South by South Gomer DAY SEVEN: Eggs, Naps & Rock n' Roll!

Day Seven:

When we arose on day seven our livers had basically transformed into beef jerky. We knew the only way to rehydrate them was with more hootch...but first, pancakes!

Once the van was loaded we sauntered across the street to the Denny's for an early morning gut bomb. It ended up being possibly the best Denny's experience any of us had ever had (I realize that is a low bar to set, but still). Our waitress spotted us a band right away, (probably because we all looked like the bloated corpse of Elvis by that point) and we were treated like Denny's royalty. We signed a couple stickers for the staff and our waitress even sang an acapella number for us while we poked at our burnt sausages. It was a Grand Slam morning! Moons Over My Hammy indeed...

This is as good a time as any to say that we were absolutely blown away by the citizens of Texas. Seriously. Being granola eating, California boys, most of us had a vision of Texas as a right-wing hell scape. I can say now that it couldn't have been further from the truth. Every person we met, from musicians to gas station attendants were great. It was spooky. On top of that the landscape was green and pleasant almost everywhere we went. Where were the tum-tum-tumbilin' tumbleweeds? Maybe we were in Bizzaro Texas? Whatever the case, it was a good time.

After eggs we hit the road, mercifully the trip to Austin was one of our shorter journeys of the tour. We checked into our hotel by four and our load-in wasn't until nine, so we had gobs of time. It goes without saying that we used our extra hours in one of the hottest music destinations in the world in the most legendary rock star fashion possible...we did laundry and took a nap! Ha! In your face Keith Richards!

After our siesta we gussied up and moseyed on down to the Rattle Inn in downtown Austin. It was a class joint with possibly the best sound guy we have ever worked with. His name was Joe and we almost chloroformed him and threw him in the van so he could come back to the Bay and show them how it's done.

Before our set the stage was warmed by the exceptional group Justin Black and Big Heart. Their rhythm section killed it and we were a little intimidated when we hit the stage.

But, thanks to grace under pressure and an enthusiastic crowd including some friendlies (a couple old friends of Mark's and some work-mates of Callahan's) we played our tightest set of the tour. In fact we melted the faces off of our small but mighty audience and got to check one of the great musical destinations off the old bucket list. Not bad for a Thursday night.

After more loading and unloading we at last retired to the air conditioned womb of our hotel, gulped down a wind-down cocktail and drifted off into Drifter dreams.

Tune in next time for a wet and wild time in El Paso...