June 23, 2005

We missed last week because Don was out of town, so there was some excitement about last night. Don also had his heart set on Saba Blue Water food, but we made an early start and took care of that pretty efficiently.
We walked in the back door of the Lucky just in time for the last bit of Lately I've been leaning in the wrong direction... Perhaps hoping to make up for missing the first part, Don agreed to sit on one of the couches. It is too loud there, but so much fun to be close. Fortunately we were in time to hear So Lucky, and I must say it was a great rendition. Listening to Scrappy a couple of weeks ago, I thought of two words that hadn't come to mind in a very very long time: psychedelic guitar. Yes, he's got it. When he's totally into a break, like in that song, he's kind of almost dancing in his chair, doing this shoulder thing. At the end of Lucky, he actually held his guitar up to his little Vox speaker for some feedback.
In a sort of costume reversal, last night Scrappy wore a brown plaid shirt and jeans that were not torn. Mark wore a Hawaiian shirt about 3 sizes too big for his skinny frame, and jeans torn as bad as Scrappy's usual ones. And his red Converses. He had a scruffy beard that Don commented on, and he joked back that he was embracing the scruff. The beard was a little gray, though, it made him look his age.
At the end of the first set, Don Harvey jumped up from his drums and bolted from the stage. He wasn't back for the beginning of the second set, so they started without him. Ian said something about his seeing his son. Eventually he came back, and then a pleasant woman with two cute boys appeared and sat on the empty couch cushion Don had left. I asked if they were the Don Harvey family, and she said they were, and the younger son had just played his first gig at the Broken Spoke. I asked him if he played drums too, and he said no, bass. Isn't that so Austin? Where musician families raise musician children?
I think they may have played a little later than usual, maybe in honor of the Harveys. Ian mentioned that they would be out for a couple of weeks. And sometime during the last song, a woman in a very short dress popped in the back door, stood in front of Scrappy to wave to him, and popped out the door again.

June 9, 2005

We arrived last week to find the doors to the Lucky Lounge closed--a dismaying sight. We made do with the Cedar Street Courtyard, an open-air, below-street-level bar in between Saba and Malaga, the same dimensions as those long, narrow buildings--and like the Lucky Lounge, too--but with no roof and a few trees growing from the floor.
As it turned out, the Bump Band was taking a night off. We left a song or two early on our anniversary, so maybe we missed the announcement. At any rate, they were back last night, and we were there.
Don was late getting home, so we didn't even leave the house until 6, arriving soon after 6:30. The place wasn't overly full so we got a good spot half-way down the high side of the bar. We were fortunate to hear several songs before they took their break.
As we were in between smokers at the bar, we decided to step away during the break. Don had noticed the stairs at the back, which appeared to connect to some sort of balcony, so we explored.
To our surprise we found almost more level space than they have downstairs, all furnished with many chairs, several couches, and some tables. There was even a small, free-standing, fake fireplace with a red light under some fake firewood. Possibly this is the "lounge" of Lucky Lounge.
One other person sat up there. It's not possible to see the stage from any of the chairs, but one could see standing at the front railing. We didn't stay up there for the second set, though, but just sat out the break. While we were there, the one person there left, and two others came up and looked, then left--one of them Mark Andes.
A nice find, the balcony.
During the second set, they did what Mac said was a Jon Dee Graham song. It hadn't the simple power of their usual playlist, and Mac added afterward, "Not bad for the first time."