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Casbeers is one of those classic Texas bar/restaurant gigs. The walls are lined with photos of all the usual well known and not so well known texan folkies and honky tonkers. The bar is lined with drinkers who just look like they belong. If it were an English pub they'd probably have their personal pint pot hanging above their favourite bar stool. They seem to know everyone who walks through the door. One of the regulars is remarkably well dressed in suit and tie and it turns out he is my hosts lawyer.

My host is Claude Butch Morgan. Butch has been running a gig here for 7 years, normally with his band, but once a month he shares the stage with a visiting songwriter and tonight it is me.

There is lots of friendly banter between Butch and the regulars. Lots of jibes at the lawyer: Q: "Does anyone know a good lawyer?" A: "No but I know Ben." and so on. Ben takes it very well along with copious amounts of beer.

The other thing Casbeers is famous for is its burgers. I have one before the show and it's easily the best thing about the place. The gig itself is what you'd expect in a noisy bar style restaurant. me and Butch swop songs and 10 or 15 people pay attention. Other tables tune in every now and then when something distracts them from their own conversation. I test the water with a song of mine about The Pilgrim Fathers called "William Brewster Dreams of America" but I am obviously expecting too much. After that I stick with the simpler, more rhythmic and up numbers.

Butch is an excellent songwriter. His song about Ed, a local man from his hometown of Devine, is very moving. He tells me it was this song which has one him a finals place in this years Kerrville New Folk Competition. Good luck with that Butch !

I enjoyed playing with Butch. He has a lovely easy way, a very good guitar player and a top notch songwriter. Unfortunately I didn't fancy Casbeers much. The real clincher was a couple of young women who kept applauding inexplicably mid song. I ignored it a couple of times but when they did it during one of Butch's songs I looked over and noticed they were concentrating on something else. They were watching a baseball game on the huge flat screen tv with the sound turned down !

MONDAY 14^TH APRIL
After scorching myself on the beach at Port Aransas, on the Gulf of Mexico, I have a gig tonight in Corpus Christi. The venue is Parkway Presbyterian Church. Last night I’d done a local radio show with Pam (Bambi) Stakes. Pam is herself a singer and teacher of orchestra, particularly Cello, in Corpus. She runs a show called ‘Some call it folk’ on which I was the guest. We ‘visited’ for a while and I sang 5 or 6 songs.  Pam organises the Burning Bush House Concert series, and like many of the Texan promoters, is a 20 year stalwart of the Kerrville Folk Festival.The venue is a 1970’s modernist style church and I’m playing in the church hall. It’s a large, voluminous room with chairs arranged in a semi circle and I’m positioned under the baseball net. Brad provides a very decent sound system and Pam checks the levels. Other women arrive to dole out the coffee and cookies – like many church house concerts this is a strictly alcohol free event.My sunburnt face gets a few laughs which immediately breaks the ice. These are really friendly people anyway. Pam runs a wonderful relaxed show. And the venue, in spite of its size, feels very intimate. The audience is around 40, average according to Pam. And they automatically rise at the end for a standing ovation. I sell plenty of CD’s and head for San Antonio and a day off to rest my throat and my throbbing face !

My accommodation for that night was with Camille and Frank Duane Rosengreen. An elderly couple with a fantastic rambling 17thc ex mission house in the woodlands. Frank was a writer and playwright with an impressive history of Public Broadcast Service recordings under his belt. He was also at one time the youngest ever playwright on Broadway.
With Jo Lynn we sat up to the early hours drinking wine and Camille told us of their associations with the 60's Greenwich village crowd "yes, I knew Dylan - to be honest with you I never thought he'd amount to a hill of beans" She was active in the peace movement personified by Baez.
She had also been a protege in her day, on the piano, and had later played guitar and sang jazz. On the wall amongst the original artworks and the mexican carvings, hung a lovely tenor guitar. I told her that I was looking for one for myself "That's my mother's old Gretsch". She said. In the corner was a black case which contained a well-played Spanish style guitar. "Do you still play?" I asked her. "Not for years." She said. Neither did she touch the baby grand that dominated the room. "To be a succesful classical musician at the level where I was heading you have to give up everything else" She said. "I wanted to do other things with my life as well"

The thousands of books that lined the walls, the art, the lovely house, the pictures of her beautiful and succesful Hollywood Prop Artist daughter, her 60 year marriage and her vitality and intellect all seemed testament to a good decision well made.

Saturday morning I make a quick visit to South Congress St in Austin for coffee at Joe's. Road blocks are everywhere due to the 5 films currently being made in the town. We circle round through the park, littered with cyclists and runners and canoeists and walkers and frisbee throwers...... Austin is a keep fit kinda town.

