Tuesday night, I met up with my friend Chris to see Bill Kirchen at El Mercado in South Austin. El Mercado is actually where I first met Bill, under entertaining circumstances I will surely make a point of detailing at some future point, but for now, suffice to say, Bill ruled on Tuesday, despite having his left-hand middle finger in a brace due to a recent household incident with ludicrously out-sized consequences, particularly for a guitar player.

And the thing is, of course, after the first couple of songs, he got the hang of playing under these limited circumstances, and wound up delivering as much if not more guitar than a lot of mortals can pull off with all four fingers functioning at full strength. "Hammer of the Honky Tonk Gods," indeed.

If you dilly-dally enough on your way out of the venue, you sometimes wind up chatting with the talent in the parking lot. That's how I learned that Bill had been at the Newport Folk Festival in both 1964 and 1965 – he was freaking there when Dylan went electric. I'm not sure it gets any cooler than that, and explains in part why this night he was working through some tunes he'd chosen for an all-Dylan birthday tribute show this coming weekend.

If you dilly-dally enough after chatting with the talent in the parking lot, you sometimes wind up standing around across the street deconstructing the show instead of getting into your car and heading home. Chris and I spent some time trying to figure out just why Kirchen, best known as a songwriting Tele picker, was so persuasive delivering all those Dylan songs. I mean, he pulled off "Like a Rolling Stone," for crying out loud, along with a half dozen others from the same period.

We ultimately decided: it's because, as good a guitar player as he is, he's actually a singer who plays guitar, not a guitarist who sings in between the solos. Big difference, and, in my book, way cooler.

Kirchen still tours occasionally, and is well worth making the time to see if he comes your way. Alternatively, you could road trip to Austin, and hear him in the back room of a Mexican restaurant for a ten dollar cover and the price of a cold Pacifico.

For today's Youtube lesson, I've posted another performance of mine from a recent show at the New World Deli, a venue which does not serve Pacifico, but is known from Rosedale to Hyde Park, and possibly as far south as the Drag, for the quality (and sheer dimensions) of its tuna melt.

You can find it (the song, not the tuna melt) at the link below:

Don't Tailgate Me – Live at the New World Deli

More soon,

David