keith.robertson@aig.com – Page 38

Best of 2018 Lists

Top 10 Restaurants, 5 Best Destinations, Best 20 books of 2018, Top Places to Live in America.

Over the last few years, a lot of communication seems to come in the form of ranked lists. This year I decided, if you can’t beat them, why not join in?

The last couple of hours have been spent scrolling back through all the blog posts of 2018 in search of my favourite concerts, books, and records of the year (while keeping one eye on the Colts versus Texans playoff game – not going well for the Texans so far). Wow, we covered a lot of ground and saw some great performances last year! From tiny jazz clubs to arena shows to classical performances at Lincoln Center – a wide variety of venues and genres to choose from.

Best Concerts of 2018

Curtis Stigers (Birdland, NY) Diana and I talked about this list and spent no time at all debating our top pick for concert of the year. We both loved the Curtis Stigers concert that we saw at Birdland prior to Denny and Anne arriving in New York for Denny’s 50th birthday trip. This was more surprising given that neither of us had heard the name Stigers prior to the concert. I bought the tickets purely on the basis of the write up on the Birdland website. Within the first 10 seconds of Curtis’ opening song, “I’ll be Home” by Randy Newman, I was sold. The arrangements, variety of songs, and quality of performance were all top notch. We were both completely aligned on staying for the late set and were very pleasantly surprised to find it was mostly completely different music, ending the way it started with “I’ll be Home”.

2. Band of Heathens (Kessler Theater, Oak Cliff) Why is this band not famous? They have amazing talent, a great sound, look great (according to McD), and put on excellent performances. We first saw them on Austin, again purely based on a magazine write up, as they performed a closing show for the venue “Momo’s” where they formed as a band. We left amazed at our fortune of lucking into the show. Since then, we must have seen them 10 or more times at various venues in Texas and Louisiana. Their Thanksgiving week concert at the Kessler was a special highlight – they performed their cover of the Ray Charles album, “A Message From the People”, in entirety and book-ended it with some of their most popular songs. Both Diana and I can very easily get their version of “Abraham, Martin and John” stuck in our brains on hearing the fist line, “Has Anybody Here Seen My Old Friend Abraham?”.

3. Nils Lofgren (Kessler Theater, Oak Cliff) Can you tell that the Kessler puts on one amazing show after another? Best venue ever! I’ve loved Nils since high school and his Live album from the Glasgow Apollo (signed copy obtained after this show, when he told me that tour was his favourite of his career). The show was particularly special as Lofgren showed what a consummate performer he is. His guitars had been stolen the night before, and you would never have known by the quality of the performance with borrowed gear, and his willingness to stay after the show to greet all of his fans.

4. Joshua Redman (Blue Note, New York) This is the best jazz performance that I’ve seen so far (granted, it’s only been a few years that I’ve been attending jazz shows). Diana and I saw Joshua as a special guest in the tiny Village Vanguard and were amazed at his saxophone mastery (that’s the night that he shared some of D’s champagne). This show was a complete master class on the saxophone with a beautifully varied repertoire that showed off his amazing versatility and musicality.

5. New York Philharmonic (Lincoln Center, New York) The precision of the performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto #5 was ridiculous. I’ve heard a few orchestras but never one so completely synchronized and rehearsed but still entirely musical and flowing. This is one of a few classical pieces that I could sing form start to finish (my Mum had a record that was played quite a bit, one of her favourites from her time teaching in France and living with Aunt Louise).

Excellent shows that didn’t make the top 5 include The Eagles and Chris Stapleton at ATT Stadium, Elton John’s farewell tour at American Airlines Center, James Hunter Six at the Kessler, Mark Broussard at the Kessler, Marcia Ball and Shelley King at the Kessler, Doyle Bramhall with guest Lukas Nelson at Antone’s (my first great Austin show), Marcia Ball, Shelley King, and Carolyn Wonderland’s Christmas Show at Poor David’s Pub, Nick Lowe and Los Straightjackets at the Kessler (with the amazing performance of “Peace, Love, and Understanding”), Jethro Tull’s 50th anniversary show at the Beacon in NY, the Bacon Brothers at the Kessler, Los Miguels in a private concert in the courtyard of El Taminamba in San Miguel de Allende, Big Sam’s Funky Nation at the Kessler (with dancing by Diana on stage), John Fohl and Johhny Sansone at Chickie Wah Wah in New Orleans (amazing performance of “Do or Die”), Devon Allman and Duane Betts at the Kessler (half the audience in tears during “Blue Sky”), Kenny Baron’s excellent piano at the Jazz Standard in NY, John Oates soulful blues show at the Kessler, Soullive and Robert Randolph at the Blue Note in NY, and finally Rayo Bros at the Gasa Gasa in New Orleans during jazzfest.

Wow! 2018 might be the best year of live music I’ve experienced in my 54 years on this planet.

Best Books of 2018

Every Note Played by Lisa Genova. I loved this book and have recommended it to several people. I hadn’t read “Still Alice” prior to this and that probably enhanced my enjoyment as I understand her books may be a bit formulaic. The empathy in Genova’s writing about a musician losing the ability to play is extraordinary.

2. The Reminders by Val Emmich. This was a very close second choice. I had never heard of the author when I visited Interabang books in Dallas and received such a high recommendation for this book. It ended up completely sucking me in to the extent that I didn’t do a number of planned activities in order to finish the book in one sitting. Such a creative story about memory and relationships.

3. The Rules of Civility by Amor Towles. “A Gentleman in Moscow” was one of my favourite books of 2017 and I was delighted to discover this previous novel by Towles when I accompanied Diana on her work trip to St Petersburg. Such an excellent job of capturing New York society in the 1920s. I anxiously await his next novel.

4. The Soloist by Steve Lopez. This was a very good movie (I don’t like to see movies before reading books) and an even better book. The understanding of mental illness and homelessness that Lopez communicates is stunning. The backdrop of unrewarded musical ability (at a virtuoso level) is heartbreaking in the extreme.

5. Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult. This is the most relevant book on my list for today’s society. The unnecessary and embedded hatred portrayed in the book seems to become more and more part of our political system and society on a daily basis. While somewhat egregiously depicted, the characters ring true as examples of the bigoted and inflexible positions taken by so many these days.

Other books I enjoyed this year include Calypso by David Sedaris (an excellent Christmas read), Less by Andrew Sean Greer (a great recommendation by Interabang books), Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng (surprisingly enjoyable and creative), The Sportswriter by Richard Ford (excellent writing and led me to Independence Day that I’m currently loving), Famous Father Girl by Jamie Bernstein (great anecdotes on the musical master), A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (classic Irving and a bit of a long slog), A Visit from the Goon Squad, Manhattan Beach, and Emerald City, a trio of books by Jennifer Egan (a very rewarding discovery this year), Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks (in a year when vintage typewriters seemed to appear everywhere).

Best Records of 2018

Several of my top records of 2018 were actually released in 2017 and not noticed by me until 2018. I’m going to claim a 9 month wiggle area for inclusion in the current year – it’s my list and I’ll do what I wanna.

John Prine – The Tree of Forgiveness. Prine’s first album in many years is not his finest but still the best of the year for me. Sublime songwriting coupled with an aged voice that communicates all the passion and hurt in his songs.

2. Teskey Brothers – Harvest Hill Moon. I heard a song from this album on the radio in Austin and listened to the rest of it as soon as I could. I remember telling Diana how amazed I was that a sound like this (sounds like deep Muscle Shoals from the 70s) came out of Australia. I listen to this at least once a week – especially when able to enjoy the home office system.

3. Charlie Hunter – Baboon Strength. Hunter was discovered when he played the excellent Townsend speakeasy bar and music venue on Congress Avenue in Austin. He plays a hybrid bass and lead guitar and has a very unique style. I love the sound of this record – “Fine Corinthian Leather” is a standout for me.

