Ramblin' Jack Elliott Comes to Town (Part I)

OK, folks, found some if not all of my fistful of notes about Ramblin' Jack Elliott and friends at The Live Oak Music Hall & Lounge (1311 Lipscomb Street, just off Magnolia) in Fort Worth, Texas.
 
The interior music hall part of Live Oak (like the lounge, outside floor level and upstairs deck area) is relaxed, intimate and -- at this early date in the venue's history, anyway -- easy to negotiate. For the Ramblin' Jack show, round tables and chairs were available and maybe fifty or sixty people really lucked out by turning up and tuning in on a two-tufted Tuesday night.
 
First, The Whiskey Folk Ramblers played their energetic "folk noir" for the greater part of an hour as warmup act. New album: The Lonesome Underground. A link to their website here: http://www.whiskeyfolkramblers.com/  Got my ear -- keep one out for 'em.
 
Just about everyone in the room seemed like a real character. During an interlude, I spoke with a dude with an accent like Billy Bob Thornton's, originally from Abilene, who spoke at length about the Fort Worth music scene past present and future. When not also talking about his kith, he focused on kin, in particular the storied wildman who died as a brigadier general fighting for the Confederacy at Pea Ridge in 1862, Ben McCulloch. This Ben here had followed Davy Crockett from Tennessee to  Texas but was laid out with a case of measles before he could reach the Alamo, and so lived a while longer, long enough to fight two different duels with the same man, one with rifles and the second with pistols (he finally killed the other feller); he himself was felled by a Union rifleman.  Anyway, it was also important to this dude to elaborate on why Fort Worth is a far better place than Dallas, whose denizens always manage to mess up a good thing (examples given included Deep Ellum and the sculpture garden). 
 
Before even the Whiskey Folk Ramblers took the stage, two fierce looking cowboy type dudes walked back and forth along the side edges. One of them had a broadbrimmed black hat and was vigorously chewing gum.  Figured out later this was Larry Mahan, a world rodeo champion in the 1960s and 1970s. He had real style, like a gunslinger, and ended up on stage with Ramblin' Jack to sing a ribald variation on a cowboy song. 
 
As for the main act, Ramblin' Jack performed for about two hours, including a break for Jim Bonnet (or Bonet -- pronounced the French way and maybe even a distant relative) to recite a couple of cowboy poems -- one of them called "Lasca" from the 19th century. I looked up the words. One small part goes like this, about "Lasca, this love of mine:"

. . . once, when I made her jealous for fun  
At something I whispered or looked or done,
One Sunday, in San Antonio,
To a glorious girl in the Alamo,
She drew from her garter a little dagger,
And -- sting of a wasp -- it made me stagger!
An inch to the left, or an inch to the right,
And I shouldn't be maundering here tonight;
But she sobbed, and sobbing, so quickly bound
Her torn rebosa about the wound
That I swiftly forgave her.
Scratches don't count
In Texas, down by the Rio Grande.

After a break recovering from tonight's very real Texas tornadoes, to be continued.

Today's Rune: Signals.