Some of my fellow American Aquarium fans were out of town last night or were otherwise tied up — and they sure missed a great show. There were a couple of guys there who even drove all the way from Auburn for the gig.
Fresh off a swing through Europe, the Raleigh-based band ripped through a great set that included some of their tried and true songs like “Katharine Belle”, “I Hope He Breaks Your Heart”, and “I Ain’t Going to the Bar Tonight”, but also included some songs off their upcoming album, “Burn.Flicker.Die.” recorded with Jason Isbell in Muscle Shoals after a successful Kickstarter campaign.
The set included the title track (which I’ll probably mistakenly call “Redheads and Adderall” routinely), “Cape Fear River”, and — brace yourself — “Savannah Almost Killed Me”.
I’m expecting “Savannah Almost Killed Me” to become one of the defining songs of a certain segment of the local scene.
B.J. Barham is the frontman — and he was the only one in consistently good light all night. So there are lots of pictures of B.J. here, but I could watch the guy sing all night. His expressions are amazing, and I love how he steps back from the mic before attacking it again.
B.J. didn’t tell as many stories as usual, which made for a tighter night of rock and roll if a slightly less spontaneous edge than at some of their shows. In the photos below, you can see Ryan Johnson on guitar, Whit Wright on pedal steel (once again sitting in near darkness!), Bill Corbin on bass, and Kevin McClain on drums.
When I got downtown, there was a spectacular sunset in progress. And then I met a friend with a group of vacationing women at The Sparetime; they had a weirdly large number of beverages-in-progress on their table.
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