Alt Experimental Indie Pop Night and beyond.

It's been a pretty good weekend so far. Neither of us are sick for a change, and weather is absolutely great. Friday night we went to see Shearwater at Mohawk over on Red River. They were advertised to start at 9 with doors at 8, so, of course, I wanted to be there by 7:30. I had no idea what the attendance would be like. Well, we got there plenty early (in time to get a kickass parking place right across the street) - it was basically just us, a couple of people hanging in the main bar, and the Shearwater Super-Fan who flew in from LA to see the show. We got to hear soundcheck, which was we enjoyed, met the band as they passed by on the way out, and since we then found out that the band actually went on at 11pm we had plenty of time left to walk over to Koriente for a bite, and come back. Someone at Koriente had customized this sign on the wall using a black sharpie. Funny!

There were 2 openers for Shearwater, and the first one was this band, Black Before Red, that we hadn't heard of but turns out that one of the guys in the band was a friend of ours so that was cool, and I really liked their sound too. Listen to them at the link above. Here's one of the videos I took of Shearwater from the upper perch that we took. Song is called "Leviathan Bound." I have gotten into this band lately. The sound is rather haunting -- takes me back a little to the late 60s early 70s prog sound, it's very eclectic using lots of instruments. There's another video on my Youtube channel if you are interested. Review of show here.

Mohawk is really a fascinating club space. It's more than half patios, and is full of stairs going everywhich way, leading into different spaces. It's a great place. There's one place where you can stand and have a great view of the band playing on the patio next door at Club DeVille - and of course the sound bleedover is terrible - but it IS Red River.

Saturday morning, we went to Bouldin Creek for breakfast, and ran into Leslie (that's a good place to run into Leslie if you were trying to do that). It's a wonderful coffee house with an all vegetarian menu (the mural image at the top/right of this blog right now was taken across the street from there and shows the side of a now-closed now painted-over wall of a video store). Then it was home to do our annual cleaning of the birdhouses (which got skipped last year because both of us were sick). It was very odd, but there were only 2 old nests in those bird condos where we used to find them nearly all filled after one year. No wasp nests either, just one little mud dobber nest. I wish I knew what the hell was up with our bird visitors. I can't help but wonder if a neighbor is creating some kind of bad chemical event that is affecting the wildlife. There oughta be laws about putting unlimited poisons in the suburban environment, but there aren't. There's a spot along our west fence in the back where all the plants die. I suspect that the neighbor is using Roundup or some other thing we wouldn't approve of.

Today (Sunday) has turned out to be a beautiful day, contrary to the weather people's predictions. I have wrapped up a big project I've been working on for the last month, and finished up a couple of straggler things in the InBox today, so I am attempting to take the rest of the day off for ME time (who am I kidding? It's not really going to happen...), but tonight while MrB watches that game that will be on, I am planning to go over to Momo's around 8pm to see MiLkDrive. The show will last a little over an hour, and will feature some mighty fine picking, so come on out if you're not glued to the end of *the game*.

Tags: Music - Austin - Texas - Texas Music - Shearwater - MiLkDrive