Janice Williams Loves Austin

On to the concert. This wonderful record guy had given me amazing tickets. We were eye-level with the stage to the side. Perfect for seeing everything that went on on the stage, but also easy sight of the big video screen for the close-ups. The Frank Erwin was sold out and packed with thousands of little girls from 2 to 20 in SHORT skirts and cowboy boots. And pink. Lots and lots of pink.

Gloriana was the opening band. The show was to start at 7 p.m. and they started at 6:54! I like that. Let’s get this show on the road. They started with their current hit “How Far Do You Wanna Go?” and I like that song a lot. They are one of the new groups in country music with 2 guys and 2 girls. It is quite the trend. The guys played guitars and one girl had a mandolin from time to time and one girl just sang. They had bass and drums behind them. Their harmonies were great and I deemed them good. They sampled a little bit of “Go Your Own Way” by Fleetwood Mac. I think that, too, is a requirement for these mixed groups. We saw Little Big Town open for George Strait a couple of years ago and they also sang “Go Your Own Way.” Gloriana whipped through a few songs and ended with their first hit “Wild at Heart” I just looked up their website and discovered that the two men in the band are brothers and the blonde girl in the group was raised in Frisco, Texas, near where my folks used to live (just north of Dallas). They are up for the ACM New Group award next month, too. Gloriana was on stage for exactly 20 minutes and they were done. I like that! No wasting time.

Next up was Kellie Pickler of American Idol fame. Not the winner, but she got a lot of attention from that show with her South Carolina accent and Dolly Parton look and attitude. While she may have been really pitchy on American Idol, she sounded fine on stage here and was dynamic and entertaining. Tight (TIGHT) blue jeans and a cute little flouncy blue top and sparkly silver diamond-studded high heels. She’s also gone back to blond hair and looked good. She’s had a quite a few hits in the last few years and she sang them all with a four-piece backing band. Her show was pretty simple, as was Gloriana, with some video on the video screen, and a stage that jutted out to put her closer to the audience and ramps on each side of the stage that brought her closer to the audience on either side of the stage. She was on and off in a quick 20 minutes, too.

So now the crowd is ready for Taylor Swift. While the first bands performed, there was a large “curtain” or canvas, painted with pillars and draperies forming a big curved backdrop behind the performers. They had their bands all completely in front of this background. All of their equipment is cleared away, the lights go down and now that big backdrop goes up.

Now we can see a large round stage and a large square stage with two sets of stairs coming down from these elevated stages to the “regular” stage level. And the front of both of these stages and even the front of each of the steps is all video screen. So these video screens are really setting the backdrop and mood of the stage.

Oh, my, and what a mood it was. Mark and I used to laugh at the Shania Twain band on TV and Mark said no matter how much he loved Shania he would not want to be in her band because they all had to wear matching pink lame (la-may — how do you make an accent mark on a computer?) shirts. I thought of that as soon as I saw Taylor’s band all dressed in high school band uniforms! And the video screens had bricks and lockers to give the whole stage the appearance of high school. And there is cute Taylor Swift on the big round stage in a band drum major uniform with the skirt, the boots, the big heavy buttoned coat, and the hat, too. All of this mood is from one of her videos (don’t ask me which song…. it’s the one where she likes the boy, but he likes the cheerleader…. oh wait, that is about 60% of her songs). Anyway, it’s that song and this is sort of like that video and the crowd just goes crazy. I’ve never heard such screaming. She throws off her hat and lets her hair hang free and the crowd raises the level of their pitch. She sings and performs and marches her way down to the main stage to be closer to the audience and then, boom, the cheerleaders. Oh wait, I didn’t tell you there were 6 dancing cheerleaders on stage, too. The cheerleaders surround her somehow and rip off her band uniform and now she has on a slinky, sparkly little cocktail dress with the same black knee-high boots that somehow now don’t seem dorky at all.  A few minutes later I look over and realize that now the band is no longer in band uniforms either and are all in cool black suits, not matching, and the whole look has changed. All of this while that first song is still going on.

You think I’ve written a lot and it is only 8:07 at this point!

I think we’ll have to hold off on the continuation of the Taylor Swift concert. Work calls.

I say Part 1 in case I don’t have time to get to it all! Her concert was quite an extravaganza.

I’ve had lots of people ask how I rated backstage passes when I am no longer in radio and a “celebrity.” Well, of course, I still am, as the picture with Taylor proves.

