Frank Turner is touring North America in support of his tenth album, Undefeated, along with a killer lineup of musicians featuring Amigo the Devil, Bridge City Sinners, and Micah Schnabel & Vanessa Jean Speckman.
One might question the wisdom of hosting a 4-band show starting at 6:30PM on a Monday night, but when Frank Turner is personally curating the lineup you make it a point to get there early. Indeed, by the time opener Micah Schabel took the stage there were a surprising number of folks already filling the general admission floor and they kept arriving in a steady flow in as Vanessa Jean Speckman joined him.
While oriented around singer/songwriters, the lineup was admittedly eclectic. How so? Look no further than satanic folk punkers Bridge City Sinners. No stranger to San Francisco’s Regency Ballroom, the Portland quintet got the crowd moving and singing along to their entire set including a few tunes from their upcoming release as well as an unnamed and unreleased song before which Libby Lux implored the crowd not to film.
With the crew making quick work of the stage, Amigo the Devil was already on the stage by 8PM and launched right into “Small Stone.” It was clear from the get-go that San Francisco loves AtD and that the feeling was mutual. The entire set turned into a massive sing-along with the crowd hanging on every word, from new tunes “My Body Is a Dive Bar” and “Crying at The Orgy,” the latter of which appeared to have been slipped into the set at the last minute as his time ran out. For a while there it was easy to forget that Amigo was not the headliner!