I'm catching a flight home in a few hours to catch a ultra rare appearance on the other coast by The Parson Red Heads. With Red Cortez, The Henry Clay People, and The Airborne Toxic at Northern Lights in Clifton Park, NY. Short of being at Spaceland in LA a few years ago, I'm pleasantly shocked that I'm getting to see a lineup like that.
But I wanted to just drop a note and say...the 500+ photos and review of the Red Cortez, The Henry Clay People, and The Airborne Toxic's DC stop should be up this weekend, as will the photos/review from last night's Lucero show at the 930. A few quick notes on the latter:
-Ben's Nichols voice is pretty ragged out. I thought it might have been due to a cold or something but I found out after that they'd been practicing like 6-8 hours a day for like a week prior to the tour to get the horns up to speed. And Nichols, "who doesn't take care of himself anyway" (says Brian Venable), shot his voice. Anyone seeing them this show, seeing them earlier than later might be better.
-Nichols was drinking water (I know, shocking) but there was whiskey shots being brought up around all sides of me that he was drinking.
-Stand in the back of whatever venue you go to see them in order to hear the horns the best. I commented to their steel pedal player Todd Beene after about how hard it was to hear the horns where I was up front and he said, 'Yeah, the horns were put through the mains so the sound carries. If you're up front, it's not as much." He said he had a hard time hearing them in his monitor, and he was right in front of them.
-FYI: horns were worked into their older tracks and boy, are they niiiiice. They aren't onstage for the entire show though.
Oh and speaking of Lucero, if you're in Baltimore, MD tonight, be sure to catch The Revival Tour 2009 at Sonar. Lucero's buddy Chuck Ragan and the awesome Jim Ward are among the large group of performers.
