Playing the Viva Terlingua Festival, Part 2

Part 2 - the conclusion! Okay, so as I ended my last post, after arriving in Lajitas on Thursday and catching some music, we called it a day and crashed in our lovely, Western-themed hotel room. The next morning, I arose to this beautiful view:

This was our room (the porch to the right), and my vantage point for the photo above:

In the section of hotel behind ours was a courtyard area:

It turns out that at one time, this section was a parade ground and barracks for a military fort:

I took lots of pictures and hung out with this new fan:

When Johnny woke up, we headed across the street to look around the area where all the action happens - a renovated Old West Town:

The main walkway through the "town."

The Badlands Hotel

The lobby of the Badlands Hotel

The golf course

Lunch, anyone?

We found this amphitheater behind the main resort area.
We'll play here the next time we come, right?

After poking around the grounds for a while in the blazing heat, we decided to check out the film portion of the festival. We saw several short films at the Flat Rock Theater on the Lajitas grounds:

It was a small, but congenial crowd, so Johnny took the opportunity to chat it up with some of the other musicians and filmmakers who were there. There were several folks from the Austin area, which was cool. In fact, the night before, at Starlight Theater, we ran into some folks Johnny knew from Austin. Small world, man.

Then it was time for more music. We got dolled up and headed to The Thirsty Goat to watch the other folks who were playing that venue for the night, before finally taking the stage ourselves as the night's closing act. The venue was pretty full earlier in the night, but unfortunately, either Lajitas is an early crowd or most people had ventured over to the Starlight Theater for the late shows, so we didn't have much of a crowd by the time we got started. But wadda ya gonna do? Not a whole lot, I'm afraid - it's not like you're going to get a lot of walk-by traffic in a ghost town!

We did our thang, though. The stage at the Thirsty Goat is really designed for a singer-songwriter or duo act, but we made it work. We've played smaller stages! The festival rep who ran sound for us said he enjoyed us a lot and would like to have us back to the venue again, so we'll see if Lajitas makes it into our rotation in the future. While it's far, it is indoors and air-conditioned, and I think you all know how much that means to me.

Until we get an actual booking, though, we'll consider it a fun memory and an interesting experience. I can't tell you how many times someone has told us how much they like us, and they have some event/venue/etc. that they want to book us for, and they take our card, and we never hear from them again. It's part of the drill out there in the trenches.

The next day, we caught a little more of the film portion, then decided to head back home. We had done all we could do in the desert! Joe was particularly eager to get back to high-speed Internet, as you can see from his ambitious luggage transport:

"I make one trip to the van. One."

So, we bid Lajitas and Terlingua adios, and we headed eastbound and down for home. Not the Danny McBride version - the Jerry Reed version:

You'll be singing that the rest of the day. You are WELCOME!