4. Jason Isbell – Nashville Sound. Isbell was my favourite performance at the Telluride Blues festival a few years ago by a long way. This album has several stand out songs and “If we were Vampires” is the most poignant song that I heard this year. I’m making it a goal to see an Isbell performance in 2019.

5. Marc Broussard – Easy to Love. “Don’t be afraid to call Me” is reason enough to love this album. After you hear it live, you can’t forget it for a while. Broussard is certainly one of my favourite live performers and I look forward to seeing him again at the Kessler in February.

6. Anderson East – Encore. I had to add a 6th choice to this category. I like every song on this one and still rue not attending the two shows of East’s that we had tickets for this year – work got in the way both times (it doesn’t happen very often and it impacted the same artist twice). The song “Cabinet Door” is certainly the saddest one I heard this year – but one I couldn’t stop listening to.

I hope you enjoyed this recap of some 2018 highlights. Are any of my top picks aligned with yours? I’m always looking for new recommendations on musical artists and authors.

Week in Review – December 30, 2018

The week of Christmas was very busy in Pacifica, CA with lots of cooking, organizing, and family visits.

The fun kicked off on Christmas Eve with the traditional feast of the seven fishes. Never heard of this celebration? I hadn’t either until spending the holiday with the Campagnas. Apparently it’s not well known in Italy either, but is an American tradition popular among Italian Catholics.

Here’s what Eataly’s website has to say about it:

“Every year in the U.S., many people celebrate the Feast of the Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve. Although it is unclear when the dinner became so popular, this celebration is considered one of the most Italian traditions. Typically, the family gathers around a feast of seven different seafood dishes or one or two different types of fish prepared in seven different ways.

The ancient tradition of eating fish on Christmas Eve dates from the Roman Catholic custom of abstinence from meat and dairy products on the eve of certain holidays, including Christmas. The number seven is rooted back in ancient times and it can be connected to multiple Catholic symbols: in fact, the seven seems repeated more than 700 times in the Bible. Also, according to the Roman Catholic Church, seven are the sacraments, the days of the Creation, as well as the deadly sins. Hence seven courses!”

Adamo and family as well as Andy and Jude (Clorinda’s neighbours) joined us for the feast, with Adamo doing much of the cooking. The meal was a big success despite not having exactly the fish selection that the matriarch had expected (no cod). Leftover massive crab claws provided excellent ingredients for omelets the rest of our visit.

New sleeping bags from Auntie D and Auntie Keith for Tahoe

Christmas Day started with a visit to Amy and Adamo’s home to observe the chaos of the kids opening presents. Amy made a delicious brunch (as usual whipping it up casually amid the chaos) and Andy and Jude joined again.

We were able to exchange a few gifts with Alicia before the madness became unmanageable and we had to beat a retreat. I enjoyed this gift label and always get a chuckle out of her referring to herself as an “Angel”:

Back at Clorinda’s home, it was time to start the preparation for Christmas dinner. Diana had purchased both rack of lamb and honey ham for dinner and we set about preparing those together. The matriarch didn’t like what we did with the lamb but enjoyed how it tasted at the end, so we’ll let that go (kind of). It was a gorgeous day in Pacifica as evidenced by this picture of the view from the prep kitchen.

Marco, his family, and Alicia were our guests for dinner and everyone enjoyed the meal very much. Diana’s Aunt Sarah passed away a few weeks ago at the age of 104 and the family had arranged a memorial service for December 26th, when most of the family would be in town. The after dinner activity was helping Marco finalize the order of service pamphlets and getting Olivia and Alicia ready with their parts of the service (a reading and flute performance).

I had to work on the morning of the 26th and so didn’t attend the service. The videos I’ve seen of both Marco’s eulogy and the reading/performance by Olivia/Alicia were both beautiful. Boxing Day was another gorgeous day and I worked outside on the deck with this view before heading down to the beach coffee shop for lunch.

Travel home on Thursday was relatively smooth – our flight was 2 hours late, but American let us know before we headed to the airport. We arrived home around 10:30pm and enjoyed the quiet of our house.

We used a coupon at the Tommy Bahama restaurant in Legacy West on Friday night and had a very good meal. This is not a restaurant we would have thought of trying without our $50 off card and we were both very impressed with the food, service and ambiance. These ahi tuna tacos were an excellent appetizer. Then I had Thai curry scallops and shrimp and Diana had a rib-eye steak and shrimp – all very fresh and well cooked. We’ll be back for sure.

After dinner we exchanged the Christmas gifts for each other that we had transported to California and back unopened. That’s an indication of how little downtime McD had during the visit.

Saturday was a quiet day at home catching up on things before heading to New Orleans to ring in the New Year with good friends. We did get workouts in on both days in anticipation of all the good food ahead in New Orleans. I’m at the airport as I finish this up and just watched the Cowboys eke out a win over the New York Giants – a game that didn’t mean anything for playoff spots, but one that both teams played hard to win. A 10-6 record is much better than my prediction of 7-9 for the Cowboys this year and a playoff berth quite a surprise. There’s a good chance that they will play the #1 seeded New Orleans Saints if they win against Seattle next week.

I read two of my “suggested Christmas gift” books this week – the first was “Calypso” by David Sedaris. It’s been 20 years or more since I last read one of his books and it was such a welcome treat to revisit this witty, funny, sometimes disturbing, and often sarcastic author. His descriptions of the antics of his family are insightful, humourous, and heartbreaking – often all at the same time. Not a book for the easily offended or shocked, but one that I enjoyed very much.

The second book was “French Exit” by Patrick DeWitt. Apparently a “French Exit” is when guests sneak out of a party without saying goodbye – have you ever heard that term? I know I haven’t – is it supposed to imply the French are lacking in manners? Weird. The book is quite strange also – an upper East Side New York socialite and her son flee to Paris when their money and social status are lost. Their cat which may embody her deceased husband also makes the trip. The exploits in Paris with a gaggle of entertaining characters are intended to be a farce and certainly come off that way. It reads like a cross between a witty Noel Coward play and a quirky Wes Anderson movie. I’m not a big fan of either (can never understand why Denny thinks the Anderson movies are so hilarious), but did enjoy the book overall as a light and entertaining read – just what’s needed during the holidays.

I’ve been working my way through Quincy Jones recordings after watching the biography a few weeks ago. Here’s one of his early big band recording sessions that I enjoy – “Walkin'”, with a classic walking bass line at the core of the recording.

And here’s a beautiful song from the Band of Heathens that reminded me of their excellent concert a few weeks back:

Week in Review – December 23, 2018

It’s most definitely starting to feel a little bit like Christmas here. Above is our favourite card so far (and unlikely to be topped). I wonder if Ben is bawling about seeing Santa? We love the look on Lilly’s face. That’s Santa Peaty (holding Scotch whisky – get it?) on the right.

Tuesday was Diana’s birthday (she finally caught up to me) and we celebrated with dinner at Pappa’s Bros steakhouse. The poor thing had a totally full day of work and was still dressed up and ready to go at the prescribed time.

Pappa’s Bros is consistently voted the best in the Dallas area and one of the top 10 in the United States and so my taste buds were excited. I kept the destination a surprise from Birthday D.

Steak special with foie gras and shaved truffle

We started with an outstanding lobster and brioche dish. Both nicely cooked and with great flavour provided by the shaved truffle and sauce. In a very mature move we decided to save two for dinner the next day. Thank goodness because we didn’t do a very good job of getting through our steaks either. Dinner on Wednesday nice was very good. Diana had a steak special dish with ridiculous foie gras on top, shaved truffles, and a cauliflower puree on the bottom.

