I flew into Austin from SLC. I tossed my bags in the back of the Kia and headed north. Why not just head to Kim's house? I more or less lived there for a couple of months last summer. It's like a second home. But Kim wasn't there. She's been hanging out with this musician, Joe King Carrasco, and he and his band had a gig that Friday night in Waco. Well, north of Waco. For those of you unfamiliar with central Texas geography, Waco is about 75 miles north of Austin. Kim and the band had to leave Austin before I landed. We had loosely planned for me to meet them in Waco. I gave her a call once I was on the highway.
Despite their head start, they were still on the road. It seems that the gig promoter wanted them to wait in Waco where he would meet them and guide them in to the location of the show. Guide them in? That was certainly...unusual. Kim and the band had not even reached Waco yet. I carefully navigated the speed trap of Williamson County then decided to break a few speed limit laws. Kim called again when they reached Waco and were waiting for the promoter. I had narrowed the gap considerably--I was less than 20 miles behind them!
The promoter showed up and the band's caravan went on the move. Now I was only five exits behind them! Kim called me back at every turn they took with crazy detailed directions (go 3.5 miles down this road, then turn right at this other road; go 5 miles and look for the house on the left with Christmas lights; and so forth). Everything was exactly as she described it.
Each turn took us onto progressively smaller, narrower roads. From the interstate to a four-lane divided highway, we at last ended up on a one-lane county road. It was paved but barely. Their caravan was still a few miles ahead of me but I kept the Kia barreling down those dark roads. And they were dark, too. We were nowhere near any sort of town, having left Waco behind us as soon as we left the interstate. Few houses, no street lights--and the full moon was late to rise. Pitch black. I hoped that I wouldn't hit any critters or cows.
Then Kim called with this update: where the road makes a sharp left, look for a triangular sign that says "music festiva". We are now turning right into a cow pasture, she said.
Music festiva? Cow pasture? What the heck? Turns out I wasn't the only one thinking that. Joe King was in Kim's car, saying, we're going to be kidnapped and held for ransom. What other explanation could there be?
The sign was indeed triangular. The words "music festiva" looked like a four-year-old had painted them. And that four-year-old just plain ran out of room for the L in "festival." And the triangle did point straight into a cow pasture. I turned the wheel of the Kia hard to the right and gunned it into the pasture. According to Kim who was on the phone full time with me now they were just ahead, but I still couldn't see their cars.
I proceeded to bottom the Kia out in a trench deep enough to have hidden an entire cow. My suitcase in the back went completely airborne. Whump whump! I thought, wow, I hope the oil pan on this thing is protected. Then I thought, good thing it's a rental. Before I could slow the car down, I hit another trench--whump whump! again.
I finally got the car under control and realized I could see dust ahead in my headlights. Dust from cars somewhere ahead of me.
There were no lights. No signs. No track. The field had sort of been mowed in places to about a foot of stubble. I blindly navigated my way forward by looking for tire tracks in the dust and flattened stalks. Suddenly I came up over a small rise--and saw taillights! Kim said, we are at a tent. Tent? I couldn't see a damned thing. I came sliding to a halt in a cloud of dust behind the last car just as the guy at the tent (there really was a tent there) asked Kim, how many cars with the band? She looked back to see me pull in, and said, three! I got a wrist band along with the others and the caravan proceeded deeper into the cow pasture. (As an aside, you know that there is no way we could have actually successfully planned that I would meet them there. It was just one of those crazy convergences of events.)
We continued forward into the pasture. Still no lights. There were places where the field wasn't mowed and the weeds were taller than the roof of the Kia. It felt like we were in a tunnel. We were driving so slowly that I opened the car windows. There wasn't any sound except the whispering of the wind in the weeds and the crackle of our tires on dirt and stubble. Suddenly, we came upon this open area with a few parked cars. We all pulled in, parked, and got out to get the lay of the land. As we rounded some trees, we saw...this gigantic, modern, high-tech stage (integrated with a semi-trailer, which is how it was brought in). Banks of LED lights timed to the music.
And on stage were four thrash-rock head bangers, volume turned up to 11. The lead singer was yelling unintelligibly into the mic in between drags on his cigarette. We looked around. There were perhaps five people in the area in front of the stage. Five. People. Music festiva, indeed.
At this point, I should tell you that Joe King plays tex-mex/tejano music. Accordion. Congas. Happy music. Not even in the same musical universe as thrash rock.
The stage was perched on the top of a very steep hill. At the bottom of the hill were some trailers and what looked like vendors of some sort. Behind them was the Brazos river.
Kim and I took a quick tour. One of the vendors was selling all manner of sex toys. Yeah, certainly not what I expected. The life-size, blown-up, blow-up doll they zip-tied to the entrance of their booth was also a bit of a surprise. In some of the trailers we could see people laughing and drinking. One of the vendors was selling homemade tacos and sodas.
But no beer. What kind of festiva has no beer??!
I told Kim that I had no intention of hanging out in a cow pasture next to the river listening to bad thrash rock all night without beer. Let's go back to the main road, find a gas station, and get some beer. She thought that sounded like a good idea. We checked in with the band--we had arrived late but there was still another crappy rock band scheduled to perform after the metal-heads before Joe King and his group could even start setting up. So Kim and I piled into the Kia and off we went, back along the trackless pasture, back to the "festiva" sign, back to the main road.
At the quicky-mart, we grabbed 7 or 8 six packs of beer, some ice, a crappy styrofoam cooler, some gum, and other odds and ends. Then we headed back to the festiva. By this time I was starting to get the hang of the pasture and had no problem finding the tent (still no lights) or the stage on top of the hill.
Joe King was setting up just as we arrived--excellent timing!
And you know what, once he and his group started playing, all sorts of people started crawling out from under rocks and various nooks and crannies. It didn't take long before I realized that they were mostly members of some local biker gang (named, lamely enough, the "Booze Fighters"). Bikers and their chicks, maybe 30 of them. They'd been smoking pot and drinking all night but the happy music was too much too resist, so up the hill to the stage they staggered. I had been doing my best to catch up in the drinking department, it was past 11pm, and I was terribly jetlagged, so it was all quite an experience.
I should let you in on a bit of a secret: I saw Joe King Carrasco perform live when I was an undergraduate at UT Austin back in the early 1980's. Dancing around in the cow pasture watching bikers stumble into each other while listening to Joe King and the Crowns perform classics such as "96 Tears" really took me back.
(You can see in the second clip that the bikers were more interested in taking pictures of each other than the band!)
I drank far, far too much that night (it took two drivers, neither of them me, to get me and my Kia home). We didn't get back to Kim's place in south Austin until 5:30 the next morning. But I sure had a good time! I kept telling Kim all night "This is great!"--and that wasn't just the beer talking! I was so happy that she invited me along on such a classic Austin adventure.
No comments:
Post a Comment