At the Red Rock Casino here in Las Vegas we used to have a branch of The Salt Lick, a famous Texas rib joint, but it closed a couple of years ago, to my intense chagrin. To my intense delight, Hilmar took me to the original Salt Lick which, as it happens, is located out in the countryside not too far from Austin.

It’s a vast place, with indoor and outdoor seating on picnic tables, and was jammed with Texans, including many families, the Saturday afternoon we visited. There was a bit of a wait but we improved the time by sampling a couple of local beers which they had on tap. One was a dark beer flavored with jalapeños, the other was a lighter brew flavored with pecans. I could have sat out there all day alternating between the two, but there was meat to be eaten — we got combo plates of brisket, sausages and ribs. Mighty tasty. Hilmar gave me The Salt Lick Cookbook as a souvenir:

That night we wandered around Austin again, looking for fun — ran across a concert by Prince at the Zona Rosa which required some sort of pass more exclusive than our SXSW badges, so we moved on to Lambert’s to see what was happening at its upstairs bar, a music venue.

We lucked into a great line-up of country bands, the pearl of which was Rosie Flores, the legendary rockabilly spitfire, now 63 but still smoking:

Rosie is sort of like a Latina Wanda Jackson — she has in fact toured with Jackson — and she is something else in concert. We left soon after her set, feeling that nothing could top it. Walking over to The Halcyon, a cool café-bar, we ran into Rosie and a friend of hers at a street corner. We hurried over to her and shook her hand and told her she’d kicked ass at Lambert’s, which seemed to please her a great deal. Up close she was tiny and birdlike.

At The Halcyon we hired a pedicab to take us back to Lustre Pearl. Austin swarms with pedicabs, especially during SXSW, when entrepreneurs from other places in Texas arrive in town to pilot the things alongside the native drivers. Austin also swarms with cute girls during SXSW, and sometimes the cute girls are pedicab drivers, like the one we hired — Deanna Rae:

Deanna Rae is a local, who also makes and sells candy. Like most pedicab drivers she had an mp3 player hooked up to a small boombox strapped to her pedicab. She looked us over carefully and then selected a playlist she thought we might like — mostly alt-country numbers, in honor, I guess, of my cowboy hat.

At one point she slammed on her brakes, shouted, “Money!” and jumped off the pedicab to retrieve a five-dollar bill in the street. Two other pedicab drivers had also spotted it and jumped off their vehicles to race towards it, but Deanna Rae got there first.

“We’re always finding money in the street,” she said happily.

Above is a picture of Deanna Rae from her Facebook page, on which she describes herself as “awesome”. Word.

Click on the images to enlarge.

Above is the elegant and comfortable garage apartment I was lucky enough to inhabit for SXSW, thanks to the kind hospitality of Hilmar and his wife Kaaren.

I didn’t get pictures or video of several nights at SXSW, so you’ll just have to imagine the wild adventures we got up to, the funky clubs we visited and the great music we heard. At any rate, on Thursday Hilmar and I had lunch at The Oasis on Lake Travis (above), another lake just outside Austin created by a dam on the Colorado River.  The grievous drought in Texas is responsible for the sand islands in the middle of the lake, which are normally covered by water:

That night Kaaren cooked us a lovely meal of spicy shrimp and roasted potatoes, then Hilmar and I headed off downtown with no fixed destination in mind.

We stopped in at Cedar Street Courtyard but the band playing there was lackluster, so we walked to Red 7, where good bands were supposed be booked that night. There was a line of badge-holders around the block so we skipped Red 7, then drifted over to Stubb’s Bar-B-Q, because Hilmar said it was a cool place.

We heard some good music coming from its outdoor music venue and went in. About ten minutes after we arrived, the leader of the band on stage, who turned out to be Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters, said, “Now I’d like to bring on someone we consider to be a rock and roll legend.”

Hilmar and I rolled our eyes, sure it would be someone lame, but then a guy walked out who was anything but lame — John Fogerty. The Foo Fighters turned up their game about twelve notches backing Fogerty on six or seven of his greatest songs, including this one:

Fogerty is the one in the blue shirt.

Quite by chance (or some sort of mysterious providence) we had stumbled upon what was undoubtedly the greatest set played at SXSW that night — one of the greatest sets I’ve ever heard. Fogerty can still kick ass, and the Foo Fighters did him justice in spades. This is just the sort of thing that happens at SXSW.

We wandered over to the terrace at the Stephen F. Austin Hotel on Congress Street, where we had some coffee, trying to come down from the high.  It took a while.

We picked up our SXSW badges in Austin on Monday, then had dinner at Lambert’s, the legendary Austin barbecue joint. The baby back ribs I had were magical, perfect — crispy on the outside, tender and juicy on the inside.

I drove with Hilmar to San Antonio the next day, where he had some business, and we lunched at La Frite, a Belgian restaurant (above) which serves excellent moules frites. That night we wandered through downtown Austin to see what was going on as SXSW geared up. There was a lot going on.

We ended up in the bar at the fabled Driskill Hotel (above), which dates from 1886 and which, being near to the state house, has seen its share of Texas political wheeling and dealing. Lyndon Johnson awaited the election returns there in his first unsuccessful bid for a Senate seat. He had stolen a lot of votes in that election but his opponent had stolen more.  Johnson was in shock.

There was a good country swing band playing at the Driskill bar:

A splendid preview of the week to come . . .

Click on the images to enlarge.