Trying to pick something light from the dessert tray was impossible, so Diana ended up going with a mousse concoction with a toasted marshmallow on top.

I was sad to hear that Zumie, my dog in California, passed away on Tuesday at the age of 16 (or 112). He lived a very long life for a Westie and, as my Mum said, “was a lovely wee dog”.

Diana and I had our Christmas gift exchange on Thursday night as we had a concert on Friday and travel to California on Saturday. We didn’t bring the big tree down this year since we were spending such little time at home over the holidays. However, we did not have the smallest tree we saw this year. That honor goes to Harold, Patty and Brent’s tree. We didn’t have a full appreciation until a picture entitled “pressies under the tree” arrived. Our tree is named Cooper, because he’s a Mini version. How did Harold get this name? Well, Harold is in charge of all the angels, you know – “Hark the Harold Angels Sing”. Classic Patty and Brent humour.

Both our trees fared better than the downtown McKinney tree which blew over in high winds right before the parade of lights.

Friday took us to another excellent Christmas concert – Marcia Ball, Carolyn Wonderland, and Shelley King at Poor David’s Pub.

We enjoy all three of these ladies in concert individually and together they are a real treat. They shared an eclectic mix of Christmas songs and songs that could be considered appropriate to the season. This was the opening song:

We enjoyed “Christmas in Austin” and “Christmas Fais Do Do”:

And finally, I always love a good Marcia Ball ballad:

After all that, it’s really starting to feel a lot like Christmas.

We made the long drive home and then got up and headed to the airport for San Francisco on Saturday.

Amy and Adamo prepared an excellent feast to celebrate the closing days of D’s birthday week. Some of Adamo’s hand caught lobster and yummy butternut squash risotto. Luciano and Massimo provided assistance in blowing out the candles (which seem to have got switched around at some point).

On Sunday we met up with the boys and Christine at Timber and Salt in Redwood City for the annual gift exchange.

We had a very good meal and a lovely time catching up on the news from the boys and Christine. One interesting piece of news was that Campbell had been awarded the “Rookie sales person of the year”. Among other rewards, this comes with an extra week of paid vacation. He seems to be doing really well at work and enjoying it – even admitted to D that it comes pretty easily and isn’t too much work at all.

After dinner Will took me for a ride in his newest BMW – yes, you might be thinking, “I thought he just got a highly customized new BMW from the factory”. That is correct, and he was offered a “too good to be true” opportunity to trade up a notch to the racing track BMW M2 Competition edition. It’s very fast and outfitted with all kinds of computerized engine adjustments.

It was very nice to spend time with the kids and now it’s back to Pacifica to prepare for the Christmas onslaught.

Week in Review – December 16, 2018

I flew back to New York on Tuesday for the first time in a couple of months. I enjoy the city but don’t miss the hassle associated with flying into La Guardia and getting transportation into the city. The drive was particularly long this trip due to all the traffic coming in to see the Christmas tree and decorations at Rockefeller Center. The hotel is located between the iconic art-deco Chrysler building and Grand Central rail terminal.

On the flight I watched the film “The Children Act” starring Emma Thompson and Stanley Tucci. This is based on the Ian McEwan book of the same name and he wrote the screenplay. I read the book a couple of years ago and so the story was still pretty familiar to me. Thompson and Tucci give very good performances and the ending is just as saddening in the film as in the book.

I braved the bitterly cold weather to head out of the hotel for dinner and some brief exploration. The Grand Central terminal building is really impressive after the renovation several years ago.

At peak times you can certainly see the origin of the phrase, “busier than Grand Central station”. A nice part of the renovation is that there are many good restaurants at various price points throughout the building. My boss and I enjoyed lunch at Cipriani on the main concourse on Wednesday afternoon as we prepared to present to our major investors and the analyst community on Thursday morning.

From the rail terminal, I headed up to Rockefeller Center to take a look at the famous Christmas tree. It was still busy there at close to 11pm on a very cold night.

I enjoyed the light and music display at the Sak’s Fifth Avenue storefront and some of the characters milling around.

All this Christmas excitement reminds me of a sign that I saw at Eddie V’s last week and forgot to share in the post. I’m hoping the Martini fairy might visit me once or twice this holiday season:

I’ve been enjoying the new solo album from Wilco front man, Jeff Tweedy, this week. Here’s a good song from “Warm” and I’ll include one or two more at the bottom of the post.

Tweedy also released a memoir in the last few weeks that has been garnering positive reviews. Maybe it’ll end up in my Christmas stocking.

Making a dinner reservation on Wednesday night in midtown Manhattan proved challenging. My boss’s nephew is executive chef at a fancy steakhouse but they were fully booked with holiday parties and couldn’t get us in. After many rejections, I found a Northern Italian place on 47th street, Allora, that could get us in. The reviews promised a classic New York Italian restaurant experience and that’s exactly what we got. Good food, waiters trying to rush us along with humor, finally giving up and buying us grappa on the house. I enjoyed a couple of delicious appetizers (the waiter wasn’t listening and got them wrong before bringing us what we really wanted in addition) and then an excellent mushroom risotto – one of the best I’ve tasted. I snapped this picture of the bridge outside the hotel with its holiday outfit on.

I would not choose to stay in midtown Manhattan during Christmas again. The traffic (both cars and on the pavements) is crazy with folks in to see the lights and decorations.

Our presentations and meetings with investors on Thursday morning went well. They seemed interested in new systems and applications that we’ve been developing. Then it took over an hour to drive what should have been a twenty minute trip to the airport.

Friday and Saturday turned out to be very busy days – mostly entertainment busy, so no good reason to complain about it. Friday evening began with Diana’s Christmas party at her office. This was very nice with drinks and hors d’oeuvres and a pleasant group of folks. We stayed for about an hour and then had to leave to drive down to the Elton John concert – Diana got tickets to the work box in recognition of her big project to create a new spin-off company that went so well.

On the drive to the concert, Diana asked me what songs I was hoping to hear. My reply was, in this order, “Someone Saved My Life Tonight”, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”, “Funeral for a Friend”, “Song for Guy”, “Rocket Man”, and “Daniel”. Five out of six isn’t bad – only “Song for Guy” didn’t make the show. Here are videos of my number one choice from the amazing “Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy” album.

Elton is on an 18 month farewell tour and has stated that he will not tour again when this tour is complete. The last time I saw him was in Edinburgh in 1984 – hard to believe it was 34 years ago. I remember being hugely impressed with his band and the sound in the Edinburgh Playhouse. The band on this tour is even better and the sound at the arena was the best I’ve heard – perhaps even better than the Eagles – certainly louder. Here’s one of his best known songs, “Rocket Man” – with the lines about living on Mars that start to sound less and less fantastic as Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson race into space tourism:

“Funeral for a Friend” sends everyone into a melancholy mood but the music and performance were excellent after the very theatrical lead in:

You can tell that the stage set and the videography were very well done. I particularly enjoyed watching the exemplar percussionist, Ray Cooper, on the top tier of the stage with his five timpani drums, tubular bells, bongas and multiple other percussive accoutrements. He puts more energy into playing the tambourine than anyone that I’ve ever seen.

The second and final encore of the night was “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” and it was accompanied by a wonderful video showing Elton John from a kid through all of his crazy performance outfits. It really did feel like a farewell performance at that point:

Elton came across as being exceptionally thankful for his career and fans throughout the evening and I was very happy to be able to participate in his final tour. His music has meant a lot to me through the years and I enjoy attempting to play it on my own piano at home very much. I will never forget his reinterpretation of “Candle in the Wind” as “Goodbye English Rose” for Princess Diana’s funeral. They did so much for AIDS patients together and I have no idea how he held it together for that performance.

