Category Archives: TVD Washington, DC

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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Long-running rocker Chuck Prophet never lost his capacity for writing engaging tunes or shaking up his style as he does it. For his latest venture, Wake the Dead, he’s wedded his laconic lyric observations with the bright rhythms of cumbia, the Latin American musical style that originated from Colombia. With baselines not so far from reggae and stinging guitar that could be a kin to surf, fueled by a percussion-assisted beat, it’s a thoroughly pleasing, danceable sound to frame his familiar voice.

But with his show at The Hamilton in Washington on a frigid winter night last week, dancing was not possible. The space in front of the bandstand where fans have bopped for previous shows by Prophet and the Mission Express was blocked by gold circle tables extending all the way to the stage. Which may have made it more comfortable for the frankly older crowd on hand. But, like the all-seated duo show with his wife Stephanie Finch at the Kennedy Center last year, it kept the show from reaching quite the celebratory heights his band shows usually hit.

Nonetheless, the rock-cumbia connection bookended the set through some tasty covers—a bilingual blast of Eddie Cochran’s “C’mon Everybody” to open, and a can’t miss closer of Sam the Sham’s “Woolly Bully” as the final encore. The latter best employed the keening electronic organ and raspy vocals of Mario Cortez, amid his myriad percussive instruments.

As on the Wake the Dead album, he and two members of his usual band Mission Express, guitarist James DePrado and drummer Vincente Rodriguez, are augmented by a couple members from the Salinas, Calif., cumbia band ¿Quiensalve?—guitarist and keyboardist Alejandro Gomez and the multiinstrumental Cortez. And with the newly added bassist for the tour Mike Anderson, they’re touring as Chuck Prophet and His Cumbia Shoes.

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The first surprise in Gillian Welch and David Rawlings’ current tour is the stage: bare, with just a couple sets of microphones for guitar and voice, and a table between them for water. Rather than rely on a band or other equipment, they’ve stripped everything down to honest voice and guitar—and their show, which played the Capital One Hall in Tysons Corner, VA Sunday, was all the stronger for it.

Already, Welch’s alluring song craft and plaintive, melodic voice that’s produced a handful of great albums, her harmonies with her partner Rawlings enhance the songs, but they rise to a new dimension when he begins soloing on his trusty 1935 Epiphone Olympic, which has a small wooden body but a big, bright sound.

It approaches the sound of a mandolin when he’s playing fast, but more often he’s taking time to invent strikingly original solos and runs within the confines of songs that may not have come directly from classic string bands but sounds as if they could have.

He’ll shake the guitar as if to wring the right sound out of it, or wag his head when he isn’t shaking his instrument. Almost like magic, he never touched another guitar all night, using the mahogany and pine fronted arch top from beginning to end, playing to a microphone instead of being plugged in and never even stopping to tune very often.

Welch was doing her part with rhythms and more than once pulled out a banjo to some unnecessary acclaim. They concentrated on the songs from their recent album together Woodland, but had more than enough songs from their catalogs, together and apart, to fill two sets and two sets of encores.

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The Fillmore Silver Spring hosted a night of hair metal and laughs as Steel Panther made a stop on their Feel the Steel 15th anniversary tour. It was a fun weeknight gig, and the venue was packed with fans ready to let their hair down and let loose for a night. 

Maryland’s very own Stone Horses are support on this tour. The band kicked off the festivities with an energetic performance showcasing their raw take on classic rock sounds, influenced by giants like Led Zeppelin and Robert Johnson. Led by vocalist John Allen, Stone Horses (with drummer John Heiser, guitarist Teddy Merrill, and bassist Dylan Howes) got the crowd amped with songs like “Reckless Ways,” “Free,” and even a cover of a Black Keys song (“I Got Mine”). The set was a tight thirty minutes but packed a punch for the home state crowd.

For the uninitiated, Steel Panther is a “comedic” glam metal band, hailing from Los Angeles. The band (vocalist Michael Starr, guitarist Satchel, drummer Stix Zadinia, and bassist Spyder) provide their fans with an often hilarious parody of the 1980s glam metal experience. The songs are debauched and profane and defenestrate any idea of political correctness, all in the name of some naughty, tongue in cheek fun. I found myself laughing quite a bit. So did everyone else.

This tour commemorates the 15th anniversary of the release of Steel Panther’s first album, Feel the Steel. That album introduced the world to songs like “Asian Hooker,” “Community Property,” and “Eatin Ain’t Cheatin’,” all of which were in the set Thursday night. You can use your imagination to figure out what those songs are about. Steel Panther look like the prototypical glam metal band, too—with neon, big hair, spandex, a dash of leopard print, and wind machines. It’s a hoot.

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PHOTO: AL PEREIRA | A couple songs into his crackling set at The Birchmere, Marshall Crenshaw stated his purpose. “I’m still flogging the ’40 Years in Show Biz’ thing,” he said, though it’s been 43 years since his first single “Something’s Gonna Happen” and 42 since the self-titled debut album that became a classic. Freed from that round number, though, he traveled throughout his career, over nine different albums.

