Tedeschi Trucks Band in Concert...

Last week we took an evening out on the town of Houston with Morgan and Ail and saw the Tedeschi Trucks Band in concert. If you don't know and you should that it's a husband and wife team of Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks. They got a big funky soul/southern rock/jazz/blues/micro tonal/world music/Coltrane influenced band that really goes to town. 

Now I gotta tell you, I never saw Lynyerd Skynyerd and I never saw Molly Hatchet. But I sure as heck saw B.B. King, Albert King, Earl King, Buddy Guy, SRV, Lonnie Mack, Santana, Bo Diddly, Sonny Landreth, Brownie McGee, Jimmie Vaughn, Robert Randolph, Jr. Brown, Gatemouth Brown, Johnny Winter, Max Reynolds and a heck of a lot of other guys and gals I can't bring to mind right now and I must say that Derek is pretty much a beast. An Alien. Maybe the best there is. He was raised to it. His Uncle is the late Butch Trucks of Allman Brothers fame so he has been around soaring melodic take the jams to the next level all his life. He plays in open E tuning, fingers and slide. 

Susan is a power house singer with a blues career all her own before her marriage to Derek. She is no slouch on guitar either. Use Youtube. There are some clips of her throwing down with the big boys that leaves nothing on the table. 

I think the first time I saw Derek was about 13 years ago at the Howlin Wolf Bar in New Orleans. The later Col. Bruce Hampton was also there. Me and Bill Cooney stood right in front and thought Derek's drummer was going to jump from his drum set on to us. The next day at the Jazz Fest Bill found himself hanging with Derek while they watched sax great Ornette Coleman. Derek confided in Bill that he hated it when his drummer did that. 

Next time we saw Derek was at another jazz fest and he was married to Susan by then and this big band was really starting to roll. 

Horn section and backup singers who also took lead vocal turns. Who could not like a band with a trombone? 

Here's Derek and his brother Duane who was in the opening band Todd Snider and the Hardworking Americans as well as holding the drum chair for Jam Band Widespread Panic. They jammed on "Statesboro Blues." I have heard that the new release has a killer cover of the Beatles/George Harrison tune from Sgt. Pepper's "Within You Without You."  

Don't ever say there is no good new music. There is just music you have not heard yet. 

     

The Tulloch Baby Shower...

The excite builds. Just a few more weeks and we will have a new grandson. This weekend we went to Chicago for the baby shower thrown for Katherine and Peter by their friends. Due date is Oct 24th or as some say it will be born on the day the Astros win the world Series. I think if the Astros and Cubs happen to play and I don't know if that is even possible there will be some decisions made as to loyalties. 

  For the record a name has not been decided on but there have been names picked. They are waiting till birth to gauge personality to see what fits. In the running according to current favorites are Wallace (Wally) Woodrow (Woody) and Winthrop. I'll probably call him little mudbelly if no one else claims that pretty soon.

 

Texas Coast Birds...

I spend a good bit of time outdoors, usually near water. While I am waiting for a fish to bit I watch the birds. It's how I pretend that I use all minutes of the day being productive. Most of the time the little birds are scampering and flying here, moving there and seem to be poking, searching for a bite to eat. I wonder how much time a bird has to spend eating each day? Is food easy to find? Is it tasty or are they like a human, "I just gobbled that down so I could keep on going" kind of thing. I might never know but here are photos of some Texas Coast Birds I made.

This looks like a blue heron only a bit smaller than the East Texas verity commonly seen on fish rich Sam Rayburn Lake. Maybe a young one, maybe having to hustle more for food. 

Sandpiper. They run along the beach at the edge of the waves poking and picking in the sand. 

Not sure what this is. He seems to be performing a physical therapy activity that I would called single leg stance. Did you know if you are in your 50s average SLS time should be 45 seconds, if in 60s it's 40 seconds and in your 70s you should do 27 seconds. 80 and above is 12 seconds. This guy actually had two legs, just resting and I don't know the birds age. 

This is a willet. Numbers have declined since the 60s despite protection by the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act. A meat eater mostly feeding on crabs, worms, clams and such they are good to eat by humans apparently hence the need for protection in 1918. Biggest threat these days is you know who, draining and building on the wetlands. 

I could not ID this fellow by it falls under the catch all name that my dad used to use "crane." 

More one SLS. That timber in the back ground would have made a good art project of some time but the tides that seems higher than normal buried it for the purpose of beach stabilization. 

As I recall I once spent an afternoon years ago drinking in a bar up the coast called the Ruddy Turnstone. As I view my photos I think I saw some of these but did not get a picture. Don't worry there are not any photos of that afternoon either. 

This photo by Mary. A bird skeleton. No birds harmed in these photos and none are swimming in my belly. Life is tough. Like the birds, keep moving. 

Guitars Just Find Me...

