ACL Update - Friday Part 5

No time to waste, we had to go all the way across the field to see Lucinda Williams. Amazingly, we were able to get on the center isle and within about 15 feet from the front. The wind was keeping us cool, even as the temperature reached into the high 90’s. While we waited, we sat next to a guy who owned a record store in New Orleans (check out http://www.magicbusrecords.com although they are out of business right now). He has been in Austin since the storm and doesn’t know if he will be able to go back. His store is in good shape, but all of his customers are gone and it will be some time before he will be able to open up again.

Lucinda was in the same spirit as when we saw her a couple of weeks ago. She was happy and really enjoying being out there. The set was more country than rock this time, probably because she was in Texas. One of the highlights, again, was her new song Jailhouse Tears. Someday she will record it with someone like Hank Williams III and it is sure to be a country hit (although radio may have a problem with some of the lyrics). At the end she did two songs of redemption; the second being “Get Right with God”. She was having so much fun at that point that she was wiggling her hips big time. And we were all having a blast watching.

We decided to do the autograph thing with Lucinda. Unfortunately she wasn’t doing the picture thing. But we had a great time in line sharing stories. One of my favorite stories of the weekend was from a woman who had driven out here because her friend at the last minute decided to not go. The flake was avoiding her as late as the Wednesday before the show. The highlight to the story was while she was trying to contact the flake, a call came in from the flake’s business partner wondering why her partner had locked herself in the closet afraid to talk to the storyteller. I had trouble getting past that, “locked herself in the closet” line: We were laughing so hard.