We spent the night at the downtown Omni hotel and I snapped this picture of the Pegasus outside with the downtown Dallas skyline:

Saturday was a warmer day than we’ve had in a while and I caught these pictures of the Dallas morning skyline before we headed for our workout.

The Christmas ornament balls out front are huge as you can tell from the person pushing a cart beside the large stack in he center. We tried to have brunch at Hattie’s in Oak Cliff but they didn’t have their brunch menu on Saturday – only Sunday. A quick regroup and we walked to Bolsa for a delicious brunch – this is such a relaxed and great restaurant that we continue to enjoy year over year. From there we walked back to Wild Detectives (my favourite store of any kind in the Dallas Fort Worth area) and enjoyed a coffee with our crossword on their back patio. I showed D a few books for my Christmas list while we were there.

After brunch we had several hours to kill before our Saturday evening plans. I found a few good places to explore in the Uptown neighborhood, just north of downtown Dallas. We started at the Standard Pour – a brunch and cocktail bar that looked very promising – we’ll have to check it out one weekend. From there we walked through Uptown, had a coffee, and then visited the Bowen House. This was the first “Prairie Style” house built in 1865, and now housing an excellent speakeasy style cocktail bar with a very interesting menu – we resisted as dinner was fast approaching.

A friend had invited us to see the 10th annual Ricki Derek Christmas Show at the Granada theater on Lower Greenville on Saturday night and we met for dinner at the Sundown restaurant prior to the show.

We enjoyed some ridiculously good tater tots before our friends arrived for dinner. Tater tots are Diana’s favourite comfort food and these were a huge hit with both of us.

The Ricki Derek show was excellent. He’s a classic crooner in the Sinatra, Michael Buble style and had a 16 piece jazz orchestra accompaniment. I loved the campy nature of the variety style show with comedians, excellent guest singers, the Grinch, Frosty the snowman etc. Here’s a video of a guest vocalist joining Ricki for “Winter Wonderland”:

We arrived home around 11pm with good leftovers from brunch and dinner to see us through Sunday.

The Cowboys could have clinched a playoff spot with a win on Sunday, but as usual had a huge let down against the Indianapolis Colts and will have to try again next week. This amazing hurdling run by Zeke Elliott on the opening drive was indicative of the great Cowboys plays that ended up going nowhere:

We’ve covered a lot of musical ground in this post, and so I’ll save the new musical discoveries of the week for next week.

Week in Review – December 9, 2018

Apologies for the late posting this week. I offer a couple of weak excuses – (1) Diana and I were wandering around downtown Austin on Sunday afternoon when I would typically write this and (2) WordPress, the blogging software that I use to write these posts, upgraded to a new “Gutenberg” editor that I couldn’t fathom at all. After an hour of research on my flight to New York, I have now reinstalled the old “Classic” editor and am back in business. Why can’t things that work perfectly well be left alone? Here goes with the post:

The film “Bill Evans, Time Remembered” occupied a good chunk of my bus ride to Austin on Monday morning. I’ve listened to a bit of Bill Evans music but didn’t know much about him or his contributions to jazz music prior to the movie. Evans played a major role in the creation of “Kind of Blue” – the classic Miles Davis recording, and one of my top 5 recordings of all time. This was their first experiment with “modal” music, where long passages are played on a single scale. Critics credit Evans with bringing a new elegance and refinement to Davis’ music. It turns out he lived a very tortured life and finally succumbed to his addictions. I’ve been listening to the albums “Everybody Digs Bill Evans” and “Explorations” this week and enjoying both very much – they feature some impressive bass playing.

Work featured a lot of interesting new things that I haven’t been exposed to before, and a couple of new folks that joined to work on a project with me for a few months. We had a working lunch at the original Chuy’s on Tuesday – really good and different Mexican food. There are a number of “original” restaurant locations on my commute route from the hotel to the office. Restaurants that have gone on to have many locations across Texas over the years.

On Tuesday evening, my new colleagues met me for a short dose of live jazz at the Elephant Room followed by dinner at the Second Bar and Kitchen. I narrowly avoided being knocked over by a gaggle of young folks dressed up as Christmas trees and jogging down the street – they were not looking where they were going at all. Greg commented that the singer at the Elephant Room looked like she would be “difficult to have a conversation with”. I think she was just immersing herself in the jazz singer character for her songs. Here’s her rendition of “Blue, Blue Christmas”:

I had a vegetarian dinner at Second Bar – beet salad and crispy brussel sprouts and then called it an early night.

The radio station 100.1, “Best Radio under the Sun”, is my new accompaniment on the drive to work. On route to TacoDeli for breakfast on Wednesday, I heard this song from the band Dawes. It really caught my attention as a good song but more so because of how much the singing sounds like Ray Davies of the Kinks.

A delicious Frontera Fundido Portobello taco with the crossword and it was time to start work. A consultant that I’m working with suggested a kebab for lunch and some quick research showed that the Kebabalicious food truck on 2nd Street downtown was our best option. Turned out to be a great find and one that I look forward to visiting again soon. It’s been a long time (probably 1985 in Edinburgh) since I had a kebab on the street.

Diana arrived for her first of I hope many visits on Wednesday evening. We walked over to Swift’s Attic for dinner and McD had just as positive a first impression as I did. She loved the scallops and we also shared the brussel sprouts, squid fries and a new addition to the rotation, hamachi crudo. After dinner, we peeked into the Elephant Room but they were between music sets. We wandered on to The Townsend and again McD enjoyed it as much as I had on my first visit with Gonzalo. Austin is doing a good job of impressing Diana so far.

Sun radio 100.1 came through again on my Thursday morning commute with the Teskey brothers from Melbourne, Australia. Another band that I hadn’t heard of with a great sound. Kind of a mix of Otis Redding, Ray Charles, and the guitar playing of early Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Green – all things I like a lot. I’ll share a couple of their songs in the “K’s new music” section at the bottom of this post.

On Thursday night we planned to attend a tribute show to Jackson Browne’s “Running on Empty” album at a great local music venue, the Saxon Pub. Before the show we tried Bartala for what are advertised as Catalan tapas with quite mixed results. The service, drinks and several of the tapas were good. However, the ceviche was really disappointing with very tough and rubbery octopus. So bad that it drove me to write my first Yelp review to warn folks away from this dish. I hope this was just some bad product because the place had some good potential and is nicely located close to two good music venues. After dinner, we were both too tired to wait for the music to start – the previous band was finishing and then we would have had to wait on their equipment being hauled out and the new groups’ set up.

For Friday lunch, I took a few coworkers to lunch at Mandola’s Italian. This was their recommendation and it turned out to be an excellent Italian restaurant and grocery/bakery. I had some left over scampi and augmented that with a fresh cannoli to take to Diana for lunch at the hotel, where she had been camped out working all morning. The conversation over lunch was very enlightening as I heard about one gentleman who had gone to Stanford on a volleyball scholarship and another who had been a minor league catcher for the Dodgers. I enjoyed getting to know some of the folks at work better.

On Friday night we let Diana out of the hotel for dinner at Wink – a restaurant recommended by another coworker who seems to know his food and wine. Wink is tucked away in a very quiet location and not easy to find from the street and has both a restaurant side and a wine bar side. We were nervous on arriving to find about 30 University of Texas fraternity looking folks all dressed up in tuxedos and fancy dresses for dinner before a winter dance. They turned out to be very polite and well behaved – must have been the nerdy fraternity.

The food and wine were very good. The fois gras appetizer being a particularly yummy and decadent stand out. I enjoyed grouper with lattkes and dill sauce while Diana had a venison dish with a little langiappe. A piece of a rubber band had crept into her dish. This was handled very nicely by the staff who brought us a quartet of desserts and extra red wine on the house. Everyone had a good chuckle as the kitchen was just through a small window from our table. A couple of the desserts were amazing and we left completed sated.

