Flanfire

After spending half the morning hiking with my daughter Melody and grandson Caleb (in his stroller) from the IH-35 bridge to the Stevie Ray Vaughn memorial and back, I had a second shot with the kid (age 10 months) after dropping off the wife at Borders Westgate for a poetry jam featuring one of her co-workers. Caleb and I trekked over to Maria's Taco X-Press to catch up with Slim Richey and Leeann Atherton (with the fabulous Francie Mojo on bass) for her Thursday night jazz set. [This music has been memorialized in a limited edition CD which is fun to listen to.] Well, Leeann is looking GREAT these days - longer hair, slimmer waist and more smiles than ever - and her jazz singing just gets better the more she does it.

But wait - there's more! Joining Slim on stage on guitar was the one, the only -- Austin's premiere flamenco player -- Teye! Teye also did a few songs with the wonderful Belen (his Spanish flamenco dancer wife) -- and then a second set of Slim, Francie, and Leeann began with jazz fiddle wizard Martin Norgaard (whom I had last seen backing Karen Mal at Waterloo on 38th back in February). Caleb was astounded by all of this fabulous music -- and by Leeann's personal attention.

The boy is a music lover -- I wish he had been able to be with us at Maria's on Tuesday evening, when we got to see the 28-month-old future superstar Antone Leikam join his mom Shelley and dad Eric on stage with the Livin' Dedd! Antone performed only on one song -- but he shook the eggs with aplomb, keying his moves to those of drummer Perry Drake and dancing along as he played to the lead guitar riffs of GUITAR STUD KYLE JUDD (who always makes you glad you came to hear him play). I remember Antone's birthday party - four months ago - when he got a little drum set and immediately began banging out padiddles to one of his mom's songs as if he had been in on the recording. The lad is a true prodigy, taught well by his dad and mom but gifted from birth. Curly blond hair, too!

Very high on our list of pleasures at that Tuesday event was the opportunity to visit with our pal Steve Ulrich and his galpal Elizabeth, whom he had met while living in Guatemala much of last year. Steve got up and led a reconstituted Steelbeam in one of his own compositions, and then PJ Lyles and Steve joined lead vocals on the classic Boilermaker Blues - also featuring Antone and Shelley performing the Beamettes boilermaker dance.