| 15th August 2006 01:05 AM |
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| Barney Fife |
Dave Alvin and (Some of) The Guilty Men – Off Broadway, St. Louis, July 19, 2006
This was truly a Dave Alvin gig for real Dave Alvin fans only. Getting there was tough. So was having faith that a concert could go on in a dark nightclub without electricity.
One of the worst storms in years hit St. Louis that Wednesday night. The band had all of their equipment set up to do their normal show, but Mother Nature didn’t want to cooperate. A low pressure cell over the St. Louis area sucked moisture from a relatively cooler high pressure area over northern Illinois and the recipe produced sustained winds of over 50 miles per hour with gusts of up to 80 or 90 m.p.h. I left my place of work in a western suburb and tried to get a steak dinner at one restaurant on Lindbergh.
Bill went to drive around seeing which steak house he could get in that had electrical power. No, not Kreis'. He drove on Lindbergh southbound and saw lots of fireworks of power transformers blow up. No, not Citizen Kane's. Then he drove eastbound on I-44 with 60 mph cross winds thinking a tornado could pick him up at any time and finally got that steak dinner in Soulard.
Hats off to one of my coworkers for being a real trooper, showing up at the Dave Alvin gig and staying for a great show despite only candle and acoustic power there. Most people stayed home that night! Phooey!
Dave decided to let the drummer have the night off for this acoustic gig. The crazy part was when Joe Terry brought a toy piano – about two feet tall – onto stage and started playing it. It was amazingly in tune so it didn’t sound all that badly. Greg Boaz had left after just a few songs because he was sick and Joe wanted to do more than just play tambourine, so he started playing this little rinky-dink – but sorta cool – piano and it actually sounded OK. Joe’s brother had supplied the stand-up bass that Gregory was using and the acoustic guitar that Chris Miller played - and maybe he supplied this little piano too. I believe Dave had his own acoustic with him. So Joe played three or four songs on that thing starting with Wanda and Duane and he had the crowd in stitches.
The worst aspect to the show was that Dave’s vocals couldn’t travel out to the audience very well because of no PA and guitars that are slightly louder. By the end of the night, most people were up on their feet for the encore.
The song list was rather unusual, so for that reason alone, it was well worthwhile to be there. I think I had only heard him do Nine Volt Heart once before and that was in Chicago with that guy from The Iguanas on vocals after Dave had forgotten the words and called him out from backstage. Too bad he didn’t do a full version of Sonora’s Death Row! It was nice to hear the acoustic version of Wanda and Duane and What Did The Deep Sea Say? was an excellent choice for the last song of the night.
I had another harrowing experience with the elements, but I lived through it to wink at danger and plan the next adventure..
Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor
King of California
- a cappella snippet from Sonora’s Death Row
Nine Volt Heart
Surfer Girl (Joe Terry on falsetto harmony)
Every Night About This Time
- band introductions
Rio Grande
Abilene
Wanda and Duane
Out in California
Ashgrove
Blue Blvd
Fourth of July
encore:
What Did The Deep Sea Say?
A show of approximately an hour and 35 minutes...........$15
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| 17th August 2006 03:57 AM |
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| Barney Fife |
San Diego, Nov., 2005
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