Running on empty
Last night, I was with a Virgo friend, and she was complaining, “It’s 10:30 at night, and we’re both whining, ‘I’m too tired, I want to go to bed.’ Alone, of course. Here, think we can make it across the street?”
It was Guadalupe, or the “Drag” to Austin natives and university students. On a Wednesday night, it wasn’t too busy. We’d just gotten out of the taping of the Jackson Brown Austin City Limits show.
Pretty amazing. When I saw Robert Plant, I could feel the electricity in the air. Jackson Brown felt more subdued. The taping lasted several hours, for a one hour show. About halfway through, he was talking about it, between songs, “They told me not to worry about mistakes because we can always do it over. But you never know which ones to let go of.”
A little later, while the tape was changed, he was unscrewing the top from a bottle of water, “I just can’t imagine squeezing one of these things in front of lot of people.”
For the record, the ACL Studio hold 400 people, more or less, so it’s like an intimate cabaret setting.
Far different from seeing the Eagles in Dallas, what more than a year ago? Stadium seating, more than 400 hundred thousand people? Or the ACL studio, maxed out at 400?
During the taping, Jackson Brown played mostly new stuff, with a few old time faves thrown in for good measure.
His voice is strong, and his lyrics are still catching. There’s a lyrical, pop quality to his writing that sticks. And sticks and sticks.
Yes, it was his birthday, too. Along with at least one other Libra in the audience. During my evening, I ran into a Gemini, then a Capricorn, then another Virgo, then a Libra who shared the star’s birthday. The Moon? She was in Sagittarius.