You can read Part 1 here to get yourself up to speed.
July 6 — Dosey Doe Coffeehouse, Conroe, Texas
With our New Orleans pseudo-vacation over with, we made our way to Texas. We had never ventured to the state and did not know much besides the fact that we would be there for the next nine days. After six hours of driving we sort of had our fingers crossed for this show, which was arranged to happen at Dosey Doe Coffeehouse in Conroe, Tex. The coffeehouse was the only business in a brand new and otherwise unoccupied strip mall in a Houston suburb. The show was put together last-minute but it went off without a hitch. While we performed in the coffeehouse to a friendly group lounging on sofas, Lisa Marie (under the moniker Air Castle Mystery Solved) performed acoustic and by candlelight in the unoccupied portion of the strip mall. Each song was swimming in reverb from the concrete floors and steel walls. Lovely. New friends and a good vibe kicked off our stay in Texas.
July 7 — Super Happy Fun Land, Houston, Texas
Our new friend Marshall let us stay at his parents’ house after the show in Conroe, and his mother was kind enough to cook us an enormous feast for breakfast. Unfortunately by now we’ve gotten used to the southern hospitality, and I must admit we’ve seriously considered never leaving Texas again. But with only a short drive to Houston ahead of us, we lounged around the house for most of the day, getting a good laugh every time Wolf Blitzer almost said “Michael Jordan” during the Michael Jackson memorial on CNN. We played to quite a few people at Super Happy Fun Land, which is a theater seating-style venue with some interesting graffiti on the wall. One of the bands in particular was pretty hilarious to watch, because they were not exactly “of age”, and had been hanging out outside the venue drinking some fermented beverages. The belligerence that followed on stage was quite amusing, as they shed clothes and played Daft Punk covers, while the drummer’s mother was in the front documenting it all on videotape. A writer from the Houston Press attended the show, and wrote a (sort of) nice little review of our performance and all the others, and you can read that right here:
http://blogs.houstonpress.com/rocks/2009/07/aftermath_goodnight_and_good_m.php
July 8 — Annie Street Arts Collective, Austin, Texas
While in Houston we ran into plenty of “Keep Houston Ugly” propaganda, but we were excited to see the weird Texan city — Austin. Annie Street Arts Collective hosted a tasteful show for us, with plenty of homemade broccoli, mushroom, red pepper and cauliflower on honey wheat crust pizza to go around. More importantly, the music was fantastic. Starting with Dan Grissom of Some Say Leland (above right, who will be performing with us and You & Yourn at the Red Herring on August 9th), and ending with a wonderfully mellow project called Twigs and Yarn. The southern hospitality came through again, and the evening was delightful. Also, our new friend Charlie recorded our live set and has posted it on his radio station’s website, and it is available for listening and downloading here: http://www.kaosradioaustin.org/node/15782. With a third of our Texan dates through, we looked forward to helping keep Waco wacko and Dallas pretentious.
July 9 — Common Grounds, Waco, Texas
Dan from Some Say Leland told us that if we’re going to Waco, we had to eat at this place called the Clay Pot. We Googled it, and found out it was literally right around the corner from Common Grounds. We were pretty excited when we got there and found out it was a real-deal Vietnamese place, complete with fantastic food and sit on the floor-style tables. Pretty fantastic. Common Grounds is easily one of the best coffee shops we’ve ever been to. I can’t comment on the coffee, as I didn’t partake, but the atmosphere was wonderful, and there was an outdoor bungalow area that was pretty cozy for the two hours we spent there before the show started. A songwriter named Tommy Read opened the show (above), and his songs were gorgeous and heartfelt. The crowd thinned a bit after he played, but the people who stuck around were amazing and some of them paid way too much for our donation-based EP. Our host for the evening, Justin, had just purchased a sailboat with some friends and as we left Common Grounds there was talk of going for a midnight voyage. Sadly, the boat had already been taken over for the evening by a co-owner, so we hung out on the porch for the evening with several people, playing guitar, getting recommendations for barbeque places in Dallas, and getting haircuts. Ryan’s looks extra good. Hopefully Off the Bone Bar-B-Que in Dallas doesn’t let us down.