For the affable Crenshaw, 71, it became something of a parlor game, identifying each song with its year, defying what would seem to be the simplicity in his songs that made them so popular with driving, complex, interlocking rhythms from his talented band.

His guitarist Fernando Perdomo looked like he could play any kind of lead guitar, including metal, but was on point—and seemed to be having a ball—adding his leads to Crenshaw’s melodic tunes. Bassist Derrick Anderson was just as inventive in his approach, while drummer Mark Ortmann, once of The Bottle Rockets, pounded out his own rhythms.

Crenshaw is a decent guitarist himself and the four of them turned out wheels within wheels on highlights like the opening “Fantastic Planet of Love” to “Move Now.” He’d include a couple of things from albums out this century—”Live and Learn” and “Passing Through” from 2009’s Jaggedland.

But if he got too far off track, it was easy to reel fans in with the opening strains of “Whenever You’re on My Mind” early in the set, “Cynical Girl,” and “You’re My Favorite Waste of Time” and the set closing pairing of “Mary Anne.”

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PHOTO: DANNY CLINCH | A 2020 stroke never slowed the creativity of Lucinda Williams. Rather, it could be argued it has ignited her to do more than before, issuing a new album in last year’s Stories from a Rock n Roll Heart, performing a series of live-streamed concerts covering favorite artists that resulted in a half dozen more releases since 2021, writing a memoir in Don’t Tell Anyone the Secrets I Told You, also out last year, and near constant touring since she returned to the stage three years ago.

Her current outing with her solid band brings one of two different shows—a more conventional concert prioritizing Rock n Roll Heart amid her classics, the other a continuation of her more strictly autobiographical Don’t Tell Anyone the Secrets tour.

It was the latter that played the Lincoln Theatre before a hushed, grateful audience experiencing essentially the same as the book-based show she gave at nearby Tyson’s Corner, VA a year ago, that mixes reminiscences with songs, illustrated with home movie type video accompaniment.

In a way, it’s a perfect format for any artist with a long career, telling her story of musical development chronologically through tunes that influenced her before touching on early compositions, career highlights, and a couple of recent tunes that reflect what she’s learned.

With her father a poet and her mother a music major, Williams seemed destined to become a Southern-bred singer-songwriter. To hear her tell it though, a major early musical inspiration was a street blues singer and preacher in Macon she saw when she was five and who she enshrined in the song, “Blind Pearly Brown.”

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Japan’s Babymetal sold out The Anthem in Washington, DC last Friday night, demonstrating once again that the DC area loves to headbang.

From the second The Anthem’s house lights go dark, and Babymetal’s logo is projected onto the nearly bare stage, the room belongs to the three young women. Founded in 2010, Babymetal’s is credited with creating kawaii metal (or “cute metal”), a genre that features a mix of pop-ish vocals and thrash/metal musicianship. Leading on vocals, Su-metal is joined by Moametal and newest member Momometal in intricate and impressive choreography.

The show’s opened with “BABYMETAL DEATH,” from 2014’s Babymetal. Live in 2024, the song serves to introduce the mythology of the band and get the crowd hyped. According to Babymetal lore, “A Long Time Ago in a Heavy Metal Galaxy Far Far Away…” the Fox God (the “spirit of heavy metal”) chose three metal spirits and summoned them to the metalverse. Those three metal spirits marched onto the stage in sync and got the choreography started, backed by the Kami Band. It was like a heavy metal pep rally and the sellout crowd ate it up.

The setlist pulled from across the trio’s four LP discography; based on the enthusiastic crowd reactions, Babymetal know what the fans want to hear and deliver on that. The women appear to barely break a sweat during their hour and change set, which included “Karate,” “PA YA YA,” and “Gimme Chocolate.” The set also included “Time Wave,” from the band’s latest album, The Other One, released in 2023. It’s a concept album based on a journey through alternate realities; Su-metal described the album as an attempt to move beyond old, stereotypical beliefs about Babymetal.

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In 2000, Ian Parton was a documentary film director in Brighton, England, who started putting together musical tracks for his films the way he handled visuals, a collage style that created surprising results. Eventually his interest in the musical creations overtook the movies and he released the tracks, cobbled together from old hip hop tracks, cheerleader chants, instrumental fanfare from myriad old records and a big drum sound.

The resulting 2004 Thunder, Lightning, Strike, credited to The Go! Team, became an unlikely hit when DJs like John Peel began playing it. But when requests came to tour, Parton had to quickly assemble an actual band that could play it live. Twenty years and six albums later, The Go! Team is back on tour with the 20th anniversary celebration of that debut. And while the number of band members has fluctuated over the years, it was down to six members (and steady reliance on backing tapes) to replicate it when they played the final US stop at the Black Cat.

