Date Night

Friday was mine and Casey's date night. Dinner was great, we tried fried green beans as our appetizer, something new. What a treat!

This isn't a picture of our actual appetizer, but you get the idea. It's true what they say, everything taste better fried. The green beans were surprisingly crisp and fresh tasting inside that salty fried shell. Definitely try them if you're ever somewhere fried green beans are offered. The beer and wine was flowing and our bellies got full! We spent a little bit more than we had intended, which means it will be slim pickin's at the grocery store this week (no Ben and Jerry's for us!), but we needed the time away together so it was worth it.


The music part of the night was kind of funny. We found ourselves at a square dance! When I planned the date I saw the words "Square Dance" posted next to the names of the bands on the event calendar, but I've heard the first band before (they don't usually host square dances and the name of the venue was The Square Room. I didn't actually think there would be a square dance opener. I thought it was a fun play on words. It's not that I don't appreciate square dancing and bluegrass music, on the contrary we love bluegrass music. Our grass is definitely blue! It's just that we weren't anticipating it so we weren't in a dosido-swing-your-partner-around kind of mood. We stuck around for a few songs and the novelty of listening to a "square dance caller," it was kind of like listening to an auctioneer set to music. After a while we headed upstairs to the lounge/bar above the restaurant.

After engaging in some quality conversation and watching some of the Olympics we finally ventured back downstairs for what turned out to be an excellent live music experience.

PoGirl is an earthy, soulful group, with an indie southern rock kind of sound. They are from Canada and have recorded albums in Austin and Chicago. In fact, they had actually come directly to Knoxville after playing gigs in New Braunfels and Wimberly. Talk about a small world. It wasn't long before the homesickness set in. It's never very far my surface anyway. I'll always be ready to go back home.

Po'Girl played original music and a variety of instruments. The guy on the left actually made several of the guitars that the group plays. He did a great job, the instruments were beautifully crafted and sounded awesome. The bass player and I actually met prior to mine and Casey's dinner. We had an in-depth conversation about cupcakes and other sinfully delightful pastries at the coffebar counter in the restaurant lobby. Little did I know, I would see her a few hours later playing her heart out. In addition to the bass, she sang, played the harmonica, acordian and guitar. The lead vocal played the clarinet, guitar and banjo. Pretty cool, huh? Here's some incomplete video footage of a couple of songs. I'm no videographer, but I think you can get a sense of how passionate these performers are. I love live music!



Unfortunately my camera ran out of memory and I didn't get the last song, which they performed with the first band, The Bearded, it was a very well-played version of Bob Marley's Three Little Birds, one of my all-time favorite songs. I guess it was something I needed to hear, because I was actually moved to tears. It probably had something to do with me feeling homesick, my desire to return home to my roots always leads to tears. Poor Casey.

And with that our date night ended.

I leave you with Bob Marley's Three Little Birds, in case you are also having one of those days when you just need to hear that "every little thing is gonna be all right."