Birmingham, Alabama - 16th November 2012

(You have to pronounce it BirmingHAM in order to distinguish from England's drabbest city.)

I'm in a public library and I am sleepy and I feel like I maybe don't look or smell too good, but I'm feeling pretty good otherwise.  Here's what's been going down:

The rest of my stay in Denton was great.  Brad and Micky continued to be excellent and fun hosts, and Brad doubled as a chauffeur, driving me around town to get some things organised.  On Monday I walked around in the suddenly pretty chilly Texas sunshine and ate in a novelty cowboy themed diner which, maybe on reflection, was only a novelty to me amongst its patrons.  That evening we ate some fine American cuisine, pictured below:

 

I also tried to make a curry, only to find that you seemingly can't buy curry spices in America.  I made something anyway, and it didn't taste too bad.  We also played a weird nerdy boardgame, where you had to settle a mythical land or something.  It was stupid but also fun.  I was rubbish at it.  It looked like this:

On Tuesday I rode the Megabus over to Austin.  Megabus!  Megabus in America is way better than both Megabus in the UK and the, more prevalent Greyhound over here.  The buses are clean and usually on time, both of which are far from guaranteed with Greyhounds.  Anyway, I got in to Austin and walked a couple of miles to Trailerspace records, where I was greeted with a cup of tea and a rerun of the Chelsea vs Shaktar Donetsk game on TV.  I felt right at home.  Trailerspace is a great little record store which doubles as a venue and hangout spot for skateboard kids and the occasional homeless person selling pecan nuts.  Kids started showing up and it was fun hanging out drinking Lone Star beers and whiskey, looking through the records and waiting for the show to start.

I played first and it went just fine, though nobody was especially enthusiastic.  I am starting to remember how to play some of my songs a bit better, but it's still a little sloppy at times.  A couple of other guys joined me for the last song, on cello and drums, which I thought sounded pretty great.  The other bands were Bitter Birds, who were cool and had a great drummer, and Quin Galvais + friends.  Quin is the guy who set up the show and he was really friendly and cool and I enjoyed watching his set whilst hanging out with his mom.

I had a place to stay organised with a woman called Pish on Couchsurfing.  She came to pick me up after the show and we stopped to get a cup of tea and have a chat before heading back to her place.  This turned out to be a trailer in a real life Texan trailer park, which was pretty exciting to me.  A 1985 custom built somethingorother, which is apparently much sought after.  It was certainly comfortable enough to get a good night's sleep in, undistrubed by her hilarious little, totally spoiled dogs.  Pish was a fascinating person to spend a few hours with and our conversation covered a lot of ground, including raw veganism, parking lots you're allowed to speak in and something called 'orgasmic meditation', which I assured her I will look into, as it apparently has a growing following in London!

The next day it was back on the Megabus to Houston.  I had another long-ish walk to the venue... SUPER HAPPY FUN LAND.  How could I not be excited?  I played at SHFL on my first tour, way back in 2004, to an audience of zero, which I was a little concerned might happen again, especially when I discovered that my deadly songwriting rival 'Sir' Paul McCartney was playing in town the same night.  I needn't have worried though, because the awesome headlining act, Branagan brought quite a few friends along.  I booked Branagan for this show myself because I thought they sounded great and they put on a great show, which I failed to adequately capture on camera:

Also on the bill was Kara Melton, who had a bunch of intriguing songs and a sofa she was happy for me to sleep on, although I was only able to do this for a couple of hours by the time we got there.  Anyway she was lovely and very accomodating, as was Debs from Branagan, who very kindly drove back in to Houston from her home in Sugar Land TX(!) in order to drop off the copies of my album which had been shipped to her address too late for her to bring them to the show.  I'm hoping I get to repay some of this generosity when she visits London next year.

Houston then, was pretty great all round.  I even got through my set without any fuckups.  On to New Orleans in high spirits, destined to be royally shat upon... First of all I had to sit on a frotty Greyhound for almost 8 hours, which at least gave me a chance to catch up on some sleep.  Greyhound bus stations always seem to be in the sketchiest parts of town, and New Orleans really exemplified this.  I live in the Knife Crime Capital of England, but I never feel remotely threatened walking around Peckham, whereas my 5 minute walk to The Big Top left me feeling pretty uneasy.  Anyway, I felt better when I arrived at the venue, a cool little gallery space with a stage for live music, run by friendly volunteers.  Unfortunately, that stage was not to see any live music on this particular night.  There were supposed to be two local bands on the bill, but only of them showed up, and none of their friends/fans came out to see them.  This meant we were reliant on my New Orleans fan base to fill the venue.  So the show was cancelled.  I also didn't have anywhere to sleep, which, after many attempts to figure something out, meant I ended up sleeping on a gross couch in the corridor of some skanky appartments upstairs from the venue.  This is what it looked like:

To add to the fact that it was filthy and very brightly lit, the residents of flat #2 decided to have some fun with me in the night.  The highlight of their general drunken obnoxiousness was when one of them came out with a 10" meat cleaver and asked me if I have a weapon, assuring me I was likely to need one, though I'm not sure whether he meant because of him or some other threat.  I'm pretty sure it was all just a joke, but I didn't sleep much anyway.  I've never been so glad to get up at 5:30 am.

Today, I rode the extremely comfortable AMTRAK train out to Alabama, feeling very glad indeed to be leaving New Orleans behind.  I got a lift out to this part of town from a friendly local, who was kind enough to give me a lowdown of the town's "gentlemen's clubs".  One of them is apparently "the country club of titty bars".  Great?  I bought some good bread, to go with the surprisingly good cheese (what's up, America?) and had a great picnic in a beautiful park just by the library here:

...then came inside to update this.  I have no idea what sort of show to expect tonight, but pretty much anything will be an improvement on yesterday.

Anyway, I am still having a good time all in all, and I am happy to be here.

OK.  I'm out of time on this computer.

More soon.  Keep in touch.

Hugh

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