Crooked Still

One Sunday in May we took the Kingdom to Ennis to see Crooked Still at the sparkly 'new' theatre there. Glór. It's a funny place, not least because you can't take your drink into the auditorium. The stage is wide and the seats are not far away but the back of the room, the depth of it is not as wide as the stage if you get my meaning. There's a good sound system so the sound can be good if it's handled right. It was that night.

There should be a couple of footnotes here. The band had just got off the plane and spent the afternoon renegotiating a van that was the right size for their gear. They did if I remember rightly have some spare time though coz their was talk of Brittany Haas swimming in Kilkee (or was it Spanish Point?) I start to realise my memory is a little hazy here coz it was clearly said that she swam in May without a wetsuit. In the Atlantic. No mean feat.

There's a saying in Kilkee which seemed logical at the time:
April and May - stay out of the Sea
June and July - swim til ye die


My memory is a little hazy due to the second footnote about Saturday being such a beautiful night, all balmy, still and full of friends, that I could not sleep at the party I went to (and didn't get home til way after dawn). All day I was receiving important messages from my liver such as **WARNING! YOU HAVE BEEN POISONED. PLEASE DO NOT MAKE ANY SUDDEN MOVEMENTS - WE ARE ATTEMPTING TO MINIMISE THE DAMAGE** so I wasn't on tiptop form when I got to the theatre. Painkillers (the good ones my friend K has for her migraines) were sneered at by my internal repair team. I nursed my bottle of water through the first set. And took a medicinal Whiskey during the interval. That was well received.

So what of the gig? All I can say was it was good enough to go and see them again a few days later in Galway, in a small room with maybe 120 people, and with the band wedged in between the tables. Great. The Irish water (whiskey?) has done it's work and they are looser and freer and having fun.
Here they are doing a Bill Monroe Instrumental, "Road To Columbus" with some funny chat about Tattoos and Piercings. Led by their new fiddler, Brittany Haas. Actually the chat was led by Aoife O'Donavon during the introductions for the new members, Brittany, and Tristran Clarridge, but Brittany led the tune. (I like the way her myspace categories say "Acoustic/Folk/Psychobilly" btw)


It was a great gig and the new CD, Still Crooked, is still on high rotation here two months later.

A couple of tracks from that too.

Undone In Sorrow
Tell Her To Come Back Home

here's a great review of the new album, Still Crooked, over at Cover Lay Down

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And next up is banjo player, Greg Liszt's project the Deadly Gentlemen, about which you hear a tantalising snippet of introduction at the end of the live track.