Nkechi Ka Egenamba, who calls herself Ninja, has been the group’s frontwoman almost since the beginning (but after the recording of Thunder, Lightning, Strike) and served as ringmaster and lead chanter—there isn’t a lot of singing involved. In the delightfully diverse aggregation, half women and half men, Jaleesa Gemerts played the big main drum kit, an important sound augmented by a second drumset occupied by anyone not playing anything else at the moment.

The newest female member was Kate Walker, who seemed delighted to be there (“I’m a fan myself!”) and played a suspicious trumpet that seemed to double its sound on some tracks, and could be played with any apparent fingering on others. She also sang the tremulous vocal on the ditty “Hold Yr Terror Close,” handled on the record by an uncredited Robin Pridy.

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Black Metal pioneer King Diamond stopped by the Fillmore Silver Spring Monday night (10/28), a stop on the Saint Lucifer’s Hospital 1920 tour. The production featured a stage set that just barely fit into the confines of the Fillmore. It was fitting for the spooky and over the top shows King Diamond is known for and just what the Washington, DC suburbs needed the week of Halloween.

This tour nailed the selections of support acts. Kicking off the night was Night Demon (vocalist/bassist Jarvis Leatherby, guitarist Armand John Anthony, and drummer Brian Wilson). Formed in 2011, and hailing from Ventura, California, the trio represents a resurgence in old school heavy metal. The men got the crowd amped up early in the night with riff heavy songs and a skilled performance that made me very glad I got to the venue early. The 30-minute setlist borrowed from across the band’s discography, and included a few selections from their latest release, concept album Outsider.

This band is fantastic, especially for those of us who like an old school, no fuss, no muss sound to our metal. Given how much Night Demon apparently tours, I’m kicking myself for not knowing about them until now. Better late than never. If you’re curious about this band, 2017’s Darkness Remains is a good place to start—it features a fun cover of the Queen classic “We Will Rock You.” Or just start from banger Outsider and work your way backward. Can you tell I’m a fan now?

In the metal world, it is commonly known that thrash metal originated in San Francisco back in the 1980’s (Metallica being among the most well-known of those early bands). The East Coast made its own contributions to the early days of thrash. One of those bands was New Jersey’s own Overkill. Lucky for all of us, Overkill is still around in 2024, and occupied the middle slot on the night’s bill, continuing the tour’s theme of old school metal.

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Nick Lowe has been starting his current tour with one of his oldest songs. “So It Goes” was his first solo single after his stint in Brinsley Schwarz, it starts with a thrumming guitar fanfare before slipping into easy-going verses about a garrulous Thin Lizzy guitarist, a peacekeeping force, a tired US rep, and a missed opportunity. All are tied together with the title refrain, maybe borrowed from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, so it goes.

Sounding as fresh and vibrant as it did in 1976, it helped set the tone for Lowe’s pleasing show with Los Straitjackets at the Atlantis in DC, the second of a two-night sellout. But the song also made a natural bridge to the disarmingly clean and simple throwbacks to rock ’n’ roll that are part of his newest album on Yep Roc, Indoor Safari.

Teaming with the Nashville-based instrumentalists in their Mexican wrestling masks might have seemed an odd mix when they first teamed up but by now their matching proclivities toward a kind of rock purity, where a well honed lyric meets the perfect twang, makes them natural collaborators on a sound that not only maintains the classic underpinning of rock ’n’ roll but sounds as natural and immediate as anything today.

There may have been a time when Lowe may have settled into a kind of modern day crooner offering delicate downbeat ballads that showed off his late life tones. But the Straitjackets seem to have bolstered and lifted his rocking tendencies so that now, when he introduces one of his still-beautiful ballads, like “You Inspire Me” from his 1998 Dig My Mood to “House for Sale,” from his 2011 The Old Magic, he almost apologizes for slowing the pace.

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Billy Bragg wrapped up his five week North American tour Sunday in familiar surroundings —the 9:30 Club in Washington, where he was quick to joke he was starting at 9.

He had just played a more intimate show Saturday at the Atlantis next door the night before, but a big crowd still was on hand to hear a career’s worth of ringing songs as cutting as his slashing solo electric guitar chords. He had a few things to say about the political situation as well, of course, especially about the imminent election. But he also had some hard-learned lessons from his 40th anniversary tour of the States, some of which he stated, and others of which he demonstrated.

Looking sharp in neatly cut grey hair and beard, and a shirt-like jacket, the purchase of which he went into great detail, Bragg took care to tune between every song as he continued his banter. Because every performance these days is duly shot by fans on smartphone video and shared online, he explained, musicians dare not turn out a sloppy performance, lest it live forever in some corner of the internet.

This may be unexpected in a rocker who rose up in punk, raising his voice and single guitar since the start, but it made for a nicely honed performance which swelled beyond its setlist to last nearly three hours. The extended set was filled with favorites from early in his career—with “Greetings to the New Brunette,” a big singalong to “New England,” and the poignant sting of “Levi Stubbs’ Tears” in a year that claimed the last of the Four Tops.

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