“75 degrees in early January?”
Penelope and I led the way down to Austin on Monday, with Diana following behind in the racing Passat. Alicia flew in on Thursday and the girls are driving back up to McKinney on Monday, so we needed two cars.
My Christmas present from Diana was delivered in person to the apartment on Monday night. Sharon from the Soundwaves art gallery decided it would be easier to drive over my painting than to mail it. She is married to the artist, Tim Wakefield, who creates these excellent music related pieces. Mine is of The Kinks “Waterloo Sunset” and is signed by Ray Davies. It looks amazing. Thanks D! One of my very favourite songs from such an underrated band.
Sticking with the new artwork theme, we installed Quine and Loon in our Austin bedroom – don’t they look great?
And finally, D’s spin art from the Christmas party was installed in the Austin bedroom as well. It’s an album by The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, a glam rock band formed in Scotland in 1972. I can remember checking their albums out of the High School library in Stewarton. How did the spin art folks happen to have one of these albums in Austin, TX? I think Diana created a very interesting piece.
Our first New Year’s Eve in Austin was a lot of fun. We met up with a work colleague, Issac, and his wife Adrienne. They have a similar situation to us, splitting time between a home in San Antonio and an apartment in Austin. Issac selected La Volpe (the fox) as our dinner destination with a 10:30pm reservation to facilitate ringing in the New Year.
The interior of the restaurant was very modern and cool, and I read was designed by Jennifer Long, who also worked on C-Boy’s Heart and Soul on South Congress.
The special menu was all small plates with some great options. The plates ended up not being so small and we had plenty to eat.
The poached lobster and duck confit risotto were absolute standouts. Great choice Issac! We wandered around the corner to Antone’s blues club to close out the evening and posed for these fancy pictures in front of Eddie V’s:
New Year’s Eve in Austin certainly ended up being more exciting than our typical McKinney experience. Maybe we’ll do it again next year.
We rested up on New Year’s Day and planned some fun for Alicia’s arrival on Thursday. Festivities started with dinner at Diana’s favourite Austin restaurant, Peche. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed their meals. Then we 
walked across the street to the Parker Jazz Club for the early show. The House Band was playing, but we got very lucky. The trumpet player Mike Sailors was sitting in, along with club owner Kris Kimura (who plays 10 different instruments including various clarinets, saxophones, flugel horn, and 
ukulele), and an excellent trombone player. Sailors has been a big name in New York for the last several years, playing with the Village Vanguard orchestra and the Birdland band, among many others. He just moved back to Austin to take the role of jazz trumpet professor at the University of Austin, and this was his first gig. What a treat! The music was very much focused around Louis Armstrong – perfect for me. Here’s a sample.
Did I mention an excellent trombone player?
Armstrong’s “The Sunny Side of the Street” took me back to New Orleans and Kermit Ruffins at Vaughan’s on my first evening in that fantastic city:
Everyone thought the music was outstanding. A great first night for Alicia.
On Friday night, Alicia decided she was in the mood for sushi. I suggested Lucky Robot on South Congress based on a quick Yelp search. We had walked by it many times, but never considered dining there. The food and service were both very good, with a menu that included several things that I liked – pork belly bao (steamed buns). There are a lot of origami birds inside.
Saturday was a gorgeous 70 degree day – seriously, in January – so I went for a jog along the river trail while the girls hit the gym downstairs. In the afternoon, we walked across to the Alta coffee shop and enjoyed the sunset. A very nice, relaxed Saturday.
Sunday started with workouts downstairs and then brunch on the rooftop 
patio at El Alma – such a good, close spot. Then we drove over to Covert Park to hike up to the top of Mount Bonnell. This is the highest spot in the city limit of Austin at 785 feet – I know, not that impressive in the scheme of things, but does offer some excellent views of downtown, and up and down river. There are some little multi-million dollar shacks right below the peak. It’s 106 steps up from the parking area to the top of Mount Bonnell. Whew, we made it!
McD took advantage of a table to enhance her view, and I snapped this picture of the two girls looking up river.
“Mission Song” by John Le Carre was my first book this week. I “borrowed” it from the bookcase at Mum and Dad’s house. The story is told from the point of view of Bruno Salvador, “Salvo”, a very talented interpreter of African, particularly Congolese, languages. This is Le Carre’s 20th novel, published in 2006, and it focuses attention on the atrocities committed in the Congo, and largely ignored by the British and American press. Salvo begins his interpreter assignment thinking he is helping Britain find a good solution to the problems in Congo, then realizes it’s just another plan to take advantage of the region’s natural resources. He decides to attempt to stop the plan, with dire consequences. This was a typically beautifully written Le Carre book, with another really disappointing ending. A 375 page book, that comes to a conclusion with a report occupying the last page and a half – I’m getting really tired of less than rewarding endings. The commentary on the role an interpreter plays and the skill associated with the position seemed very well done.
My second book was “Made in Scotland” by the hilarious, and very Scottish, Billy Connolly, a Christmas gift from my parents. What an excellent read, but fair warning, the language is very salty at times.
There are so many great stories from a very interesting life, starting with Billy’s tough childhood and initial working life at 15, as a welder in the Clyde shipyards – building the Queen Mary and QE2.
I learned that Connolly had a band in the early 70s and recruited a young Gerry Rafferty to join. The duo were quite successful, but Rafferty was clearly a more sophisticated and talented musician, going on to release some amazing albums. Did you now that Dire Straits opened for Rafferty on some of his biggest tours?
I enjoyed the stories about Connolly’s Dad taking he and his sister to Rothesay, on the Isle of Bute, for summer holidays during the Glasgow Fair. And handing their buckets and spades to the incoming Paisley Fair kids as they left. The descriptions of the trauma of a knitted swimsuit are very funny.
This book has a lot of heart and soul, and captures the Scottish population very nicely.
Let’s start with some more of “Sunny Side of the Street”. The original and Kermit’s version from Vaughan’s:
The Australian Teskey Brothers came across Spotify again this week. What a great sound:
And this song by FREEMAN popped up again. I really like this one: