As I lurked the LES, waiting for the line in front of Rockwood to thin, (nope I don't wait in lines) I bumped into Shinobi Ninja's attorney/connector to everyone in the music biz, Elliot Resnik. "Damn this business is small," I thought to myself as I traded a few cards, then went inside to wait for my friend.
There was a much older crowd in the room of about 70, I instantly felt like an outlier as I entered and therefor felt compelled to order a Dry Manhattan on the rocks, b/c 1. I just started bartending school and 2. I felt like being an ass. I'd never ordered one before, but now seemed like a great time to start.
The Show Began.
My initial feelings were of disappointment, that I was going to have to sit through entire set of music, before Jay Nash was to star. These feeling were immediately shattered; Garrison has an amazing voice. "At first site I didn't expect to be such a great singer, don't judge a book by cover," Ebone said to me within 3 minutes of sitting down, she seemed to agree with me head on.
Joking w/ the crowd as she played a solo on the piano, she was eager to grab her "money maker." And I call it her money maker, because to the astonishment of many in the crowd, she has just finished her 7th studio record, and I have yet to heard of her until tonight. Now suited up with an acoustic guitar while Jay Nash tuned his awesomely, gnarly electric, lets do it! It did start out a bit slow, but quickly picks up the pace.
Rockwood is a weird venue for many reasons, first everyone is forced to sit at tables, which entirely goes against my main rule at music events. And especially once she started to lift the energy in the room, people would have surely started to dance, and the energy would have been contagious.
With a quick switch to an electric guitar, it looks like now it's time to really rock. The entire show I had been trying to pin down the singer she most reminded me of, and finally it hit me. She was like a fusion Sarah Mclaughlin and Sheryl Crow, she had a "country twang" to her music, hailing from a suburb of Memphis in Mississippi surely attributed to that.
I was completely satisfied with her show, ready to leave and almost forgot there was another set by Nash immediately to follow. They traded guitars and suddenly we were all at a Jay Nash concert
I feel they should have started w Jays set first, it was a bit slow after the jump start Garrison gave the room.
Not to my surprise he finally picked it up! A similar set to Starrs, with the same band, he took us on a folk rock adventure. To my dismay, I had to leave early. An overall great night of music.