I’ve already made three other posts with pics of my ramblings on Independence Day: 4th of July: Hairy Chest Fest at Taco Abajo, Savannah celebrates the 4th . . ., and Savannah Dance Festival 4th of July flash mob on River Street.
About 6:30 on the evening of the 4th, I joined a couple of friends at the bar at B. Matthew’s Eatery at the corner of Habersham and Bay. We had a couple of drinks, split a filling appetizer, and listened for a couple of hours to Velvet Caravan, an eclectic local ensemble with some great musicians.
Click here for the Velvet Caravan Facebook page and here for the page at New Arts Ensembles. The usual lineup is Sasha Strunjas on guitar, Eric Dunn on bass, Jared Hall on piano and accordion, and Ricardo Ochoa on violin. Sasha was out of town Wednesday, so there was an excellent fill in guitarist whose name escapes me. And an out-of-town visitor whom Ricardo met randomly a couple of days earlier also played violin and sang for a long time. Ricardo referred to him several times as “a cultural tourist”, which elicited laughter from me if not many others in the audience. (There’s a lot of talk in certain circles about “cultural tourists”.)
As the night came on and folks began leaving for the fireworks, the quartet played for a teenage girl’s birthday. She seemed utterly delighted.
I recommend Velvet Caravan very highly — they play B. Matthew’s regularly and hit other venues like Huc-A-Poos, Foxy Loxy, and The Sparetime.
Later, we ended up at Molly MacPherson’s on Congress Street for The Train Wrecks — the primary gig of Velvet Caravan’s Eric Dunn. As usual, The Train Wrecks were awesome. And, as happens far too often, there was no light on the band at all. I’ll append one photo to the end of the gallery here so that you can tell — maybe — that I was really there.
