Though they only played for about thirty minutes, American Gun surpassed my already pretty large expectations. For those of you who haven't heard of American Gun, they are a local band from Columbia, who one reviewer described as reminiscent of the Drive-By Truckers and Slobberbone. I had fell in love with their debut album Dark Southern Hearts a while back and was anxious to see the band in action.
Unfortunately Donald Merckle, acoustic guitarist and as lead guitarist Jeff Crews put it "the other guy that can sing" was missing due to recent back surgery. Nevertheless the show was awesome and full of energy as they whipped through some of my favorite songs from their debut, including "Heart Locket", "Picture", "The Fall", "Tears", as well as covers of "Ring Of Fire" and the traditional folk tune "Wayfaring Stranger" (though it was hardly a traditional take on the tune). Singer-guitarist Todd Mathis was excellent through out, but I was floored by lead guitarist Jeff Crews, who was blistering through out the whole set (they told the crowd late in the set that he usually played keyboards too, but due to Donald's absence was filling in on back-up vocals and had left the keyboard at home). Drummer Andrew Hoose seemed to have a smile on his face the whole show, he and bassist Kevin Kimbrell provided an impressively, aggressive bed rock for the frantic guitar attack of Mathis and Crews.
As a bonus (due to the rather dismal turnout for the Sunday night show), I got to meet and talk to most of the band with the exception of drummer Andrew Hoose. They were all excited about the work they are doing on the new album, but slightly reticent due to Merckle's condition and absence from the sessions. On a more upbeat notice, I also talked to the other opener Otis Gibbs.
Gibbs was certainly a character. He gave frequent anecdotes and stories between each song and was often funny and had success engaging with the rather small crowd. He played a cool solo acoustic show with really cool songs that were kind of....I wanna say Dylan meets Willie Nelson meets Billy Bragg....but that doesn't really get it at all. He's got some country sounding songs, some topical stuff, and some funny songs. He was kind enough to offer me a copy of his latest CD, One Day Out Whispers, to play on WUSC.
The Bottle Rockets came on next and despite being the headliners, they had the muddiest sound mix. Brian Henneman is certainly a terrific guitarist, but his vocals were not helped by the less than stellar mix. Unfortunately my girlfriend had a massive headache at this point, so after a couple songs of foot tapping we made an early departure. I would guess that the sound improved after a couple songs. Henneman will always be one of my heroes for his relationship with Uncle Tupelo and his lead guitar work on Wilco's first record A.M.
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