I am now a “music consultant,” which means I do various things in the music industry and some of it involves helping people choose the music that they play (on radio and in businesses). I deal with a record guy from Nashville that works for Taylor’s label. My friend Jack Ingram is also on that label. He called about 7 weeks ago and asked if I wanted to see Taylor Swift’s show. My first “old lady” thought was, “No, of course I don’t want to go see Taylor Swift.” Then, my hipster attitude jumped in and wrestled the old lady persona to the ground and said, “Of course we do!” She’s the country music Entertainer of the Year and she’s received a boatload of Grammys and video awards and someday I might really regret not having taken this opportunity. I said yes!

I really did not expect to do the meet-and-greet with Taylor before the show, though. I hadn’t even thought about that, but that’s what I got.

My friend Joey went with me to the show. Mark is working about 15 hours a day right now getting ready for South By Southwest (the big Austin music festival) so he was unavailable. Joey started working at my radio station when he was a 21-year-old college kid at UT and was always the standout promotions assistant and has stayed a good friend since then. He’s been off working on oil rigs the past 5 years so he’s always ready to see music when he is home.

Traffic was difficult and we were scrambling to get to the Frank Erwin Center on time so we wouldn’t miss this meet-and-greet opportunity. We made it and finally found ourselves downstairs, on the floor level, but outside of the arena in a hallway, waiting along with about 20 others that would be going back. I don’t know if these people were winners or connected to radio stations or friends of friends or what. I’m sure they were looking at me and wondering the same thing. I did know how one family was there… Bama Brown, who has been on KASE for a dozen years or so, was there with his wife and 14-year-old daughter and her friend. The girls were very excited to be there. Bama was very nice to me and said they all missed me. I was glad he didn’t ask what I do these days since it is hard to explain and it was also nice to let him see that I still have the connections to get me backstage at shows.

After a bit of waiting and gathering the crowd, we were finally led down the hall and into the room for the m-and-g. I must say they had this set up and organized incredibly well. I can say that everything about Taylor and her organization is set up and efficient (from my perspective). They led us into the room, had us line up around the outside of the room. Over on one wall I see they have Smithsonian Institute type showcases with four of the dresses Taylor has worn on awards shows on display. Interesting touch to give us something to look at while we waited. The assistant tour manager explained how things would work. They had a camera set up and a backdrop with American Greetings’ logo on it. He said that everyone could put away their cameras, they would take the pictures and give you your picture immediately. They asked that no one take any other pictures as that might ruin a picture they were taking. I thought, “And what a great way to control her image!” They avoid random bad shots of her getting out by amateur photographers. They also said that they would take pictures in groups, not individuals, and your picture would be with who you came with, but you would both get a copy. Very nice.

The tour manager was cute, young, energetic. I know a lot of tour managers. Usually they are moving gear and setting up stages and completely behind the scenes (at least in my part of Texas country). I wondered how he felt to be herding 10-year-old fans and teaching us how we should chant “Taylor- Taylor- TAYLOR” as she approached the room.

But chant we did and Taylor came in through a back door in a little print cotton dress, looking as fresh and pristine as she always does on TV. She is very tall (maybe about 5 10?), but incredibly delicate. Her bones were just tiny and she is just a wisp. Joey was pondering how much she weighed, which is probably available on some fan site somewhere, but he decided it had to be less than 100 pounds. I think more just because she is so tall, but certainly less than most 20-year-old women. Her facial features were doll-like. You’ve heard about “porcelain” skin? She had porcelain skin. I don’t think I had a day between 12 and, well, 51, when I didn’t have a pimple. I don’t know how she manages to have such beautiful skin. I guess it comes from the good genes that gave her that hair and body.

It seems like all the pictures of Taylor are unsmiling, but she was smiling as she came in and was very smiley and pleasant and effusive. She eagerly signed items for the first fans in line and we noticed she held her Sharpie between the index and middle fingers in a very odd way as she signed. Our turn came and my record rep, John Zarling, jumped in to introduce me to Taylor and tell her I programmed her music. She gushed and hugged me like we were old friends and then hugged Joey, too, and signed his Taylor poster with “I (heart) Joey.” He was very proud of that and certain she didn’t write that to everyone. We had our picture snapped and went on out of the room and were handed our photos on the spot. Amazing system they had. The picture was against the American Greetings logos (she has her own line of cards there now) and the picture also had a frame around it (just ON the picture, not a physical frame) with the date and the tour and the American Greetings logo. Great marketing. And great for her since she is too young for a lot of the sponsorships that usually go hand-in-hand with being a performer (beer sponsors, for instance).

