Vaughan and his crackling band, which includes George Rains on drums, Bill Willis on keyboards, and Billy Pitman on rhythm guitar opened the set with a song called “DIRTY GIRL”, a hip instrumental tune off their latest CD entitled “DO YOU GET THE BLUES?”.  As always, Vaughan prowled around the stage playing flawlessly as he eyed the crowd from face to face.

On a version of “TEXAS FLOOD”, Jimmie traded off his classic Stratocaster to use a vintage 1960’s Fender Coronado II Wildwood.  It’s the only time I’ve ever seen him use any guitar other than a Stratocaster.

In a tribute to the late Gatemouth Brown, the band performed Brown’s “DIRTY WORK AT THE CROSSROADS”.  Vaughan talked about the great impact that Gates’ music had on his own style, as well as the styles of Albert Collins and other blues musicians.  It seemed that Vaughan would have liked to say more about Gatemouth, but he perhaps realized that the crowd was having too much of a good  time to become somber at the reminder of what losing Gatemouth Brown means to music, and his thoughts softly trailed off.

Jimmie introduced Lou Ann Barton to the set, starting off with “NATURAL BORN LOVER”.  The throaty Texas songstress is a longtime veteran of the Texas music scene, and a legend in her own rite. The show was augmented throughout with Barton’s bucket bottom twanging vocals as the two traded off on duets of “YOU GOT THE POWER” and a crowd participation version OF “BAPPA BOOM”.

As the show progressed Vaughan covered tunes encompassing his entire career, from the Fabulous Thunderbirds first album, Slim Harpo’s “SCRATCH MY BACK” sung by Barton, up through music from his most recent release “DO YOU GET THE BLUES?”.

Many fans will remember the “butt rockin'” marathon T-Birds shows at Rockefellers and Fitzgeralds, playing ‘til the house lights came up at the furthest end of the evening.  Well, this show seemed to spark some of those memories for Vaughan.  He made approving comments regarding the venue, and was obviously pleased to be performing to the Houston crowd this night and played an additional six-song encore pushing his show just past two hours.  Vaughan ended a great night of blues music by appearing at the front of the hall to warmly greet and sign autographs for about 100 excited fans.

Besides his tremendous talent, the thing that makes Jimmie Vaughan a Texas National Treasure is that he embodies the past and the future of blues music.  Every time the world loses a bluesman, we look to the living to carry the torch forward into the future.  Perhaps not every blues fan realizes this, but rest assured that Jimmie Vaughan knows.  He’s made it his life’s work.

Friday night’s show at THE WAREHOUSE started off with Homer Henderson, a.k.a. Phil Bennison, the full sounding one-man band from Dallas.  I first saw Homer a number of years ago at the Houston International Festival.  He was set up on the sidewalk playing for passersby who would marvel at his blues prowess and literal individual style.

After being introduced, he walked on stage and positioned himself in close quarters with his music machine drum kit contraption of pedals, electronic boxes, wires and microphones.  In synch with no one but himself, he began to play for the audience, who caught on quickly to his twist on blues as they shook their heads, smiled and clapped for this self styled Atlas musician.

Henderson’s appeal is more than the curious mixture of original music amid his one-man-band novelty. He’s also very good at what he does.  If you were only listening, and didn’t know he was the only guy on strings, drums, rhythm, harmonica and vocals, you would never guess that you were not listening to a band with at least three members.  He was well received by the crowd who seemed to appreciate his all around dexterity as well as his rock-a-blues playing.  The audience didn’t mind the technical difficulty that shut this one-man sound machine down briefly, getting the fact that this appears be a complicated setup Homer has engineered for himself, and as a consequence, being subject to the occasional hiccup.

Midway through his playing, Homer introduced a youngish woman as his assistant from Amarillo to help out on vocals and maracas, rounding out his two-foot rhythm section.  If he mentioned her name, I didn’t catch it.  To the crowd’s delight, she walked on stage and assumed her place with her maracas in hand. Her demure appearance belied her gutsy rock-a-billy vocal style.  Her vocal and rhythm addition had a tremendous grounding effect on the rest of the band, err, that is to say, Homer.  Having another person to wail against – and who pushes back, remains a one-man band combination that can’t be beat.  An unexpected highlight of his set was their duet of David Seville and the Chipmunks’ classic “MY FRIEND THE WITCHDOCTOR”.

Homer Henderson’s show is a must see anywhere you can catch him.  Even on a sidewalk.