Flanfire

Friday night and what to do? Clearly obvious - take the wife to Central Market to see Natalie Zoe and her four-piece jazz band. Good choice - especially because the band is ON, Nat is hot, and best of all she has special guests singing with her. That would be the one, the only Miss Donna Hightower - who in her seventies has a voice that makes Sarah Vaughan seem boring. Great news! Someone has been transcribing Donna's old LP's (many of them available only in Europe, where she lived for three decades after spending some time in Texas in 1959 after completing her leg of a tour with B. B. King). Two of them will soon be available - including the 1959 debut album - and more later. Also on stage for part of the show were Nat's 15-year-old daughter Sasha Ortiz and her pal Danielle. All of the women really rocked out! Great show.

Earlier in the week we stopped by Threadgill's on North Lamar to catch Brennen Leigh and her band -- with special guest Tom Pittman of the Austin Lounge Lizards. Threadgill's World HQ waiter and San Angelo native Dylan McDougall sat in and offered up three or four of his fine fine original ballads.

And I almost forgot to mention that last Sunday, we went out to the Blue Theater to catch part of Frontera Fest - this was choreographer-dancer Ellen Bartel's Black Things, which featured good friends Amy Cone (who is also in the Body Choir) and Ceci Proeger (whose husband Mark is on staff at Hope Chapel in my neighborhood). This is a very avant garde production set mostly in very dark lighting. There is some funny stuff and some very heavy stuff -- but it was a fabulous production. Earlier we also went to the Blue Theater to see 10 independent choreographers (including pal Genie Barringer) perform four 1-minute dances, some with extra dancers. This was an interesting show as well. In April, I understand, my pal Catherine Berry will be performing her one-woman show at the Hyde Park Theater.

No time for more right now.