© The Legendary Eddie V
The Gourds
Variety Playhouse
1099 Euclid Avenue NE
Atlanta, GA
10-09-09
01. Cracklins
02. Pine Island Bayou
02. Pine Island Bayou
03. Illegal Oyster
04. Hey Thurman
05. Magnolia
06. El Paso
07. Bridgett
08. Mister Betty
09. Omaha (Billy Joe Shaver/Hillman Hall)
10. When Wine Was Cheap
11. Hallelujah Shine
12. The Way You Can Get
13. O Rings
14. Ants on the Melon
15. "Stab"
16. Burn the Honeysuckle
17. The Gyroscopic
18. New Dues
19. The Tinys Variety Hour (Claude Bernard/Matt Cook/Travis Garaffa)
20. Plaid Coat
20. Plaid Coat
21. Country Love
23. Country Gal > Fat Bottomed Girls (Brian May)
24. Waxy's Dargle (trad.)
24. Waxy's Dargle (trad.)
25. Hooky Junk
26. County Orange
27. Waterfalls (Marqueze Etheridge/Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes/Organized Noize) > Psycho Killer (David Byrne/Chris Frantz/Tina Weymouth) > Life During Wartime (David Byrne/Chris Frantz/Jerry Harrison/Tina Weymouth)
Special thanks to Pete Rutherford and The Legendary Eddie V for the field reports. If anyone has audio/video/photos from this show, please email TheGourdsNews.
I admit it - I take The Gourds for granted. I see they are coming to town, and if it looks convenient, and I happen to be free, I'll go. But if it won't work out, I don't get particularly upset - I always seem to think I'll catch them again later, and I've seen them plenty of times. I'm unsure how many, but certainly in the double-digits, in a variety of venues. However, in Atlanta, for years I'd only seen them at Smith's Olde Bar, where they seemed to stop nearly every time they got within spittin' distance of Atlanta. I'd gotten to a point where these shows just didn't generate a lot of anticipation for me - in fact, the last time they came through I got shut out by a rare sellout, and ended up just having beers downstairs with Joe Carver, and wasn't really chagrined about missing them at all. So when a few weeks back I noticed that they were booked to play my favorite room in town - Variety Playhouse - I was both intrigued and disturbed. Intrigued because the Playhouse has immaculate sound, a feature I'd never experienced before at a Gourds show, and disturbed because the room is way, way too big for them based on their normal Atlanta crowds. I kind of felt like I needed to go to put another body in what was sure to be a sparse room, and but it in the back of my mind. I didn't think about it again until a friend - a former active member of the curbi-whatever-it-is-called list (for those who don't know this Gourds list, it makes the traffic on PCFH look like the Calexico yahoo board), called and asked if I was planning on going. I had to do a little wrangling, as my neighborhood has a little ritual where the local MILFs gather to consume bottles and bottles of wine on Friday evening while the kids run amok, and my house was playing host on this night - but I was able to pull away to get to Variety between the opener and the Gourds.
ReplyDeleteEven though I take them for granted, I'm usually very pleasantly surprised when I do go to these shows - I've never seen these guys just mail it in. Despite my issues with what has become the 'Gourds crowd' in Atlanta, and their (entirely understandable) focus on material off the most recent records in their shows, I always find myself smiling coming out of their show. And every now and then, they prove themselves worthy of mention in any discussion of "best live bands" - this was the case on Friday night.