all the way through.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: By Dave Thomas
Today I am 37
Happy birthday to me, I’m officially in my “upper 30s.”
Here it is, 37 years old, and A) the Belgians just purchased Anheuser-Busch and B) Brett Favre can’t leave well enough alone and stay retired.
From what I understand, Belgium has excellent beer. Why do they have to mess with my beer? Why do I fear a “New Coke” moment is on its way?
And Favre is on the road from transitioning from someone I would tell my son about in reverent tones to “Daddy, why is that old man wearing a football helmet?”
That’s what’s troubling me today, a welcome break from war, politics and people doing bad things to kids.
Today I’m back on the job after about two weeks of vacation and I feel all right, I guess. The boy is doing well — his most recent discovery is that if he brings me a book, I will read it to him — but that wasn’t the most exciting thing of the past week.
No, I sold something on eBay. Not something valuable. Not something useful. No, I sold a dancing Coke can from nearly 20 years ago … that does not work. And I said so on my listing.
I basically said “this is a piece of junk, but you might be drunk enough to buy it anyway.”
And someone did.
Very exciting. What else can I sell?
Permalink | Comments (7) | Post your comment Categories: By Dave Thomas
Willie Picnic ‘08: Report 2
Perhaps I was a little too quick to dismiss the Willie Nelson Fourth of July Picnic in Selma as something short of a real Picnic.
Given how it has evolved over the years, it fits right in. Besides, who am I to judge? A veteran of the Picnics in Dripping Springs or College Station or Gonzales might look at my beloved Luckenbach Picnics and say “Where’s the drugs? Where’s the nudity? Where’s the wildness? That’s not a real Picnic.”
So, sure. We’ll count it as a traditional Willie Picnic. Even though we were missing Leon Russell … where were you Leon?
My personal distaste for this year’s picnic was no doubt amplified by the fact that I was still sick from the whatever-it-was gastrointestinal bug that had struck me down last Tuesday. My Picnic partner was also ill, so I had to sit there by myself, feeling ill-at-ease with a stomach too rumbly to have any beer or enjoy the bad food.
Oh, I tried to have some beer. I was provided with several options for Bud Light: the 16-ounce draft beer for $7, the 16-ounce bottle beer for $8, the 24-ounce draft beer for $9, or the 24-ounce can for $10. Premium beer (or, beer snobs take note, what Verizon Wireless Amphitheater deemed to be premium beer) cost even more.
Mysteriously, they seemed to immediately run out of 16-ounce cups for the draft beer. So I forked over $9 for a 24-ounce cup of beer that I in no way could finish before it got warm. “This is the most I have ever paid for a beer,” I told the guy. He was not impressed.
I mean, seriously. Nine dollars for a beer?
This wasn’t peanuts. No they were $4, same as a bottle of water.
And there were people who seemed to have brought the whole family, multiple kids included, to this event. How on earth could anyone afford this?
I did notice that Verizon provided a “family zone” in the lawn seating area. A roped-off smoke- and alcohol-free area. It was largely empty throughout the day.
I do want to call out Event Staff No. 139. In the half-hour between musical acts, I had plenty of time to observe what was going on around me. Now Mr. 139 had been vigorously enforcing the no-smoking rule in the seating area through mean faces and violent hand gestures and fiercely guarding the gate leading to the higher-dollar seating area.
At one point, an older woman and her younger escort — we’ll assume it was her daughter — had to get up, I assume to use the restroom. She was seated at the front end of the upper-tier section that I was in, about 20 rows in front of me, and just next to the gate that led to a walkway between our section and the higher-priced sections.
If she could go through that gate, she would have a straight shot to the bathooms.
Now let me point out that this was no slightly older woman. Nor was she just lazy. No, she was hunched over with age, walking in tiny steps leaning on her daughter. This was a woman who had probably seen the Depression.
Would Mr. 139 let her through the gate? No. He did not budge. Instead, this woman had to walk back up the slick concrete ramp to the top of the amphitheater and shuffle all the way around to bathrooms.
An hour or so later, I saw the older lady and her daughter seated in padded folding chairs in the VIP section, directly in front of Mr. 139. She must have found the right person to complain to. Good. And Mr. 139, I hope it ate you up.
The house music provided what little entertainment we had between sets. The crowd sang along with Robert Earl Keen and “The Road Goes on Forever.” The crowd was puzzled by Bon Jovi and “Bad Medicine.” The crowd was insulted (well, at least I was) by Alan Jackson’s “Where I Come From.”
Let me share one of David Allan Coe’s quotes of the day: “… songwriters … songwriters … songwriters … there’s a lot of great songwriters here today and I’m one of them.”
Well, there was a lot of mumbling in between. But that’s what I remember.
There seemed to be a lot of young girls at the Picnic who had won the “you are NOT going to go out dressed like that” argument. They weren’t the only ones out of place. A few rows in front of me sat a guy who looked like an investment banker on a yacht, along with his wife, who looked like that rich aunt who never had any children but did have a little work done.
From my notebook: “You can’t swing an overpriced T-shirt without hitting someone selling overpriced beer.”
I spent much of the last 45 minutes of my night talking to a 75-year-old woman from Austin who had just driven down to see the Picnic because it seemed like fun.
I didn’t ask her name, because by the time it was obvious this was going to be more than a fleeting conversation, she had revealed so much it seemed disingenuous to say, hey, I’m a reporter of sorts and tell me who you are.
But it was a pleasant conversation, especially given that I had been at the Picnic for 9 hours already by myself.
She had enjoyed the Picnic — especially Merle Haggard’s set. But I’ll remember her for two wonderfully innocent questions.
First, we saw a police officer leading away a young woman in handcuffs. I looked over and she asked me “What on earth could you get arrested here for?”
And later she asked, “What song do you think Willie we open with?”
For those looking for other coverage of the Picnic, John Goodspeed of the San Antonio Express-News provided on-the-spot blogging. You’ll have to scroll down a bit to find ‘em.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: By Dave Thomas
Willie Picnic ‘08: Report 1
When the rain poured down at 1:15 p.m., just as Pat Green was beginning his set, it blew nearly halfway into the amphitheater, soaking many of us who thought we were in the “sheltered” seats.
The illusion of protection was enough for many wandering the grounds, though. They overwhelmed the staff and surged down the rain-slicked ramp between the seating sections. Those of us in the seats had to stand to see … and there we all were: Standing, wet, dancing and dripping, shoulder-to shoulder.
I was writing between the raindrops in my notebook. For a moment, it felt like a real Willie Nelson Fourth of July Picnic.
After that, it was just a concert.
Don’t get me wrong, it was a fine concert. In every shady spot with a seat, there was a senior citizen waiting it out to Ray Price and Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson. Underfoot there was no shortage of children enjoying the day. Everywhere else, there were music fans of all sorts waving their ($7, $8, $9 or more) beers in the air and having a good time.
I arrived as Del Castillo was finishing up just before noon and settled into my seat for what was going to be several interminable waits in between sets. There was a full 5 minutes of silence before someone thought to turn on a little house music. There were no emcees of any sort beyond the occasional appearance by a local disc jockey.
The 30-minute delays between sets were, simply put, the most exhausting part of the day. It’s just not fun looking at your watch at 5:05 and knowing that it’s not only more than 4 hours until Willie’s set, but that half of that time is going to down time, with nothing to do but buy $40 T-shirts, $9 cheeseburgers or a $4 bottle of water.
Asleep at the Wheel has gotten little respect in my past reporting on the picnics, typically because they take the stage at the beginning of the show, but after watching Friday’s show, I have to hand it to them. Ray Benson and Co. played all out — from “Miles and Miles of Texas” to “Happy Trails” — for a pretty sparse early afternoon crowd.
Johnny Bush took the stage at 2:15 with no introduction at all (this was typical) and seemed a little bitter at his hometown: “During our portion of the show what you hear is traditional country music,” Bush said. “It’s something you don’t hear much in this town anymore.”
That’s not overboard, but when he pulled out his fiddle and presented it to the crowd — “This is a fiddle” — there seemed to be little humor in his voice.
It was Ray Wylie Hubbard, who took the stage with son Lucas, harmonica guru Mickey Raphael and a drummer whose name I didn’t catch, who stole the show. “Snake Farm” sounded fantastic, but was quickly blown away by a bluesy instrumental that was essentially a jam-off between Lucas and Raphael.
“Drunken Poet’s Dream” was a stunner, as well. When Hubbard left the stage, he hadn’t played “Redneck Mother” and there had been no shouts for it. Good for Ray Wylie. It was a great set.
Next up, Billy Joe Shaver was at his animated best, shadow boxing and throwing verbal jabs at his stand-up bass player until … he wrapped up “That’s What She Said Last Night.”
“Worst song I ever wrote,” Shaver had said when he started the song. Toward the end of the song — the part where a cell phone is a tongue-in-cheek metaphor for the male sexual organ — Billy Joe is describing how next time he’s going to get a bigger model, one that vibrates, talking about how women like them “bigger and better.”
Then he steps in it: “Some of ‘em like the black model — bigger and better,” he said. There was a deathly pause in the crowd. “Like Cowboy Troy,” Shaver quickly added, referring to the black country singer. “Bigger and better.”
