Category Archives: TVD Washington, DC

One imagines New Year’s Eve weekend gigs as big dress-up affairs, with champagne toasts, balloon drops, and an overall classier sort of celebration. Southern Culture on the Skids, as their name implies, works against most of that, with swampy, stomping anthems about dirt tracks, fried chicken, mobile homes, moonshine, and generally déclassé down-home living.

The band’s stage set Saturday at the Pearl Street Warehouse in DC, had a few strands of sad looking garland on amplifiers, some cardboard ribbons to denote the recent Yuletide they never mentioned. Bassist Mary Huff, in her bouffed up hair and go-go boots, looked the most done-up for New Year’s; she cracked open the Lite variation of what was once known as the champagne of bottled beer.

On the first of the two night stand, they didn’t have to worry about countdowns at midnight—or any kind of particular arc to their typically woolly and wayward show. The closest they came was a cover of The Pretty Things’ 1966 “Midnight to Six Man,” but that was about it. Mostly they stuck to their greasy, down-home formula, which was certainly welcome from a band that recently marked its 40th anniversary.

Throughout, guitarist and front man Rick Miller is the only mainstay, but they’ve remained the same trio for 36 years, still sounding vital, though they looked a little odd all spread across the bar’s stage with Miller center, Huff over to one side thrumming her pink bass, and the hard-hitting drummer Dave Hartman way over on the left, standing at his sparse kit of a snare and two toms.

Miller, in his seed cap and grey pappy chin beard is a demon on the guitar, kicking off with a stinging surf instrumental, “Skullbucket,” cracking a smile every time he hit a sweet riff. On harder rockers like the “Voodoo Cadillac” that followed or the boogie “Greenback Fly,” he gets a little lost in his driving solos, extending them into extended guitar workouts, cutting further and further into the groove until Huff shoots him a look as if to remind him its time to wrap up. Hartman, for his part, just keeps whacking away, with nothing to slow this engine.

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BALTIMORE, MD | The mighty KISS—the ones who gave rock ‘n’ roll to us all, the gods of thunder, “the best” we ever wanted—have said farewell to touring life forever with their End of the Road World Tour.

The global tour has been ongoing since 2019 and has had a least two DMV stops including Jiffy Lube Live in Bristow, Virginia in 2019 and a recent November 29th performance in Baltimore, Maryland at CFG Bank Arena for the KISS Army to rock and roll all night once more time in Charm City.

The tour concluded with a two night stay in Madison Square Garden in New York City. The spectacle of “Kiss Week in NYC” dominated music press and social media all week with enough face paint to be seen for miles, literally. The fab foursome actually had a portrait adorned on the city’s beloved Empire State building on November 30 ahead of their NYC shows. I have to say, the thought of a rock band from Queens with their picture on the Empire State building for the whole world to see is enough to bring tears to any music fans eyes.

As for the Baltimore show, I don’t have to tell you that band was amazing. With KISS we’ve come to expect nothing less. After all, the band practically wrote the book on how to put on a rock show, and no live performance has the pageantry, the mystique, or the grandeur of a KISS show. They bring it every night—and they are simply the best.

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Weirdos, misfits, and freaks gathered at The Anthem in Washington, DC on Tuesday night to catch one of the last few dates of the Kiss of Death tour, with coheadliners Ice Nine Kills and In This Moment. Swedish metal gods Avatar provided support, as did California’s New Year’s Day. It was a fun and fabulous evening for lovers of heavy music with a theatric bent, and I was delighted and honored to have the privilege of covering this tour date for The Vinyl District. It was a spectacular night.

With four bands on the bill, the festivities got started early. At 6:15 PM the lights went down, and the members of New Year’s Day took the stage. Avatar followed precisely at 7 PM. But more on those bands in a bit.

The first coheadliner to take the stage Tuesday night was In This Moment. I’ve been hearing about In this Moment and their lavish live shows for years now; somehow, I’d never seen them until Tuesday night. As their set began, I was eager to experience what was in store. The stage was hidden by a white sheet adorned with a giant black spider. Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” filled the room until the curtain dropped—and the crowd lost its collective mind.

Led by the beautiful and mysterious Maria Brink, In This Moment hails from LA, and was formed in 2005 by Brink and Chris Howorth. Along with Brink and Howorth, the current lineup includes Travis Johnson, Randy Weitzel, and Kent Diimmel. Live, In This Moment couples heavy but catchy music with an elaborate stage production.

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Molly Tuttle knew she had a great bluegrass band when she put together The Golden Highway two years ago, so soon after touring their first album together last year, the Grammy-winning Crooked Tree, she got busy writing songs for a new album. Ten songs from that new one, City of Gold dominated their big sellout show at the 9:30 Club last week, closing the Eastern leg of their tour.

Tuttle, fresh off a full-show Austin City Limits broadcast, was happy to be making her first appearance at the long-running DC club (which she thought was so named because that’s when all its shows start). Her confidence seemed that much more amped up to fill a rock club, following her previous area show last year, playing the quieter Birchmere across the river in Alexandria, VA.

The new album is something of a road trip into the West, into the old gold mining towns in “El Dorado” or riding an imaginary rail in the “San Joaquin” from Tehachapi to Bakersfield. And she began with its anthem of “a girl as wild as a western town” who “can saddle up, not settle down” in “Evergreen, OK.”

There was little settling down in the typically high-energy show that offered a lot of showcases for the speedy, virtuoso band members, from mandolinist Dominick Leslie, who is also part of the group Hawktail; as well as fiddler Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, Shelby Means on bass, and Kyle Tuttle on banjo.

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Surprise! We’ve scared up another DC Record Fair! Now in its 14th year, DC’s twice yearly record dig, returns to Washington’s vinyl and community-centric Eaton DC on Sunday, October 29, 2023.

For this event, we’ll have 45+ record dealers from up and down the East Coast with thousands of records, a stellar DJ line up—and entry to the event is free of charge for the entire day.

Our thanks to YouTube user Abigail Bender for a recap of last October 2022’s DC Record Fair above!

THE DC RECORD FAIR FALL 2023 DJ LINEUP:
11:00-12:00 – Cinema Hearts
12:00-1:00 – Doc Delay
1:00-2:00 – DJ Neville C
2:00-3:00 – DJ Fleg
3:00-4:00 – DJ Fatback
4:00-5:00 – Baby Alcatraz

Mark your calendars! 
THE DC RECORD FAIR
Sunday, October 29, 2023 at Eaton DC, 1201 K Street, NW DC
11:00AM–5:00PM—and free all day!
Follow via Facebook.

It was a bit of a shock to see Lucinda Williams being helped onto the stage for her Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets tour at the sleek new Capital One Hall in Tysons, VA. Unsure on her feet and moving slowly on the arm of a roadie, she presented quite a different vision than the strong and vibrant, guitar-slinging singer-songwriter we’ve come to know over the past few decades.

The path was to a stool where she sat, minus guitar, swinging her feet, as she alternated stories of her life with appropriate songs. Her condition precluded her playing her guitar temporarily, she said. “I like to think of it as temporary.” And while she freely noted that it was due to “a stroke I had last year,” it was 2020 when she suffered that stroke. Luckily, it didn’t affect her voice, which still had its lilting drawl while speaking and was absolutely strong, clear, and ringing through her songs.

Because the tour is named after the memoir she released earlier this year and not the album she also put out in this year (that has a title like a book), Stories from a Rock n Roll Heart, the evening took the format of one of those book and music shows, most successfully done by Bruce Springsteen on Broadway from 2017 to 2021, but also attempted by Ray Davies for his book X Ray in 1995.

Williams never read directly from her book, though. Rather, she shared her vignettes of growing up in various towns in the South, playing guitar since she was 12, extemporaneously—often wondering if she was going a little too far off track before she’d get back to the song with which she’d pair it.

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PHOTO: NANCY RANKIN ESCOVEDO | Alejandro Escovedo has played with a lot of different outfits over the years, from raging punk bands to Americana outfits to classical ensembles. One of the more unusual pairings may have been the rural Italian group with whom he cut his last album, The Crossing (with whom he’ll reunite for an album of new versions of old songs before recording some new things next year).

For now, ever the troubadour, Escovedo has been touring in a trio that’s given some muscle and versatility to whatever he selects from what he called “14 or something albums.” For the tour that brought him to The Hamilton in DC, Escovedo was flanked by able Houston drummer Mike Henne and Denton, Texas, keyboardist Scott Danbom. Together they brought a full backing to Escovedo’s electric guitar and a voice that was still surprisingly strong and smooth at 72.

The stories behind “The Crossing,” a coming of age tale that somewhat mirrored his own family’s move from Mexico to Texas to California, provided a lot of the dialog. But he also moved back to things like “Sometimes” from 1996’s With These Hands. Whole albums were necessarily skipped in the 13-song set, particularly Real Animal and Street Songs of Love, but the 2001 album A Man Under the Influence provided a kind of framework for the show, starting with “Wave,” the moving song of migration that opened the show; to the love story “Rosalie” that provided an emotional heart late in the show, with its own explanatory intro; to the can’t miss, set-closing rocker “Castanets.”

Danbom, formerly of Centro-matic, and who had also played in Slobberbone and (briefly) Drive-by Truckers, had the responsibilities of a Ray Manzarek—holding down bass on his analog synthesizer while paying electric keyboards, adding a distinctive “96 Tears” vibe to things like “Break This Time.” But Escovedo often stood opposite Henne’s drum set, concentrating on the basic call-and-response of drums to guitar that’s often at the heart of his songbook.

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Twenty years after the release of Permission to Land, rock legends The Darkness hit the road on a tour supporting the reissue of their massively successful debut album. The US leg of the Permission to Land 20th Anniversary Tour wrapped up in Washington, DC, Sunday night at the storied 9:30 Club.

Permission To Land was released in 2003; it was met with immediate success, powered by the single “I Believe in a Thing Called Love.” I was able to briefly catch the band the following summer at Summerfest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I was excited to see them but got dragged away by my aunt and cousin after a few songs; we had just seen Prince and they wanted to get home. After Sunday night, I’m very sorry it’s taken 19 years for me to see the band again. Better to be late to the party than to never show up at all, I suppose.

The band (frontman Justin Hawkins, Dan Hawkins, Frankie Poullain, and Rufus Tiger Taylor) wasted no time, launching into “Black Shuck,” “Get Your Hands Off of My Woman,” and “Growing on Me,” the first three tracks of Permission to Land. From there it felt like barely contained, delightful chaos, fueled by Hawkins himself who, by the way, sounds just as good as he did 20 years ago.

Clad in a jumpsuit reminiscent of 1970s Freddie Mercury, Hawkins filled the entire club with his charisma and mischievous spirit, jumping in the air, doing a handstand on the drum riser, joking with the crowd, and stepping onto the barrier from the stage. He playfully teased a few dudes in the audience; one man was scolded for wearing a non-licensed Darkness t-shirt to the show. His punishment? Hawkins removed the shirt from the man and wore it himself for a bit before handing it back.

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St. Paul & The Broken Bones performed to a delighted crowd in Washington, DC Tuesday night, a stop on the Angels in Science Fiction tour.

The Birmingham, Alabama-based soul band (Paul Janeway, Browan Lollar, Jesse Phillips, Kevin Leon, Allen Branstetter, Amari Ansari, and Chad Fisher), wasted no time getting into the groove when they took the stage, jamming until bandleader/vocalist Janeway strutted into the spotlight, crowd cheering. They kicked off their set with “Flow with It (You Got Me Feeling Like),” from their 2016 release, Sea of Noise.

The band’s latest album is Angels in Science Fiction, a work largely inspired by fatherhood, specifically, the experience of Janeway becoming a new father to a baby girl. Before performing “Lonely Love Song,” accompanied only by a guitar, Janeway talked about the feelings he had about impending parenthood and how they moved him to write that song. It was one of only three songs (out of an 18 song setlist) from the new album.

The rest of the night’s selections were pulled from across the band’s expanding discography, with the most coming from 2014’s Half the City, which nearly ten years later, remains a fan favorite, judging by the DC crowd. A highlight of the night isn’t a St Paul & the Broken Bones song at all, but a cover of Jeff Buckley’s “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over.”

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Legendary trio Melvins stopped at Washington, DC’s Howard Theatre last Friday night, a date on their massive 40th anniversary “Twins of Evil” tour, a coheadlining tour with Boris.

Formed in Washington State in 1983, Melvins (currently Buzz Osborne, Dale Crover, and Stephen McDonald) are credited with merging the worlds of punk and heavy music, influencing the development of sludge metal and grunge. The “Twins of Evil” tour is not just a 40th anniversary tour for Melvins, but a showcase for their 1991 album Bullhead. This album is what is cited as a turning point for the band, the point at which Melvins became a true metal outfit with a more chugging sound and longer songs.

Melvins kicked off the coheadlining set Friday night to a packed and steamy house—one unfortunate fan succumbed to heat before the show even got started. The legends played all of Bullhead with a few additional tracks thrown in for good measure to the delight of the crowd. They were impressive over the course of their hour-long set.

Singer/guitarist Osborne’s voice and playing have stood the test of time and bassist McDonald hammed it up for the crowd. Coady Willis, filling in for Crover on tour, pounded away tirelessly on drums. Melvins played on stage with a backdrop of actress Agnes Moorehead in full Endora makeup (from the old TV show Betwitched) and vibrant, almost psychedelic, lighting—all pink and orange. It was a heady experience coupled with the sludgy metal. They ended with, of course, “Boris.”

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After more than 40 years, the legendary Duran Duran shows no signs of slowing down. Not even a little bit. They’ve been touring to promote Future Past, the icons’ 15th album, since last year, taking a quick break to get inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in November. Last month, they announced Danse Macabre, to be released in October, just in time for Halloween. According to the press release, the new album is Duran Duran’s “soundtrack to their ultimate Halloween party…threading together new songs, themed covers, and newly reimagined versions of their own ‘spooky’ classics.” Sounds fun!

Last Wednesday night, the band once known as the Fab 5, which is now just four since the departure of guitarist Andy Taylor (Simon LeBon, Roger Taylor, John Taylor, and Nick Rhodes) graced Washington, DC with a stop on the Future Past tour. The all-ages crowd got treated to new material while also dancing to old favorites. The fans loved it all. I was thrilled to have the privilege of photographing one my first true musical love and still one of my all-time favorite bands.

Boy, does Duran Duran know how to make an entrance. Emerging from backstage, backlit by a video screen showing AI footage of the band dressed as astronauts, Duran Duran stood at the top of a staircase, peering out onto the screaming crowd, pausing for dramatic effect before scattering to take their respective places on stage. Two metal “curtains” that obscured the drum kit and keyboards then were lifted into the air and functioned as video screens for the night. Graphic art and video have a major presence on this run of the tour—it’s fitting given the band’s pioneering use of the music video in the 1980s.

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Five years, almost to the day, since the last time they appeared in the Washington, DC area, English indie/rock outfit Nothing But Thieves played to a very stoked, sold-out crowd on Tuesday night at The Fillmore Silver Spring. It was the very first date on the “Welcome to the DCC” US tour, and it possessed the air of a ship setting sail on a great adventure—all excitement and happiness. If the opening night is any indication, the “Welcome to the DCC” tour will be a huge success.

The Fillmore was already filled with fans when supporters Kid Kapichi took the stage at 8PM. Kid Kapichi (Ben Beetham, Jack Wilson, George Macdonald, and Eddie Lewis) come from England, in their case, Hastings, on the southeast coast. Known for their working-class voice, with a body of work that addresses racism, poverty, and mental health, Kid Kapichi cut their teeth on the Hastings music scene until they got a big break from Frank Carter, who invited them to play his birthday party then join him on tour.

The crowd at the Fillmore got a taste of this voice Tuesday night, with 30 minutes of working-class finger-flipping in songs like “5 days on (2 days off),” about monotonous day jobs, and “Working Man’s Town.” Vocalist Jack Wilson asked the crowd if everything in the States was outrageously expensive like it is back home. When the crowd roared in the affirmative, the band launched into “Rob the Supermarket.” Kid Kapichi’s latest album is Here’s What You Could Have Won.

Standing at the barrier between sets, I didn’t realize the Fillmore had become even more crowded until I looked over my shoulder at the urging of my pal on the security staff. We were packed in like sardines, and the crowd erupted when Nothing But Thieves took the stage. Nothing But Thieves formed in 2012 in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, in England. They are lead vocalist and guitarist Conor Mason, guitarist Joe Langridge-Brown, guitarist and keyboardist Dominic Craik, bassist Philip Blake, and drummer James Price. The band scored a top spot on the UK album chart with its latest album, Welcome to the DCC, a concept album that, according to the band, addresses “themes such as advertisement, unity, internet culture, the music industry, aging and politics, as well as escapism and change are highlighted by the alienation or privilege of a members only club.”

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Call them the good X.

Unlike that corporate overlord’s sudden new name for Twitter, this one has been banging out the finest of Los Angeles punk since 1977. That they’re still around in the original configuration, sounding great, after decades of commercial indifference, intermittent personnel changes, a farewell tour, and years’ long hiatuses, is a reason to cheer. And a triumphant 24 song show at the 9:30 Club, capping a two-day residence in DC, showed them at their best.

