Janice Williams Loves Austin

It’s Friday night and I’m about to go up and see the final show with Delbert McClinton. We are definitely back in the colder waters and winds, but it isn’t too bad and doesn’t feel as cold as it did way back on Monday night. I just got through seeing Marcia Ball in her final show. It was excellent, as always. Earlier we saw Nick Connelly (our house painter, in one of those odd twists of Austin) play with his combo in the Crow’s Nest. Raul Malo sat in and played guitar and sang a couple, too, which was very cool to see him in that relaxed atmosphere. There has been less music today because they are already putting away the instruments to be ready for the port. Of the music in the afternoon, I only saw Tab Benoit from Louisiana. Very Cajun.

The coast of Baja California has been nearby all day and it is pretty with big mountains. We saw some dolphins yesterday, jumping and flipping and showing off.

I don’t think I wrote yesterday about seeing Fred Eaglesmith. Mark had only caught a song or two when Fred preceded him on Tuesday night and didn’t think much of it, but we were very impressed when we caught the whole 90 minutes last night. He is very very funny, along the lines of Ray Wylie Hubbard or Hayes Carll except with more true jokes. Like the grasshopper that goes into a bar and orders a beer. The bartender says, “You’re a grasshopper, aren’t you?” The grasshopper says yes. The bartender says, “Did you know we have a drink named after you?” The grasshopper says, “You have a drink named Mike?” hahaha Lots of jokes and repartee with the audience, plus some very good songs with a rough, Tom-Waits-like voice. One song made me very sad! It was “It’s Times Like This I Miss My Dad.” Very sweet. Mark and I had just commented on missing daddy a couple of songs earlier when he sang about a John Deere tractor. I will be watching for Fred’s annual thing in Gruene and make plans to attend this next time. I don’t know how often he is in Austin.

I wrote earlier about the great book I’m reading. I put it down so I wouldn’t “use it up” and read another great one, “Lunch at the Picadilly,” by Clyde Edgerton. He is one of my favorite authors and I was surprised at the library last week to see that this one was there and I hadn’t read it. It was absolutely wonderful. I may have to check it out again and have my mother read it when she comes down next weekend for the Superbowl.

So tomorrow morning we’ll be back on California time (we’ve been on Texas time for a few days and I noticed the stops in Mexico were due south of Odessa).  And tomorrow night we’ll be back home for a while. I’m looking forward to it. I love an adventure every 10 years or so, but I am happiest at home.

Late night Tuesday after the trip into Mexico…. back on the high seas northward to Manzanillo.

Oh, my. I expect this will be my last cruise. After having not felt “good” all week, but having not felt “bad” necessarily either, today I had a throbbing headache all day long in Mexico. I blamed it on the heat and the lack of sleep and hoped it would go away when we got back to the ship.

It didn’t. I took some ibuprofen and a shower and a nap and only felt worse and worse as the ship got cranked up and rolled (and I mean rolled and rocked and rolled some more) out to sea.

Mark had a gig at 10:30 so he was getting ready for it and I could see there was no way I was getting out for this performance. I asked him to go get some Dramamine for me from the front desk. He quickly got it and I took one and he left for the performance and I lay and moaned.

Thankfully, I woke up and it was two hours later and the headache was mostly gone. The ship was (and is) still rocking and tilting and jolting and bumping on the CALM seas, according to the TV channel that gives us such details. A couple more hours have passed and I am about ready for Dramamine number two. And some dinner that is suggested for sick stomachs on the room service menu is on the way. It is 1:30 in the morning, so thank goodness for their 24-hour room service. I’m sure eating at this time of the night is not terribly wise, but since I haven’t eaten since about 3 p.m. when I had a half a taco in town, I think it would help.

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Okay, now it is Thursday and things are much brighter. That’s why I haven’t written.

Yesterday we were in port in Manzanillo, Mexico. It is biggest port in Mexico and is growing constantly and the port is developing. So, understanding that, you can imagine a cruise ship in a big shipping port. Not particularly beautiful. We were actually in a port, though, so we could just walk off of the ship instead of taking the tenders in from the boat like we did on Tuesday. So we did. We walked around the downtown area of Manzanilla and found it very crowded and congested. Auto fumes filled the air and the shops were tiny and not charming like we had found in tiny Zihuantanejo.

We took a taxi and found a beach and things got much better. It was a very nice, small beach called Playa La Audiencia. We paid to have a table, umbrella, and chairs, and we had plenty of “table service” for beer, margaritas, cokes, tortillas, guacamole, chips, and fish. We ate and ate and swam and enjoyed the combination of white and black sand. There were others from the ship there, but also local families. I watched two sweet little twin girls about 18 months old playing in the sand and wading and then falling asleep in the chairs with their bottles. Their older brother (maybe 5 years old) sang and sang. I never could be sure he was singing in Spanish, but I couldn’t hear English words there either.