A local punk rock group The Dead Chachis did a good thing. I mean besides put out some homegrown old style type punk they sponsored a guitar raffle to benefit Hurricane Harvey Relief. I always try to support local music, I bought the cd, the t shirt and I won the guitar. My wife likes to catch me at unguarded moments and ask how just how many guitars I do have. I can't come up with an answer real quick and best I can counter with is "do I have to count banjos, mandos, ukes and a lap steel?" Anyway here is the newest one. 

No, not really a Gibson but according to Dead Chachis guitarist Adam Rios it's a knock off copy in the SG body style that was his first attempt at painting a guitar. It came out pretty good. It does fit in well with what Cathy calls the "tooth paste Guitars" as it is the third guitar I have acquired that's just a shade off the color of old school Crest.   

I Think these last two photos with a flash give a bit more of the true color. 

Those pickups, for the electric guitar uneducated are what they call hum buckers. It's the first guitar I have owned with these so up against the P90, single coil, gold foil, DeArmotrons and lipstick pickup guitars I own it gives another tool in the tool box.   

I might do a little customizing with some fancy knobs and stuff. 

Check out some Dead Chachis and like them on facebook. 

Salt Water Fishing Report...

Sometimes an old dog can learn a new trick. He made need to. Especially if he's doing something he only does once a year and he really wants to make good at it.  That's me and salt water fishing. I've had some great luck over the years but it's a fine line of wind, tide, maybe moon and of course this year there was a big old storm and then there was a deluge of fresh water river run off. My luck this time was not so great. 

Fresh caught was plentiful the first few days. Here you see Matt make a fine cast new throw. I think I had bait on my first throw, nice finger mullet. Bait got hard to catch after a few days but we caught bigger baits which we thought was going to be good for big fish.  

Surf rods set on the beach. It's a good time of the year for red drum and shark. I think Matt had one bait that was shark bit. First couple of days we caught hard head, a lady fish that Coraline reeled up and this sting ray. Remember a few years ago I stung by one of these boys wading the surf. Not fun. I got off light with only a small wound that drained for 9 weeks. I did the good manners Gulf Coast thing and snipped his barb before release. 

The surf got rougher for several days and made bottom fishing with big rods harder. Last day we fished we bought fresh dead shrimp and started catching red drum 14"-18" inches long. Those, while about the size of a redfish fillet you might get in a restaurant and so a bit hard to throw back are undersized fish. They gotta be 20-28 inches long and you can keep one fish over this.  A good thing to go by the law. If you recall in the 1980s Cajun Chef Paul Prudhomme invented blackened redfish and the population took a severe nose dive.

The trick I picked up is I should have gone to the shrimp earlier. I don't mind buying live shrimp if the fish are really on. I'm slower to spring for shrimp if conditions are bad but we might have lucked into a big red on lighter tackle and we did catch quite a few small whiting. They are a pan fish type of critter and while you won't read any fishing reports detailing the glory of whiting fishing they are tasty and there is no restriction of any sort. A couple of days and we could have cobbled together a fish fry. 

I think me and Matt had 8 or 10 of these reds. That's my fishing shirt. Makes me invisible to the fish. This photo is a ghost red. No spot on the tail.   

Matt and his fishing hat. Hat makes him invisible to fish. 

I checking right now what other tricks I need to learn. 

Back From Vacation...

We have been on vacation. Luckily Hurricane Harvey spared one of our favorite places, Surfside Beach and we were able to rent the Soundwaves Beach House. It's one we have rented before and you can find photos scattered all through this blog of times we have spent there over the last few years dating back to 2010. 

Time at the beach is downtime and the fishing was kind of poor and being that I am getting kind of old I did not thrash the water to as big a froth as I usually do. Internet connection was poor so I was not able to keep a running live blog. Just as well as not. It's been at least 15 days since my last blog post. I guess that was OK with some folks as I note that there have been about 16 visitors to this web site today.  I have used the little facebook "on this day thing" that pops up each day to read and review old blog posts. I impress myself sometimes. On reflection they are good. I usually do not read anything I wrote twice so there have been some nice surprises. 

I don't think I have written so well lately and I can't quite put my finger on why. Sometimes I think it's because things happen pretty fast and I let them pass without recording my thoughts. I read somewhere that if you have the urge to write a song, a story, a poem you should not let it pass because where ever that urge comes from may stop sending the inspiration. 

Now I don't feel out of inspiration by any means but maybe I need to just sit down and  pound those 300-500 words as often as possible. 

The photos, you know that's what you look at, the top shows me Cathy and Coraline and the wreck of the pop up sun canopy. How would you like to see that across the stern of a sail boat for a name? It took a bashing from the waves and stood until we woke one morning to find it disappeared, tie downs and all. I suspect a beach junk man on a recycle scrap metal run. Bottom photo Matt walks out into the surf with a pole, Mary gazes on the sea with Ezra strapped in one of those snuggle things and Cathy, Coraline and Warren dig. They just dig. 

Can you?