Band of Bears?
Saturday, September 19th, 2009Do bands hibernate? Most probably should. A solid stint of solitary study would behoove the majority of what seems to fight for the popular vote these days.. Ask me what I’m listening to at any given moment, and nine times out of ten, it’ll be something from before you were born. There was a time when no genre was prefaced with “a thinking man’s..” The musicians I love and return to time after time are almost all dead. Granted, not all of them died of natural causes, if such a thing exists for musicians, but I’m straying here.. Point is, more than half the music we have access to is complete mindless garbage, robbed from the graves of the pioneers who actually took the time to do things like, oh I don’t know, PRACTICE, research, take chances, test their audience, and ultimately GIVE themselves to thousands of strangers in the face of imminent criticism, crucifixion, and the fickle, shared, single-celled mind of the drooling masses.
TONIGHT, my friends, fellow musicians, dudes-in-bands, and fans of real music in general, What Made Milwaukee Famous will celebrate the end of the “What Doesn’t Kill Us” album cycle at Antone’s here in Austin Texas. It’s been three very long years of touring for this band in support of both Barsuk releases, and now that we’re not staring down the barrel of 250 shows a year, we’ve got some time to sit down and think about what the next album means for us, and how three years of road-dogged living has changed both us and our sound.
TONIGHT we’ll be taking the stage around 11pm and we will be joined by Josh King of The Lemurs on keys and Kelly Doyle on guitar, who you’ve maybe seen with WMMF side project The Motts. Mr Doyle is quickly becoming my favorite guitarist to play with in over 20 years, and might just be my favorite guitarist to listen to. This guy makes me laugh and cry, often while I’m trying to back his ass on a solo, which makes my already grotesque stage faces even more amusing, I’m sure. I dunno. You tell me. Come out tonight and hear us one last time before we go into hibernation and see what the dream machine conjures up for the next album. We’ve got new tunes in their infancy we’d like to share with our hometown crowd, old favorites, and probably a LOT of Firefly to drink..
Showtime: 11pm
Doors: 8pm
Openers : 9pm – Quiet Company / The Laughing