Finally, we gathered our things and went back for a taxi. The cute boy “in charge” of the beach, the boy that informed us of all the various charges and made sure we were taken care of and spoke impeccable English, was from Chicago, we discovered. I would have loved to have heard why he was here.

Back to the ship, we cleaned up and went back up to the Observation Deck to see the ship pulling away from Manzanillo. The ship had to take on a pilot to pull us around and “drive” us out of the narrow channels of the bay. We let the pilot off to a small boat and then we were on our way back out to sea. It was pretty to see the town and all the hotels and houses clinging to the hills and mountains.

Mark and I went to the beautiful dining room and had a nice meal. Without our afternoon nap, we had messed up our whole usual routine! So we killed some time and then made sure we were at the Debbie and Doyle show at 8 p.m. We saw it the other night and had missed the very beginning so we wanted to see the whole thing. We discovered we had only missed about 10 minutes of the show, but it was still so enthralling that we stayed for the whole performance and then went to the shop to get their CD. They were just hilarious and such good performers/actors. The previous night (when I was sick), Mark had had a chance to hang out with the couple briefly and found them to be very personable and nice.

There were still performances to be seen, but having missed that afternoon nap was taking its toll on us. We came back to the room at 10 for a “nap” that turned into a 11 hour sleep. We like the cruise life!

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So now we are almost up to date. It is Thursday evening about 9:30 p.m. (on Texas/Mexico time, we’ll go back to California time tonight at 2 a.m. I think). I’m watching CNN and waiting for Mark to go see something. Not sure what. Maybe Jimmy Hall who used to be with Wet Willie or Fred Eaglesmith who does a special weekend at Gruene once a year but I haven’t ever seen him.

Today we saw all of the outdoor performances on the big aft Lido Deck by the pool. We have returned to the cooler Pacific waters and it is chilly outside now, but was nice and warm and perfect this afternoon. We saw Mike Farris at noon after hearing lots of rave reviews about his previous show. He was young and I don’t know much about him, but it was a gospel performance with two women back-up singers that could belt it. There was a horn section, too. They were really good. Later, it was Tom Hambridge (or Hambritch?). He wrote a lot of the hits that Susan Tedesci sang and has written the next Gretchen Wilson title cut. He was more of the Southern rock style. I liked him, but his songs were a little more cliched. Finally, we saw Paul Thorn. What a great performer. I loved his music and especially his introductions. He was highly entertaining and won Mark over, too.

The funniest moment of the day was provided by Paul Thorn. We were eating in the “cafeteria” buffet area. Mark’s bandmates had joined us and Seth Walker came over to the table, too. The guys were talking about Mike Farris and the gospel performance he had. He had performed “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” and called for many of the ship’s performers to come on stage and sing with him. Seth was relating how he was so enthralled by the performance and someone told him that Mike Farris had called for him to join him on stage, but he was so mesmerized he hadn’t heard it and didn’t get on stage.  Paul Thorn had sat at a table back behind us a bit. When Seth said that, Paul piped up and said (in a Tupelo Mississippi accent that added so much of the humor):  “You’s like the woman in the Bible without any oil in her lamp.”  We laughed and said he had hit the nail on the head. He added, “You’ve got to have oil in your lamp and have your wick trimmed.” We laughed and laughed, but we understood his wisdom!

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So that is where we are today and there may not be another update before I get home. The internet time is not cheap, that’s for sure, and it goes fast when it is searching and searching and searching for the internet site. Tomorrow we will once again be at sea (and doping up on Dramamine) and the final shows tomorrow night. Then we’ll wake up in San Diego and debark. Our plan is to have lunch at Hotel Del Coronado with Marsha and Tonio and then Mark and Marsha and I fly home about 3:25. It will be nice to be back home on dry land with the cats. a

I don’t remember what day of the cruise this is, but I know it is Inauguration Day! I was worried that we wouldn’t be able to see it on the ship, but they announced yesterday that it would be on the TV and there will also be a gathering to watch it in the Queen’s Lounge, so I we may go to that to be with like-minded people for the festivities. We’ll watch some of the earlier parts here in the room momentarily.

As uncertain as I am to what day this is, I am even more uncertain as to what time it is. We were on Pacific time as we left San Diego and sailed, but yesterday they announced we would be back on Central Time when we woke up this morning and approached our first stop in Mexico. So my computer has one time and my cell phone (which does seem to have service, even way out here in the ocean) have different times. I do know I had a short night of sleep. I THINK I’m expecting breakfast any minute, but my timing could all be off on that, too. The sun is brightly shining and the sea looks a lot calmer than it has, but the boat still seems to be doing plenty of swaying from side to side.

