12-20MAR11 - Kerrville, TX (south by southwest)

Saturday morning, 12MAR, we drove the short distance to Dan’s sister, Sharon, & hubby, Tim Tompkins, place in Kerrville, TX. As noted many times in this BLOG, we usually stop by twice a year; once in the spring heading west leaving Louisiana, & once in the fall heading east back to Louisiana. Obviously having visited many times since becoming full time RV’ers in 2007, there isn’t much left for us to discover or experience in Kerrville & the surrounding area. So we use our time here to catch up on family "gossip", chores, check on our household goods in storage, & take turns preparing tasty dinners. For example, we took two days to wash the rig, & Dan smoked a pork roast for pulled pork BBQ.

On Wednesday we headed into Austin to check out the annual South by Southwest (SxSW) Festival at the world famous Continental Club on South Congress Ave. SxSW is an annual festival that started 25 years ago as a music festival to showcase Texas musicians. It quickly mushroomed into one of the largest events in the USA & now has three distinct components – music, film & interactive/multi media, & has participants from all over the world. In addition, there are hundreds of panels by industry leaders discussing music, film or multi media. The music portion is the largest part of the festival, & there are thousands of acts performing throughout the city.

http://sxsw.com/

Since the thousands of musical performers are only scheduled to perform once or twice during the festival, they usually have two choices – come to Austin just for their performance & leave, or find other venues to play during the entire festival. And probably due to the shear number of acts, they often play for free! Of course the “big names” often leave town after their performance. The end result is that almost every restaurant, bar, & even boutiques that can squeeze in a band has free music at night; & some even start free music at 10AM & go past midnight! Another by-product of the festival is that all the streets surrounding the venues have many “street fairs” going, along with their own outdoor stages providing free music.

Dan decided to check out the “Happy Hour” at the Continental Club; Happy Hour is free music from 12 to 6PM (five bands in six hours). The idea was for Corrie to also attend this free show, but for most of the time Corrie roamed Congress Ave checking out the boutiques, street vendors, & free outdoor music. Dan stuck it out for the entire Happy Hour & saw - Loves It! (Folk/Indie), Miss Tess (Jazz/Blues), Defibulators (Americana), Woody Pines (Blues/Country), & Stone River Boys (Rocking Country). All the acts were excellent, but the definition of free show is subject to interpretation? Obviously the Club would prefer you buy something to drink and/or eat; if you do buy something, the waitress expects a tip; & lastly each band passes around the tip “bucket” toward the end of their set. End result, free ended up being $20!

http://www.continentalclub.com/Austin.html

Since Tim had to work Wednesday & couldn’t go to the Continental Club with us, he & Dan headed back to the Continental Club on Saturday morning, 19MAR. Saturday was the day for Mojo Mayhem, an event they attended back in 2009. Tim & Dan missed the first few groups but caught Jade Idol, Stone River Boys, Jon Dee Graham (too mean to die) & the Fighting Cocks, Jungle Rockers, Mother Truckers, & lastly - Mojo & the Toad Liquors. As in 2009, there were many baby boomers in attendance. But Dan noted that almost all of them were wearing earplugs; to him that defeats the whole purpose of attending a live rock & roll concert?

Although Dan is still not a fan of Mojo’s shock-jock personae, he has to admit Mojo has unique outlook on things as shown by his two hit records – Elvis is Everywhere, & Debbie Gibson is Pregnant with My Two-headed Love Child. (Note – most of his other titles are not suitable for a family BLOG.)

http://theryanrvexpress.blogspot.com/2009/03/05-24mar09-kerrville-tx.html

http://www.mojonixon.com/home.html

We were going to hit the road Sunday morning, heading west & north; but for some reason Dan was feeling tired & we decided to wait one more day.