I just noticed that she is smiling in the picture we took with her, too. I guess she just liked us more than most of the people she has pictures with! Seriously, I get a lot of pictures of her in country music newsletters with her standing next to disc jockies and she never is smiling.

I’ve been transformed into an admirer of Taylor’s at this point, but I was yet to become a fan. But that came with the concert.

I know we are in the New Year and Christmas is past (oh, except for the cards I haven’t sent yet), but this is a neat story, I think. My grandfather was a schoolteacher. In 1925 he was teaching in Newburg, Texas, just south of Comanche. If you don’t know where Comanche is, it is halfway between Brownwood and Stephenville. Halfway between Fort Worth and Abilene and south a good ways.

Papa Hallford was born in Newburg and so was his mother and so was his daughter, my mother. That is where my big family reunion is in the summer. There is a school building and a church there by the cemetery.

In the Christmas Eve edition of the Comanche Chief, they had a neat story in their Museum Musings column. I haven’t asked for permission to reprint this article as I firmly believe it is easier to get forgiveness than permission.

MUSEUM MUSINGS

By Missy Jones

With the time getting so close to Christmas, it is impossible not to let my mind go back to some of my childhood memories, and the best of them all was for Christmas.

Having been a volunteer at the museum since probably 1995, I noticed for the first time recently a framed picture hanging on the south wall in the Newburg room.

This is a framed Christmas card “Presented by teacher Arla Hallford to pupils at Newburg School on December 25, 1925.” Donated by Oliver (Ollie) Gandy to Comanche Co. Museum 8-18-1992.

This is a colored Christmas card, about 3 x 5 inches. It is colored in the earlier style, showing people bringing home a Christmas tree through the snow. Below the tree scene is this Christmas message: “With your teacher’s best wishes for the most joyous Christmas and the happiest New Year you have ever had.”

On the right of this colored picture is the writing on the card:  Presented to Oliver Gandy, Grade 6, School: NewBurg, by: Arla Hallford, teacher, date: 12/24/1925. There is an oval picture of Ollie Gandy, from a later time. To the right is a poem entitled:

“A CHRISTMAS GREETING”

To all my children dear, each one

What shall I give at Christmas time of

Gold and Silver have I none

But I can give a simple rhyme

That tells of hope and faith and love.

(Four verses)

1. My hope – what is my hope for you as swiftly pass the year of life …

2. My faith – that each will act the part that best befits a man or maid …

3. My love – how can I tell my love

Dear foster-children of my own?

Fannie Morton Bowden  Copyright 1921

On the center right of the picture is a list entitled: “My Schoolmates”

Chester Brown, Otha Gober, Bevlie VanCleave, Bob Burton, Arlis McCurdy, Aubie Love, Iris Johnson, Naomi Johnson, Ruby Shaver, Myrtle Moore, Mable Cunningham, Sidney Burton, Burton Hicks, Jim Lake, Vernon Love, Gerald Davis, Sarah E. Burton, Aubrey Shaver, Oliver Robertson, Lucille Cunningham, DeAlva Harris and Jay Kirkham.

These signatures are all written with a fountain pen, black ink, and not the same pen. You can tell from the size of the nibs that each person was using their own pen.

I knew Ollie Gandy well. I remember him as a very good roper, a ranch man and interested in history. He brought this to the museum, framed, 67 years after he had received it, and I am writing this 84 years after he received.

Merry Christmas to everyone. Please, put on your memory cap and let your thought go back to your childhood and Christmas. Enjoy!

——

I like thinking of my grandfather as a 26-year-old schoolteacher in charge of all these kids. He had a toddler and baby at home himself. He went on to be a teacher and the superintendent at the Grosvenor schools (north of Brownwood) for about 10 years and then on to Jermyn and Jacksboro. He left teaching to work for the State Welfare Agency in the 1940s in Quanah and Amarillo.

I did a little bit of genealogy tonight and found that Ollie died in 1993 in Comanche. His teacher outlived him. My grandfather died in 2000, having lived in 3 different centuries.

