("Hot Guts" [king of the Texas Sausages] from the Southside Market in Elgin, TX)
I thought to myself, but consciously didn’t say out loud, that I remembered Houston had a reputation for wicked traffic, and wasn’t it funny that here we were in the city, at rush hour no less, and traffic was moving just fine. About twenty seconds later, we were stuck in a hellish traffic jam. And we both had to pee.
Eventually we got to a gas station, and then poked our way through the awful congestion to the house were staying at, which was to be our last CouchSurf. As we drove through our hosts’ neighborhood, we remarked to each other on all the cool little Mexican shops and grocery stores we’d have to hit up on our way out of town the next morning.
Our hosts were a friendly couple who had two kids, including a very cute baby who happened to also be named Gabriel, and an iguana named Rambo who, they informed us, had a reputation for causing trouble. They welcomed us into their place, and we drank tea and talked for a while. Then we all (minus the iguana) took a stroll to grab more fantastic Mexican food, including some chicken mole enchiladas (ordered by Gabriel, naturally) that were perhaps the best version of that dish that I’ve ever encountered. I won’t say we haven’t been eating well.
(And as a side note, we also haven’t been exercising much. Just a word of caution – I’ll likely be returning somewhat porkier than I was when I left. Please try not to stare. It was worth it.)
We left the restaurant, walked back home to our hosts’ place and got ready to take off for the gig. They told us just to come in when we got back (we’d said it might be late), and that the door would be unlocked.
Anyway, before our Houston adventures continue, a brief bit of housekeeping. The 17th of April was supposed to be a gig in Hot Springs, Arkansas, with the 16th kept as a travel day, us likely taking our rest in some place like Texarkana or Shreveport. The Hot Springs gig was cancelled, which was a shame, given that we had been looking forward to it, but also something of a gift in that it gave us an extra day off between Houston and Nashville.
For the last week or so, we’d been debating what to do with that extra day. Essentially there were three routes – north through the Ozarks, south through Louisiana, or the middle way through Texarkana. Texarkana was out. No interest to us whatsoever, except that misery seems to be where we both get our songs. Still, hardly someplace we’d enjoy. I initially wanted to do the Ozark route, since I’d been hearing about a town called Eureka Springs, which fancies itself the “hole in the buckle of the Bible Belt,” a lunatic enclave full of hippies, artists, more psychics per capita than any other town in the US and a generally zany approach to life. I pictured it as a Provincetown of the mountains.
The idea was to camp out near Eureka Springs, go into town, see the sights, eat and drink well, then enjoy some solitude and maybe write some songs. But the more Gabriel and I thought about it (and, to his credit, I think he’d had the idea from the beginning) the more sensible the southern route seemed. Because the bend in that road is New Orleans. Gabriel had been there a few years ago and remembered it with riotous fondness. I’m not sure if he intentionally planted and watered the idea, but by the time we hit Lafayette, we had made a solid plan to take an evening’s R&R in the Crescent City before heading up to Nashville.
So, back in Houston, the plan was to play our gig, go back to stay with the folks we were CouchSurfing with, wake up early and hit the road for New Orleans. Perfect.
The show was supposed to have been at Houston’s legendary Super Happy Fun Land, but SHFL had not yet reopened in its new location after some building code problems. It got rescheduled at notsuoH, a downtown bar with a great funky bohemian feel and wild art all over the walls, located curiously between swank restaurants and swankier hotels. We pulled in, had a beer, hung out a bit with Chloe, the bartender, and met the DJ, who goes professionally by the name “360,” and who was spinning “Maggot Brain” when we got in. We talked about Eddie Hazel, maybe the most underrated guitarist of all time, always a subject I’m glad to discuss.
After a while, a woman came in, said “I’m Christa,” and shook our hands. I asked, stupidly, “Have we met?” She answered that we had contacted her through CouchSurfing, and she’d responded but never heard back from us, so thought she’d come down and see if we still needed a place to crash, being that notsuoH was already on her circuit of good bars. Gabriel hadn’t gotten her email. Oops.
