I had a chance this last Saturday to go check out Seattle’s REVERBfest, a local-acts-only single-day music festival featuring 64 bands at 9 Ballard neighborhood venues. I managed to catch Pufferfish, Lonesome Rhodes & The Good Company, Boat, Laura “Piece” Kelley Jahn, and Truckasauras. Photos and reviews after the jump.
I started off the evening at 6:30 with Pufferfish, an alt-country act with a wide variety of instruments at their disposal. This includes starting off the show with a musical saw being played with a bow, an accordion, slide guitar, banjo, and a large hunk of metal that looked like 19th century farming equipment being used alongside a cowbell. This, of course, was alongside the usual set up of instruments. For a better idea of their sound, check out the animated video at the bottom of their site.
Pufferfish
Lonesome Rhodes & The Good Company
Lonesome Rhodes & The Good Company were playing next at The Tractor, a great medium-sized venue with slight country western accents on the walls that I imagine I’ll be finding myself at fairly frequently. The band continued my alt-country for the evening, although I was dissapointed to find out they wouldn’t be rocking out on Rhodes organs like I had expected. The band stepped onstage with guitarist/singer Brian Pake playing a solo song, before being joined by the rest of the band and a guest singer whose name I didn’t catch, shown to the right in the picture above. The band had a sound very reminiscent of a laidback Ryan Adams & The Cardinals with a dash more twang, which you can hear clearly in “Hearts in AZ.” Later on the band played a great cover of Harry Nilsson’s “Everybody’s Talkin’,” and a lot of great originals you can hear on their MySpace linked above.
Brian Pake of Lonesome Rhodes & The Good Company
Boat
Boat was next at the F.O.E., which distinctly reminded me of every punk-skate-park V.F.W. show I went to in high school, only this time I felt way less awkward and way less inclined to start a mosh pit. The band played all originals (setlist on their site), and had a great carefree attitude, joking around with the crowd and even distributing homemade shakers from solo cups and envelopes of confetti. Very DIY, guys. Anyways, I recommend “Four Beds for BOAT,” the first song listed on their MySpace.
Laura “Piece” Kelley Jahn
I was headed straight to Truckasauras after Boat finished, since I knew it’d be packed and the show had already started, but on my way over I passed by Mr. Spot’s Chai House and overheard what turned out to be Laura “Piece” Kelley Jahn, and I double-timed it across the street to try and squeeze into the way-over-capacity venue. With full band behind her (only half-pictured in the shot above), you could have sworn The Roots invited Lauren Hill up on stage for a whole set. I couldn’t catch the names of the two originals I managed to see, but sandwiched in between was a strong rendition of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth,” or ‘Stop Children What’s That Sound’ for those of you who only know it from Limewire and Dave Matthew’s shows. The show didn’t sound a lot like her tracks on MySpace, but even if you don’t enjoy those it’s well worth it to see her live with the band, they’re a powerful combo.
After weaving out of the crowd I made my way over to Truckasauras, my original destination. Truckasauras is, in essence, three or four dudes hunched over a table covered in noisemaking apparatuses, with a video screen behind them showing monster truck rally footage, among god knows what else, playing what sounds like a 1980’s Nintendo game soundtrack on steroids. If you like techno, or !!!, or LCD Soundsystem, or any other even mildly talented electronic group, you’ll enjoy these guys. Check out their songs located on MySpace.
