My Dinner with Chris Chew: Another Burnside Recollection

Yesterday Gorjus chatted about his experiences seeing RL Burnside in concert. Sadly, I never saw him in concert.

Last night at Book Club, we were chatting and Gorjus's post came up. And I talked about a previous experience I had with Duwayne.

I made it to Hal & Mal's at 6:30 pm on a Saturday evening in November 2003 after Thanksgiving to see the Allstars perform. I wanted to get there early to get a good parking spot and get a bite to eat.

Anne was kind enough to seat me at Chris Chew's table. We ate and talked for a while.

Chris recognized me from the show the NMAS did in California at the High Sierra Festival (way cool-- of course, in retrospect it helped that I was wearing my High Sierra shirt) and asked me if I was going to do some more traveling. I think I said that if they were going to be at High Sierra that I would try to go (it helps that my sister has a house near there, you know).

Duwayne Burnside was at the next table and handed me a shot of tequila. At first, I refused, but he said if I was going to sit and eat with them, I had to drink with them too-- and so I did.

I was near the front at the beginning-- close to a friend of mine who's the sports editor of the Vicksburg newspaper-- and made it to the front a couple songs from the end.

The show was awesome-- I personally think the June 2003 show might have been a little bit better if only because I began to feel better after being down over my father's death-- but this show had the bonus of interacting with Chris & Duwayne.