Michael Tolcher, Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers, and The Pat McGee Band
A few weeks ago, I finally got the opportunity to see one of my favorite bands live. You see… I got into [tag]The Pat McGee Band [/tag]several years ago when I first heard “Rebecca” on KFOG here in San Francisco. I’m a sucker for great [tag]harmonies[/tag], intelligent lyrics, and any song where before it’s over I can sing along to the chorus. That’s right, I’m a Pop Junkie(tm). I make no apologies.
Anyway.
After being quite enchanted with the album, Shine, I was quite excited to discover they were going to play a show at Slim’s on September 11, 2001.
So my first thought on that day wasn’t, ‘gee this is awful, those poor people.’ It was, ‘damn, I just know they’re canceling the show tonight.’ [of course I immediately thereafter felt the weight of the events of those days as it related to other people.]
I’m not saying it was the most PC, socially-conscious, or even compassionate thing to think, but as we all know, it IS all about me.
So I waited patiently for PMB to come back to San Francisco… anxiously scanning the fan-site emails for new tour dates, and kicking myself for not living in Nashville anymore.
So fast forward FIVE, yes, count them FIVE long years of downloading live versions of anything I could find from PMB and waiting for them to come back to the left coast.
In the meantime, I picked up many many many cd’s, including one by [tag]Michael Tolcher[/tag] that I love. His voice is amazing, pitch perfect… and while I believe this album is a bit overproduced, and would have been much more powerful with a couple of solo acoustic songs, it is nonetheless wonderful. I caught a live performance of Michael’s last year when he opened for [tag]Everclear[/tag] (who hold the distinction of being only the 2nd band I’ve ever walked out of a show before it was over… before it was even really begun, actually…) MT is great live.
I had purchased the [tag]Stephen Kellogg[/tag] and the Sixers album, and it was buried in my iPod. I knew that a couple of songs stood out and I actually remember thinking that they sounded a bit like PMB, but really I hadn’t given them much thought.
But then.
FINALLY, an announcement that PMB was coming to San Francisco, and they were bringing Stephen Kellogg with them. Great… I immediately got tickets.
A week before the show, I got an email from the Michael Tolcher website, saying he would be opening the show. No. Way. Great news!
Let me just say, despite the fact that PMB brought half his band, this was probably the best live music event I’d ever attended. Michael performed solo acoustic (!) and really showed off his guitar abilities and again, his PERFECT FUCKING PITCH. I got the opportunity to talk to him after his set, he put a new song (which is quite good) on my iPod. I relayed to him my disbelief that his record company hasn’t done more to promote him. He completely agreed with me.
Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers are a m a z i n g live. There was so much on stage chemistry and energy that it couldn’t help but boil over into the audience and infect the entire room. I love small venues like The Independent. At one point the band jumped off stage and played an acoustic version of “See You Later, See You Soon” in the middle of the audience. Their show included many cover song segues, an unusual inclusion of random movie quotes during songs, and a bass player who danced in his underwear.
And of course Pat McGee was just as good as I had hoped. I wish the whole band had come along, as the lack of a bass player made some songs that should have had more drive fell slightly short of expectations, but above all their musicianship was evident and provided a different arrangement of songs that I had by now become quite familiar with. They did a fine mix of older songs from Shine, as well as newer songs from Save Me.
Oh yeah, and they ended the show with “Rebecca,” with Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers helping out. Fantastic. And it wasn’t just the six manhattans talking.
