Asleep at the Wheel

I made two mistakes on Saturday. Well...okay, two that I am willing to admit. The first was not bringing my camera to the "Asleep and the Wheel with Special Guest" show at Antones. Rumor was that the "special guest" was going to be Willie Nelson. AaTW is going on tour and all of the tour shows say that Willie will be playing with them. They are calling it Willie and the Wheel. Willie plays Austin a lot so it would not be unexpected for him to show up and if he's touring with The Wheel then it seemed like a done deal. I was feeling really down for forgetting my camera. I had my phone, but the pictures aren't as good so please accept my apologies.

That Ray Benson sure has a voice, doesn't he?! It makes me melt. It seems so effortless for him to sound good. He does a lot of radio spots around Austin and his voice is instantly recognizable. We saw him once as the celebrity playing Mother Ginger - the character in the Nutcracker with the enormous skirt that the sugar plums (or whatever) emerge from during their dance. He even had on his big black hat as Mother Ginger. It was a hoot.

Back to my other mistake. This one was potentially disastrous. Earlier in the day Mike and I were talking about our entertainment options for the evening. Asleep at the Wheel's show was at 7 at Antone's. Joe Ely was playing 8:30 at the Cactus. Both of these were good options but Asleep won because of its early time and potential guest Willie. Mike said "how about if I get our tickets online?" and I replied "Naaah, let's just get them at the door." Major mistake. When we got there, there was a line around the corner and we waited and waited and watched people who had gotten their tickets online go inside. Then we heard Ray Benson's rich deep voice and the band start to play and we were still outside. The line hadn't moved at all. Well we did eventually get in and it was a great show. But no Willie. We are still not sure who the "special guest" was since it seemed like his regular band. We still had a great time and it was really nice that it wasn't a late night out.