2009.05.15
Asylum Street Spankers at Kirk Avenue Music Hall; Old School Freight Train with Hoots and Hellmouth at Martin's
This one is in honor of John Fred Young, the fine drummer from Black Stone Cherry, which opened the 3 Doors Down show on Wednesday. (The band may have been mediocre, but Young was great.) It's time for some drummer news.
First up, Asylum Street Spankers have a new drummer, bass player, fiddler and mandolinist since I last saw the band. It amazes me that no matter how many times the band lineup changes, the shows are always tight.
After the Spankers show, I went to Martin's, where it turned out the Spankers were hanging post-show. I spoke for a while with drummer Mark Henne, while Hoots and Hellmouth was playing. This four-piece newgrass act stomped a lot of stuff to make a beat, and Henne told me that he had auditioned with H and H, to no avail. After that, he got the Spankers' gig, on which he kills.
At Kirk Avenue, Henne and bassist Morgan Thompson had pulled off a fat piece of solo time, in which Henne used his sticks to play jazzy rudiments on Thompson's strings, while Thompson moved his left hand on the fretboard to make it musical. Spankers' frontman Wammo popped open a bottle of beer for Thompson, who used one hand to guzzle it while dragging his other hand up the bass neck to create a beer-appropriate effect. Easy moves, but great showmanship from the newest ASS guys.
Henne wouldn't be able to do that with H and H, so I think he gets to have more fun on his new gig. That's not to say that Hoots and Hellmouth aren't a fun band to hear. The act is good and tight, and singer Sean Hoots sounds just great.
Later, I met Hoots during the Old School Freight Train set. He told me that OSFT's drummer, Nick Falk, just got a scholarship to the Thelonius Monk Institute of Jazz, in New Orleans. That is one amazing opportunity.
So that creates an opening for the drum slot with Old School Freight Train. If you want it, you'd better be really good!
On a final note this morning, I'm trying to produce the second half of the Wammo podcast, but I'm having a tough time filtering out a high-end whine. Bear with ...
