A Special Night at the Fair
I love those evenings when you’re blissfully rocking along with not much to do and lots of time in which to do it. I also love it when that sort of evening turns in to something really special without even seeming to really try.
It started off simple enough. I got home from work, ate a couple of toasted cheese sandwichs, with Velveeta because it makes the nice creamy sandwich, and then headed out to Anderson Fair. Got there without much trouble which is always a good sign in Houston because I think DOT destroys roads around here as a recreational pastime.
That was when I got the first good surprise of the evening. Abi Tapia was playing with Beth Wood on Wayne Wilkerson and Ken Gaines regular Thursday night gig. I realize this shouldn’t have been a surprise, since we sell tickets at yourtexasmusic.com for Anderson Fair, but it was so I accepted it. I was sad when Abi moved to Massachusetts and it was nice to have her back in Texas.
Now a nice thing about Anderson Fair is that the sound is so good you can sit anywhere in the building and still hear really well. So, I decided to give in to my inexplicable urge to eat some popcorn. I got a bag, a bottle of water and settled down in the little library just off the main entrance.
At this point, I’m happy. The popcorn is buttery and salty and the music is drifting in putting a nice feel in the air. Thourgh all of this I’m watching the people walk up to the bar to buy their beer, wine and coffe, when I realize one of the patrons who just walked up is Don Sanders.
Don and I go back further than each of us would like to admit, to the days of Sand Mountain, Liberty Hall and the Jester. He is lovely person, a great singer and a talented songwriter. I’ll never know why the gods of success didn’t bring him a bigger portion.
He joined me in the Library where we visited and listened to the music. He declined my popcorn offer but I wasn’t offended. Not many people like to dip into someone else’s bag of popcorn.
So now the evening has gone up two notches in quality and I’m thinking I’m a pretty lucky guy, when in walks Leon Beck. Leon is a country music icon in Houston. He made his name working at Gilley’s doing their in-house magazine, the proceeded to branch out. He publishes Texas Hot Country Music, and has made or helped to make his fair share of stars. We knew one another from our days at the Daily Cougar at the University of Houston.
I introduce Leon to Don and we get to talking about why Leon is there and he says he’s come to interview Jim Post who is in town to do a Mark Twain show. Jim’s first claim to fame is the song, Reach Out In the Darkness that he wrote and performed as part of Friend & Lover.
Then Don allows as he’s there to see Jim as well because Jim is from Houston and the two of them have known one another for 40 plus years. All of these coincidences are pretty amazing in and of themselves, but then I got to hear Jim sing.
I have to say for a guy who is 70 he still has great pipes and when we spoke afterwards he admitted that he felt blessed to be able to continue to perform at a high level at his age and he thanked me for coming out.
At this point all us old guys said goodnight because our old guy alarms go off at around 4 a.m for some damn reason even when we’ve stayed up past three and all of us had something to do in the morning. All except Leon who is younger and had more clubs to attend for his magazine. God bless him.
I left Abi, Beth, Wayne and Ken to finish off the evening singing to their attentive masses and made the blessedly quick drive home and to bed.