Last Thursday was another fine night at Tom’s Tabooley. Patti Dixon, Ben Bochner, Rose Gabriel, Adrian Nye, Jimbro Lutz, Don Berryhill, Gregg Miller, Smokey, George Ostrich, Sam Alexander, Jack McCabe, and Rusty Nelson all came out to sing and play their original songs with a few covers of songs by Texas songwriters who have gone before us like Townes Van Zandt, Bob Wills, Lyle Lovett, and David Rodriguez thrown in. Victor Mikeska was there with his harps and backed up Patti Dixon, Don Berryhill, and Jack McCabe. So many great songs, like Rose Gabriel's "Leaving Real Soon" and Patti Dixon's "You Can Live on Love." One of the highlights of the evening for me was George Ostrich's commitment to come every week and never play the same song twice. It was a great time.
When I was in high school in North Houston my friends and I used to lie to our parents about where we were going and drive down to Montrose to a coffee house on Richmond called Sand Mountain. Jerry Jeff Walker, Guy Clark, and Townes Van Zandt had all played on the Sand Mountain stage and were spoken of in respectful tones by other performers on the stage. In the audience we listened in transfixed silence from straight backed chairs that were more uncomfortable than a church pew to original songs from songwriters like Willis Alan Ramsey, Bill Staines, Don Sanders, Ed Miller, and Bill and Lucille Cade. Protest songs. Re-invented traditional folk songs. Love songs. Funny songs. Confessional songs. Songs from the heart. Songs from the head. I know it’s hard to imagine a music venue in Montrose on Saturday night in 1969 that was church-like, but I honestly felt downright reverent about the music. And I know a lot other people who were there with me felt the same. You could feel it in the air. It was at Sand Mountain that my love of live music began.
If I were to continue the metaphor I guess you could say that when I moved to Austin to go to college my relationship with live music just continued to get more serious and we eventually got married. Over four decades later I have to say it’s one of the happiest marriages I’ve ever known of. Not only that, in my heart I believe it’s one of the many love stories that lead to Austin being dubbed the Live Music Capital of the World.
Sometimes it feels like ACL and SXSW are commodifying the life right out of live music – turning it into living dead music. But the truth is there’s still an incredibly vibrant grassroots music scene in Austin that’s so much more about art than money. So many small stages all over town give brilliant and unprecedented musicians a stage to play to appreciative audiences every night of the week. In my humble opinion, open mics are at the very center of that grassroots movement. They are the heartbeat of live music in the live music capital. Which is one of the many reasons I’m so happy to be hosting an open mic at Tom’s Tabooley which is one of the best listening rooms in town. I hope you can join us next week. Sign up's at 6:30. Music from 7 to 10.
Adam and I are songwriters ourselves so we want to encourage original songs, but covers are welcome, especially covers of Texas songwriters.
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