What makes the card extra interesting to me is the list of all the students in the Newburg School at the time. I will have to research them further because I know many are relatives. I personally knew Lucille and Mable Cunningham. They each just died in the last few years and were my grandfather’s first cousins. They were wonderful women. Ruby Shaver was a great-aunt of mine, too, but I didn’t know her.

Reading this article makes me ready to jump into the car and make the short trip to Comanche to go see this in the Newburg room.

The cat TC has been hanging out again lately. He likes our backyard bench.

More good news about Nathan Jr. After I wrote last week, he had a bad day on Thursday. I won’t go into the details, but he was a sick kitty and worn out and the doctor said to bring him in. His blood counts were very low and he was a pretty sick boy. They pumped him up with some good blood and kept him overnight to get better. When he came home on Friday he was much much better and more energetic.

Today he went back to the doctor for a checkup and the blood seems to be doing pretty good. The magic number was “22″ on Friday and today it was down to “19,” but still a lot better than the 5 or something it had been when he went in.

It’s been interesting in the last week trying to give Nathan pills. He doesn’t like them from me, but he takes them okay from Mark.

We’ve also played a lot of “where’s Nathan.” He has been finding new and interesting places to sleep. You’d think Nathan doesn’t like the carrier that takes him to the doctor’s office, but several times we’ve found him in the garage, curled up in that carrier. I guess it is small and contained and he feels safe. We’ve had lots of hunts trying to find Nathan Jr. For instance, see if you can spot Nathan in our garage:

See him? See why we have trouble?

I do not like what Yahoo has done to my blog. It was hard enough to manage before, but I managed. Now they’ve made it harder to get the pictures into the blog and changed the name of my blog, etc. I want to get a new server, but who has the time to figure all that out?

Mark is on his way home from working at a Snyder Bike Rally and doing the stage things for Ray Sawyer. If you don’t know the name Ray Sawyer, you probably know the name Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, or just Dr. Hook. I’m jealous he got to see them. I have always been a fan. “Sylvia’s Mother” was one of my very first 45s. Maybe the very first I picked out and bought. Then, when I was in college, I stood up to a LOT of derision from my KWTS 91 jocks and program directors Jamey and Randy because I liked the song “Sharing the Night Together.” They were trying to move my tastes in a new direction, but I tend to like what I like and I went out and bought the album. I wonder if I still have it?

Mark said that Ray Sawyer was a great entertainer and played a show just full of all of his hits and other songs from the era. Mark said they did “I Got Stoned and I Missed It.” I hadn’t thought of that song in years and I wasn’t even sure that was Dr. Hook, bu, yes, I looked it up and found it on youtube. I think that is the right version. I haven’t heard it in 30 years so I can’t be 100%, but I found lots of BAD cover versions and I know they were wrong. It’s a funny song and I wonder why morning shows (at least) don’t play it now from time to time.

Dr. Hook is probably mostly known for “Cover of the Rolling Stone” (… well we’re big rock singers and we got golden fingers and we’re loved everywhere we go… that sounds like us!) I listened to it at work a couple of months ago and could still sing, and say, every lyric. And I did, at full volume, much to my co-workers’ dismay. While I had the list of all the Dr. Hook we had in our computer (which didn’t include “I Got Stoned,” which is why I forgot it was by them) I listened to every other song by them I could:  “Sexy Eyes,” “When You’re In Love With A Beautiful Woman,” “A Little Bit More,” and it seems like there were a couple more I can’t think of at the moment. “Only Sixteen,” that’s the one I forgot (among others).

Jance Garfat.  I think that was another member of Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show. I only remember that because of the name Jance. I liked it. I tried to figure out if anyone would ever call me Jance if I changed my name. That’s a good boy’s name. Next nephew I have, I think I’ll name him Jance.

Mark took this gig and made the drive so he could eat at Allen’s in Sweetwater. I’ve written about Allen’s before (Dec 2007 if you want to look it up) and it is the best food in the world. He ate at the buffet restaurant on Friday night and was a little disappointed, so he ate at the sit-down, family-style today and it was perfect.

Last night Mark said he was going to go today and he didn’t care if it was Sunday and he had to sit on the lap of some 90-year-old woman, he was going to eat at their tables.

