Last week I got to see a long-time personal favorite, Mr. Webb Wilder, the last of the full-grown men! Best of all it was at the Cactus Club.
It has been a while since he graced us with a performance in Austin, I want to say about a decade ago and at the Continental Club. He has a special place in my heart for several reasons too.
- He performed twice at the Madison Club in Podunk Bloomington-Normal, IL before I moved to Austin. I went both times to support him over the usual crap the area often booked.
- He was the first show I saw at Austin’s legendary Antone’s.
- His song “The Rest (Will Take Care of Itself)” was on our wedding mix, more about this down the road.
Being at the Cactus meant the show was acoustic, just Webb and his guitar. His material awesomely stands up perfectly without the amps. He also told little stories and interacting with the crowd. Before he did “The Rest…,” he mentioned how much people love the song, it is often played at weddings and funerals. When I had my face time, I told him we were guilty of this too in Vegas. Webb said, someone flew him out to Vegas to perform the song at a recommitment ceremony. Awesome!
There was other good news. Webb finished recording a new album which should appear later this year. He previewed a couple tracks between his catalog: opened with Steve Earle’s “The Devil’s Right Hand,” followed by “Lonely For a Reason,” “Human Cannonball,” “No Great Shakes,” and “Streets of Laredo.” During the encore, he took a couple requests. Somara and I managed to be in the front row so he heard me ask for “Hittin’ Where it Hurts.” Just for me, he tuned up his guitar to jam out to that awesome opening track on Hybrid Vigor.
It was fun chatting with him again. I finally confessed about the first time I heard his song “Tough It Out” on WXRT (a station he said was always nice to support him), I thought he was Nick Lowe. He found it to be a compliment and mentioned they’ve met a couple times, along with Dave Edmunds.