Calliope Musicals - Mohawk - 05.16.15

In general terms, the point of this blog for me is to have fun writing and thinking about something other than the normal work stuff.  Listening to new music and forming my thoughts about them, or reminiscing about the great music of the past, or figuring out why I like what I like, it has all been a fun exercise.  But this weekend, I got the first tangible perk of the blog, when one of the band members from the band Calliope Musicals read my ACL preview on them and invited me to come and see their show in Austin.  Pretty exciting - someone other than my close friends and wife actually read something I wrote down!  So I had to take them up on the offer.

I had never been in the Mohawk's small room, but it was a great little intimate room for music.  When the show started, there were just over 50 people in the place (not counting the musicians and sound guy). More people wandered in over time, but it stayed a pretty intimate show.


The best word I can use to describe the show was fun. They fired up with a lot of energy, weirdness, and pretty great music. When they rocked, they truly kicked in with some great riffs and nice groove.  As I noted previously, they feature the xylophone pretty prominently, with about a third of the stage taken up with a big ol' xylophone (which may not even be the technical term for what was being used, but alphabet books for children have warped me into thinking that only x-ray and xylophone exist when discussing "x" words).  You can see it in those pics above, over to the left.  But during the live show, that instrument pretty well blends into the music and sounds just right.  Not all that different from a keyboard in any other band.  In addition, they've got two guitarists, a bassist, a great drummer, and then the lead singer who just crushes it. Rocking a cape, either asking for hugs or twirling around like an animal, she just looks like she couldn't be having any more fun as she bounces around and conducts the party.  She sound-checked with a slice of classic Janis Joplin, and the comparison in voices was just right.

In addition to the good music, they obviously think about fun things they can do to make the experience. They fired up a confetti cannon at one point, threw out a huge beach ball and inflatable alien for people to bounce around, and handed out pieces of Shiner boxes for people to wave around. At one point in the show, they handed out candles (like you would get at the Christmas Eve service in church), the lead singer stepped down into the crowd and sat down on the floor. Most other folks in the room took a candle and sat down too, and then sang along with the next tune.  It was highly unusual, but it seemed so genuinely real that it wasn't offputting.
 
I was a little bit unsure about what the hell I was doing - wandering by myself up to the bouncer guy and telling him that I was "on the list," but it actually worked!  And then to have the show be a fun treat left me feeling pretty excited about the band and about keeping the blog going.  I may never see another perk from doing all of this, but Saturday night felt like a pretty good score. Many thanks to Chris and the rest of the band - I hope that the ACL show brings many more converts into the fold!