She sat down with us, then pulled out a sketchbook and started writing. She handed me a list of personal recommendations for late night eats and other Houstonian points of interest for traveling musicians.
She also turned out to be an artist. She made a wicked cool drawing for us on a sample tag of formica, of a lanky panda waving hello, ringed by the words, “nothin’ to fear, I just want some bamboo.” It was awesome, and now adorns our dashboard.
We played to the assembled crowd, first Gabriel and then myself. I think we both put in good, solid performances, and we ended, as we usually do these days, with a harmonized duet on the Stones’ (by way of TVZ) “Dead Flowers,” which we started working on in the car between Wilmington and Asheville.
(Live mp3s - Gabriel doing "Leave Him Alone" - http://econo-graphics.com/superdupersecret/LeaveHimAloneHouston.mp3 - Me doing "Nobody Loves You Like I Do" - http://econo-graphics.com/superdupersecret/NobodyLovesYouHouston.mp3 )
We went back to the table, hung out and chatted with Christa, and left at around 12:30. On the way home, I realized I was extremely hungry. Gabe still had half of his enchiladas in our hosts’ fridge, but I had only a bit of salad, and I made an executive decision to get a Whataburger, a Texan fast-food creation whose praises I’d heard sung but which I had never tried myself.
We pulled over to the side of the road and scarfed fast food (which, by the way, was gloriously good, especially at that hour – miles above McDonald’s, BK or even Wendy’s, all of which we’ve managed to avoid completely on this trip). My vision of perfection – a happy belly full of greasy chow, a warm place to sleep and the road stretching out before us in the morning, glinting gold in the Texas sunshine.
We drove into the driveway and got our guitars and sleeping bags out. We left the amps and suitcases in the car – our hosts had told us, “This neighborhood is completely safe. We never even lock our doors, neither the house nor the car.” We wandered up to the front door, trying to make a minimum of noise.
It was locked.
“Oh drat,” we said. Or something to that effect.
We essentially had five options, as enumerated by Gabriel. We could:
1) Call them and wake the whole house, probably including the baby, and ask to be let in to crash on their couches.
2) Sleep in the car in their driveway.
3) Pitch our tent and sleep in their front yard.
4) Find the nearest motel.
5) Drive to New Orleans immediately.
In retrospect, we should probably have just given them a call, but at the time it seemed like a rude thing to do. Number two was out since we have so much crap in the car that the seats no longer recline. Number three was ridiculous. Number five was completely impractical, given that I was too tired to drive nearly three hundred miles by myself and Gabriel was still pretty drunk – I was designated driver for the evening. And besides, showing up sleepless in New Orleans at 7 AM would guarantee a bleary, dreary day in a city we’d wanted to enjoy.
I was in the process of checking into the nearest sketchy motel when I found out they only took cash, and I didn’t have any on me. Then Gabriel made a sixth suggestion – we could drive towards New Orleans, find a motel when we got tired, then wake up and hightail it but have already crossed a few hours off our journey by morning. That sounded good to me.
We gassed up and headed east on I-10. We decided to get off the road around Beaumont (it was already after three by that point), an oil town and another of the world’s ugliest cities. We crawled around looking for a motel, marveling at the immense hideousness of the place, and eventually settled on an Econo Lodge, which advertised the cheapest rates we’d seen in that part of Texas.
We checked in and loaded our stuff out of the car, and then I went out to park it in the last available spot in the parking lot. As I looked out over the courtyard and the superhighway rolling past it, I suddenly remembered the last verse of “Two Girls,” by Townes Van Zandt:
Cold down on the bayou,
They say it’s in your mind.
But the moccasins are treadin’ ice
And leavin’ strange designs.
The Cajuns say the last time
This happened they weren’t here,
But Beaumont’s full of penguins
And I’m playin’ it by ear.
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