A Long Music Day

Yesterday was a LONG day of alt-country music.

We roadtripped over to catch the Dead End Angels for an afternoon gig at Gruene Hall. They put on a fine show, as always, and I have tons of pics to stick up in the gallery later (I never mentioned that new addition of a few weeks ago, did I? It’s powered my Noel Jackson’s wonderful PhotoStack software). There was even sun in Gruene. Imagine that. I love that part of the state.

We roadtripped back so that we could catch The (new) Great Divide at the Firehouse.

Opening for them was Frank Neville and band. Neville was okay, but we thought we recognized a member of his band. Sure enough, sitting in on bass for him last night was none other than Bonnie Whitmore, whom we remembered from her days playing with Brent Mitchell (along with her sister Eleanor). Bonnie seemed pleased we remembered her, and came upstairs to visit with us afterwards. What a sweetie. Incidentally, she does a mean cover of “Gold Dust Woman” by Fleetwood Mac. It was definitely the highlight of the Neville set, which means only one thing: Bonnie, we’re ready for YOU to be more front and center in a band.

The Great Divide sounded good. The new lead singer is not Mike McClure, but he plowed through the old tunes unabashedly. It’s probably not fair to compare him to McClure, but it’s also kind of hard not to. They played some new, post-McClure stuff well, and it may grow on me over time. But I was a little slow to warm to it.

At the end of the evening, we ran across some doofus in a freebie ESPN jacket giving the doorman at the Firehouse a hard time. He was complaining that Tim McGraw’s bus had pulled through, and “someone at the door” told him the parking lot was full, to move on. Well, the parking lot wasn’t full, and the doorman told the dude nobody would have told him that. I mentioned something along the lines that whoever DID tell McGraw to move on probably had good taste. ESPN jacket dude then announced that he was affiliated with MCA Nashville, and needed to go inside and use the phone. My response — “MCA Nashville? That makes you part of the problem.”

Obviously, the dude was enjoying dropping names and acting important. I don’t think he was affiliated with McGraw or MCA (hint: not having a cell phone is usually a clue). But why the hell go to the best alt-country joint in town, and act like Nashville is a big damn deal? Hell, if you say you’re affiliated with Nashville at most shows there, you’re likely to get the hell beat out of you. It wouldn’t surprise me if some regular in the parking lot did tell Tim McGraw to move along.

So, anyway, we saw a lot of good alt-country music yesterday, we got to rip on Nashville music a bit, and hopefully Tim McGraw’s bus ran over him or something.

I’m off to a friend’s to watch the Super Bowl.

(Update) And on the trip home from the Super Bowl watch, Callie’s Cobra got sideswiped by a drunk, who ran a red light and disappeared. Nice. The car isn’t that damaged, and we weren’t hurt, but we didn’t get a license plate #. So that’ll be a nice chunk of a deductible out of the comprehensive/collision coverage. Thanks, asshole.