Monday nights, you'll find me in the Continental Club

I was listening to a playlist on Spotify the other day and, when it ended, Spotify started queuing up random things that were vaguely connected to everything that had gone before. Into this mix came Dale Watson's I'm Through Hurtin'. I'd never heard the song before but it's a pretty perfect country song. For a start it's short and includes two solos, a key change, a dash of humour that you expect from country music and, in its vocals, a voice that shifts effortlessly from classic country twang to something approaching old-school crooning. All that in less than three minutes. It sounds like the kind of song that Nick Lowe's spent much of the last 15 years or so recording. If you told me this was his I wouldn't doubt you.

So maybe you've heard of Dale Watson. I hadn't until a little over two years ago when we were in the US on our 3-week, multi-state trek. We started in Chicago and intended to fly to Austin for a couple of days before driving to West Texas. As it turned out we were unexpectedly snowed in for several hours in Chicago. By the time we got to our motel in Austin, via an unscheduled stop in Charlotte, North Carolina, it was late. Real late. Everything was quiet and, apparently closed. But after a long day spent hanging around in airports, we weren't quite ready to sleep. After all it was a Monday night in Austin - somewhere had to be open! 

We asked the guy working the desk at the Austin Motel if there was anywhere around to grab a beer and he told us that the only place he could think of was the Continental Club, just across the street. He didn't make it sound like much and we were none the wiser so we made our way over the road to see if it was open. We opened the door to find a dark room with a long bar on the left side, some sparse seating in front of us. Beyond that was a low stage looking down on a small dance floor populated by a few dozen people. The guy on stage was talking and invited someone from the floor up to sing. We grabbed a beer as they tore through 'I've Been Everywhere'. I never got the name of the chap from the audience but the singer was Dale Watson, an unknown-to-us singer who, it soon became clear to us, was something of a local legend. Oozing Texan charm and with an enviable quiff, Watson and his band rolled their way through their set, stopping for lengthy between-song banter. I can't really speak to the quality of the music - country music isn't really my thing (apart from a few obvious contenders) - but on that night, under those circumstances, the music and the room we heard it in combined to land a punch that I've never forgotten. 

We stayed there for ages, until - to quote a line from I'm Through Hurtin' - they closed the beer joint down. Our heavily tattooed (it was Austin - of course she was heavily tattooed) bartender was a musician herself (it was Austin - of course she was a musician) who had spent some time in Dublin with the Dropkick Murphys. She told us a little about Dale Watson and a lot about what we should do in Austin. Eventually she shut up shop and our brief spell in the Continental Club was at an end.

We didn't have time to go back there and of course it looked differently in the light of the next day but, even now, three years later, I think about it regularly. I even visit their website every so often to see who's playing. They get some pretty decent acts - mostly local acts who are starting to make a name or small-ish bands touring through the area. The Club's not much bigger than Whelans so that'd give you an idea of the kind of bands that play there. Speaking of which, when Alejandro Escovedo played there recently he commented on how much he loves Whelans and about the ribbon that ties it to the Continental Club. I know what he means. I often say that if I'm overseas and looking for live music, Whelans is what I've got in mind. I found it in Austin. You should go sometime.  

Dale Watson's on stage in the Continental Club at 10.15 tomorrow night. If I head for the airport now...