Tuesday September 17
I woke up at midnight after about an hour’s sleep having got home from the City Winery at around 10.30pm, put my washing on and fell into bed listening to BBC Radio 5 Live.
I could not get back to sleep and the reason was simple. I was trying to rearrange my flight home from San Francisco and I could not get anyone at United to understand clearly what I wanted. I discovered that I had made a mistake when I originally booked. Apparently, I couldn’t then use any more miles for an upgrade or a change. So, be aware that you can change your booking within 72 hours, something I didn’t do because I didn’t realise I had made an error. The cost to change to just a few days earlier ranged from $551 to $1700, depending on when I looked. Thank dynamic pricing for this! ‘Just keep checking in, it could get lower,’ said one rep, so I did. This bugged me so much that I was determined to beat the system. Finally, I got onto a young rep who offered to change my flight back for A$195.20. I had to double check. Of course, I took it. The day would be easier now.
The main task for today was to pick up my wrirtband to the Festival and pass to the Conference at the City Winery, where in the late afternoon I met Myles O’Neil-Shaw from Five Foot High & Rising on 3PBS-FM and his friend Gordo. Presenting an Americana radio program, Myles is right in his element here and you can sense his excitement.
We all compared travel notes. They had driven from Austin to New Orleans via the remnants of Hurricane Fran and then on up to Nashville. They are driving back to Austin on Tuesday and flying out from there. In Nashville, like me, they are staying a bit out of town. They are near Opryland and have decided to catch Ubers rather than risk driving at night. Good move.
We stayed at the City Winery for the tribute show to Mary Gauthier’s Drag Queens and Limousines album with an all star cast and Jim Lauderdale as the MC. This was also a chance for Jordie Lane to impress and he did so with a beautiful version of ‘Between Daylight and Dark,’ following on from Rodney Crowell which would have been nerve-racking enough in itself.
Other guests included Jamiee Harris, who helped out the show together and featured alone and with others, Vernon Thompson (colleague of Guy Clark), Gretchen Peters, Creekbed Carter Hogan (a story indeed), Aaron Lee Tasjan, Beth Nielsen-Chapman, Lori McKenna, Steve Poltz and Odessa Settles. A great night for merely the cost of the festival wristband.
After the show, we ventured to the upstairs lounge to catch Jordie again, this time doing a gig with his band and sounding splendid. We managed to catch the final impressive half hour after it overlapped with the Mary Gauthier tribute.
Luckily, at this time of night the Uber fare, if you can avoid a surge, is quite okay, about US$13.00.