Sunday, May 25, 2008

Echoes of the Boneshakers

Let me get the bad part of the weekend out of the way quickly.  It was gray, cold, and spit rain off and on. I doubt the temperature ever got above sixty and there was an almost continuous biting wind.  Not enough to ruin the weekend, but enough to make it uncomfortable.

Okay, lets go to the good part.  Saturdays lineup was Bonnie Raitt, Legends of the Blues (featuring Pinetop Perkins, Hubert Smith, and Willie "Big Eyes" Smith with the Mike Schermer Allstar), Coco Montoya, Jimmy Thackery, and JJ Grey and Mofro.   Because I was running late, I saw Legends and Bonnie Raitt.

Sundays line up was Al Green, the Subdudes, and the Boneshakers (Randy Jacobs, Sweetpea Atkins, Malford Milligan, Stephen Bruton & the Texicali Horns), and Trombone Shorty & Orleans Ave.

My favorite was the Boneshakers.  I am sorry I missed Jimmy Thackery - Jimmy is an incredible guitarist, a future legend himself.  Here are a pair of links...

The Boneshakers at JWMF...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anYFEpJqCWk

Jimmy Thackery...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Klm15AqPsKs&feature=related

It was a very good weekend, all in all. By Sunday afternoon the weather had opened enough that there was some sunshine - not a classic California spring day, but enough of an experience of the sun to remind you that you were in California.

Late Sunday afternoon we made the decision to go get dinner rather than watch Al Green - get an early jump out so we could skip the traffic getting back into San Jose.  We ate at Riva's on the Santa Cruz Boardwalk.  Riva's is a nice little place.  I had the Texas Tilapia - which was - flavorful.

Translate that as so spicy that I only ate about half of it before I realized I was loading my stomach with a potential lethal mix of spice and seafood.  I'll write some more about the weekend once I've let it percolate for a while.

It was nice to just get out for a pair of days and indulge in my favorite minor motel fetish and spend time with some friends I haven't spent a lot of time with.  One of the strange curves was the original group of friends I had planned on going with gradually bailed out for a variety of reasons.  On Saturday, I got texted by some other friends that I had not seen in a while, but who knew I had planned to go to the festival and wanted to try and get together.  That turned it into an excellent weekend - around the festival we spent a lot of time eating, drinking, laughing, dancing, and talking into the wee hours and catching up.

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