Love Shack Baby!

Songs keep me coming back to Texas, and this acoustic memory is gonna expose a little more about a Texas song that’s all wrapped up in the concept behind "Acoustic Memory."

Roundabout seven years ago I started trying to write a novel in earnest. The emotion was there but the stylings were hard to work through.

The story is about a woman’s suppressed love for a Texas guitarist. Or is it about his suppressed love for her that makes her suppress her love for him? Hm. I’m still too confused about my own story. Anyway, two years into the project my mil sent me a CD she bought in Johnson City. The artist’s name is John Greenberg. I’d never heard his songs before, but I took one listen of “Amy Walker” and thought it clearly summed up the novel’s theme.

So on my next trip to Texas, I went on a pilgrimage to River City Grille to meet the songwriter with my mil. He played “Amy Walker” for my mil and me after the show, even though he’d just flown in from Italy that day.

I’m on John Greenberg’s mailing list and every week read about all the good folks that come to the RCG to play with him and Mike Blakely, who is a novelist himself. Sometimes John goes on the road with Walt Wilkins and the Mystiqueros.

Funny thing is that John and the Mystiqueros were going to be in Fort Worth the same night that I was visiting my husband’s uncle with my daughter. I called Uncle Jeff a week before the show and left him a message about the band. He called back with a brief response, “I’m in.”

The night of the show, we headed out to Tim Love’s Love Shack So 7 with no expectations. The Love Shack is a burger joint owned by Tim Love, who’s probably better known for one of his other Fort Worth restaurants, the Lonesome Dove Western Bistro. We were blown away by the Mystiqueros playing in the beer garden—all three generations of us.

Uncle Jeff worked hard after dinner to get the two girls good seats, right in front of Walt where we could revel in the harmonies of Bill Small and John Greenberg. A few songs later when I was adrift in bluebonnets, Jeff came back from the men’s room, all excited cause he’d spotted Pat Green. Sure enough, Pat joined Walt at the microphone. The song I can’t get out of my mind is “The Trains I Missed.” The boys capped off a night of hill country blues with a Van Morrison cover, “Into the Mystic.” By then I was heavy into the Mystiqueros.

Check out the Mystiqueros’ new CD, Agave, on Blue Boot Records (a Ft. Worth label) or go old school and buy John Greenberg’s CD, Red River Blues, when you head down to the River City Grille on May 4. That night Gurf Morlix joins John and Mike for a TexAmericana Tuesday. Tell ‘em Heather sent you.

"Only now I wish I could be that same smooth talker,
Talk myself out of wanting you."
-John Greenberg, "Amy Walker"