Purgatory Players

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The Purgatory Players are a bunch of musical characters (Jeff Plankenhorn, Seela Misra, John Dee Graham and Scrappy Jud Newcombe on acoustic guitars with Jon Greene on drums) who have been around for many years and play Sunday mornings at the El Mercado on South 1st in Austin -- typically they pass a tip jar to raise money for the Central Texas Food Bank. It's an event we always attend while in Austin. They're all very good musicians, comfortable playing with one another and very funny with one another. They say the event is a "gospel-ish" brunch -- there usually is some music with a gospel theme that sinners like us can tolerate. And there's usually lots of fine music without any tinge of religion.

When Gordon and Leslie were visiting in late February we took them. The show is from 10:00am to 1:00pm with a short break in the middle. We arrive early around 10:30 to get good seats and order a Tex/Mex breakfast -- with a "Morning Margarita" or similar beverage to wash it down.

The audience is usually pretty good at listening and the sound mix is always excellent. On this day Scrappy Jud Newcombe, a core member of the group, wasn't there -- other commitments. When the core group is too thin due to other commitments they'll have guests sit in to fill out the group.

Guests in the second set included Ray Bonneville, Barbara Bergin, Kelly Micheal McDaniels, Kate Howard and Shawnee Kilgore (who we had seen fronting for Butch Hancock at the Acoustic Austin gig).

There's a Canadian connection to the group -- Jeff is married to a Canadian, Seela and Roy Bonneville are Canadian ex-pats who have moved to Austin.

One of the really neat things about this weekly show is it's regularly taped and posted to YouTube by "DanViewTube". I met him one day recording at a Waterloo Records show (Hays Carll) and chatted a bit. I let him know that I really enjoyed the videos. Check out his Youtube channel -- the audio quality is surprisingly good.