Saturday afternoon had been set aside to go apartment hunting and this was much more efficient than anticipated as I really liked the first place we toured and, on stopping at the second place, realized I shouldn’t waste any more time on places that I wasn’t going to like nearly as much as the first. We drove down Barton Springs road and had to stop at this airstream food truck to take a picture for Patty (the cupcake queen). Then I showed McD the new office and we drove on to the local mall for her to pick up some things she needed for her Christmas party outfit. The mall was a complete zoo and so I dropped Diana, picked up a couple of Space Cowboy tacos (my favourite lunch taco at TacoDeli) and returned to pick her up.

The company Christmas party was a very well done affair at the Hotel Van Zandt in downtown Austin. It started with cocktails and hors d’oeuvres on a balcony overlooking these amazing trumpet bell chandeliers. Then dinner, accompanied by a 1920s style jazz band.

I enjoyed introducing Diana to the new folks from work. She had been grilling me on folks she would meet and we were able to check them all off except one who didn’t attend. I think she found our CEO the most entertaining of the bunch. Additional entertainment included a photo booth and caricature artist and we took advantage of both.

Sunday began with workouts and then a late brunch at Swift’s Attic. A very enjoyable meal again – I enjoyed a different take on shrimp ‘n grits. Then it was time to find somewhere to watch the Cowboys and Eagles game – a key decider in which team will make it to the playoffs. We started at the Driskill bar and saw the beginning of the game there. The TVs were small and dark and so we walked around downtown for a while. I picked up some useful information on vinyl record stores in Austin during a quick stop into Antone’s record store beside the music club.

We settled on Eddie V’s seafood house as a good place to watch the football and it turned out to be a good choice as we enjoyed old school style bar service to accompany D’s rose cocktail and some tasty steak tartare. The game remained neck and neck until the Cowboys finally won as we sat in the airport club waiting to board the flight back to Dallas.

I enjoyed some statistics on my listening this year that Spotify shared this week:

Week in Review – December 2, 2018

It was back down to Austin again early on Monday morning. I found a new podcast, “My Favorite Album” with Jeremy Dylan, that made a good portion of the trip pass quickly. Dylan interviews folks from all walks of life about their most treasured albums. I started with Brian Koppelman, creator of the TV show “Billions”. I’ve commmented a few times to Diana about how impressed I am with the music selections on this show and enjoyed Koppelman talking about how they were selected and why. See the bottom of this posting for several examples. The next episode was the drummer from Australian band Augie March talking about Dire Straits first album (also one of my favourites). I really enjoyed his thoughts on Pick Withers nuanced drumming on this album and his views on Mark Knopfler’s guitar work. The first half of my bus ride finished up with Amanda Shires (wife of Jason Isbell) talking about Leonard Cohen’s “Songs of Love and Hate”. Amanda had quite different views about Cohen’s music than Jeremy (the interviewer) which made for an interesting listen. She’s clearly spent a lot of time thinking about Cohen’s songs.

The other highlight of my bus trip was receiving this picture of Will’s new car by the Golden Gate bridge on Sunday afternoon. I think he did an amazingly professional job.

Monday night brought a classic Austin music experience my way. The band “Sis DeVille” was playing at the “One to One” music club.

We’ve enjoyed Carolyn, Shelley, and Floramay at the Kessler and Poor David’s Pub and I had never seen them all together in this incarnation.

This was much more of a rock ‘n roll band than the folkier versions of Shelley and Floramay in particular. I had dinner at a Korean barbecue place next to the music venue and was pleased to have Carolyn and Floramay at the table next to me. They left around 7:30pm and so I expected an on time 8pm start and wasn’t disappointed. Here’s a couple of videos to give you a flavour of the evening. The ladies clearly enjoyed playing together very much.

I was entertained to see Marcia Ball sitting in the audience as the show finished up and told her how much I was looking forward to seeing her, Carolyn, and Shelley at Poor David’s Pub later in December for their Christmas show.

The “revealer” clue from the New York Times crossword on Tuesday gave me a chuckle. “Parting words” from Fried Egg, Candidate, Computer Program, and Editorial -“Gotta Run”.

The boss decided to have an impromptu Christmas dinner on Wednesday. Most folks won’t see him again until after the holiday and so I made a reservation for us at Swift’s Attic. This is the tapas restaurant that I enjoyed so much a few weeks ago and it was great to go with a group and get to enjoy so many more dishes. All the food was wonderful and we had a very enjoyable celebration.

After dinner we enjoyed a trombone fest at the Elephant Room downstairs. Two separate groups of five trombones performed. A rare treat.

After all of those trombones, a couple of us went for a quick wander down Sixth Street to find some other kinds of music.

To round out the trombone section this week, here’s an amazing video of 28 tromobonists collaborating remotely with each other to play Bohemian Rhapsody:

I caught the bus back to Dallas on Thursday and the evening brought the much anticipated football matchup of the Dallas Cowboys and the New Orleans Saints. What a great game from the Cowboys! Most fans were very nervous that the 10-1 Saints would establish a big lead quickly, but the Cowboys defense played an excellent game. The Saints couldn’t get anything going offensively at all. The final score Cowboys 13 Saints 10, bringing the winning streak to 4 games in a row.

Saturday was a lovely 72 degree day, and so we had an early dinner on the patio of Rick’s Chophouse in downtown McKinney. This was probably the last al fresco dining day of the year, before winter sets in.

Sunday was a relaxing day at home catching up on things after a morning workout followed by coffee and crossword.

I didn’t know much about any of these artists until listening to the podcasts that I started this post discussing. A good week for new music finds. An appropriate song in here for Finn from Garrett T. Capps.

Week in Review – November 25, 2018

Monday and Tuesday were quiet, work from home days. It was nice to be back in the routine of working from home with Diana, if only for a couple of days. Travel to San Francisco on Wednesday was pretty quiet and painless and we arrived in time to meet up with Will and Christine for dinner at Sushi Plus in Redwood City (where Will’s new apartment is located). Will was able to give us a ride in the new BMW M240, but not the full experience since it had rained most of the day. It was entertaining to have the live run down of all the special features that he had customized on his factory order.

Will took care of most of the ordering at Sushi Plus. The “fire roll” and “super duper roll” were very good and unique. Clorinda enjoyed her left overs of “super duper roll” very much.

Christine has just started a new job and was clearly very pleased and excited about it. Will told us a fun story of how Christine started working in the technology field – she was running the jewelry department at Nordstrom and one of her customers liked her service so much that she told her son (owner of a technology startup) that he needed to hire the lady who helped her from Nordstrom to interact with his customers.

Adamo and Amy hosted Thanksgiving at their home. We had a group of 13 and so it was good that they had just bought a big new table. As usual, Amy, Adamo, Diana, and Clorinda created a delicious feast. My favorite was the “French Onion Soup stuffed mushrooms”.

The little monsters above (my nephews, Luciano and Massimo) did their best to disrupt my quiet afternoon of football viewing before the meal. The Cowboys pulled out a nice win over the division rival Redskins and I was able to watch some of it. I like this picture of Clorinda making a key point with her neighbor Andy as he’s cooking up something for the feast.

On Friday we were lucky to have an early dinner with all three boys at Vino Santo in Redwood City – Will’s favourite Italian restaurant. The food and service were both excellent. We started with an off-the-menu appetizer sampler that Will apparently orders on each visit, then shared lobster ravioli and some delicious scallops. By this time we were starting to get full and hadn’t ordered main courses yet. Diana had a calamari steak and I had a beet salad. Will, on the other hand, had plenty of room for a full size ribeye steak. Clorinda enjoyed left over calamari later in the evening. Dinner was really good and we had a very nice conversation with the boys. Here’s a picture with Finn from the evening and one of all three from Thanksgiving day.

