I just watched No Country For Old Men which was filmed partly in Marfa , Texas. I was in Marfa last fall with Boris. The local movie house is pictured above. I don't have anything new and interesting to talk about so I'll tell you about Marfa.
Marfa is located in west Texas, near the Mexican border. As far as I could tell the two biggest organizations in town are the Border Patrol and the Donald Judd art facility. I hate to call it a gallery or museum, it's located on an old WW2 army base, and it is big. Marfa is not your usual wind blown small town. It is full of galleries, artists and their support troops, New York City on the Rio Grande.There are also some kind of unexplained lights that that show up in the sky at night. If you are really interested in how it got this way, google Donald Judd.
Anyway, Boris had a show booked there. Some arts group (very nice folks) arranged it. They do the occasional concert, mostly stuff like Terry Allen, art country. We pulled up to the venue and it's this real old, cool building, kinda like a garage. They told us to back the trailer right on up to the stage. I'm starting to like this. We loaded right on to the stage, set up, sound checked, cool. One of the promoters casually says " I hope the roof doesn't cave in,we've never had a band as loud as you guys here before". There was an awful lot of dust floating down us. I'm liking this better all the time.
Show time comes and there's about 150 people in the place . A bunch of hipsters show up and I ask the house engineer what's up with that. He says they are all trust fund refugees from New York, LA and Austin. Going country for a while. Jeez, Williamsburg on the Rio Grande.
Boris starts and within 5 minutes all the circuit breakers blow, every amp down and the air is filled with dust. We get the power back up and 10 minutes later, gone again. This goes on all night. Annoying, but the crowd doesn't seem to mind much. They are drinking lots of beer.
The crowd is pretty mixed, artists,hipsters a few cowboys, some town kids and about 10 guys down front going crazy. These guys are slamming like it was an Agnostic Front show. They get rougher as the show goes on. Towards the end a fight breaks out that looks pretty bad. This woman who writes grant proposals for the organization that booked the show breaks it up. She was awesome, kickin' butt in high heels.
Show ends and were standing around the stage talking and find out that during the fight a kid got half his ear bit off. Somebody just happened to look down at that moment and...saw the piece of ear. Nasty looking, dirty and covered in beer. We put it in on ice and someone took it to the kids hotel.
Well, we backed the trailer up to the stage loaded out and went back to the hotel. Cops and paramedics are there dealing with the kid who got bit. After they left, this guy comes over with his head all bandaged and tells us he's the one missing the ear. The hospital is like three hours away so he's not going to bother to try to get it fixed. Then he takes off his jacket and asks the band to sign it. He's on and on about how he love Boris and drove 12 hours from Dallas to see them and he doesn't give a damn about his ear. Gotta love him and Marfa. The weirdest show on the tour. The roof held.
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