Jess Klein - Backstage

Outside my house is a church which chimes the hours and, on Sunday, the Mass times…despite this, I wrote a new song this weekend, with the word ‘f**k’ in the chorus.  I can’t even spell it out here because it makes no sense in this context.  But I’m kind of glad the word has the impact it does.  In the context of the song, I meant it.  Important to reserve words for the right moment.  I don’t make a very good potty mouth.  Going to try it out at Rockwood tomorrow night.  Today seemed to be about napping one page in to Matsuo Kirino’s book, Out.  Looking forward to staying alert next time I open it, because I was hooked, I was just also under 4 blankets - I didn’t want to take any chances on being cold.  It’s cold out.  I was really getting into Kenzaburo Oe’s Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness but I left it with my friend by mistake after wandering around Williamsburg, Brooklyn at 1:30 a.m. I/S/O taxi.  My friend, Butterfly (that’s a code name) only had a $100 bill, so there was debate about stopping somewhere to try to break it or just taking a chance on the cabbie having change.  I didn’t want to stop in at White Castle, though Butterfly told me about a former White Castle somewhere which was converted into a vegetarian restaurant and is now called ‘Veggie Castle’, and that is somewhere I would have wanted to stop into.  So now I have to give Butterfly the $80 change to get my Oe book back.  Seems fair enough. 

Without going into too many details, here’s a picture from my New Years Eve:

Couldn’t help but thinking about JR on our swing through Dallas.  The wonderful Tom Prasada-Rao and Kerry Cooper put us up in their home (and drove me to the airport!) and gave us directions to Kalachandji’s - a Krishna temple, inside a palatial building, with a restaurant serving sattvic vegetarian food - buffet (everything’s bigger in Dallas).  Did you know food could make you drool even without garlic and onions?  I didn’t, but then we ate there and neither Byrd nor I could really speak for a good 30 minutes after the meal except to say ‘Wow’. 

No photos of Kalachandji’s, though if you go to the neighborhood where it’s located in Dallas, the temple will ‘appear’, as the website promises, just off I-35. 

 Instead, here are some pics of us laying down some love onstage at Uncle Calvin’s - thanks to Ira Hantz!

I don’t even know where to begin about how great this town is.  I’m kind of waiting for someone to pinch me - it’s like New York without the parking hassle, without the attitude…with sunshine…and, lots of cowboy boots.   

 This’ll be a quick one since I’m about to run out to see The Resentments at the Saxon.

Climbed around the Green Belt today, the series of parks/trails/dry riverbed around and through Austin.  Every night we (my tourmate Jonathan Byrd and I) go out (we have almost a week off here total, god bless our booking agent) we find great music and just enough trouble…I took some girlfriends to see Bruce Robison at the Broken Spoke Friday night.  Bruce just wrote a number one for George Strait and wrote Travelin Soldier which the Dixie Chicks sing, but at the Spoke, he was playing swing, two step, etc. My friend Eleanor Whitmore was playing fiddle with him.

So at first the three of us gals sat there admiring the display of boots and various dance styles, half judgmental, half in awe…then we got scooped up by some cowboy-businessmen, who could actually dance - I didn’t know 1) how easy it is to dance with a man who knows how to dance or 2) how cowboy boots are actually good for dancing (did you?)

Luckily, I knew enough to walk away when my partner leaned in to say with a drawl, “You’re starting to get the hang of this….”

 More soon…

It’s blog-mania!  Ok, not at all really.  I tried in Austin to post something detailing my feeling of being completely in love with the place, but apparently it didn’t post!  Mercury is in retrograde.  Now I’m in my favorite coffeeshop in Brooklyn, as the wireless is down in our house, trying to be brilliant on the spot as they close in 12 minutes - a good writing exercise, not necessarily great reading.

Um, shit, just got reminder from the friendly barista…ok, uh…my latest discoveries in list form:

 1) I couldn’t get enough of Austin - just couldn’t, so I may be moving there…

 2) Great combo: Acorn squash, green beans, chickpeas, spices, raisins - saute the chick peas in olive oil and spices, add steamed acorn squash, green beans, raisins, some water, a lid, steam those puppies = yum.

 3) Carina Round - you Brits know her, and now I do too!  Yanks - check her out - she is the bomb!  www.myspace.com/carinaround  Carina and I are working on various schemes together.

4)  Girl next to me at coffeeshop is singing harmony (loudly!) to Jack Johnson album. 

5) Promise to start earlier in the day next time -big love, and apparently I’ll be on the west coast, midwest, northeast and UK/Ireland this spring, so hope to lots of you! 

xxoo

 Jess