Saturday was an early start to the airport to fly home. The airport was much busier than on Wednesday with lots of families flying. We had a concert at the Kessler on Saturday night and so drove from the airport to a downtown hotel and then headed to the Bishop Arts district in Oak Cliff for a pre-concert ramble. This is a picture of the Mobil pegasus outside the hotel (the pegasus atop the Mobil Oil building was a stalwart of the Dallas skyline for many years).

I enjoyed the movie “Pick of the Litter” on the flight. This follows a litter of five puppies born at the Guide Dogs for the Blind facility as they progress through training and assignment to owners. Only two of the five were placed as guide dogs with one retained as a breeder, one assigned as a PTSD support dog, and one finishing as a pet. The training to have the dogs learn to ignore owners’ commands when they would put them at risk was fascinating – to be able to teach a dog to decide that traffic is unsafe and to not proceed across a street even though given the command is amazing. I highly recommend this film.

Our Oak Cliff evening began at Macellaio – a new restaurant by the couple behind the fabulous Lucia Italian restaurant. We enjoyed an amazing chicken liver mousse and delicious cocktails. After that Diana’s new boots were given a good comfort test as we walked 1.1 miles to Nova for dinner. They passed with flying colours.

We met Diana’s co-worker, Janelle, and her husband at the Kessler to see the Band of Heathens. I think this is a band we’ve seen more than any other – the first time was when we took a trip to Austin several years ago. The opening act was “Matt the Electrician”, also from Austin. He originally worked as an electrician all day, rewiring houses and playing concerts in the evening. We loved his voice, songs and between song banter.

The Band of Heathens put on an excellent show – the first half was a selection of their popular songs and the second a full performance of their latest album, “A Message from the People Revisited”. This was a Ray Charles album from the 1970s that speaks to many of the social issues that are still relevant today. We had a table in the front row and it was funny to watch McD “swooning” over the two lead singers.

Here’s a video of “Abraham, Martin and John”, my favourite from that album.

And here’s the encore performance of “Hurricane”:

Another in a long list of great concert experiences at the wonderful Kessler theater! Here’s the full set list, courtesy of the swooner:

On Sunday morning, we took advantage of being downtown to visit Smoke for breakfast. I enjoyed my usual pulled pork benedict and Diana ordered a bacon burger so that we’d have leftovers for dinner. Breakfast reminded me of some pictures Finn sent this week of his latest breakfast creations.

We (ok, mostly Diana) put up a small Christmas tree on Sunday afternoon. Much smaller than usual since we’ll be gone over the holiday and couldn’t face hauling the regular tree down from the attic. I always get a kick out of how much Diana enjoys unwrapping and placing the ornaments on the tree. That’s the famous angel that Adamo and Amy repaired last year on top.

Two great new albums were released this week by Roseanne Cash and Mark Knopfler (I read this week that he was born in Glasgow). Here are tracks from each and a closer from Matt the Electrician.

Week in Review – November 18, 2018

The experimental Vonlane bus service to Austin early Monday worked out well. I enjoyed avoiding security and all the other airport hassles. It was nice to be able to spread out and relax for the 3 hour trip. I’ve booked my next few trips on the bus. Thanks to Diana for getting up so early to drive me to the bus.

The Uber driver who shuttled me from the bus drop-off point to work provided several useful tips – suggested a great local radio station, told me about a music club that sounded appealing, and an unannounced show at that venue by a group named “Sis DeVille”, comprised of Carolyn Wonderland, Shelley King, Floramay Holiday and several others – these are several of our favourite performers that we’ve seen at the Kessler and Poor David’s Pub and I bought a ticket later in the week.

Hill Country Sunrise from the Sonesta Breakfast Area

The hotel this week was the Sonesta Bee Caves which is located about a 20 minute drive from the office and next to the Hill Country Galleria outdoor mall. It took some time to get back and forward to the office but the view from the 6th floor restaurant was very good. It’s a Tapas Bar at night and has an amazing wrap around deck – nice when the weather is warmer than it was this week. I enjoyed the sunrise views in the morning with an early breakfast. This hotel also featured music art in the rooms:

Our friend Gonzalo was scheduled to interview at my office on Wednesday and came in on Tuesday night to be ready for the morning. We enjoyed an excellent dinner at the Second Kitchen and Bar – the truffle grits with G’s short ribs were amazing. I started with smoked salmon rillettes (way better than I anticipated) and then had a delicious beet salad with big chunks of brie – right up my alley.

After dinner we tried a new place that I had read about – The Townsend. This is a speakeasy style bar up front and a small music venue in back. One of the owners is an acoustic engineer and this showed up big time in the quality of the sound systems in the bar and the concert space – amazing sound! The concert in back by Charlie Hunter was sold out and so we enjoyed the music in the bar and then snuck into the music venue for the last few songs.

Charlie Hunter is a pretty unique performer – he plays an eight string guitar with 2 bass strings and 6 lead guitar strings. He maintains the bass guitar rhythm and plays lead guitar at the same time. Hunter’s music is mostly classified as jazz but has a lot of rock, blues and other genres mixed together. This performance was with a trio of singer, guitar/bass, and percussion. Here’s a short video followed by a recent review of the show that describes it much better than I could.

“Lucy Woodward almost stole the show. And she might well have done so, wholly and completely, if her two bandmates had not demonstrated the same touch for nuance she did throughout the two sets. In turns insouciant and sultry, saucy and winsome, the woman was the aural/visual picture of well-practiced discipline wherein the notes she belted out on a Nina Simone song were as finely-phrased as those she breathed so softy on one from Teresa Brewer circa 1959, “Music! Music! Music! (Put Another Nickel In)”.

If the guitarist/frontman had not so obviously relished her participation, he might not have so keenly complemented Woodward’s performance by savoring the moments his fingers ran up and down his own instrument. But plucking those ringing harmonics, bending some bittersweet notes and dropping the low-register bombs were subtleties similar to the singer’s, but also to those that appeared in the percussion work of Keita Ogawa”

I highly recommend The Townsend if you’re ever in Austin and looking for a great bar and small music venue. There was a book about Austin music in the bar that had articles on both Alejandro Escovedo (lives in an apartment above the check in desk at the Belmont hotel) and Marcia Ball (see post last week about her amazing concert at the Kessler).

On Wednesday I took Gonzalo to lunch at the nearby TacoDeli which has a very nice woodsy location near a Zilker Park trail-head. I tried the chile relleno taco special and loved it. It was nice to catch up with G on Tuesday night and Wednesday – we spent a lot of time working on tough issues together at my previous job and I’m hoping that we’ll get an opportunity to work together again.

In the afternoon we had a town hall at work for all the Information Technology employees where I was introduced. I enjoyed the view of my boss with a long horn cow in the background from where I was sitting.

Thursday was the Thanksgiving Potluck at the office – I had meetings all the way through the lunch hour and wasn’t able to participate but it looked like folks were having a great time.

I had dinner at the Hill Country Galleria mall – empanadas and salad at the Buenos Aires Grill Argentinian restaurant and then a drink at a Texas themed place that had a good guitarist/singer and the football game showing.

Friday was back on the bus to Dallas. I was interested to see a Basset hound joining our group and claiming to be a “service dog” to be allowed on the bus. HGTV was annoyingly playing on the TVs on the bus – this is the home buying/improvement channel that I had to block at the house because McD was playing it incessantly. Thankfully it hasn’t been on in a long time now.

Diana picked me up from the bus and took me to a lovely dinner at the Neighborhood Services restaurant on Lovers Lane. I loved my haddock and Diana her lobster dish.

