A Weekend of Music in Ballard
This weekend Seattlest ventured out into the wilderness to spend both nights in Ballard. This rarely occurs, but we're willing to make the arduous journey if we know the music's going to be worth it.
Friday night was Dan Bern at the Tractor. We've seen Dan perform approximately nine million times, and he's always good and full of charming stage banter, especially when there's politics to discuss. So Dan did his best nasally Bob Dylan impression and celebrated the ouster of the G.O.P., with accompaniment by Paul Coon on the "cellocaster," a fairly awesome instrument that could be played as either guitar or violin. While Dan's set leaned heavily on his new album Breathe, we also got to hear a bunch of our old favorites, like "Tiger Woods," "Marilyn," "Jerusalem" [mp3], "God Said No" [mp3], and "Chelsea Hotel" [mp3]. We never leave a Dan Bern show disappointed.
The same could not be said for Ladyhawk at the Sunset on Saturday night. We could easily make the claim that Ladyhawk is the best Canadian Southern rock band ever, but that's not saying much---especially since after seeing them live for the first time, we'd rather stick with hearing them in album form. Some of it is purely superficial on our part: these dudes are not attractive. Unattractive is unimportant when the performance is riveting, but as that was not the case, we were left having to watch a Cousin It guitarist engage in more headbanging than we've seen since the mid-90s. Porn-mustachioed percussionist Ryan Peters was easily the best thing in the band, with his dynamic drumming and sweet harmony vocals. Meanwhile lead singer Duffy Driediger had a whole lotta beard-sweat goin' on, along with a voice not entirely up to the task at hand. He had problems hitting all the not-even-that-high notes, and there were a couple times where his attempts to do so made us cringe.
Of course Ladyhawk did close out the set with the two best songs off their self-titled debut ("My Old Jacknife" [YouTube] and "Dugout" [mp3]) back-to-back, so we suppose we really can't complain.
Dan Bern photo care of Flickr / user colin_brumelle.