At Joe's, an open air sidewalk coffee bar,the air is thick with cellphone talk about studios and scripts and funky dressers pecking away on their laptops.

Pretty soon I'm on the road, heading down I35 to San Antonio. I'm a big fan of signage, and American signage is up there with the best, sometimes it borders on hallucinatory. From cut price Vasectomy reversal, (ouch !) to Choose adoption reject abortion - tel 555 ..etc etc.. I saw a church draped in banners declaring "30 Minute Worship". Do Americans see that sign, I wonder, and say to their fellow faithful "Why, the worship is taking a good 40 minutes at my church, I think I'll switch right away!" Fast Food. Fast Faith. I passed a mission style building with a large cross on the front and a banner reading "Catholic Bathtubs" The front parking area was strewn with all sizes and shapes of baths.

I arrived at the gig, The little Aussie Bakery, on the edge of a park in San Antonio and behind the Witte Museum. I was met by Jo Lynn who hosts the River Road House Concerts, and John the Australian owner of the bakery. The PA is a beautiful and extraordinary Bose affair. Which belongs to George, the support act for the night. It consists of 2 speakers, about 2ft long and 4" wide, one on top of the other, and a small 2 channel box with simple 3 band EQ and Volume. The sound is natural and acoustic. George offers to lend me his lovely Taylor guitar, can't remember what model, ident numbers have never been my strong point, but it was very pretty with lots of abalone inlay and detail and gold coloured heads. It also took the capo very well without going out of tune.

The gig was excellent, although a struggle at times owing to a table of friends of the owners' from Poland. It was clear that they were not versed in house concert etiquette and nothing was going to quiet them completely. The best I could hope for was some kind of minimal control over their volume. I managed to achieve this to a degree by occasionaly announcing a Polish song, this would get their attention and reassure them that I was friendly, if sometimes a little bossy. I made a point of acknowledging their applause so they felt marginally involved. Once we got to a singalong opportunity though they really came into their own, singing with gusto and surprisingly good harmony.

I knew the easy solution would have been to change my programme but I didn't travel thousands of miles to play polish crowd pleasers. The end result was smiles all round. Jo Lynn has an excellent well run series, with enthusiastic and involved people.  The venue was superb and John offered me accomodation in his guest house for the 3 days I would be in San Antonio next week. I sold a few cd's and was well paid. Result ! 

The first gig of the tour is a house concert in the Tarrytown district of Austin, 5 minutes west of downtown. It's an affluent area with wide tree-lined streets and large houses with neat shady lawns and pools out back. Jessica, my host has never held or attended a house concert before, and neither had most of her 50 or so friends and work colleagues who made up the audience. The point of view of an outsider is often much clearer than those who live right in the heart of it and that's certainly the case here. I find myself explaining the history of house concerts in America to airline pilots and accountants and even Austin musicians.

The event is an instant hit. People bring food & wine and beer. tables are laid outside with buffet style food and the folks spread out in deck chairs or on the lawn to witness their first genuine internationally flavoured house concert. a couple of unruly kids in neon arm and leg bands whirl around dangerously like giant fireflies for 20 minutes or so until someone convinces them that they will both fit neatly into a canvas butterfly chair. Within minutes they are asleep and last seen being carried, still entwined in the chair, bedward.

Jessica decides not to charge her friends but to pass around some plastic containers for donations. This works fine and I sell around 20 cd's at $15 a time.

 

Every one appears to leave happy. Some are obviously fired up by the experience and are talking about organising their own house concert. I remind them to be sure to invite me. Jessica is pleased, the event has been a success, her friends are still friendly, nothing got broken and all it cost was some extra groceries. I get to sleep around 2am, 8am UK time, and the rest is sweet oblivion.

 

I'm planning to keep an online diary of this tour, international wireless networks permitting of course ! I arrived last night in Dallas and spent the night with the songwriters Bruce Balmer & Lisa Markely http://www.myspace.com/lisamarkley.

We ate Salvadorean food at Glorias in the old Oakcliff district of Dallas, with its Prairie style houses, with porch swings and the ciccadas doing their best to deafen the Englishman. The daytime temperature was in the 70's and night time balmy & breezy. We had a few rounds of songs and chilean red before sleep finally dragged me away to its blow up bed in the spare room. Bruce has a newish D28 Martin with a cutaway which he describes as his Steinway, 'hard but worth the effort' and Lisa has a beautiful Santa Cruz guitar, apparently a copy of a 20's Gibson model. Nice guitar. Sleep now.....