When I visited Nashville, I visited many honky-tonks and the cookie cutter experience was disappointing. When I visited Austin, the Live Music Capital, I didn’t want to have another so-so experience, so I checked out tours and things to do. The Austin Live Music Crawl offered by Austin Detours caught my eye. It was a small-group tour, provided a van, so the tour could go all around the city, and a real-life musician would be giving the tour. The actual tour exceeded my expectations! The guide, Sunny Fairly, was super knowledgeable and funny and full of great stories about how music venues developed in the neighborhoods of Austin. He communicated well so we knew when we were moving on to the next venue. Sometimes it was difficult to leave, but he was careful about making sure all 11 people knew what was expected. We saw three bands in three different venues, and the experience was definitely not cookie cutter. We went to the Saxon, an intimate performance experience in a bar. The South Austin Moonlighters were playing, and they were super, a country-rock band with smoking lead guitar players. The second venue was a honky-tonk with dancers twirling along with a more pure country type, Dave Insley’s Careless Smokers (great steel guitar player) playing songs about broken hearts and thankless lovers. I could have danced all night, but when band took a break, we loaded up the van. The third venue was the Skylark Lounge, and this was an exceptional experience. First on was an old-fashioned blues band (didn’t catch the name) with musicians who could bring the Blues home. Then the 90-year-old Legendary Miss Lavelle White took the stage and showed how to raise the roof with Soul music. Wow! If you love live music and like to explore all different genres, this tour needs to be on your list when visiting Austin. And Sunny, the tour guide, was giving recommendations on places to go to hear such-and-such music during the rest of our visit. Great Guy!