Hill Country Wine & Jovitas

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Friday, Nov. 20.

A rainy day, a wine tour, and Jovita's.

It's raining in the morning and has been all night. The tailgate party in the parking lot outside our window last night was quite loud and lasted quite late. What were they doing?

Kate has been researching the musicians we saw at Z-Tejas the other night, and we send a note to Alison letting her know what we have figured out. Stephen Doster played with Nancy Griffith's "Full Moon Orchestra" and is a producer of some renown. Will Sexton and his older brother Charlie Sexton were raised here in Austin by a hippy mom with a bad drug habit and equally bad taste in men (jail, dead, etc.). Bill Carter wrote songs for Stevie Ray Vaughn and the Thunderbirds. We see that Bill Carter and Stephen Doster are accompanying someone at the Driskill happy hour tonight. We could see them again if we wanted.

We did a very small wine tour around Lake Travis. There is a developing wine industry in the nearby Hill Country. One winery, Flat Creek, has a lunch and wine tasting. It's on the north side of Lake Travis but getting there seems to take forever. We have a nice lunch — they aren't very busy. They are about 9 years old and make what they call a "Super Texan". That's a play on "Super Tuscan" — a kind of fancy expensive Italian wine that's all the rage. We buy a bottle to take home as a souvenir for Terry, our Italian Wine Aficionado. It's actually a pretty good wine.

Stonehouse Vineyard is on the south side of Lake Travis and a long way away in from the main road. It turns out they make only one wine! It's a nice enough red made from "Norton" grapes, which we had never heard of before. And they have lots of wine that they import (from Australia) and label as their own. That's not really Texas wine! We learn that a lot of these wineries are using grapes from the Llano Estacado area of the Texas panhandle, or importing grapes from California, Oregon and Washington. There's really not much by way of local vineyards. It's a developing industry.

Back in town we visit Threadgill's South, which is a very short walk across our parking lot, to buy tickets for James McMurtry who will be playing there on Saturday night with his full band. We've seen him before as a solo acoustic act but never with his full band. He'll be outside on a small stage in the beer garden if the weather clears. Tickets are $15 each which is a pretty good deal.

We head to Jovita's on South 1st a few blocks south of us for the happy hour and some music. We are stuffed by the apps we've ordered and have some margaritas, beer and wine. This place has expanded a lot from the last time we were here. They now have a big concert area at the back — before it was just a small room with a small stage where we saw Cornell Hurd back in 1998.

The music tonight is a "Women's Night" with lots of friends and family as the audience. For more information on the women who live and play around town see Girl Guitar Austin. We buy a calendar of Austin girl guitar players which has some very nice photos.

The first act is a singer / song writer in the folk style with a fellow accompanying her. The second act is three girls called "Camptown Girls" who sang bluegrass. The stand-up bass player (I think it was Melissa Carper) was a very pretty butch girl in men's clothes with ratty matted dreadlocks. She could have been a model but had decided to be a poster girl for the homeless. However she had the nicest voice. The fiddle player (I think it was Beth Chrisman) was a very big girl and wore cowboy boots. She seemed to be the lead on some of the more traditional bluegrass twangy stuff. The banjo/guitar player (didn't catch her name) was very slim in a short tunic type top, tight leotards and cowboy boots. She wrote several of the tunes as did the fiddle player. Plus they did some Hank Williams and other traditional music. They were pretty interesting.

We ducked out early and did not stay for the CD release party of the closing act. They were guys, big guys, with drums, electric guitars, etc. What were they doing there on "Women's Night" anyways?

Transcribed and edited during the OMIGOD! pandemic of February 2022 from notes taken at the time.