Yesterday was a huge day of music. We managed to see a lot, though I still enjoy my afternoon nap too much to miss it to see a lot more. We started the day with Mingo Fishtrap. I had worked with them once before and saw them briefly on stage at that time, but we got to see the whole funky show yesterday at noon on the outside Lido Deck. Finally, as promised, things had warmed up considerably and it felt like a tropical cruise, even though it wasn’t truly hot yet. The guys of Mingo Fishtrap went to the University of North Texas in Denton and there are two roads in Denton, Mingo and Fishtrap. I don’t know why they chose that name, but that is where it came from. They have a horn section and are very funky.

I knew this would happen. Already, less that 24 hours later, I am having trouble with recall from the day before. There is so much going on!

(stuck in here later when I remembered) Pianorama! That was where we went after Mingo Fisthrap. On the big Vista Lounge stage they had five pianos lined up across the stage and Marcia Ball, Nick Connally, Stefano Intelisanto, Kevin McCendry, Teresa James and a couple more piano players played with Cory Keller on the drums behind them keeping the beat. It was awesome to see five boogie-woogie pianos rocking all at once.

I did want to record some of the t-shirts I had seen on this cruise. On the very first day I saw a woman with a shirt that said, “Two Social Security Checks a Year Go To Delbert.” She wasn’t the only person on the ship that is old enough to be getting their social security. Mark and I feel like youngsters on the boat, though, i am sure, to the true youngsters, we are indistinguishable from the others with grey hair and wide bodies. Another shirt on the first day said, “Don’t worry, I can’t remember your name either.”  Yesterday, my favorite was “Stupidity is not a crime. You are free to go.”

Yesterday evening we had our first meal in the dining room (as opposed to the buffet, which is excellent). The dining room is “freestyle” where you don’t have to sit with the same people each night, or you can even sit by yourself, as we did. I sure like that better. On our last cruise if we decided to skip dinner, the next day our dinner companions would question us and our whereabouts.  The dinner was excellent and the service is outstanding and you get to walk away without a bill or a tip or anything. Very nice.

Interruption— Mark is up and on the balcony and called me to see dolphins jumping out of the water by the ship. He had seen whales a day or two ago, too, but I never did. I certainly saw the dolphins, they were right here by the ship and the ship’s wake.

Yesterday evening we saw the funniest performance of our trip, and I hope I can find more about this duo on the web when I have time to surf. Check out “Doyle and Debbie.” It is a couple dressed in glittery country-western finery  worthy of Dolly and Porter and they sing “country” songs and put on a country show that was a hoot. He frequently referred to “the first Debbie” and this new Debbie (as she gritted her teeth behind her smile). He had her sing a song he wrote when he and his first Debbie realized there was a dearth of upbeat country songs for women to sing. The song? “Barefoot and Pregnant.”  …”Barefoot and pregnant, that’s how I like to be.”  It went on to say it was better he come home drunk than not come home at all. Hilarious. Everything they said or did was well planned and delivered and the whole audience was laughing and clapping (including Raul Malo). We had to stay for the whole show and will go back to see it again. Another funny reference in they sang their country-patriotic song about the “good people of the heartland and the heathens on the coasts” and then, speaking, Doyle made reference to our nation verging on socialism “in just a few hours.” The topical line got a big laugh.

When Debbie and Doyle concluded, we rushed up the hall to the Vista Lounge to see the final song from Paul Thorn. I hated to miss his show, but we’ll catch a full show later in the week.

Mark had missed the previous night’s performance in the Crow’s Nest of Big Joe and Bill. I didn’t know what to expect, but Mark said Big Joe and the Dynaflows was a favorite CD he has and an album he has been hugely influenced by. So we went up and it was great. Nice swing-type blues with piano and guitar with Big Joe on drums and singing and Bill, an Austin musician, on bass. Delbert McClinton sat in and played piano on the first song until his keyboard player Kevin McCendry took over. We watched them (and the dancers that were loving it) for a quick hour. A harmonica player Johnny Sansome from Tab Benoit’s band sat in, too.

We went back to the Lido Deck and saw the Marcia Ball Band on stage again. A nighttime show and the weather was ideal for it now. The night before the Raul Malo band had been performing in coats, Marcia performed bare armed. What a difference a day (and a few hundred miles) made.

Now back to the Vista Lounge for the songwriters showcase with Gary Nicholson hosting and three other artists I wasn’t familiar with. Then he asked up Seth Walker to sing a song. Delbert McClinton was on hand here, too. He was everywhere. He sat in and sang one song.

All the music for the day was over except the jam session on the Lido Deck, which I had heard can go on for hours. We decided to call it a night at this point and came back to the room. The nephews gave us the DVD of movie Walk Hard-The Dewey Cox Story. I brought it with us and we watched a little of the extras in the room.

