Flanfire

September 4, 2003

Last Saturday while grinning at Gruene Hall with my Nancy to the tuneful muse, Shelley King, and her band, I ran into Jessica Shepherd who was handing out flyers about her gig two doors down at the New Braunfels Museum of Music and Arts (what a cool place it turned out to be). She was hosting a songwriters in the round with - ta-da - fellow redhead Carolyn Wonderland and the inimitable Susan Gibson (whose guitar has the same last name).

This sounded like a gig not to miss - Carolyn is just back from 60 days on the road, and Jessica keeps talking about going to Australia again - for two whole years. And Nancy had never seen Susan Gibson (though we will be on a cruise with her in October). And the gig was to be in Gruene - which can only be explained as the Texas equivalent of Mecca.

So we slog through the rush hour traffic until we hit open road south of Ben White, and trek on down in time for a quickie dessert (blackberry cobbler) at the Guadalupe Meat and BBQ place just at the big curve on Gruene Road. There was a little deer who had lost its mother hanging out, and the wait-person said they were trying to figure out what to do to help the creature survive. I thought - there is plenty of grass in the backyard, and so long as he (or she?) does not cross the fence and get too close to the "bad bull" reportedly across that fence the deer could hang out for quite a while and get bigger. After all, that's what they do in Lakeway.

But I digress. We pull into the parking lot and enter the facility - and found a cool new book based on Steven Fromholtz's Texas Trilogy (see the Lyle Lovett double CD of Texas songwriters music for a modern rendition of these great songs) that costs $29.95 and will make a great Christmas present for those who have everything. They also have a lot of corny stuff for sale and rent - and it only cost five dollars if you were not a member (free for members) to get in. But they had free beer (for a donation, of course) and wine and even sodas for the weary and thirsty. Plus a great exhibit of photos of musical instrument makers from around the nation - comes from the Smithsonian (with which this museum is affiliated) and a whole bunch of cool instruments upstairs (too much of a trek for these tired legs tonight).

The stage is big enough - Willis Allen Ramsey is playing there next Thursday - and an acoustic set by the Cosmic Dust Devils on the first Thursday (that's the monthly gig deal) in October. The sound is great, because the acoustics in this two-level building (looks like a barn from the outside) are quite fine.

This is the first time that any of these women have been on stage with each other, but obviously Jessica in particular knows a lot of her colleagues' songs, because she does some great harmonies. And Carolyn plays a bunch of lead guitar riffs on her Gibson blues boy (her baby) - and also adds a few backup vocals - as does Susan.

The evening starts off with a song from Susan, then Jessica and Carolyn in back-to-back songs show off their whistling talents. Susan admits she is whistling-deprived but keeps trying, but she scores bigtime by opening (as noted before) with a tribute to Carolyn, whom she saw a decade or so ago at the Last Concert Cafe in Houston before she (Susan) was even in a band. Later, when Carolyn played lead on one of her songs, she acknowledged that she had long dreamed that one day this would happen - and tonight it kept happening.

A highlight of the night was Jessica's tribute to the beauty parlor - at which the ladies were not just washing and rinsing hair but there were some "perming, teasing, filing, smiling, coffee drinking, beehive making" good times. that one got everybody into the act - even though Carolyn and Susan appeared to know little of the pleasures of the parlor experience.

As we began the long drive back home to Austin, my wife leaned over and thanked me for taking her. Nuff said about THIS experience!