Free food, free music, free Texas beer

Normally we don't go out much during the week, but Tuesday was Texas Independence Day, and there was a party at Roadhouse Rags with free food (from Torchy's Tacos), free Lone Star Beer, and free music by La Tampiquena. We took a mini-movie, but this is one is much better. The videographer caught us in the crowd shots at the beginning. The song is "Loretta" written by Townes Van Vandt, and the band puts a south Texas spin on it.

They also had a cake with a beered-up version of the "Come and Take It" flag. It was a great little party, we like this band, saw some friends, and we still made it home by 8 to watch LOST.


On Thursday, I had won a trivia contest to get into the Shiner Party where they'd be giving away a couple of SXSW badges in a drawing. Again, there was free Shiner beer, and free food (which was Czech hors d'oeuvres, and looked like lotsa meat so we took a pass on the food). The band was Brave Combo, a world-famous polka band (they've won at least one Grammy, and have been immortalized on The Simpsons). They were pretty good, as polka bands go. I took a video of a conga line on one of the songs. The sound is not that great but it was fun watching the people dancing by.

The table behind us (among others) were trying to see how tall a beer bottle pyramid they could build without it falling down. As you can see, this one did pretty well. They restacked and toppled about 4 more pyramids after this one, and I have to say that Shiner's beer bottle glass must be extra strong because none of them broke after falling multiple times. I had about 3 beers (my limit) but didn't win anything.