The Chicago-based rock band Filligar has been around since 2000 and has over 63,000 fans on Facebook, but I’ll confess to never hearing of them before this year’s Savannah Stopover.
And I’m sure glad I checked them out last Friday afternoon on the patio at B&D Burgers. It’s an open, airy spot, but the band’s big sound and energetic live show easily took over the space — and took over the street too.
The ever-changing mix of vocals, guitar, keys, bass and drums speaks to the band’s long time playing together — Casey Gibson and brothers Johnny, Teddy and Pete Mathias formed the band in 2000, when they were still kids.
I caught the last couple songs of Filligar’s set on Saturday night at the Congress Street Social Club. As good as they were outside during the day, the band is even better on a cramped stage at night with the audience just inches away.
I sure hope Filligar will be coming back to Savannah on their next trip down South.
A fun 2012 piece in the Chicago Tribune gives a sense of Filligar’s life on the road:
Filligar — Teddy, Pete and Johnny, brothers from Chicago, and Casey, a childhood friend who spent his teen years in Madison, Wis. — will open for Alabama Shakes Wednesday at Metro, in a pre-Lollapalooza show that sold out almost instantly. They spent much of late spring and early summer as openers on a Counting Crows tour, playing the biggest arenas of their musical lives.
Before driving to the East Coast last week to play a beer festival in New Hampshire and headline a show Friday at New York City’s Gramercy Theatre, the band members, none older than 25, spent time in the studio, polishing their next album, the fifth since 2006 and a continuation of the bluesy, guitar-and-keys-driven sound that has seen them tagged at rock revivalists.
Here’s a Filligar sampler:
Click here for the latest album The Nerve on iTunes.
I took a few photos.
