Waco, Consider Yourself Officially and Thoroughly Rocked. Hard.

Man, what a great show last night. Big thanks to my good friends Brett and Emily Mills, who hosted. In addition to providing coffee and cookies and opening their home, Brett sat in with me and Michael Steele on 4 songs. Brett and Emily are great musicians, and Brett threw down a little upright piano on “Light of the World,” “Non-Religious Me,” and “Clear the Stage,” and accordion on “Why Me Lord.” It was way cool. Brett doesn't know this, but he is now, officially my new accordion/piano player. Hope he works cheap.

And his wife, who didn't know that I was listening, was singing pitch-perfect harmonies. At some point in the night, Michael leaned over to me and said, "maybe she should sing from now on, and you can just play guitar." He's so hilarious. He definitely works cheap.

So everything was excellent, and it was one of those nights when it just seemed like everybody was really tracking with the songs and the stories and such. One thing I’m continuing to learn is that the hosts are really the most important factor in making the concerts really great. Brett and Emily really did an amazing job. They had this great combination of hospitality, flexibilty, and a kind of "this is our party and we know what to do" authority.

I’m trying to organize my thoughts on all that, because I think it might be helpful for me to have a “here’s how to host a house show” guide kind of thing; something that you could click on when you came to the blog or to my website that would really make it easy for potential hosts to know what they’re getting into. I’ll think on that…

I’ll have the DFW stuff this week, I promise. I’ve had trouble putting this one together, for some reason. Oh, wait, I know the reason: I’m a goofy, disorganized mess of a man. Anyway, it’s looking like I’m going to be in DFW around Feb 15-17, and then maybe again in late March or early April. That’s all the important stuff for the day. Here's another pic from the concert.