Pike and Sutton

One Liner: Local-ish founders of Sister 7 doing blues rock

Wikipedia Genre: No Wikipedia, but blues rock and jam band?
Home: Austin (or maybe Dallas?)

Poster Position: 18

Weekend Two Only.

Thoughts:  Totally thought this was going to be some sort of Americana thing in the vein of Wood and Wire or Penny and Sparrow or Cliffs and Caves or Mumford and Sons or Iron and Wine or Beard and Bourbon or Guns and Roses or Angels and Airwaves or whatever.  I only made one of those up, and yes, I strayed some from the Americana label, but whatever.

Instead, this is Patrice Pike with some other guy whose last name is Sutton.  I've seen Pike a few times - the first time was at the Executive Surf Club in Corpus like 15 years ago, and I loved the show.  Thought she was great, bought one of her discs at the merch table, and promptly forgot about her entirely.  I've seen her a few other times at events here in Austin, and she's got a great, soulful voice.  They have no Spotify bio or Wikipedia page, but the cover of their one album available on Spotify says that they were the "Founders of Sister 7 and Little Sister."  So, let's dig into that.

This flyer on their website says that the Sutton guy's first name is Wayne, and that they spent a decade touring with iconic jam bands like The Allman Brothers, Dave Matthews Band, Blues Traveler, and Widespread Panic.  I'd like to note that they reverse the order of those bands, as though anyone on the planet would be more impressed with Widespread than the Allmans.  Is that real?  Do such humans exist?  

The flyer goes on to explain that Sister 7 and Little Sister was actually the same band, and they claim that it was a "seminal jam band."  Huh.  I am no jam band knower by any means, I love some of that stuff and absolutely detest other parts of it, but I can't recall ever hearing either band name, so I'm not sure how "seminal" we can call them.  Let's see if Wikipedia's jam band article mentions them as either "strongly influencing later developments" or "relating to or denoting semen."  "Sister" is never mentioned on the whole Jam Band page, so I'm guessing that is a no.  Oh, but there is also a "List of Jam Bands" article on Wikipedia, let's check that out.  Nope - Sister Hazel is listed (which, wut?) but neither of the Sister bands.  And I see no mention of semen on those pages either.

Anyway, this is not that possibly-jam-band-thing.  This is the two of them doing some bluesy rock and roll stuff.  None of their songs has more than 3,000 streams, so maybe this is going to be their big break?  I think I like "This The Trip" the best out of these tunes, but that appears to be a Sister 7 tune.  Let's give you the one that appears to be the Pike & Sutton original, "Hands Up."  2,731 streams (with about 12 of those being mine today).  Nevermind, as I can't find any music videos, just samplers of them doing live stuff.  So here is a 3 song sampler that has been viewed 74 times.

Oh, wait, here is "Hands Up."

I mean, yeah, its a nice little blues groove and her voice is, as usual, a powerful instrument ruling over it all.  The groove has kind of a Zeppelin feel to it - at first it felt plodding to me, but the more I just let myself settle down into the tempo of it, the more I feel like it is good and right.

Based off of what I hear here so far, I don't know that I'd go out of my way to find their show in the Fall, but at the same time, they've got the guitar and vocal chops to make something pretty cool.  Honestly curious why they've made up this new name instead of just continuing with their "seminal" band name from before...