This place has such good food and such a relaxed ambiance – we need to go more often.

After dinner D had arranged a recognition event for her team at the hockey game at American Airlines arena. I was starting to get tired and grumpy by this point. It was funny to see the Mary Kay cosmetics company suite next to D’s company suite.

The weekend was pretty quiet with workouts, coffees and crosswords- nice to settle back into our normal routine for a few days.

I finally finished a new book this week – “Half Blood Blues” by Esi Edugyan. This was a very enjoyable book about jazz musicians, the second world war, and race relations. Here’s the Amazon review:

“Berlin, 1939. The Hot Time Swingers, a popular jazz band, has been forbidden to play by the Nazis. Their young trumpet-player Hieronymus Falk, declared a musical genius by none other than Louis Armstrong, is arrested in a Paris café. He is never heard from again. He was twenty years old, a German citizen. And he was black.

Berlin, 1952. Falk is a jazz legend. Hot Time Swingers band members Sid Griffiths and Chip Jones, both African Americans from Baltimore, have appeared in a documentary about Falk. When they are invited to attend the film’s premier, Sid’s role in Falk’s fate will be questioned and the two old musicians set off on a surprising and strange journey.

From the smoky bars of pre-war Berlin to the salons of Paris, Sid leads the reader through a fascinating, little-known world as he describes the friendships, love affairs and treacheries that led to Falk’s incarceration in Sachsenhausen. Esi Edugyan’s Half-Blood Blues is a story about music and race, love and loyalty, and the sacrifices we ask of ourselves, and demand of others, in the name of art.”

It was nice to spend some time reading again this week after the busyness of the new job.

Here’s some more music from Charlie Hunter – he has many interesting albums to sample. And a great track I stumbled upon from Jimmy Smith on the Hammond organ.

Week in Review – November 11, 2018

Can you believe my baby turned 30 this week? He does seem to be doing quite well and I’m proud of the man he’s become and all that he’s accomplished in his first 30 years. Will has always been a car nut – BMWs in particular – solidified when he visited the factory in Germany during his internship. He treated himself to an early birthday present which you can see here. I think it looks pretty fierce and here is Will’s update on the engine:

“It has a B58 inline 6 cylinder twin scroll turbo. Twin scroll is the epic new balancing technology! Supposed to be the smoothest engine that BMW has ever made. And 400 hp and 400 torque approximately.”

This week was a heavy one of work and travel for both of us. Diana dropped me at the Dallas airport very early on Monday and I had plenty of time to make my flight, which arrived early even though it was foggy in Austin. I enjoyed a breakfast taco at the airport (as promised last week) and then headed to the office. That’s another one of the cards that McD spoils me with on the table – found it as I was getting something out of my briefcase. The Cowboys pretended to play football on Monday night and I watched the game at the hotel until I got disgusted and fell asleep before the game was over. Diana traveled out to St Petersburg, Florida again Tuesday through Thursday for a big client presentation that went well.

Tuesday was my music day this week. I tried out a Mediterranean food truck on South 1st Street with a combo gyro and falafel (two of my favourites). I’m going to enjoy trying out and rating all the various food trucks that are generously spread around Austin. After dinner, I drove around the corner to the Saxon Pub, where Dave Grissom plays a free early show at 6pm most Tuesdays. I didn’t get there until 7pm and so all seats were taken and the place was packed. I stayed for a couple of songs (both excellent) and then left. I wasn’t able to identify the folks who rode their horses to the show – maybe it was the performers? I will be back in a future week to catch a full show. Dave Grissom is an excellent guitar player who started in Joe Ely’s band, played in John Mellencamp’s band, and has gone on to become a much in demand session musician (particularly in Nashville). I suspect that his show covers multiple styles and varieties of music – I’ll let you know when I get there on time in the future.

From the Saxon, I dropped the car at the hotel and wandered over to Antone’s in downtown Austin to see about their free Blues show. In contrast to the Saxon, this was a very quietly attended show. I settled in for 20 minutes or so but wasn’t drawn in by the music – too much old school blues and harmonica. And so it was off to find the next musical opportunity.

Hoping the third venue would be the charm, I walked around the corner to the Elephant Room on Congress Avenue. This is a basement jazz club that turned out to be very pleasant and a highlight of the evening for me. The sound was excellent with plenty of comfortable seating. Sarah Sharp and band were performing – I forgot to note the guitar player’s name but he was outstanding. I enjoyed Sarah’s voice and here are some quick snippets of the performance:

From the Elephant Room, it was a quick walk across the Congress “bat” bridge back to the hotel and a brief check on the election results.

Sarah was a founding member of another band named the Jitterbug Vampires which performs at the Elephant Room on Wednesday nights. She is no longer in the band and I didn’t enjoy the singer as much, but the guitar (same guy from Tuesday) and saxophone players were both very good. I listened to a few songs, and then went upstairs to a restaurant named Swift’s Attic for dinner.

The menu at Swift’s is described as “New American Tapas”. The food and cocktails were both excellent and I look forward to walking back to this place again soon. My cocktail was a “Newgroni” – the normal negroni recipe with rhubarb bitters added – and it’s available on tap. I’m going to have to add some of these bitters to my barrel aging negroni because they really enhance the flavour very nicely. The scallops were fresh, perfectly cooked and paired with delicious sauces and carrots.

On Thursday night I tried something completely new to me, an author night at a bookstore. Joseph Fink, author of “Alice Isn’t Dead”, was interviewed at Book People on Lamar Street in West Austin. I had been planning a trip to Waterloo records and Book People after work and when I visited the website found this event. Both stores are great examples of independent and wonderfully curated places that rarely exist anymore. Book People reminds me of Wild Detectives in Oak Cliff but at a much larger scale and without the cocktails and wine (they do have coffee) – the staff are very knowledgeable and have many blurbs and recommendations throughout the shop.

I wasn’t at all familiar with Fink’s work – apparently he is pretty well known by virtue of a podcast series that he does that parallels his books. I enjoyed the interview that Deb Olin Unferth hosted – she has published several novels and teaches writing at the University of Texas. Her questions were insightful and often quite funny. One of my favourite stories from Fink centered on his parents – his Mum and Dad met in the dining hall on their first night of college freshman year and had been together ever since. Both were teachers and they didn’t have a large circle of friends and so their lives became very intertwined. His Dad died 7 years ago and he talked about how much his Mum has changed as she became a singular person rather than part of a couple. It didn’t hurt that he mentioned Jason Isbell’s “If We Were Vampires” song in the story – one of my favourite songs of the last few years.

After the interview, Fink read a passage from the book and took questions. An interesting and different evening activity – apparently Book People hosts more than 300 of these a year – so lots more opportunities for me to listen to authors talk about their work.

I was able to go standby on an earlier flight on Friday and got home before 4 pm. We had a quiet night when Diana got home from her hair appointment and fell asleep early.

Saturday started with workouts and then a late lunch at Zaytinya (this is a Turkish word meaning “olive oil”) at the Star in Frisco. It’s a mezze restaurant specializing in small plates like a Greek tapas place. We had tried Zaytinya once before and enjoyed the small plates and cocktails very much. This visit was equally positive – I had an ultimate G&T (Hendrick’s gin, Fever Tree Indian tonic water, lemon, lime, juniper berries) that took the bar tender some work to assemble, Baba Ghannouge (great presentation with pomegranate seeds), and a falafel wrap. Diana tried the lamb chops – delicious once the bartender supervised them being cooked properly and not overdone.

After lunch we went boot shopping at Nordstroms. I drove around for a while before finding a parking spot and was amazed at how busy the mall was – I thought malls were going out of business. Diana found several pairs of boots that she thinks will see her through the winter. I’m not sure I was very helpful with my selections.