I don’t know if Shaver knew he had crossed the line or not, but he quickly wrapped up the song and launched into “I’m Just and Old Chunk of Coal (But I’m Going to be a Diamond Someday).”
Shaver just can’t seem to keep out of trouble.
A raucous and irreverent performance by David Allan Coe, up next, might have gotten Shaver off the hook, and over the past two Texas picnics in Fort Worth, I had gushed over how Coe’s performances had been dynamite stuff.
On Friday, it was not to be. Coe and band took the stage in all black, perhaps overlooking that the entire Verizon stage, gear and backdrop were solid black. The effect rendered him all but invisible to everyone except those nearest the stage. He looked small, not larger-and-meaner-than-life, as he opened with a rough version of “Storms Never Last.”
After an almost-non-musical, disjointed version of “If That Ain’t Country,” Coe picked up a little energy with “Take This Job and Shove It” and finally hit his stride with “The RIde.” But his set was all but over by then. His closer, “You Never Even Called Me By My Name,” did get the day’s first thunderous sing-along.
By 6:30 p.m., Los Lonely Boys had wrapped up their jams, there was still plenty of daylight, there had not been a single Willie sighting and the third-to-last band was coming up next. After the big rain and a few brief showers, it was cool and breezy in the shade.
I don’t yet have attendance figures, but it was far from sold-out. For $10, anyone with a spot on the lawn could upgrade to reserved seating.
The Cherokee Cowboys start up on time, looking sharp in their white button-up shirts. I’m counting 14 of them — with Ray Price there’s enough of them to make 5 Los Lonely Boys.
Ray sounds great and gets a lot of respect from the crowd as he sings “Heartaches by the Number,” “Night Life,” “Make the World Go Away” and “For the Good Times.”
During “You Don’t Love Me Anymore” he forgets the last few lines of the song and laughs to himself. “That’s what you’d call a senior moment” he tells an adoring crowd. I don’t know if it was spontaneous (I’d like to think it was), but he follows this up with a poignant version of “Time” — sounding just as sharp as he’s ever been.
It must be good to be Merle Haggard, knowing that you can pick any of dozens and dozens of huge hits to open the show with and it’ll be met with a roar. Haggard picked an easy pleaser, “Mama Tried,” but followed that up with a few slightly more obscure songs “That’s the Way Love Goes,” “Makeup and Faded Blue Jeans” and “White Line Fever.”
We hear “Rose of San Antone” for the third time, but it hardly matters. “Think I’ll Just Stay Here and Drink” gets the biggest reception of the night.
After a long delay, again, we’re primed for Willie’s first appearance of the “picnic” at 9:15 p.m.
And here comes a rock band? It’s 40 Points and they jam for a trio of songs. I don’t mind seeing 40 Points — Lukas Nelson can really play that guitar — but they should’ve been on the lineup. When you’ve waited for nearly 10 hours to see Willie, it’s time to see Willie
At 9:38, we finally do, and a minute later we hear picnic nirvana: “Whiskey River take my mind …”
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: By Dave Thomas
Willie July 4 picnic lineup
Here it is, 2 days until my big event of the year, and I’m struck down by gastrointestinal distress — I’m thinking it was the migas at one of Austin’s finer breakfast establishments.
God willing, should I recover in time, you’ll be able to find a review of the July 4 picnic in Selma right here, on this blog, the day after the show. And probably the day after that and the day after that, too.
Until then, here’s how Friday looks, according to the folks at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater:
Del Castillo opens the show at 11:30 a.m., 30 minutes after the gates open.
Asleep at the Wheel is next, followed by a Pat Green set. After that, Johnny Bush, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Billy Joe Shaver and David Allan Coe have 20-minute sets.
Los Lonely Boys and Ray Price begin the evening, followed by Merle Haggard.
A 1 hour and 45-minute show by Willie and Family closes out the show, ending at 11 p.m.
Seem like a small lineup for a 11.5-hour show? Well, the folks at Verizon have built in a 30-minute delay between each set. I know this offers some leeway in case a set runs long or Willie wants to jam, but it still seems like a lot.
And who’s missing? Well, to begin with, all the smaller acts that typically hold the early afternoon hours at the picnic. There’s no Pauline Reese, no Geezinslaws, no up-and-comers like Shooter Jennings.
But there’s somebody else who is missing: Leon Russell.
It’s hard to be definitive, but I don’t think he’s ever missed a traditional (outside, on the Fourth, in Texas) Willie Picnic.
I’m not sure how traditional this picnic will be, but it’s not going to be the same without Leon. Now I wonder why he’s not playing this year?
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: By Dave Thomas
