Austin City Limits

More food!  Met up with family for an early lunch at Texas Land & Cattle - another steak house.  Mom and I split the lunch burger which didn't completely fill up either one of us.  I insisted on swinging by Billy Bob's Texas - the world's largest honkey-tonk located in Fort Worth.  I have to admit it's kind of dead early in the afternoon on a Tuesday, but what can you do?  We had fun sipping a Blue Moon while walking around and checking out the joint.  This place has everything!  Pool tables, dance floor, arcade games, concert stage, a disco saddle instead of a ball hanging from the ceiling, slot machines, and a real bull-riding area.  Not a mechanical bull station.  A dirt floor with hay where cowboys come to ride real bulls.  It was weird to see but it looks like it'd be a fun place to check out when it's busy and happening.

We were hungry for a snack on the drive to Austin and saw a billboard for Whataburger.  My mom knew I wanted to go there because I saw Josh Brolin talk about it on Jay Leno about two months ago.  I was hoping it would be like In-N-Out.  And it is - kind of.  It's like a not-so-fresh Jack In The Box burger meets In-N-Out.  We hopped back on the road and started talking about getting some wine for the hotel room.  I frantically called Eddie and had him search for wineries in the area only to find out they were already closed for the day.  But luck was in our favor and we saw another important billboard advertising Korks Wine & Spirits.  They had a nice little selection of wines from Texas so we bought a few for the trip.

We checked into our beautiful hotel on the University of Texas at Austin campus and relaxed for a few minutes before hitting the town.  We went to the historic Continental Club to see the BlueBonnets perform.  Clem Burke of Blondie filled in on drums and after the show Kathy Valentine took a minute to pose for a photo with us.  This was a fun show but I was tired crawling into bed at 3:00 A.M.!

I would have made the BlueBonnets my media mention, but they're not available on Amazon.  And neither is Kathy Valentine.  So I'll talk about Chely Wright.  I only knew her because of "Single White Female."  My mom had plenty of time in the car on the way to Austin to introduce me to her.  I did enjoy the few songs I heard - especially her cover of Chuck Berry's "C'est la Vie" which you would recognize from the famous dance scene in Pulp Fiction.  I'm now interested in reading Like Me: Confessions of a Heartland Country Singer to learn more about Chely's life because my mom definitely made it sound like a good story.