Ants on the Melon
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Last night I traveled to Austin with Pepper and Ethan to see Neko Case at Antones. I had never seen her before, but had heard a lot of her music on KSYM and at Pepper and Ethan’s house. The show was scheduled to start at 8:30, with doors opening at 8:00. As it turned out, we had two extra tickets, so we got there a few minutes before 8:00 so that we could sell our extra tickets. After entering we found out that Neko was not going on until 11:00, and that there was an opening act going on at 10:00. Soooo, we had a few hours on our hands.

We walked down to Waterloo Records and looked around there for a while. I decided to buy Mofro’s Lochloosa CD, after all, it is on Chris’s approved live music list.

After leaving Waterloo we walked over to an Asian restuarant for dinner, then headed back to Antone’s for the opening act. This may or may not have been a good idea because the dude simply could not sing. And he was weird. His drummer and keyboard players were excellent, so he had that going in his favor. Anyway, before he began playing his second-to-last song he mumbled something about a young girl asking to sing with him, and that she had never performed before. So this normal looking girl goes on stage and in the middle of the song begins to sing, I couldn’t believe it, this girl had an amazing voice! She stayed on stage for his last song as well, and that’s when I realized that it wasn’t just any girl, it was Neko!

When Neko and her band came on stage we were all ready, and the venue was almost full. It’s really awesome to hear something so original and unique. Neko has this great voice that is both extremely powerful and lofty, it’s pretty hard to imagine. If you have never heard her you should head over to amazon.com and listen to some samples of her music. The show was terrific and lasted about an hour and a half, during which I was able to record video for two songs. I don’t know the names of either of the songs, but she preceded one by saying that it was a story her grandmother told her, and the other is apparently a Hank Williams song. Here are the videos: Grandma’s Story (65MB), Hank Williams song (48MB, missing the last 20-25 seconds of the song). If anyone can help me identify either of these two songs I would appreciate it. After the show Neko signed a poster for Pepper, and we got a picture of them together. It was an excellent evening overall, and I can’t wait for Neko to perform in this area again.

We left Austin about 12:45, which put me at home a little after 2am, and I was asleep by 2:30. Just enough time for 4.5 hours of sleep to power me through the RHCE exam the next day at work.