Show Journal 2013-10-12
That was a lot of rock packed into one show. The Thorntown Tallboys were up first and played with some noisy rock and roll swagger. We were up second and man, it was sort of a mess. On the first verse of the first song, Dave breaks a bass string. Dave never breaks strings so we had to scrape the cobwebs off his spare bass that literally hasn’t seen the light of day in over a year. It only took two minutes but it felt like an hour. Perhaps more disappointing was that Justin was left to “entertain” the crowd. There is probably a correlation there. Then again, I wasn’t rushing up there to say anything. We started up again and three songs later we get to ‘Lost at Sea’ and I break the A string in the first verse. Fail. Trying to learn how to play a song of a different part of the guitar after so many years is a challenge, especially with an audience watching you suck. There is also a part in the song where it’s just me playing for 20 seconds and I was desperately trying to remember where on the fret board to play it. We muddled through it I swapped guitars and we moved on. To complete the holy trinity of frustration, during the last song, Justin broke a string as well. Eleven songs, three broken strings. Very unusual. Very annoying. Despite all that guitar nonsense the set was actually pretty good. Normally I write how people up front knew the words and sang along. Not the case tonight at all. We knew maybe 6 people in the crowd at best. The first few songs ended with chirping crickets, but by the end people seemed to dig it so that was a plus. The Spittin’ Cobras were up next and after 5 seconds it became obvious why we received such a tepid response. They were energetic, fast, gnarly rock with a touch of thrash metal. Motorhead meets AC/DC in a modern sounding package. They had the look, the gear, the moves and even the roadie. Very, very, very impressive set. Last up was The Independents. Sadly the influx of people that arrived for the Cobras bailed, the remaining folks were what I would call an intimate crowd. Predictably they won over everyone that remained and half way through their set they had a very, very stoked crowd watching them. All in all a very good night. Thanks to the Ash Street for having us. Best of luck to The Independents on the rest of their tour.
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