On Sunday we made the drive down to Oak Cliff for brunch at Boulevardier. You might remember me raving about a brunch we had there about a month ago. I opted for the smoky mushroom toast and Diana had the omelette. The first mushroom toast was delicious with a perfectly cooked poached egg. The second toast featured a hard boiled egg trying to masquerade as a poached egg – very disappointing for a restaurant of such repute. Even worse was the attitude when I brought it to the attention of the staff. They did pay for our entire meal – I would have much preferred they just apologized appropriately and brought me another toast.

We made it from Boulevardier over to the Twilite Lounge in Deep Ellum just in time to see the end of the New Orleans Saints game – they beat up on the Cincinnati Bengals 51-14. The Twilite is an “official Saints watching destination” and has a jukebox with lots of great New Orleans music. One of Tim’s favourites, Bonerama, was playing today – it’s a band with 4 trombones that cover rock ‘n roll songs and Tim really doesn’t enjoy them.

Now we’re home with a fire going and getting ready for the Cowboys vs. Eagles match up that starts at 7:20 pm.

This Bob Seger song popped up on a Spotify channel this week. Neither McD nor I had heard it before but we both like it a lot:

Here’s one I heard on “Discover Weekly” from Spotify by Peter Green – the best blues guitarist I’ve heard:

And finally, a beautifully nuanced version of “Can’t Find my Way Home”, the classic Blind Faith song. This is by Nathan East who was the bass guitar player in Eric Clapton’s band for years, with Clapton as a guest:

Here’s an interesting song from the band Air – I enjoy their music and haven’t listened to it in several years. They are a duo from Versailles, France with a somewhat electronic sound. This album, “Moon Safari”, was their debut. I imagine this is what Booker T Jones would sound like if he was born in Paris in the 1990s.

Week in Review – Nov 4, 2018

This was a big work week for both of us – I started my new job and Diana had her big project in downtown Dallas to spin off a new company go live on Thursday – what we’ve been calling “D Day”. The project went much better than anyone had expected with the CEOs of both companies saying nice words to the team. Diana did a great job of keeping everyone organized and motivated to make this happen so smoothly.

Monday got off to a bit of a slow start for me – had to wait on a replacement plane coming from a hanger and then circled Austin a bit because of fog at the airport. I was happy to see some good breakfast taco options at the airport – I’ll take advantage of those next week.

I made it to the office by 11 am and started the whole on-boarding process – filling out forms, new laptop, phone, meeting oodles of people and trying to remember their names. The office is very modern and comfortable and everybody was very pleasant and welcoming.

Our hotel was just across the river from downtown Austin and I was happy to see turntable and guitar art above the bed. You can see how high the river is from all the recent torrential rain. My boss and I walked to downtown and had a delicious Italian meal at Red Ash – my welcome aboard dinner.

Tuesday was a long day at the office, learning a lot about the business and what needs to be done with Information Technology. We had a quick dinner at the hotel bar and called it a day.

Diana had snuck a card for every day of my first week into my suitcase – my parents just told me how spoiled I am – I know. The Halloween card made me laugh out loud – Pumpkin Penguin.

Each of the groups of hotel employees had created a pumpkin for a competition. Here are my two favourites:

On Halloween night I was able to catch my first concert. Doyle Bramhall II was playing at Antone’s. Doyle has been a favourite for many years – I saw him with the Arc Angels in San Antonio more than 20 years ago and have seen him a few times in Eric Clapton’s band. He is an amazing guitar player and songwriter. I visited Antone’s from San Antonio in their previous location but hadn’t been to the downtown, 5th street location.

Dinner before the concert was at Elizabeth St, a French Vietnamese restaurant that I had noticed while visiting the Seventh Flag coffee shop.

I’ve been very pleased with the number of independent coffee shops in Austin – a nice change from the plethora of Starbucks in the Dallas area. You can see the airstream trailer in the background of the Seventh Flag picture – this is one of many food truck areas throughout the city – another nice feature that I’ll have to start exploring.

Back to Elizabeth St – amazing poached shrimp spring rolls and sauce selection followed by a delicious Banh Mi with chicken liver mousse, pork pate and roasted pork. The house made baguette was very good as well.

And now back to the concert. CC Adcock opened the show with his excellent band from Lafayette. Antone’s was running a costume contest and the majority of the crowd were dressed up. I had seen CC Adcock once before in New Orleans and remembered him as a talented guitar player and songwriter. He put on a great show for over an hour and really got the crowd warmed up. Here’s one of his songs:

Doyle Bramhall delivered an amazing set for close to 2 hours. A highlight for me was when he brought Lukas Nelson (Willie’s son and a big part of “The Star is Born” movie) out to play on a couple of songs. They did an excellent cover of Dylan’s “Going, going, gone”. Here’s the guitar solo form that and then a verse:

It was a little after 1 am when I made it back to the hotel – tired but very happy with the Austin music scene and with Antone’s music club.

Thursday was a reasonable day at the office. I was able to get out at a decent time, look at an apartment (very small) and then go for a walk along the river trail and find the Stevie Ray Vaughan statue.

On Friday morning I tried another one of the local coffee shops – this one is close to my hotel and open 24 hours a day -very good coffee and food and lots of seating. I made it back to Dallas around 4pm and met Diana close to her office downtown for a drink and a snack before we headed over to Oak Cliff for dinner and a concert.

Dinner was at Nova (our new favourite pre-concert dinner spot) and then Marcia Ball at the Kessler.

We’ve seen Marcia a number of times in Dallas and New Orleans and she never disappoints with her one of a kind honky-tonk, barrelhouse piano and a mix of upbeat and melancholy songs. Shelley King opened the show, reminding us of the memorable Poor David’s show we saw where Shelley, Marcia and Carolyn Wonderland all performed together. Here’s a funny song from Shelley:

Marcia had been inducted into the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame on Thursday night. Austin City Limits is the long running PBS music show that is revered by its audience and musicians alike. I obviously need to get on some mailing lists so that I don’t miss important Austin events like this going forward.

She delivered an excellent set. My favourite was her outstanding cover of Randy Newman’s “Louisiana 1927” – such a foreshadowing of Katrina.

As usual, the band was excellent. Here’s a song that showcases Mike Schermer, the guitar player in Marcia’s band for many years.

And finally, here’s a song about Mardi Gras that I enjoyed that includes Shelley King:

I made it home to my own bed for the first time in the week around midnight.

We saw the movie “Bohemian Rhapsody” on Saturday afternoon. This was very well done, starting and finishing with the famous Live Aid performance by Queen. I remember watching it at the home of my Gearhart boss, the Sunday before my first day of work following University. My take away from the movie was how happy Freddie Mercury was when performing, and how tortured he was when trying to deal with everyday life – very sad story.

The movie ends with a reenactment of the full 20 minute Live Aid set, and I thought a better ending would have included the final song that Freddie and Brain May perform later in the event – “Is This the World we Created”. What an amazing thing Bob Geldoff did in 1985.

Our typical Sunday started with a workout, then coffee and a crossword – theme “Maniacs” – key clues: “Pork Lo Mein”, “Spanish Main”, “Flowing Mane”, and some city in the state of “Maine” that I don’t remember now. Get it? Different spellings of “Main” comprise “Maniacs”. Right now, I’m watching the New Orleans Saints destroy the Los Angeles Rams (the only undefeated team left at 8-0). 35-17 at the half. I’m officially picking the Saints for the Super Bowl this year.

We probably don’t need any more music this week, but here’s a song that Antone’s was playing before the show. They play a great mix of early 60s soul/R&B music. This is by Eddie Kendricks and I love the sound:

And since I haven’t had a chance to do any real reading this week, we’ll replace the book update with a song from Mighty Mike Schermer (Marcia Ball’s guitarist):