The Gourds at Scholz Garten
I drove up to Austin tonight to see The Gourds perform a free show at Scholz Garten. After a long day of training at work, I was pretty tired and I was not sure that I wanted to drive up there, but I am sure glad I did. Of the 5 times I have seen The Gourds so far, this was probably the best show yet, and they didn’t even play any of my favorite songs. There were lots of people dancing (to Gourds music?) and the crowd was completely into the show, which, I realized tonight, is a key ingredient for a great Gourds show. As soon as they started playing tonight I remembered why they are my favorite band. The songs are almost always upbeat, the type that your foot starts tapping to and you can’t make it stop. They played a lot of electric stuff tonight, which normally I don’t like but tonight it was perfect for the setting. (“electric” Gourds to me is when Kev plays the electric guitar 
) They jammed on several songs, and hopefully the show will make its way on Casa Huevos Negros.
Around 10:30 I was following 2 pickup trucks down I-35 back to San Antonio when I popped over a hill and saw that traffic was completely stopped ahead in all 3 lanes. The trucks in front of me quickly shot over to the right shoulder, and, sensing what they were about to do, I followed behind them. We drove along the shoulder for about a quarter of a mile until we could see that an 18 wheeler was blocking all traffic, and the cops had arrived on the scene. At that point the truck in front of me turned right into the huge ditch/field that separates the interstate from the access road. Once again I followed behind him, which turned out to be an excellent move because I was back on the interstate in about a mile. It was a strange feeling to be on a completely empty interstate while there are 3 full lanes of traffic going in the opposite direction, but that’s ok because I made it home from Austin in a little over an hour. 