The Austin Experience

Played Cafe Mundi, east of dowtown Austin: the sun was angling low and there are actual trees around the outdoor stage, and the place is festooned with the casual art and/or doodling of Texas hippies, and there’s a railroad track at your back as you sing, and horse-carts clip-clop by from time to time so you fall into their rhythm, and people keep wandering in as you (read: me) sing, and they’re all so happy to hear you and so happy to meet the people in your audience that it’s actually kind of cacophonous for the first three or four songs, and the sound isn’t very good so you can’t quite hear yourself, but then you hit a quiet song in the set and, unexpectedly, everything and everyone settles down for it and things begin to click, and the sun gets lower and the crowd gets more intimate and before you know it, it’s another beautiful Austin spring night that makes you want to move here and sing forever, forgetting that there’s hellish summer heat to come, and long wet spring storm days. I’ll hate to leave Monday. So I’ll just do an interview with Fevered Brain Radio this afternoon, go see the sun set on Lake Austin tonight and yearn tomorrow morning for my fantasy version of the town as I fly back to Los Angeles almost before I’ve had a chance to wake up from my dream.

© Dudley Saunders