Amazing Austin!!

Another KURT adventure right on the heels of my trip to the Ryman show! It is kind of a shame that, with so few shows this year and the inevitable deprivation that we will feel, that two of the few concert opportunities were quite so close together. If they were spaced apart they would satisfy my “dependency” over a longer period of time. Be that as it may, I was thrilled that I could fir this trip into my schedule.

What clinched the deal was the chance to attend a more intimate show with the added benefit of being able to support a very worthy charitable event in Austin, TX to help combat Batten’s disease. This also made me feel a little less guilty about leaving school early. We have spent this week in my Neuroanatomy course on disorders affecting nervous system development, so promoting research and treatment efforts for one such disease seem particularly appropriate. I scored a first-row center of the balcony seat (yay!) - the $500 for floor seats was a bit rich for my blood. (At the show, however, I learned that the week of the show the still plentiful floor seats were marked down almost to “balcony” prices!).

I had never been to Austin so tried to pack a lot of little Austin experiences into my few hours. I had some excellent breakfasts tacos at Tacodeli, a tiny but top-rated spot that even my GPS had trouble finding. I’m really glad I kept circling the area until I located it because the young men on their staff were so friendly and hlepful and even wrote me out a list of suggested stops for my brief time in their city! I made brief stops at the state capitol and the University of Texas campus, drove through many lovely neighborhoods, walked over the Congress Street bridge where apparently millions of Mexican free-tail bats reside, visited one of the "moonlight towers" that have been ligthing Austin since 1895, and went to another local favorite Maudie’s for more of those Texas tacos for lunch.

The Batten benefit early evening activities were for the VIP big donors only, so I bided my time by visiting an interesting bar/jazz club called the Elephant Room (all the wall lamp sconces are elephant head carvings). The jazz quartet (or trio plus a singer) did some great old favorites. I walked over to the Moody Theatre (site of the Austin City Limits show) in time for the auction portion of the benefit. Since I had received both mailings and emails encouraging everyone to arrive in time for the auction I thought I would people-watch even though I wouldn’t be bidding on the diamonds or vacation trips that were in their auction list : )! But despite those encouragements, I discovered that I would have to pay another $50 to enter the auction! So I and several other early-bird “balcony” folks had to sit outside for an hour before the balcony was opened for seating.At least I had fun chatting with another long-time Urbanite who had come down from Nashville for the show. We did hear over the loud speakers that the winning bid for the meet and greet with Keith went for $8000! Strangely, once we were able to enter the balcony, the benefit announcer kept making announcements looking for the winner so the M & G could happen and the show could begin. It took 15 or 20 minutes and multiple announcements before the winner showed up! I keep volunteering to take their place if they were too busy! : )

Danny has tweeted early in the day that this intimate theatre was going to be an awesome venue - and it was! It was a little bigger than the House of Blues type theatres but had that same feel. The stage was laid out with attractive Oriental rugs. Although they used a large screen to show us a brief video about Batten Disease and the Foundation, they then lifted the screen before Keith’s performance.

Here is the set list for the evening:

You Gonna Fly

Where the Blacktop Ends, with a break in the middle (and an interesting musical introduction) to interact with the audience before going back to the rollicking blacktop chorus. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWJJd4cCR48

How are you doing to each part of audience

And Keith lead us in one of his echo rounds:

Hey hey, un huh , hey hey, un-huh

Feel so good, feel alright

Feel so good, in Austin tonight

(Does it look like Keith is growing a little more well defined mustache?)

Days Go By (with a little added “You know they do, you know they do” during the final Days Go By

Keith then paused to thank everyone for coming and gave a special thanks " those of you who bid out the wazoo at the auction tonight!” And then he apparently heard someone say that it was their birthday, so Keith stopped and sang Happy Birthday to Jennifer : ) Lucky Jennifer!

Stupid Boy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hySdwlBhoCk and the solo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUucxkluoXc

Sweet Thing with a really rocking guitar interlude

Long Hot Summer

You’ll Think of Me

Keith prefaced Making Memories by commenting that Valentine’s Day is coming up soon and questioned the audience: "Where are all the maried people? Where are all the single people in the audience.?Who’s not sure which they are? We’re gonna do this song for everybody feeling in love - which has I’d guess has grown exponentially in the last few hours!"

Making Memories of Us http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6vAleEuTRg

Then a very special treat: Keith said "Seeing how we are in Texas today and in Austin, YX in particular..

By the way I love the teeshirts that say Keep Austin Weird!"

"I'd ike to bring a good friend of mine out to do a song with me: Jack Ingram!"

When Jack came out he confessed "Being from TX I should know the words to every George Strait song around but just in case (and he held up his cell phone wiht the lyrics! hee hee)

Keith chimed in "We’ve neve done this song before which will become immediately apparent"

They sounded great together and what was even more impressive was all the men in the audience (who had been relatively quiet during Keith's songs) all joining in on the choruses of George’s song You Look So Good in Love.

It was especially fun when Keith and Jack got to the spoken portion of the song. Jack got down on bended knee and Keith finished his spoken part with “Please, let Jack Ingram say...” and went into the chorus and then the entire audience joined in. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZGXBLeQI6w

After sending Jack off with a hug, I suddenly realized the “on the move” music from the last tour was playing and there was Keith coming off the stage out to a little platform just beneath my first row balcony spot to sing I’m In!! Now that was a view I had not had before. I loved it when at one point he looked up right at me and grinned when he saw me hanging over the edge of the balcony! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu_PtrG_R-8

Sweet Thing

Kiss a Girl, with a KAG competition http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNFcSJWjsvw

Naturally the first gal Keith brought up from the audience was actually from California, not TX and only knew the first couple lines of the chorus, then tried to give the microphone back The second gal was from Austin, TX (big cheer from the audience) and did better but a cowboy in his Stetson stole the show - what a ham!

Without You (feeling almost as if Keith were singing in my living room)

Then Keith said "Let's mix it up a bit" and broke into the familar guitar intro to

Billy Joel's You May be Right http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGxi5AwuMmE

Who Wouldn't Wanna Be Me, followed by the introduction of the boys and their individual song excerpts

Somebody Like You

You Look Good in My Shirt (where Keith valiantly made it up to the balcony to perform even though this was not an arena with readily available stairways). He even gave away a guitar up there.

I'm liking Danny's new hair cut and color but I'm not sure about Brian’s “James Dean” or “John Mellencamp” hairdo - short, slicked, with a bit of a curl over his right forehead.

It was a wonderful show in a very special venue. Being a very mixed "charity" audience, there wasn't quite the audience participation on songs that we are used to at concerts. There were quite a few of us Urbanites but we were scattered in the audience. Keith realized the audience was not his usual and didn't 'ask' for as much participation as usual, although he did regularly compliment us on what singing was occurring. But I left still singing as I mosied down 2nd Street towards my hotel!