electric mountain rotten apple gang, james hinkle, woodeye

went and saw them kobetich boys tear it up as the electric mountain rotten apple gang at fred's saturday night. with matt skates (confusatron) on stand-up bass, adam (banjo/high lonesome voxxx) and darrin (dobro/mandolin/gtr -- is there anything with strings he can't light up?) played the fahhhr out of mountain music, bluegrass, whatevah (adam started to 'splain the diff but got sidetracked), alternately raging like a wild river and tinkling like a mountain stream. at times during his solo set, darrin sounded like _two_ gtrists; cat's the only axeman i know who can play so fast with a flatpick that it sounds like he's fingerpicking alternating bass figures under whatever line he's got going. scary. apparently this is gonna be a regular sat'day gig for them. they had a good-sized crowd that mostly showed up after the kitchen was closed and stuck around when they took their break -- the true sign of dyed-in-the-wool music listeners. 'twas cool. on nights when the music's playing, fred's is starting to have a feel and vibe not unlike that of liberty lunch in austin, back when austin was still, y'know...austin. except you couldn't get a steak like terry chandler's at liberty lunch.

dapper dude james hinkle stopped by fred's enroute to a gig with mace maben. he's got a new cd out entitled straight ahead blues? (an allusion to the jazzy flavor on many of the tracks) which he might be visiting europe to promote later in the year, and is breaking in a new set that'll allow him to add some singer-songwriter type stuff to his tex-lectic mix of rootsy toonage. he's promised to arm-twist his longtime keyboard player robert cadwallader into sitting in at lee and carl's wednesday night jam at el wreck one of these weeks. we live in hope, as robert's a master of classic acoustic pianner and hammond b-3 sounds.

then we headed over to the wreck for woodeye. carey wolff and co. were their classic selves, maybe a little more rockin' than usual this time out 'cos carey picked up scott davis' gretsch after popping a string on his acoustic-electric. new papa graham richardson had a photo of his son kai taped to his bass; perhaps proud papahood has brought newfound maturity to mohawked graham, or maybe it's just exhaustion from late-night feedings 'n' changings, but for now he's sorta relinquished his role of onstage visual focal point to scott davis (who actually _leaped through the air_ at one point).

i'll give the last word on woodeye to my buddy geoff, who's kind of an east coast chauvinist, but one who knows good rawk from bad. geoff checked 'em out at our wedding bash back in march and came away impressed, so i burned him a couple of cd-r's worth of fort worth goodness. last week i was asking him if he'd had time to listen to some more recent burnage i'd sent him. uh-uh, he said: "anytime i reach for one of those cd's, i wind up wanting to hear that 'how to lose' song again." who can blame him?