dailyaustin

San Francisco is one of the most beautiful towns in the world.

Two of my most favorite people are known to have said, well, Jerry Garcia said, I think, “I’ll catch up on my sleep when I’m dead.”  Warren Zevon said “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

I was strummin next to the oil lamp, as its is too hot for a fire, and thinking about law school and music and my age.  Most of my favorites weren’t young stars nor still popular. and music historically is not Led Zepplin.  Its a folk art.  People say the music industry is dying.  Its really a short span of human music.  and the assholes who run it are business men now.  people complain about CD sales.  its because they support shit and not good artist’s. Brittany could make a CD anytime she wants or some American Idol asshole, and nobody knows a Jay Farrar, or even Jeff Tweedy.  Not to mention a Dale Watson or musicians like Ben Harper, Lucinda Williams, or Taj Mahal.  its best the industry as we knows it dies.

Its too hot and the middle to the night in Texas.

Sorry, but for some reason it keeps going to double space and messing up my cadence. 

One Time in the New Lin

In our usual booth

Talking   to the waitress

                   eating  potstickers

Two men who were begging on

 walked into   to      the restaurant

     onJackson street

The bigger one with the red beard ordered

  And said, wearing suspenders,

“You cook good corned beef for a china

      nees restaurante”

A funeral prossession goes by outside again

“I’ll have corned beef and a

   glass of milk”-and goes to smoke

   outside

the limosine passes by

I put sugar in my tea

The bath room is downstairs

   And dark, old, and wet

Reminds me        of old
Chinatown

    stories,         and books,  and  OpiUm

Old Chineese men

Whose wives  have pro bably died

   eat dishes of weird food

and hardly look up

their jackets hang on the wall

I get claustrophobic

      and go outside

Man, dont know if I have time for this.  Got home from work.  Bought art supplies and an oil lamp with Rose, worked on building my pedal board, bathed, read a little bit of “Death in the Family” and now its already 11:40.  I dont even have time to play guitar or think of writing a decent bit of entertainment.  Saw Shitty Carwash, Yayo, Baby Dick, and Full Stride last night.  Emos kind of made me nervous with all the hipsters and downtown people.  Hadnt been there since I saw Spoon outside when I first moved to town.  A few Highlife’s took the edge off though.  The first band was a two piece playing their second show.  They were somehow too loud and the vocals where bad.  The highlight was in between songs they miked up a boom-box playing boom boom mariachi music.  The second band was a really good young hard rock band named after the Mexican slang for coke.  I guess the lead singer was about seventeen and really small, but extremely talented.  The drummer was also exceptional.  One of the better bands Ive seen in a while.  Baby Dick had a fog machine and an over weight bald middle aged lead singer, singing in a talking highly reverb voice.  He also had about 4 shiner bocs in his hand and a cigarette and cigar.  Full Stride sound really good last night.  Danny G from the Mother Truckers, and the bass player from the White Ghost Shivers were there.  Danny had pictures and a name for the dog that he got from Amber on New Years Eve.  She stopped in the middle of the road to pick up the young Chihuahua after the car in front of her threw it out of his moving vehicle on South First Street.  But I digress and I am tired.

Was sick yesterday with a cold or something.  Right after work we had a pretty long practice, then it was right to bed.  Therefore no blog.  Figured out my schedule for the next few months.  Ill be teaching after school gardening classes Monday thru Thursday, and working at Habitat Friday and Saturday.  This will be good though, because it will allow me to play more music actually, since I wont have to get up early on school days, and if we go out of town for gigs on the weekend and I can take off from Habitat, whereas I couldn’t do that with teaching.

I’m feeling good after hearing about Al Frankin today, especially after watching all the news today on NBC and Jim Lehrer about out health care situation.  The News Hour was pointing out that only 2% of medical students go into Primary Care because they make an average of $180,000 a year.  It takes along time to pay back their loans and they have to work many hours a week.  They also have to spend 50% of their time talking to insurance workers and filling out papers for them, and also figuring out which medicines they can prescribe based on insurance. I guess all doctors must do this in America right now, yet some still cling we have the best health care in the world despite all the facts that point in the opposite direction. 

Tonight we will be heading down to Emo’s for free night to see Full Stride.  Hopefully get a ride down there in the band van and catch a cab back.  I dont really like going downtown, but for a free show and drink tickets I just might.  I just might.

This is my first time ever blogging.  I plan on keeping this mostly as a journal.  My Sunday was fairly typical.  I woke up and watched Meet the Press.  I read a little bit of from a James Agee and Norman Mailer book.  I watched football, played guitar, drank beer, and started a fire.  I will eventually create more of a point with my blogs, but for my first one I will just tell a little bit about my current state of affairs. 

I will be getting married to my fiance Rose in a couple months out here in Austin.  Im originally from Northern California and have been out here for a years.  I play in a band out here with Amber Lucille.  I play slide guitar.  I also write songs and record songs which you can hear at www.myspace.com/tomasijohnmontana.  So my blog should be full of stories from playing in a band in Austin, TX, drinking escapades, politics, literature, and getting married.

My main focus today was working on a new tuning I developed on guitar.  I play it like like 5-string open G, (open G is the tuning Keith Richards learned from Ry Cooder and used heavily through out the seventies.  His famous quote about it is something like, “all it takes is 5 strings, 3 fingers, and one asshole to play it.”  Its like a banjo tuning.} but I leave the high E.  so its EBGDG from high to low.  I like it because I can solo and play chords like in standard tuning, but also all the strings except the high E is an open G.  So it is good for slide and blues riffs.  Today I tried to figure it out playing along with the Rolling Stones and Son Volt.  This blog is probably more musically technical then I will ever be again.