Fortunately, no old ladies had that thrill, and he had a great meal. He called to tell me about the people he shared his table with. A woman and her very old father (“He looked like he was 120.”) discussed with Mark the fact that they had been to Tyler and “that town is so big!” Another very fat family, you see a lot of that at Allen’s, with a little fat girl, and fat parents, and a fat, funny grandpa, also shared the table. The grandpa like the place for the vegetables. “Restaurants just don’t serve good vegetables anymore.” He’s got a point. But I will continue to stuff myself on a full chicken when I go to Allen’s.

Mark said his opening line with the folks at his table was, “Are you folks from Sweetwater?” When they said yes, he said, “You don’t know how lucky you are.” I suggested that maybe we should plan for a retirement in Sweetwater, but that didn’t sound good to Mark, even with the lure of Allen’s. We’ll just have to plan enough retirement funds to have someone drive us up there every year or two.

Mark was driving past Stink Creek when he called, just outside Sweetwater. I told him I was aware of Stink Creek being there because of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. My dad used to have a “toy box” with some of the precious things from his childhood. It usually was in the attic or the garage and occasionally he would open it up for us. It had the most amazing tin dancing cat. I vividly recall the garage at our house in Amarillo (so I was 5 or less) and Daddy winding up that dancing cat and letting me and Mackie and the neighbor kids, too, witness the dancing cat. Daddy never threw away anything, ever, so I went looking for that cat when he died. I knew that in later years it wouldn’t dance anymore, it couldn’t keep its balance like it had. But when I found the toy box I didn’t find the dancing cat. I still wonder where it could have gone.

But also in that box, and that’s where I was headed with this story, were Daddy’s Little Big books. In the 30s, Little Big books were quite the thing, I guess. The books were maybe 5 inches tall and 4 inches wide, but about an inch and a half thick. So very thick compared to their small size. Inside each page had a cartoon-style picture on the left and the story on the right. They were great children’s books.  Daddy had several. Dick Tracy. A cowboy, Red something? I think those are all very valuable today IF you have a good copy. Sadly, Daddy had two little girls who LOVED those Little Big books. Our favorite was a Ripley’s Believe It or Not.

In that Ripley’s, it had that interesting fact that Sweetwater. Texas, is located on Stink Creek! Believe it or not!!!!

Okay, that was one of the facts that Mackie and I learned, but didn’t pay much mind to. The pages that got worn out were the gruesome ones. Most distinctly, I remember a page with a picture — not a “real” picture, but a line drawing — of a skull with a crowbar angled through it. A man had been in an explosion that drove a crowbar THROUGH HIS SKULL and he continued to live (for years, as I recall).  His skull was then put on display at some museum. BELIEVE IT OR NOT!!

And the Ripley’s book had the story of the Winchester Mystery House. Have you ever heard of it? It, definitely, is a true story. The woman who was married to the man who invented the Winchester gun (Mr. Winchester) built a house in San Francisco. I think she and her husband had begun construction when he died. A seer or psychic told her that she (Mrs. W) wouldn’t die as long as the house was under construction and not finished. So she continued to have construction going on for years and years and YEARS. The house has doors that go nowhere, stairs that go nowhere, hundreds of rooms. I know a lot of these details now because the first time I went to San Francisco, I made sure to go see the Winchester Mystery House. I think the admission was $20 or something crazy at the time, but I still paid and took the long tour. It was amazing. I remember a sewing room that was big and every wall was solid drawers, each big, wide, and deep, for keeping material. I wanted it. I am going to go look that house up on the internet and read about it. It still fascinates me. And yes, I do believe that when construction stopped, she died.

Memories memories. There’s no telling what memories will pop up. If I were ever to go to a psychiatrist that plays that word association game where he says a word and you say the first word that pops into your head? He would probably say “apple” and I would go into a 20-minute story about being raised on Red Delicious apples and hating them and then discovering that there were other varieties in this world and particularly liking the tartness of the Granny Smith and then when I learned to make a good apple  pie….

—-

And an update on Nathan Jr. for those of you that only read and don’t hear from me.  Nathan still okay, but I sense that he is tired and a little weak. He slept in the guest room last night. He was so content there when I went to bed I didn’t move him. This morning I went in and laid down by him and talked to him a while. He was flicking his tail and purring. Then he sat up on his haunches and watched me for a minute or two. I thought he was going to head to the kitchen, demanding breakfast. Instead he laid back down, but this time closer to me so he was touching me. Then he laid his little head down on my shoulder and closed his eyes and purred. Then reached out his paw to pat me. If that cat isn’t trying to tell me it will all be okay, I don’t know how else to interpret it.