Turning into Mavericks

September has shaped up to be a great month for The Staylyns to play new venues. By the time the month is out, we will have played three new venues (for us) in three different cities:

• Kemah Boardwalk in Kemah
• Mavericks in Pflugerville, and 
• Big Apple Deli in Snyder

I already blogged about playing Kemah, so I'll tell you about Mavericks - the club we played this past weekend.

For those not familiar with the Austin area, Pflugerville is just north of Austin. It's actually between Austin and Round Rock, where our monthly gig at Junior's is located.

Mavericks is primarily a country dance club. They have a huge dance floor and bar inside where they play DJ country music. It actually takes me back to my days in Houston, just out of college, when I'd go country dancing with my roommates just about every weekend - and sometimes during the week since Wednesday for some reason was a big night at the club where we went. At least I think it was Wednesday. I can't be sure since it was a long time ago, but I do remember having to drag myself out of bed to go to work just hours after I'd stumbled home from dancing and having to somehow survive the day, so it was definitely a weekday! But I digress.

Aside from the flashback-inducing indoor dance club, Mavericks also has a really awesome patio/deck area behind the main club. This area has all kinds of games - bean bag toss, a ring toss kind of thing, and, most cool of all, giant Jenga sets on a bunch of the tables. This is a photo of the lovely Lisa Macintyre (wife of the very talented Andy Macintyre - if you don't know his music, you should, so check out the link!) showing one of the Jenga sets who's boss:

We weren't sure how we'd be received by a straight-country crowd. We do some country songs, but we do them in our own Staylyns way, with a rock edge, and it could have gone badly if our style wasn't a fit. Think Blues Brothers:

Courtesy of MOVIECLIPS YouTube channel, TM & © Universal

But Johnny said a little prayer to the set-list gods:

And I'm happy to report that the show went very well! We had some fans show up specifically for us, and we had a great group of people right up by the stage who danced and interacted with us the whole time, which made it really fun. We also got great feedback from the barkeeps and management, so if you missed our September show, we'll be back at Mavericks on October 19!

If I had managed to get a photo of the incorrigible Doug, he would have been honored in this blog as our Super Fan of the show, but seeing as Doug's best moments happened when I was on stage, unable to take photos, I wasn't able to capture his special Doug magic. But he danced, sang along, played air guitar on beer bottles and anything else that happened to be nearby, and entertained us as much as we appeared to entertain him. So, here's hoping Doug comes back in October!

Our next show is an out-of-town gig this Thursday. Thanks to my awesome new job, we can make the trek out to Snyder, Texas, a mere five hours away [waves hand as if five hours is nothing] on a Thursday with no drama. We will be playing the Big Apple Deli, which we have been told is THE place to play in Snyder. Hard to know if that says something about Big Apple or Snyder, but we will soon know!

We are psyched to be planting a Staylyns flag in West Texas, though. We played once in El Paso about a year and a half ago, but El Paso feels like it's own world...and may as well be at nine hours away. Yes, that extra four hours makes a difference. You drive five hours and see if you feel like tacking on four more.

So, here we come Snyder! We'll follow that up with a private gig on Friday evening, and our monthly gig at Latitude 30 on Friday night, 9-11:30pm. It's going to be a busy 48 hours!