TVD Live: The Heavy at the 9:30 Club, 6/9

PHOTOS: RICHIE DOWNS | It’s not easy being an opener on a big arena tour—the act nobody came to see, playing a fraction of your set to a half-empty barn as people ignore you or try to find their seats. But it may be compounded when you play a driving funk and rock sound—and the headliners are country.

True, everybody knows the UK band The Heavy even if they don’t think they know them since their 2009 song “How Do You Like Me Now?” has been licensed in countless movies, TV shows, and commercials. Even the President has used it.

But the group still may be an adjustment for fans of the Dixie Chicks, who they are supporting on six dates of their big tour. So when the Heavy had a night off from that tour as they did Thursday, allowing them to headline their own show as they did at the 9:30 Club in Washington, their joy was obvious. They could play their full set, before their own crowd, and revel in a popularity they may have questioned at the Dixie Chicks show.

Here was a crowd that loved the band, knew their songs, and would sing along or otherwise participate every time they were asked. Dynamic frontman Kelvin Swaby could hardly believe it.

This crowd even knew the songs from their latest album, Hurt & the Merciless, released in April. When Swaby declared D.C. his new favorite place to play, it wasn’t just the kind of fib entertainers often tell on the road—it sounded like he meant it. The Heavy officially is a four piece from industrial Bath, England—Swaby as well as guitarist Dan Taylor, hard-hitting drummer Chris Ellul, and bassist Spencer Page who affects a look of a ’60s mod.

In D.C., they were joined by three others, an extra guitarist, a backup singer, and a keyboardist, who handled most of the horn-like tones in lieu of a live horn section that would have really enhanced the sound.

The sound, as the big hit implies, is a savvy mix of revved-up old school soul with the added muscle of a rock band crunch. Not only are there plenty of hooks and memorable choruses involved, Swaby was forever instructing fans on its various crowd participation duties, down to the obligatory howls in “Big Bad Wolf.” But this was a crowd that lustily sang along on their favorite songs including “Curse Me Good” and “What Makes a Good Man?” in the encore.

The Heavy performs at 930 Club in Washington, DC on June 9, 2016 (Photos by Richie Downs).

Speaking of hand instruction, this was the first club show I’d seen where a hearing interpreter, under her own spotlight, signed the lyrics and stage banter from the side of the stage. I’ve always found American Sign Language an effective and sometimes moving way of physically representing expression, becoming at times its own kind of dance. It seems like a good, inclusive addition to rock show stagecraft (though I’d still rather have the horn section).

This was some kind of strange early bird show with no opener and music that started at 8:30 p.m.—did they have to allow time to get back to the big arena tour? At any rate, they were starting to say goodnight before 9:30—the time when you think shows would start at the 9:30 Club (but is not always true).

But nobody leaves a show by The Heavy early. Everyone’s waiting for that universal hit, the one whose funky intro begins with the line of classic James Brown—“Now there was a time” and is built entirely on the funky riff of Dyke and the Blazers’ forgotten 45, “Let a Woman be a Woman, Let a Man be a Man” but which set itself apart with its insistent chorus.

And so “How You Like Me Now?” ended the encores on a high point, likely giving the band as much of a lift as they return to their arena tour, as it did the audience.