marah, once again.

ok so everyone knows i love this band, right? good.

went to see them, same place as last time, only this time i took my sister. she had never actually seen them before, except for one of those in-store performances, which are just a watered down version of what they're really like live. she loved it. she actually kinda used to hate that song of theirs, "point breeze," but after hearing it live, she's like "that song was AWESOME." neat, huh?

i also wanted to talk about their opening acts real quick. i didn't mention that last time, justin townes earle (yeah, that's steve earle's son) opened. he is freaking cool, people. awesome songwriter. you can tell he's related but it's not like he's only someone because of his dad, you know? he actually has the talent to back up the name. gotta love that. this time, it was cary hudson. again: AMAZING SONGWRITER. his voice and his guitar and everything was so smooooth and he plays harmonica, which i kinda have a weakness for. i talked to him a little bit afterwards and he was super cool and nice and funny. in fact, he let me trade my band's cd for one of his. how many musicians actually let you barter with them??

anyway, this show did not disappoint, although there were more lineup changes since the last time i saw them. new bassist who also plays trumpet, which was pretty freaking cool. i'm not gonna go into that whole mess too much though, because i don't have a lot of nice things to say about the reason the whole band quit in the first place. but to be quite frank, to me, marah was always about the bielanko brothers, and now that serge has put it behind him, it's really just dave. yeah, the musicians are generally great and fit the marah sound, but still. it's dave's band.

new marah music news: they're putting the new album out on cassette and vinyl. not on cd. that kinda made me all warm and fuzzy inside. only the cassette was available at the show i was at so i had to get that, but i CANNOT wait for the vinyl. i really like the sound of the new stuff. some of it is lacking the...i don't know...balls, for lack of a better word...that is typical of marah music. but it still has a great sound and i'm really digging it. i hope everyone else enjoys it as well.