By Shannon Williams
I really am not sure if my guardian angels have been on vacation or if they (I figured, I have a team, as I am a hot mess most times) just went on a drunk, BUT…. I continue to have strange and stressful traveling incidents these days. I spent all of last week in West Texas which is where I come from and I have 4 projects out there. I am used to traveling to West Texas with no problems. I like to take early flights, now I don’t enjoy getting up early, but the early flights are usually direct and most often are not delayed. So off I go into Houston the night before to get on a 6 am flight. All was well until I got to the rental car desk, again those rental cars! It was only 7:30 and they had no cars, there was about 7 or 8 of us waiting, we all had reservations but they just did not have any cars. After a wait of 45 minutes I got a car, but the wind was blowing over 40 mph and it was totally brown from all the dust. My plan had been to go to Lubbock to see my mom that day, but was not going to drive in those conditions, so just went on to work at one of the sites.

Each and every plan I made got changed, from the meal for the board meeting being late to our meeting with the attorney being cancelled and not one but two people not having our appointments on the correct date! By Wednesday, I had just given up and was flying by the seat of my pants. I decided I would just extend my trip and spend the weekend with my mother in Lubbock, so I changed all of my plans to fly home on Friday and made new reservations for hotels and flights to stay over the weekend.

Thursday evening, I was checking it all again and found an email from the rental car that they could not extend my rental car. Ok, I get on the phone to beg and see what I could do. Well what I could do was nothing and I mean nothing. They wanted their car back on Friday am and had no car to replace it. After about an hour on the phone and the internet, I could not find a car anywhere, so began to see if I could find someone to pick me up in Midland and drive me to Lubbock and then pick me up on Sunday. That was a big ask, but had a friend who could. I woke up Friday am, ready to put the plan into place and found out my mom was having a rough time (she is in the grips of dementia) and my brother thought another time to visit might be best. She had told them she wanted everyone to leave her alone for the weekend and it did not matter if I was coming. She had kicked her provider out and she was not a happy camper. Ok, I was not really feeling well, by now the dust had gotten to me and had an awful sinus headache which would soon turn into an infection. So, I undo everything I had done and went back to the plan to fly home Friday.

As it turned out there was a reason! I had brought tickets for several of us to attend the Lyle Lovett concert at the Grand. I thought the concert was on March 30th, but I got a call from one of the ladies going with us and she said, I think the concert is this weekend, as she had seen something that said it had been changed from March 30th. Ok, as soon as I got home late Friday night, I checked the tickets and it was for Saturday night. So, all was not lost.

Now I am a lover of Texas folk music. It was one of the first types of music I really fell in love with in High School in the late 70’s. Many of my friends, played guitar and they were all playing what was coming out of Austin! Also, one of my very favorite types of music is a story song and Texas songwriters are known for how well they do that and of course they write about things I love and understand. It was at a time when I listened to Nanci Griffith, Shake Russel and Dana Cooper. They were all playing the coffee house college circuit so I got to see them all several times. I also was lucky enough to go to the Kerrville Folk Festival several times. I did not really follow Lyle Lovett until his song “If I had a Boat” came out and had never gotten to see him live. His show at the Grand was a total acoustic set! Which is just heaven for me. If you have not been to the Grand Opera House in Galveston you are missing one of the treasures of Galveston and this area. It is such an intimate setting, that you really feel you are sitting there in the living room. Several times, I have been lucky enough to attend a “house concert” most for a little know folk singer, but they are always wonderful. Saturday night was a full house at the Grand, but it felt like we were all just in a living room and he was playing for just a few of us.

Lyle, (after Saturday, we are on a first name basis) is from this area and had many friends and even his old Sunday School teacher in attendance for the concert. He was a delight as he told stories both in his songs and between them. The band he had with him was just top notch. One of them had played with the Chieftains and one was the brother of Allison Krauss, all of them were so good and together they just had a full sound and you could tell they were just having fun playing for us. He would tell the story of when he had written the song and who he written it with and all reflected his love of Texas, the small community he was raised in and just playing music with friends. It was a great evening and so glad it all worked out, guess there really is a reason for everything!

I have been listening to folk music all day, hoping it would calm my Monday down! It worked and it took me back to so many memories of evenings spent with friends, listening to great Singer/Songwriters would love our great state. It does not get much better than that. So, dig up some of the old tunes that touched your soul in a younger day and enjoy.

“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curt my back to loneness”
Maya Angelo

[Mar-29-2022]