Slow Progress

Baton Rouge

On Wednesday evening I'd planned to take the overnight bus to New Orleans but when I got to the station I found it had been cancelled and there wasn't another one until midnight. So I headed back into Austin and took in another evening's music at the Saxon Pub.

Main attraction was an acoustic set by local resident Tony Scalzo of Fastball, an American college-rock act I've always had time for. These days the same can't be said of many Austin residents as there were scarcely more than ten people there including the guy who runs the place and Tony's mate who got up and played guitar with him. It was a fine little show though, some quality new songs mixed in with older ones. In perhaps the least surprising move since Don McLean decided to close a show with "American Pie" he finished with "The Way" - a major U.S. airplay hit from 1998 that even made the British Top 20. As a calling card on the world music stage it still sounds pretty great although I sadly doubt he and the band are going to get a second fifteen minutes in the limelight.

A band called The Johns came next and played a decent hour of rootsy blues-rock. I was more interested in the baseball by this point and sure enough the Red Sox took yet another victory to finally claim the World Series. The sound guy at the venue had a different reason for constantly abandoning his post however, he was popping outside to check out the lunar eclipse. When I finally left the bar the full moon was still mostly hidden, so maybe the mysterious energy it was giving off had something to do with the local bus driver who gave me dodgy information ("yeah there's definitely still another bus that goes up to the Greyhound station") that made me miss my 12 o' clock coach.

So I spent another three hours at a bus station by now becoming rather more familiar than I'd wanted it to be. The tramp-proof benches at those places make sleeping impossible so I opted to get a bus to Dallas, even though it's in completely the wrong direction, just so I could get some shut-eye. From there I went to Houston and then on to here, arriving yesterday evening at the lovely new house of Gavin, Kathy, Abigail and Audrey and settling down to a welcome proper night's sleep in the wee one's room. New Orleans can wait, I'm sure it'll still be there when I finally make it.