Texas in the Rain

Leaving the Austin City Limits festival yesterday, being pulled by one little tractor and pushed by another, the messiness of the day was all too evident in the muck being scraped from shoes with hotel room keys…ah, good times.

They don’t get much rain round these parts, and we’re told they really needed it, but they weren’t prepared for it on the festival site at all. We know how it can all turn to shit in the rain from festivals in Europe, but here there was nowhere to shelter from the rain. For a couple of hours before we went on, we were down at our stage, sheltering under a rocky overhang, like some kind of desperados. Radio stations and Music Magazines had tiny little tents in the media area, the roofs of which would gather water and have to be cleared with an ould mic stand or stick of some description periodically.
Still, we had a great gig during one of the brief dry spells of the day, and were made feel most welcome.
I saw Willie Rogers and the Soul Stirrers play earlier in the day. He sang A Change Gonna Come, and spoke about how he had sung it for Martin Luther King in the late 60s, and again for the first black president of the United States in 2009. Very moving…
Didn’t really see much else, heard Bon Iver from the other side of the fence as we played for one of the radio stations… and a little of The Levon Helm band as we struggled to get the van out of the muckfest of a car park, sliding it into one the lighting towers before the tractor boys pulled us out. Stayed in Palestine Texas last night, breakfast of the tour in Tyler Texas this morning. Still raining. We will not be messing with Texas