A week and a half ago, I’d never heard of the bands Wilderado and Sure, Sure. Now I love ’em. All it took was one concert. That’s what I love about seeing up and coming bands in tiny clubs – the joy of discovery and the intimacy of the room can be musical alchemy.

Hat tip to my friend Jeff – he’s the one who put Wilderado on my radar. He knows my musical tastes and figured I would like them, and mentioned their upcoming show. I’d never heard of them at that point, much less heard their music. But thanks to the Interwebs, I was able to listen to quite a few of their songs, and Jeff was correct – they are right in my musical wheelhouse, a bit like Band of Horses mixed with Houndmouth. They absolutely killed it on stage, in front of about 50 people, and seemed genuinely appreciative of the folks who came to the show.

Sure, Sure was the headliner, and they were a bit more like Vampire Weekend spending the weekend at the Talking Heads house. (They even did a Talking Heads cover.) Much like Wilderado, they were fantastic in a live setting.

There’s an apochryphal quote attributed to Hunter S. Thompson:

“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”

He never said or wrote that (he wrote something similar about the TV industry) but the quote is often repeated because the shoe fits. A year from now, both Wilderado and Sure, Sure could be no more, chewed up and spit out by the industry machinery. But we’ll always have that Tuesday night in Covington, Kentucky.

 

(Hat tip to the club’s sound man too. I’ve been to many, many concerts in tiny rooms over the past three decades, and a muddy or overly loud mix is a real buzzkill. This concert’s sound was pristine.)