Thursday night we joined forces with Paddy Kilrain and Justin Trawick at the Black Squirrel in Adams Morgan for one of those amazing shows that would’ve been perfect if there’d been anyone there to witness it. Paddy was on her game, charismatic in her quirky, off-kilter way – ferocious and charming like a theoretically house-trained panther. It was my first time seeing Justin as anything but a solo artist, I think, and I was really stunned by him in trio configuration. Tight, clear, powerful – upright bass and mandolin and three-part harmony made for a wonderfully concentrated package. Very focused. And then we took the stage and tore things up as is our wont. We were a three-piece as well with Rowan joining us for the night. We had some good bonding over the course of the evening and probably the small audience helped us all just hang out with one another over the course of the night.
As sort of a running theme with shows recently, I liked the space a lot – normally I hate low-slung, long, narrow bars because it’s so hard to get sound right. Either you’re just right in the front but can’t be heard 15’ in, or your noises get really muddy and nasty by the time you reach the back (but at least you’re heard!) and the levels at the front of house are well past the pain threshold. However, at the squirrel they take one of your outputs and plug you into the house system which has a decent little Bose box every yard or so, making for sonic saturation without a LOT of decibels. It worked out pretty well.
Except of course – shame about the audience. The structure of the show as a whole was kind of odd and required a lot of explanation at the door. I think we might’ve had half again the number of people in the room if that had been simplified. No matter – we had a good time.
Last night we were at our least favourite of the Dogfish Heads. At first glance when they first opened a couple of years ago we thought this was going to be our MOST favourite – big room, large space for the band to set up, etc – we could even have a full-band show there! But in reality, playing to a large, undivided room that’s NOT at all focused on music (and really much more focused on hockey, baseball, golf, extreme full-contact man-smacking or whatever the other tvs were playing) just makes for a difficult, loud and tangled performance. You run into a similar problem as above, where you CAN really pump the volume, but the people up front won’t appreciate it – and in the case of a restaurant setting you’re then forcing people into the position of either grinning and bearing it or asking their waiter to please move them. Never ideal.
Still, a good night – we never won over the majority of the room but had a small attentive crew. Great food of course, and actually things ran on time, but an exhausting night with little return.
Justin Trawick and his trio of awesome musicians have at it at the Black Squirrel in Adams Morgan in Washington, DC.
