There

Austin, Texas

These things don't grow in Arkansas

As we approached Austin, you could see the looming gray skies and I realized how little I had considered the concept that it could rain. Amtrak was running about 35 minutes late at this point, and it was those exact 35 minutes we would have needed to avoid getting completely soaked upon arrival.  We managed to meet and greet Mychal, and get most of the gear and children in the car before the rain came pouring down. It was the checked bag that got Zac wet, the rain started coming down, and he had to wait for the Amtrak guys to unload all the luggage before anyone would pass over the checked luggage.  Even though it was just sitting in a pile in the middle of the walkway (getting wet) no one would overstep the rules of the Amtrak, and everyone politely waited for the guy to come over and distribute the luggage.  I imagined someone would take it and run, but no, people are just not really that way.

We get in the car and requested to go somewhere “cheap and ethnic”, and it was decided that Ethiopian would be a good choice, as Mychal couldn’t even see out her windows from the rain, and Zac was constantly wiping the windshield to keep it from fogging up. Unsafe is a good word for this event.

The ethiopian restaurant was empty, and our friend Moody soon showed up, and we got a big platter of delicious goopy looking food that you had to eat with your hands.  Apparently that restaurant hadn’t gotten their order of cutlery in yet. The kids were less than excited about the “kids menu” which included corn lentil roll thing, or chicken lentil roll thing. Served with salad and drink.  Salad=greens with onions.  My kids favorite!!! It is at this moment that the things we look forward to when we travel become undeniably different.  They were looking for 45 trips to various pizza joints and fast food playgrounds, and I am looking forward to eating something other than fried catfish in a restaurant. Hmmmm.  Mmmmmm.

Paul and Dorothy would never miss the show. What show?

After tearing through the restaurant for an hour, we decide to head on over to Cheer Up Charlies.  This venue was outside, and has an old airstream in the backyard, and I was already feeling that we wouldn’t be able to play because of the rain, but I was amiss. We find the place, and go on in.  There were a bunch of ladies watching a black and white documentary, and the lady behind the counter assured me that there would be no music that night, there was nothing booked, she had never heard of the guy who booked me, and that we could play after 11 when movie night was over. OK.  That is ridiculous.  I go outside and learn from the guy who booked me, that in fact he had had a falling out with the place, and they were jerks, and how they had been supposed to let me know.  Well they had not!  Instead we crash angry lesbian film night with our unwelcome happy music…oh the joy.  Dorothy was kind enough to buy a round of drinks, and as I sipped my kombucha tea on tap (vinegar) I realized I was about ready to get the hell out of there.  As were all the angry ladies straining to hear the poor audio on the documentary, they bid us farewell, and I bid Cheer Up Charlies farewell.  In my heart, I’m sure i will never go there again, I’m just wondering if it is worth a facebook slam or not.

Our friends, with full support gear on, come out to not listen to us play.

We all headed back to Moody’s acre near downtown to relax, put the kids to bed, and get some ZZZZZZZZZZs.
As always, it is so great to see some dear and near friends, and Austin is full of them.  I love it.

Thursday brought some hanging out with Moody, some grocery shopping, some coffee drinking, some house viewing, and a little breathing room.  To this point, there had not been a down time.  Moody has an acre, and when he bought this property 5 years ago, it had a doublewide trailer, and a bunch of rubble.  He has slowly gone through the rubble, and has built himself a house on the back of the lot.  It is amazing….He got an old house on craigslist, and moved it over to his land, he raised the roof, and built it in. It is truly a work of art, and I think everyone should have at least one house just like this.  Check it out:

Does this look like a fariytale or what?!

Mid afternoon my old friend Dana Fargus came by with two of her girls and picked us up, whisked us away to Cedar Park, and fed my kids pizza.  That made all five of the kids very very happy.  Pizza, kids, spacious suburban home, that is what my kids are talking about. That is what they want to see more of on the train trip.  But alas, it couldn’t last forever, we headed in for our gig at Flipnotics and hour later.  Dana Fargus is my old friend from Tallahassee.  She and I spent 13 years together at North Florida Christian School.  Go Fargus!  Dana and Brad (Brad who had been home all day with the three girls) decided to leave their herd of children at the house with the grandparents, and just come out for a date night type situation.

The Smith Wallace children unite!!

The girls, silently protesting being left. They may never forgive us for this, I hope this doesn't effect our cool status.

We all head into Austin central, and enjoy the view from the interstate as we slowly hedged ourway downtown.  Oh dear.  Me, I panic.  I better call Flipnotics, tell them we are going to be a little late.  I call, and whoever answered the phone decided to hang up on me.  Friendly Austinites! Too hip for a phone call about tardiness. I know, in hindsight, it was a terribly uncool thing to do, and you really put a cool person in a bind when you make them respond to such a dorky thing from a musician.  Musicians are always late!  We are supposed to be late! Well, I chalked it up to a bad connection and we drove on.  When we got to the venue, we hurried in to find three guys setting up microphones and tuning their guitars.  Oh!  What is this? Do you want to join our band?!! No actually, this is the ambassador to Denmark, with a team of Danish musicians, ready to play THEIR WEEKLY MUSIC SLOT from 6-7:30.  That is our gig time.  Side note, they are late, they aren’t calling in and apologizing.  They feel right on time.  Ok, note to self, CHILL OUT.  We have a talk, talk to the other lady there, our guy who booked us is in Europe (of course) and they don’t know what or how this could have happened.  We agree to split the bill, and go get a coffee.  Dana and Brad are there, the kids are telling them all about their exciting year, going to school like NORMAL kids and keeping a schedule, and not having to put up with so many harebrained idears from their mom and dad, but now they are stuck on a train for the summer. Soon Moody and Edy show up, and we play Flipnotics an hour of our best songs.

Rocking the Flipnotics folks, HARD

My favorite part was when this music loving team of coffee makers shut the door into the cafe about 2 minutes into our gig.  OK, they book it, they shouldn’t have to listen to it too. The show went well, our friends from the freak show came out, and we rocked everyone till some coffee cups started breaking.  Yeah!!!!

After the show, we left soon after, and headed back to Moody’s house for some libations and rock-n-roll jamming.  The kids stayed up till midnight, even though I had tucked them in quite a bit earlier. ok, they are rock stars too.

Model Zephyr

Thursday morning we woke up to the sound of sunshine, and made our way over to Paul and Dorothy’s downtown condo.  Their 600 square feet of heavenly bliss in the skyline. We managed to get an unreal amount of luggage in their little compact hybrid car, and enjoyed some more of Austin’s fine traffic patterns. Dorothy cooked us up a delicious shrimp pasta dinner, and chocolate cake and strawberries to boot. Homecooked meals are hard to come by out here on the rugged road, so anything with positive nutritional content is much appreciated. We skyped Bob and Karen on their large flatscreen TV, and generally tried to rub it in that we were in the big city, but they had their “fresh garden picks” ammunition, and put us all to shame.  We’ll get them next time, we’ll skype them from the snack coach and hold up our cheese pizza and really let them see how glamorous it has all gotten.

Already, Austin seems like such a blur

We got the Amtrak Station and got one more hang out session with Edy and Dorothy, and luckily the train was late, so we got a little extra friend love in.  Ok, and a pepsi.  Farewell thee Austin.  Maybe next time you can get your act together.