Our final morning in Austin started with a maintenance guy opening our motel room door to fix the lock. “I hate Mondays,” he grumbled. Good, we had confirmation that it was indeed Monday morning. This confirmation was needed because for the last 20 hours we have damn near no idea where we have been.
Yesterday started with a trip to a garage in south Austin where the Music Fog crew had been hired to tape a BBC interview with Jimmie Vaughan. The interview was hosted by Mick Jagger’s brother Chris. Really a great interviewer too. He sat with Jimmie in front of our camera for about 45 minutes. They talked about the Texas sound and Jimmie’s career that started when he was 13. They talked about Jimmie’s famous younger brother Stevie. Maybe his best quote was, “When I came back home to find my brother had learned to play guitar, we played together on stage. He did Hendrix. Once he played that for the audience, what could I do? There’s nothing you can do.” Then the BBC guys took the video tape and left. We found ourselves standing outside of a locked garage with our equipment and no ride.
Then Jessie Scott called and said she’d send “the van”. What van? We haven’t had a van all week! What van was she talking about? Ladies and gentlemen...enter the Jessie Scott Vortex. It’s that zone of unknown chaos that happens when you least expect it. You don’t fight it. Just go with it. Everything will be fine.
“The van” arrived in just minutes. It was white and unmarked. We were whisked away to a “ranch” somewhere south of Austin. It was so far out there; if we tried to walk out to get cigarettes, authorities would have found our lifeless bodies on the side of the road. Wiener dogs where running around everywhere. There was flag football. There was a recording studio in an out building that opened up to the great Texas outdoors. They were cooking hot dogs on the grill. Yes, tubed meats. But they tasted different. Turns out the dogs were tofu. So, the best we could reckon was that this was a wiener dog ranch that respected the very cattle it raised. Again, this is the Jessie Scott vortex. You just go with it. There was a jam session that went into the early morning hours. Music Fog captured it all on tape. Watch for a post in the next few days. You will then understand The Jessie Scott Vortex.
-Jim McBean