I try to limit my posts here to stuff that's at least halfway funny, what with me being a comic and all, but since I've written about Drag the River before, including my abortive attempt to go see them the last time they were in town, I figured I'd post this review:
There must be a word for it.
The moment you realize that a lot more people are into a band you love than you knew and that maybe you have more in common with the rest of the world than you thought you did. Where you're singing along at the top of your lungs and suddenly notice that everybody else is, too.
That was my night last night, watching two-fifths of Drag the River blow the doors off the Abbey Lounge in Somerville as the assembled riff-raff clutched their Narragansett tallboys to their bosoms and hollered with joy after every song. I gather it's customary in one of these writeups to go though the setlist song by song, but I don't fucking know. It was just Jon Snodgrass and Chad Price and they played all their best tunes. I don't remember the order, but they all hit me like a one-inch punch in the chest, man. I believe they started with
Mister Crews - just Chad playing an acoustic while Jon fucked with his Telecaster, and it was deadbang awesome.
Barroom Bliss was in there somewhere. They did a slowed-down version of
Calloused Heart that I loved. Ditto for
Get Drunk. They did lots of the slower stuff that I tend to skip over but won't anymore. Last song of the night was
Beautiful and Damned. Gorgeous.
There was just something sublime about seeing puffy-faced Irish kids in shell jackets and Scally caps singing along to unabashed country music. No cowboy hats or giant belt buckles, and, surprisingly, a total lack of ironic trucker hats. Just Boston kids and a Colorado band feeding off each other. And these guys were
fans. They'd all obviously seen the band before (an honor I could not claim), and most everyone seemed to be on a first name basis with them. Shots and beers flowed freely, and it just made the night that much more raw and honest.
And I know of what I speak here - there was just something so
Coloradan about these dudes that it actually made me kind of homesick. I coulda gone to school with either one of them. I had a chance to talk to Jon for a second after the show, and he seemed very concerned that people would be disappointed that it was just the two of them, which was
madness. They were phenomenal. I mean, my friend and I were both kinda bummed that there was no pedal steel, but personally, I forgot about the whole thing about 30 seconds into their set.
So I bought a weird red t-shirt just because I wanted to give them more money somehow just for being so awesome and made my way home for a fitful sleep, which was half Red Bull and half rock and roll.
On a side note, not only was I impressed with my first 'Gannsett, but I also gave the peanut butter hamburger at Bukowski's a whack. Fuckin' scrumptious.
Oh, and during the Dents' set (which I enjoyed tremendously), the woman who plays bass and sings pulled a muscle or something and fell down, flat on her back. They stopped the show for about fiften minutes until she could stand again. Not for nothing, but I feel that Sid Vicious would have just kept playing. Kids today.
