Downtown Fort Worth, on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday night allows for a little serendipity with patios, restaurants and horse drawn carriages. After two botched attempts to find live music, this combination led me to the Mercury Chophouse patio.
My first attempt to check out live music in the evening resulted in a total fail: the stage for the venue, 1919 Hemphill, was upstairs. It would be too much to ask for an elevator in the midst furniture salvaged from curbsides and graffiti covered walls. I left not at all disappointed that I’d miss 45 minutes of metal.
On the fly, I made a stop home, checked various venue calendars to figure out where to go for the evening. Also, I sought to get a feel for the next few days. Early evening shows would be hard to come by, and I wanted to take advantage of them as much as possible. Eventually, I settled to head downtown to Queen City for Luke Wade, leaving The Grotto and Magnolia Motor Lounge as future options for the week ahead.
As I strolled by Queen City at 9:45pm, the line stretched down the street to Barnes and Noble. I didn’t feel like standing in a line and then having to wait an hour for a show to start. Luckily, I heard music playing down the street at the Mercury Chophouse.
The Chophouse’s patio is nondescript, and I didn’t realize I was even at the Chophouse until I left, rolling by a chalkboard sign, “CHOPHOUSE LIVE MUSIC on PATIO –>>”.
The band playing on the patio, consisted of three guys, calling themselves River Trip. For the most part, they spirited their way through 60s and 70s era covers with an acoustic rock bent. Prior to “Heart of Gold”, they asked if there were any harmonica players in the house. No, there were not any harmonica players, thus, Neil Young’s harmonica solo would be missing for the night. At one point, they pulled out a deep track from the Beatles catalog, “Norwegian Wood”. Not too shabby.