Now we have CNN on the TV and are watching the Mall in DC fill up with thousands (millions?) of people. It is quite a day.

POST INAUGURATION:

I cried through the ceremony and the swearing in of Barack Obama. Mark and I watched it alone in our cabin on CNN rather than join others in the Queen’s Lounge.  I am not allowed to say if anyone else in my presence was crying during the ceremony.

The ship has been delayed in getting to Zihuantanejo so we are still sailing east toward the Mexican coast.

7 PM

We are back from a fun day in Zijuantanejo.  Steamy here, but very nice people and a pretty beach and beautiful mountains. A huge contrast from the riches of the yachts and houses on the hills and the poverty in the little town. The town was very nice, though, and we had some killer quesadillas.

More later, but I’ll post and then nap.

If this makes it to my blog before we are back from our cruise, it will be a miracle.  We do have limited satellite internet access on the ship (for a price) so I am not going to be putting up constant minute-by-minute accounts of the fun we are having. And the pictures will have to wait until I am home and the internet is easy and free (well, sort of).

But we are having a great time as we head south from San Diego to the Mexican Riviera. It is a lot colder than we anticipated, though we had been warned that the nights were chilly. It was quite chilly through the day today, too, and I always had my jacket on.

Mark had his first gig on the ship today and it went spectacularly well. He is playing drums for the Seth Walker Band this week and they had a noontime show on the Lido Deck (outdoors). The wind was blowing and it was chilly, but it turned out good because as the day wore on it got colder and windier, it seemed. They quickly warmed up the crowd and I heard several people say they were now converts after never having heard of Seth before (obviously, these were people from other parts of the country). Seth was joined on stage by not only Mark on drums, but Stefano Intellisanto on keyboards and Joshua Hoge on bass. Guys, forgive me if those spellings aren’t correct, I can’t Google you at these rates. Also joining the band for various songs were Thad Scott, Marcia Ball’s sax player, a trumpet player I don’t know, Gary Nicholson (the songwriter of many songs you know and Seth’s new co-writer and producer), and Delbert McClinton himself.

After their gig, we saw Teresa James play. I had not heard of her before, but liked her very much. A very raspy blues singer from North Carolina, she had a great band and was highly entertaining.

Tonight we went back to the Lido Deck again to see Raul Malo. Very cold and windy, but puts on a great show and there was no thought of leaving to get in from the wind. He was spectacular. We expected him to be in the indoor theater, but it had been moved. I hope we do get to see him indoors before the cruise is over. Most of the artists do have shows both in and outside, so we’ll wait for that.

All of those bands and artists were today, truly Day 1 of the cruise. Yesterday, though, as the ship sailed away from San Diego and we enjoyed a spectacular view of the city as night fell and the sunset was glowing to the west, we saw Nick Connally play a short while. He is a piano player from Austin that Mark knows well. Last night we saw Marcia Ball, who is Austin-based, of course, and were just in awe of her stage presence and her fun show. She was in the indoor theater and Mark got some beautiful shots of her. I have been seeing her shows for 30 years now and she just gets better and better and never seems to tire of putting it out there.

Besides the music, the ship is beautiful and the food is great. We are enjoying this cruise immensely. Our room is a nice size with a great verandah that we hope to sit on when things warm up. Don Bennett, Marcia’s bass player, told us that once we clear Baja Califonia (tomorrow) that it will immediately be sunny and warm. He has been on this cruise many times and knows how things work.

Tomorrow I am especially looking forward to seeing Paul Thorn play. He came on as a last minute substitute for Stephen Bruton, who is not well. Stephen Bruton is missed, but Paul Thorn is incredible in a whole different way and I am glad to see him in a more appropriate setting. I saw him last opening for the Eli Young Band at the Nutty Brown and the 18 year olds that were there to see EYB were not into the blues. Delbert also plays tomorrow and that will be well attended and a great show, I’m sure.

So far I have kept myself away from the casino, but I expect to drop a few quarters before this cruise ends. Well, actually, if it TOOK quarters I would have dropped some already, but since everything on a cruise is in that make-believe world of waving a card that doesn’t feel like money, I haven’t gotten that far yet.

I am reading the best book right now. It is great to have a good book on a cruise, but the trouble is that I find myself wanting to crawl off with the good book at the expense of the music. It is The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski and if you haven’t heard of it yet, you will. It’s about a boy and dogs and a lot more.

More adventures to come, including two stops in Mexico. That will be Tuesday and Wednesday and then two more Dramamine filled days going back up to San Diego. I hope the flight home is as prompt, fast, and drama-less as the flight out and I”ll be home to Nathan Jr. and Willie Saturday night.