TEXAS part 1 - Play That Funky Music White Boy

I seem to be a few days behind on posting.

We arrived in Austin a few days ago. We had a day off the first full day we were here, so I did a little local shopping/perusing with Sascha, the Assistant Production Manager from the Erasure crew. She's the only woman on the crew- traveling in a tour bus with about 12 rowdy roadies. But she is more than capable of handling it, and gets along with everyone beautifully. When she is not woking on tours, she is a psychiatric nurse in Brighton. A funny double life. We have bonded over our interest in Africa (jn my case- just reading about it, in her case, going there). I just finished reading Blood River about the Congo, and she actually visited the Congo a few years ago and wants to go back as a nurse.

The show in Dallas at The Toyota Music Factory last week was kind of nuts. There were 7,500 people- by far the largest audience we have played to. Thankfully, the Texas joviality worked in our favor- people were shouting (in a good way) and pretty receptive. The disconcerting thing about it was that Reed and I were being filmed as we played, and shown on massive video screens to our right and left. Whenever I looked over and saw myself up there, it freaked me out momentarily. Do I have lipstick on my teeth? Etc. But we picked up a few Facebook followers after that show, so the lipstick on the teeth couldn't have been too egregious. After Reed did a cello solo, someone in the audience yelled "play that funky music white boy!", which made us laugh.

The show in Houston was also pretty good, though I wasn't crazy about the city itself. I didn't see any building that looked like it was built before 1986. Instead of wearing my usual college goth-debutante outfit of black jeans and a black shirt, I wore this very sparkly white dress with blue and slate grey sequins in a cool geometric pattern. It felt a bit over the top, but I got a compliments on it from Emma and Val as well as the usually grumpy crew.

We had a few hours off in San Antonio, so I wandered around downtown for awhile. It's a really cool city. There is a narrow river that runs through it, and they made it into this really beautiful riverwalk area with restaurants and shops. Hard to explain but very beautiful and shady. There were also a lot of cool old buildings from the turn of the century. And then of course, The Alamo, which is beautiful- especially when lit up at night. I wandered into a cool skateboard shop called ¡Órale because I noticed the nice t-shirts they were selling, and chatted with the very friendly owner for awhile. He turned out to be an Erasure fan so I put him on the guest list for the show.

I went with the sequin-y dress again for the San Antonio show. Between the sequins, rhinestones and the cordless mic, I felt a little like a lounge singer in Vegas, but I was kind of into it. When I sing "John and Renee," I like to pretend I'm a lounge singer giving a Ted Talk.

Tobin Center for the Performing Arts in San Antonio:

101 year old hat shop in San Antonio:

Riverwalk in San Antonio: