Category Archives: TVD Washington, DC

The weekend wrapped up with a fun swirl of genres as darkwave Twin Tribes and partners, the post-punk Chameleons, ended their coheadlining Darker Skies tour at the Fillmore Silver Spring on Sunday night.

Kicking off the night was a 30-minute set by California’s Vandal Moon. Keeping with the dark theme of the tour, Vandal Moon warmed up the Fillmore crowd with its take on ’80s-inspired post-punk and darkwave sounds. The duo (Blake Voss and Jeremy Einsiedler) describe themselves as having the sound of “synthesizers, guitars, drum machines, vodka, and psychedelics.” Dark, but also very cool, the men commanded the fans on the floor with a set plucked from their 2020 album Black Kiss and 2023 EP “Satellite.”

Co-headliner Chameleons had the second slot on the bill Sunday night. For the uninitiated, Chameleons (or The Chameleons UK as sometimes referred to in North America) are an English band formed in 1981. In recent years the band has seen its audience grow and their 2024 EP “Where Are You?” has garnered some of the best reviews of the band’s 40-something year career. Chameleons are also gearing up for the release of Arctic Moon later in 2025, which will be their first studio full-length since 2001’s Why Call It Anything.

The current lineup is original members Vox (fka Mark Burgess) and Reg Smithies, along with Stephen Rice, Danny Ashberry, and Todd Demma. Together, the men are credited with reinvigorating the band and bringing them renewed relevance. After seeing the band absolutely tear up the Fillmore’s stage Sunday night, it’s easy to see why. It was a full hour of straight ahead, guitar driven English rock. Everyone’s heads were bobbing and even the goth kids in the audience who were clearly there to see Twin Tribes danced.

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Alejandro Escovedo’s solo return to The Hamilton in DC Saturday began with the ferocity and volume of his earliest punk days, about which he was singing. It ended with songs performed so softly, and without amplification, you practically had to hold your breath to hear.

It was the last night of a three week solo tour just before a full band slot at the New Orleans Jazz & Pop Festival May 1. And already he was ruminating about his next big project: looking back at 50 years in music, in song and story. Therefore, a big chunk of his solo show had to do with introducing songs, or groups of them, with detailed reminiscence of all the scenes he got to be part of.

That included opening the final Sex Pistols concert at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom and checking in with fellow Chelsea Hotel resident Sid Vicious before he was taken away in cuffs. Those stories took up the first several minutes of his set before he finally dove into a trio of songs that defined that era (and were written decades later), “Nuns Song,” “Chelsea Hotel ’78,” and “Sacramento and Polk.” The feedback in his guitar and the distortion of his voice through one of those vintage harmonica microphones helped recreate the aggression of those gritty songs.

Even when he switched to acoustic guitar, his songs had a strange electronic undertow, possibly pre-taped, that he has credited to Portland, OR. producer Brandon Eggleston. Lest you think he was dependent on surrounding electronics and effects boxes in lieu of a band, however, Escovedo unplugged entirely for a couple of songs he meant to sing while strolling through the audience. Logistics of the club meant he only just walked around the stage unamplified instead (and on only one side of the stage since his rig of guitars prevented him from strolling to the other side.

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Since it first formed 35 years ago at the University of Buffalo, Mercury Rev has gone through a lot of phases before settling into the kind of poetic grandeur it gave its high water mark, 1998’s Deserter’s Songs and that continues to inform their latest work, last year’s Born Horses.

It’s the kind of big, synth-washed saturation with guitar embellishment and booming drums that would satisfy an arena crowd. It was strange and wonderful, then, to see Mercury Rev in the first week of their tour playing a club as small as the Atlantis in DC. Bringing the same kind of theatricality to their performance that they’ve brought to their sound, the touring quintet assembled on stage to the strains of Ravi Shankar and an Antoine de Saint-Exupéry audiobook.

Frontman Jonathan Donahue, in a double-breasted coat, cap, and ascot, looked like a Pied Piper, using elaborate arm motions to swim through the sound or suddenly crouch to conduct or simply present the forces on either side of the stage, conjuring up their sounds like a wizard.

One was the only other original member of the band, Sean “Grasshopper” Mackowiak, in shades, playing an electric guitar that wasn’t so much individual notes or even chords, but more a cascade of glistening effects. Opposite him was the booming drums of Joe Magistro. Behind them, also in shades, were a pair of multi-instrumentalists, mostly working a pair of synthesizers, though Jesse Chandler also picked up an occasional sax or flute to bring something different to the mix.

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Music fans in the Washington, DC area are always up for a good metal show. That’s what they got Friday night (4/4), when Swedish metalcore outfit Imminence stormed the Fillmore Silver Spring on the band’s Return of the Black tour. The trés international lineup on this tour includes France’s Landmvrks and Japan’s Jiluka.

It was pandemonium right out of the gate when Jiluka hit the stage at 7:30 PM. I’ll admit to being a bit unprepared for the energy from both the band and the already large crowd, despite being given a heads up from both security and a fellow photographer that things would be wild. The foursome took the stage to massive enthusiasm from the crowd and wasted no time serving up its self-proclaimed brand of electro-gothic metal. The band is led by Riko; her death metal vocals were the dark gothic icing on the band’s death metal cake.

While drummer Zyean pounded away at the back of the stage, Riko, along with guitarist Sena and bassist Boogie, towered over the Fillmore crowd on risers situated at the front of the stage while lit garishly. Jiluka’s music is dark, heavy, and brutal, a perfect accompaniment to the raging crowd surfing on the Fillmore’s floor. Jiluka smashed their way through five tracks, which included their newest release “Kvlt.”

Batting second on the tour is Landmvrks (pronounced “Landmarks”). This metalcore band (Florent Salfati, Rudy Purkart, Kevin D’Agostino, Nicholas Exposito, and Paul Cordebard) hail from Marseille, France, and is promoting their upcoming album, The Darkest Place I’ve Ever Been, set for release late this month.

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The cheers went up when Mike Watt loped on stage with his bass and his cane, en route to his chair. The beloved bassist from the Minutemen, Firehose, and endless collaborations, at 67 is a punk rock mainstay and hero, who despite the chronic knee problems that require the cane, still lays it down with verve and force, as he showed with the experimental power trio mssv, at the Pearl Street Warehouse in DC Friday.

The improvisatory outfit is led by bespectacled Knoxville guitarist Mike Baggetta, who first managed to convince Watt and no less than rock drummer Jim Keltner—who worked with Ry Cooder, most of the solo Beatles and was drummer for Traveling Wilburys—to join him for his solo album Wall of Flowers in 2019.

It worked so well, they wanted to tour but because of Keltner’s other studio commitments, he was replaced on the road, and on subsequent group recordings by Stephen Hodges, an accomplished drummer in his own right, who had worked with Watt on his album Contemplating The Engine Room in 1997, and had played on several records behind Tom Waits, Mavis Staples, John Hammond and others.

To open the Pearl Street show, Hodges joined in the spirit of experimentation by dragging chains across his drum kit, adding to the string improvisations conjured up by Baggetta and Watt. It was one of several spots on the setlist that began with space for improv before they settled into any structures of a song. And even then, the tunes took some wild swings in dynamics.

For all the hit-and-miss variations, Baggetta restarted their second song of the set after a false turn. “It’s our first gig in DC,” he explained. He wanted to get it right. Maybe because that song seemed perfect for the nation’s capital: “Hypocrite.”

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Patterson Hood has written hundreds of songs in his life, the best of which he’s performed with his band Drive-By Truckers for nearly three decades.

His latest batch were largely biographical musings, covering his coming of age period in Alabama. Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams, his fourth solo outing, was eventually played in its entirety during the first of two sold out shows Saturday at The Atlantis, the cozy 9:30 Club anteroom in DC.

That it was “hours until” his 61st birthday Monday only seemed to further stoke his giddy nostalgia at his past, telling stories of being raised by grandparents and a great uncle in lieu of his teenage parents, all the parties he used to sneak into, the neighbors and adults he looked up to, the curve of the rural roads, and the general magic of childhood and the promises of adolescence. That he told the essence of his fondly-remembered stories before doing the songs kind of robbed the tunes of any surprise, but the thematic continuity of the show made it feel whole.

Hood sat for the entirety of the 19-song set, mostly playing a vintage Harmony acoustic that in its diminutive size made him look even bigger than he was. As on the album, he wasn’t strictly solo, but surrounded himself with able musicians.

Eschewing by large measure the rocking electric guitar crunch of his primary band, he relied instead on the buzzing drone of synth, a bit of mellotron, some sax and woodwinds, from the four piece touring band he called the Sensurrounders—two of whom were from Drive-By Truckers.

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Michael Shannon is mostly known as actor; one whose intense presence makes for memorable roles in films like Man of Steel and The Iceman. As it turns out, he’s also a musician and R.E.M. superfan. A singer who, along with pal Jason Narducy, takes a love for the original “college rock” band on the road. There, they’re joined by other fans hungry for live performances of early R.E.M work.

After a successful run of sold out shows last year when the pair honored R.E.M.’s debut album Murmur, Michael Shannon, Jason Narducy and Friends are back at it, celebrating the 40th anniversary of R.E.M.’s 1985 album, Fables of the Reconstruction. Tuesday night, the men hit Washington, DC’s famed 9:30 Club for a gig filled to the rafters.

On the road, Shannon and Narducy are joined by “friends”: Wilco’s John Stirratt on bass, drumming powerhouse (and one of my very favorite Instagram follows) Jon Wurster, guitarist Dag Juhlin, and keyboardist Vijay Tellis-Nayak.

The show on this tour is divided into two sets: the first set is the entire Fables album. The band had no problem delivering fantastic performances of Fables tracks such as “Feeling Gravity’s Pull,” “Driver 8,” and “Can’t Get There from Here.” After “Wendell Gee,” the band wrapped up the first set with a cover of the Velvet Underground’s “Femme Fatale.”

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The Faroe Islands are a tiny archipelago located halfway between Norway and Iceland and is a part of the Kingdom of Denmark. The capital city, Tóshavn, receives the fewest recorded hours of sunshine of any city in the world. Known for its rugged, isolated terrain and subpolar climate, it’s from this environment that musician and vocalist Eivør Pálsdóttir, who performs professionally simply as Eivør, comes to us. Sunday night Eivør wrapped up her North American tour in the Washington, DC suburbs, performing to an enraptured crowd.

Norwegian multi-instrumentalist Kathrine Shepard, who performs professionally as Sylvaine, served as support on this tour. Sylvaine is the first woman to receive a Norwegian Grammy nomination for Best Metal Album. At the Fillmore, her music was less “metal” and more electrified Nordic folk (a term I just made up). Others have compared the sound to something from Middle Earth. It’s an apt comparison.

Sylvaine is ethereal and her voice is beautiful. Performing without a backing band, and sometimes without even an instrument, her set was a compact five songs. However, she captivated the (seated) crowd like a headliner would. The last song, “Eg Er Framand” so affected the Fillmore crowd that they were brought to their feet in a standing ovation. It brought her to tears as she waved goodnight. Sylvaine’s latest album is Eg Er Framand.

It’s been great to see Eivør’s fanbase in the DC area grow. She first performed at the Fillmore in 2022, during her very first US tour. Like Sunday night, it was a seated show. But while the crowd in 2022 was on the smaller side, Sunday night was a sellout.

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PHOTOS: RICHIE DOWNS | Last year the DC Record Fair celebrated its 15th anniversary. Initially spawned as an ad hoc event at DC’s now-defunct Civilian Arts Gallery, to our surprise it’s grown to be a venerable DC institution. Gathering steam, the fair has subsequently been hosted by the Warehouse Next Door (RIP), Comet Ping Pong (folks, there’s no basement), the Black Cat, Artisphere, the Fillmore Silver Spring, Penn Social, and the Eaton DC hotel. And yet, another DC institution had proven elusive.

This changed on Sunday in a big way. The DC Record Fair finally made it to the legendary 9:30 Club where a line looped around the block long before the doors swung open. And frankly, the biggest buzz came not from the crowd and vinyl vendors alone, but it swept in a refreshed community spirit that until now had been typified by the Black Cat event right after “Snowmageddon” in 2010 when the club literally had to be dug out of the snow to invite people inside.

We’d like to extend sincere gratitude to the 9:30 Club and its team for opening its doors to us, and for the warm welcome and unyielding support we received. And our thanks to all of you for coming out, including the vendors and DJs. It was quite the day, and TVD’s Richie Downs was on site to capture the event in pixels.

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We’re thrilled to announce the first DC Record Fair for 2025 lands at DC’s legendary 9:30 Club! 

For this event, we’ll have 30+ record dealers from up and down the East Coast with thousands of records, a stellar DJ line up (TBA!), and mimosa specials throughout the day.

Our thanks to YouTube user Abigail Bender for a recap of October 2022’s DC Record Fair at the Eaton Hotel above.

THE WINTER 2025 DJ LINEUP:
11:00 – 12:00 – DJ Soyo
12:00 – 1:00 – Marc Meistro (Sol Power All Stars)
1:00 – 2:00 – Brendan Canty (The Messthetics/Fugazi)
2:00 – 3:00 – StereoFaith
3:00 – 4:00 – Ryan Pieper
4:00 – 5:00 – Crown Vic (Electric Cowbell Records)

Watch this space and mark your calendars! 
THE DC RECORD FAIR
Sunday, February 23, 2025 at the 9:30 Club, 815 V Street, NW DC
11:00AM–5:00PM.
Early-bird entry: $5. Noon to 5PM: $2
Follow via Facebook.

It was an appropriately cold and snowy night Tuesday when Molchat Doma stopped by the Anthem in Washington DC. The post punk trio, from Minsk, Belarus, are in the midst of a North American tour and, despite the inclement weather, DC showed up in force.

Joining Molchat Doma on this tour is Los-Angeles based Sextile. The crowd at the Anthem was already starting to swell when the trio took the stage. Founding members Brady Keehn and Melissa Scaduto (who paced back and forth with a large flag emblazoned with “Sextile”) were joined by a standing drummer for a 40-minute, high energy post-punk/electronic set. Keehn was met with cheers when he gave a shoutout to DC and revealed he once lived in Columbia Heights. The trio were successful in getting the crowd hyped for the headliner. Sextile’s most recent album is 2023’s Push.

The Anthem’s floor was full by the time Molchat Doma took the stage just after 9PM. For the unfamiliar, Molchat Doma (meaning “Houses are Silent” in Russian) formed in 2017, in Minsk, Belarus; the current lineup is Egor Shkutko, Roman Komogortsev, and Pavel Kozlov. Their music is an amalgam of post-punk, new wave, and synth-driven sounds (a drum machine takes the place of a drummer), and is often compared to 1980s work by bands like The Cure, Depeche Mode, and Siouxsie and the Banshees. The men have also said they take influences from 1980s Russian rock bands, such as Kino.

The setlist was taken from across the band’s four LP discography; their latest album is Belaya Polosa, released last September. While their songs are sung exclusively in Russian, Molchat Doma’s modern-yet-retro sound has fueled their rapid ascent and appeal across generations and nations. In Washington, DC, the crowd, while skewing younger overall, featured a lot of Millennial and GenXers alongside the young goths.

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The Fillmore Silver Spring hosted legendary Jerry Cantrell last Friday night; it was a hard rock party with a 1990s flavor. Cantrell is in the middle of his I Want Blood tour, in support of his latest album of the same name. Along for the ride on this tour is Filter, a fellow ’90s powerhouse.

The Fillmore was already quite full when Filter took the stage—many in the crowd were just as stoked to see this Ohio band as they were Cantrell. Hitting the rock scene in the early 1990s, Filter released their first album in ‘95, titled Short Bus. The band has cycled through many personnel changes since then; front man Richard Patrick remains the sole original member. No matter, though—the rest of the band (Jonathan Radtke, Bobby Miller, and Tosh Peterson), provided an energetic dynamic for the nearly 45-minute set, performed in smoke and near darkness. The crowd rocked out to songs including “You Walk Away,” “Welcome to the Fold,” and ’90s bangers, “Take A Picture” and “Hey Man Nice Shot.” Filter’s most recent release is The Algorithm (2023).

“Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!”

The mostly GenX crowd at the Fillmore had swelled by the time Alice in Chains frontman Jerry Cantrell took the stage at 9:15pm. They were anxious to see the legend and chanted and sang along for much of the night. Along with vocalist Greg Puciato and his backing band, Cantrell greeted the crowd and launched into “Psychotic Break,” from 2002’s Degradation Trip. What followed was a setlist that represented the scope of Cantrell’s career, including several very crowd-pleasing Alice in Chains tracks.

But it was I Want Blood that was the centerpiece; the set featured five songs from the album, said to have more of an Alice in Chains influence than other solo work. “Vilified” was performed early in the night; it weaves well with Cantrell’s AIC work. Much of the other solo work in the set was sourced from the southern rock/country tinged Brighten (2021), including “Atone” and “Had to Know.”

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Myles Kennedy, the golden-throated vocalist of Alter Bridge and Slash collaborator, is in the middle of his solo The Art of Letting Go tour. Along with openers Tim Montana and Sons of Silver, Kennedy conquered Baltimore Soundstage last Thursday night. It was—as always—a fun hang and a bright spot in what was a dreary January.

Sons of Silver got the festivities started in Baltimore, setting the tone for a night of rock and roll. Coming to us from Los Angeles, Sons of Silver are Pete Argyropoulos (vocals, guitar), Marc Slutsky (drums), Brina Kabler (keyboards), Kevin Haaland (guitar), and Adam Kury (bass). This band are veteran musicians and include former members of Candlebox (Kury) and Skillet (Haaland). As a lover of guitar-driven, bluesy rock music, Sons of Silver were a welcome addition to this tour. Their latest album is Runaway Emotions, praised for its energy and fun rock riffs.

Occupying the middle slot on the Art of Letting Go tour is Tim Montana. As the name suggests, Montana is from Montana—Butte to be exact. Growing up in a mobile home, Montana had no electricity and learned to play guitar by candlelight. It’s a past Montana refers to during his performance—he clearly comes across as a dude who has worked hard to overcome his underprivileged upbringing and is grateful for his successes. His notable friends include Billy Gibbons himself; the men are past collaborators on a few songs. In Baltimore, Montana blasted the audience with a grungey, southern rock sound pulled mostly from Savage, his latest album. “Devil You Know” and “Savage” were the standouts from his set.

Finally, the main event—Myles Kennedy, my favorite rock vocalist, the one who stands above all others. This tour supports his latest solo album, The Art of Letting Go, released last October.

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We’re thrilled to announce the first DC Record Fair for 2025 lands at DC’s legendary 9:30 Club! 

For this event, we’ll have 30+ record dealers from up and down the East Coast with thousands of records, a stellar DJ line up (TBA!), and mimosa specials throughout the day.

Our thanks to YouTube user Abigail Bender for a recap of October 2022’s DC Record Fair at the Eaton Hotel above.

THE WINTER 2025 DJ LINEUP:
11:00 – 12:00 – DJ Soyo
12:00 – 1:00 – Marc Meistro (Sol Power All Stars)
1:00 – 2:00 – Brendan Canty (The Messthetics/Fugazi)
2:00 – 3:00 – StereoFaith
3:00 – 4:00 – Ryan Pieper
4:00 – 5:00 – Crown Vic (Electric Cowbell Records)

Watch this space and mark your calendars! 
THE DC RECORD FAIR
Sunday, February 23, 2025 at the 9:30 Club, 815 V Street, NW DC
11:00AM–5:00PM.
Early-bird entry: $5. Noon to 5PM: $2
Follow via Facebook.

Washington, DC’s Anthem hosted a packed house Sunday night, welcoming British singer-songwriter David Gray on a cold winter evening. Touring in support of his latest album, Dear Life, Gray has singer-songwriter Sierra Spirit along as support.

Gray and his sizable backing band took the Anthem’s stage in near darkness. The venue’s ambient lighting—including lights around the concession stands and extra stage lighting—were turned off in order eliminate distractions for the artists and create a more intimate setting for the seated audience.

Dear Life is Gray’s thirteenth studio album, having released his very first back in 1993 (A Century Ends). However, it was 1998’s White Ladder (rereleased in 2000) which put Gray on the map. That album featured his now-trademark “folktronic” sound and the hugely successful single “Babylon.”

Sunday’s show featured “Babylon” as the final performance of the night—Gray packed a whopping 23 songs into the set list. Drawing from several albums including A New Day at Midnight and Life in Slow Motion, much of the material came from his breakthrough album White Ladder. Gray also threw in a few covers in to mix things up and get the crowd up and dancing. While they were mostly shrouded in shadows, Gray’s backing band was top shelf—tight and highly skilled, they worked to keep the crowd on its feet.

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