Not that there hadn’t been a few glitches this summer, too. Washington was among a dozen dates that had to be postponed due to a member recovering from an emergency surgery. The member wasn’t named in the announcement, but guitarist Billy Zoom had been diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2015 and though he has since been proclaimed cancer-free, has gone in for additional chemotherapy.

Zoom, now 75, was first to get on the 9:30 stage, though, to plug in his guitar and begin to play along to the recorded Link Wray “Rumble” intro, albeit atop a tall stool. Always the picture of sleek, pompadoured cool in the X heyday, he looks a bit like his own grandpa now (but among long time fans doesn’t).

His ringing riffs, born of classic Chuck Berry and Cliff Gallup, were all still there, though he seemingly had to remind himself to smile. Zoom had built a stage presence based on blissful tranquility as he tore through the solos, intent on exploding the notion that rock guitarists have to also show theatrical expressions of pain as they solo. This time, though, the smiles sometimes bordered on grimaces as the show continued.

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Part of the appeal of the National Pastime are the endless stories of its colorful characters over the decades, their dizzying achievements or career-crashing failures, the arcane stats and mostly, the shared experience—around the TV or in ballparks.

No wonder a group of experienced rockers decided to mine the sport for material, creating a whole songbook of baseball songs. That’s been the mission for The Baseball Project since it formed 16 years ago. And with a new album out, their first in nine years, the band is back delighting audiences as they stomp through their rocking songs of baseball lore, as they did Thursday at The Hamilton in DC.

Ex-Dream Syndicate Steve Wynn and Scott McCaughey of the Minus 5 (and many other bands), are the kind of songwriters so steeped in their craft that they can turn out dozens of songs commemorating the most esoteric tales, and the history of baseball is rife with them. But their other famous band members, Peter Buck and Mike Mills of R.E.M., have been contributing music or whole songs lately as well.

In baseball, when big stars came to small towns for exhibitions, they’d call it barnstorming. And there was a similar feel in this tour stop—the exhilaration of seeing Buck and Mills up close on the kind of stage size they’d have when they began, slung with matching black and white Rickenbackers (though one was an electric guitar, the other a bass). More than a couple fans angled to snap photos of the amp case prominently stamped “R.E.M. Athens GA.”

The last time I caught Buck and Mills on such a stage in these parts (for McCaughey’s Minus 5), they did “Don’t Come Back to Rockville” in an encore. But by now there was so much baseball material to cover—in 26 rockers, over two sets and an encore—there was no need to dip into old catalogs of R.E.M., the Dream Syndicate, the Minus 5, or the Young Fresh Fellows for that matter.

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The Watson Twins started gaining wide attention when they joined forces with rocker Jenny Lewis on her 2006 album Rabbit Fur Coat, issued about the same time as their own solo debut, Southern Manners. Since then the two have largely worked in the area of country, which is probably the most natural thing in the world for a pair of sisters from Louisville who have been living in Nashville.

Backed by a crack band, the two entertained an early evening crowd at The Kennedy Center Millennium Stage, which has been attracting bigger names by also making entire shows available streaming and archived online. As such, Leigh and Chandra Watson spent nearly as much time addressing the wider world as they did the polite crowd at the storied performing arts center, where the two last performed singing backup for Kings of Leon at the 2016 Kennedy Center Honors (doing “Take It Easy” as part of a tribute to the Eagles). “We didn’t think we’d be back,” Leigh admitted.

But their country sound sounded sharp, and they immediately set the stage by describing a perfect honky tonk in “The Palace.” It was the first of a half dozen songs they’d play from their recently released album Holler. That title song began as a lament, Leigh said, written soon after the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, but she it got an overhaul to be a more joyful, upbeat song. With a singalong chorus of “Holler if you hear me,” it advises “Looking for a reason to hold the truth and carry on / Gotta keep on tryin’ harder / Why can’t we all just get along?”

Sister acts thrive on harmonies they’ve developed their whole life, and those work as well with the Watsons, though they are not as often prominently on display as you might expect. The pair does plays up the twin bit. They came in matching shiny red and gold dresses with hearts (though Leigh goes for a shorter hemline than her sister). They often played identical acoustic guitars (though they switched off) and style their long, jet black hair similarly.

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