Once again 2 shows in 2 days last weekend, first one around Austin on Friday night, second one in Houston Saturday night. For both shows tracy was not playing with her regular band but with Leland Parks on Bass (always doing a great job) and "Uncle" John Turner on drums, the guy who played Woodstock in 69 and who also played with several obscure blues musicians such as Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, B. B. King, Freddie King, Muddy Waters, Lightnin' Hopkins, Willie Dixon, Albert Collins, ... Leland and John are used to play with Tracy, they used to play together in the mid-90's. Tracy has many new songs since then but they had no problems learning them quick and playing them good.
The first show was at Grand Central Station just North of Austin, some enormous multi-section bar with a country room, a dance music room, ... and of course a live music room where Tracy was playing. Very interesting show with some new things like songs sang by Leland and Uncle John Turner. It was so good that some cowboys even left the country section to watch Tracy giving a much more entertaining performance than whatever was going on over there. Tracy ended the show with a wild version of "Third stone from the sun", a Hendrix song also covered by Stevie Ray Vaughan.
After that everybody drove to Houston for an even better show at Dan Electro's guitar bar, the place was completely full and all these people had a GREAT evening. There was a really cool and loud opening band called "Too Tall & the Guilty Lineup", leaded by the young but very talented guitarist Travis Bettis. I arrived there late so I only saw their last 2-3 songs but you could tell that those guys were quite something. Then Tracy jumped on stage with Leland and Uncle John again, and soon after Sam Massey joined them to sing and play guitar, there was really a lot of talent in the house that night! Some really good jams and such a great version of "the thrill is gone" again.
Finally this is not related to Tracy but the next night I was back in Dallas and a friend of mine and I went to see an old band called "Hot Tuna" at the Granada theatre, that was also excellent, they played for almost 3 hours, all accoustic, really good stuff. The Granada is a great place, I hope to see Tracy playing there one day.
