End of Silence

Austin City Limits is launching a new newsletter with a contest. You can win tickets to a My Morning Jacket taping on Monday, August 25th. If you don’t live in Austin, they’ll fly you here via American Airlines. If you’re not a big My Morning Jacket fan (and I’m not), there’s still an incentive to join the mailing list to get info on ticket and contest announcements. The signup page is here.

Also, don’t forget that the REM episode taped during this year’s SXSW will air this Saturday, March 24th at 7pm locally on KLRU. The set list appears to be heavy on the new album with almost nothing before 1990 on the set list. “Bad Day” is apparently a b-side and my pre-date Losing My Religion, but I’m not sure. Otherwise, there’s not much there for die-hard 80s REM fans.

PS Note to ACL people, why bury a banner ad for the episode in a Flash animation? Make it easy for people like me to get the image to plug the show. Don’t make me take a screen shot and then crop it myself.

We heard the wind around midnight. No hail for us. A large cottonwood branch nearly took out the minivan, but only chipped a bit of paint on a side view mirror; its smaller brethren littered the yard and the tops of both cars. The loudest thing before that was the storm warning that blared out over the TV as we watched My Name is Earl on the DVR. I think Time Warner can tone down that notice a bit.

As of my commute time about an hour ago, the light at Barton Springs and Robert E Lee was completely out with no traffic cop in sight. Cars on Robert E Lee were backed up for quite a distance. Once I got to the intersection, I found an accident with an ambulance and fire engine, but no police car? Very odd. A downed tree took out a section of the fence at Umlauf. It looks like they’ll be doing a lot of cleanup today. Power is out for at least part of the Zilker neighborhood. Leaves and small branches littered most of the streets that I drove.

It was hard to tell, but it looks like there might have been a fire somewhere between Far West and 183 west of Mopac? I haven’t seen any news to corroborate that, but there appeared to be smoke mixed in with the clouds.

Update: Reports from C., the Statesman and Austinist as well.

Update 2 (2008.05.15 17:18 CDT): Some people may be without power until sometime Saturday. Ouch.

I was very fortunate to attend an Austin City Limits taping on Sunday evening. This was my third in the past ten years. I saw Roky Erickson last November and got to see Hank Thompson & Ray Price with Junior Brown in 1999. I seem to have a knack for catching legendary musicians late in their careers.

This time it was “Pinetop” Perkins and Bettye LaVette. Ninety-five year old Perkins was up first. He arrived at the stage in a wheelchair and was helped up onto it by an ACL employee. He made it across the stage on his own and seated himself at the piano wearing an impressive red suit and hat. The backing band consisted of many local veteran musicians including Chris Layton, Mark “Kaz” Kazanoff, Gary Clark Jr. and also included another Blues legend, Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, on harmonica. “Big Eyes” has played with “Pinetop” Perkins for many years both on drums and harmonica. I didn’t know this until I started checking him out after the show, but they were both in Muddy Waters band and formed their own Legendary Blues Band, appearing behind John Lee Hooker in The Blues Brothers. Wikipedia claims he’s the only other musician shown clearly on camera in that scene. Time to go check out The Blues Brothers again. KUT did an award winning documentary on Perkins last summer. It was kind of hard to hear Perkins over the band. They turned up his mike after the first song. He’s definitely showing his age, something to be expected at 95, but it was definitely a honor to be able to see him play, one of, if not the, last boogie woogie piano players. In a really weird coincidence, “Down in Mississippi” came on the stereo in the coffee shop where I’m working this morning.

Here’s the set list:

CHICKEN SHACK
DOWN IN MISSISSIPPI
HOW LONG
BIG FAT MAMA
MOJO

Bettye LaVette was up next after a long intermission between bands.

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