Pub After Dark: Rocky Votolato

After having a great time at the Daphne Loves Derby concert at Porter's Pub earlier this month, my roommates and I were very excited about the last concert of the "Pub After Dark" series for Fall quarter, with Rocky Votolato headlining on November 29th. We had no idea who he, or the two opening bands, were beforehand, but since the concert was FREE, we figured we had nothing to lose by going out to hear them perform at the Pub on a Thursday night.

We got to the stage door at 7:25 pm, about five minutes before the doors were supposed to open, and much to our surprise, there was no line whatsoever and the doors were wide open. After glancing at our IDs, the security guards at the door directed us the patio in the back to wait for the show to begin.

The patio was half-empty when we arrived, so we grabbed a few chairs and parked ourselves within view of the stage area, where the bands were doing a bit of last-minute rehearsing. From what I could hear out on the patio, the band rehearsing sounded pretty good, so I looked forward to hearing their set for the night.

We chatted a bit out on the patio before heading into the staging area and claiming front and center spots for the show. Even though we were in the same building where we had seen Daphne Loves Derby, Josh Damigo, and 5Star Fallout perform just weeks ago, the atmosphere for this show couldn't have been more different; the crowd was much sparser and much more subdued - there was even enough room to sit cross-legged on the floor of the staging area in between sets.

The first openers, The Midwinters, began playing promptly at 8 pm:




The Midwinters was the band I had heard rehearsing out on the patio, and while I thought they sounded pretty good from a distance, their performance on stage was pretty disappointing. Something must have been wrong with the sound system because the drums were extremely loud and drowned out the rest of the band on stage.

All of their songs sounded very similar and the band members were not very engaging, so I found myself spacing out about a minute into each of their songs.

The lead singer wore really baggy jeans and that kind of bothered me; it's a silly personal preference, but I like my rockers in tighter pants. (There were plenty of tight-jeaned guys in my vicinity of the audience though, so it was not a completely disappointing night.)

The guitarist on the left played hunched-over, in a turtle-like position while staring at the chords on his guitar the entire night; he looked just like a turtle that was very hesitant of sticking his head out of the safety and security of his shell. Because he constantly stared at his guitar as he played, it seemed like he was not very comfortable with the instrument in his hands.

The guitarist on the right also stared at the chords on his guitar during a majority of their time on stage, but instead of standing like an shy turtle, he had an expressionless stone-face throughout the entire set. The fact that he was wearing a gray shirt that kind of blended in with the curtains in the background made him all the more stone-like in appearance.

The second opener was a duo called Chris and Thomas:




Thomas is the one of the left and Chris is the one on the right. Creative name, no?

Immediately upon taking their places on stage, they both admitted that they may have had a pint or two too many at the bar in the Pub and that they were a bit tipsy. Throughout their entire set, they lamented the fact that they were not allowed to bring alcohol onto stage with them and that all they had as replacements were "little water bottles" that they scoffed. They were a pretty funny duo. While they were both much better at connecting with the audience than the first opening band was able to, their music just wasn't my cup of tea.

Just as I was thinking to myself that they sounded too "folksy" and "country," for my liking, Chris whipped out his banjo and I burst out laughing:



Thomas ended the set by playing his guitar horizontally, which made for an interesting sound:



A few minutes after Chris and Thomas packed up their many instruments, the concert coordinator introduced Rocky and he made his way slowly onto the stage. By the time Rocky took to the stage, the crowd had grown considerably larger, though it was still nothing compared to the packed-like-sardines madness at the Daphne Loves Derby Concert.




Rocky had a pretty nice voice, but I wasn't digging his sound too much either; it was a little too mellow and folksy for me.



There were quite a few Rocky fans in the audience who sang along with him and shouted requests at him in between songs.




Maybe it was because I hadn't had my full daily requisite of caffeine before the concert that night, but the three overly mellow musical acts left me feeling pretty drowsy by the time Rocky was half-way through his set for the night. Something a little more energetic and upbeat would have been nice.




While Rocky's overall performance did not blow me away, his harmonica-playing was pretty damn impressive. A few songs into his set, he reached down to grab one of the weird metal contraptions sitting at the edge of the stage and put it around his neck; it turned out that a harmonica was attached to the end of it!

Every time he reached down to pick up one of the two metal-and-harmonica-contraptions on the floor of the stage, I would grin with glee and I swear he looked my way and smiled at my grinning face a few times that night.

Basically, Rocky + Harmonica = AWESOME!!

At the Daphne Loves Derby concert, I overheard a guy standing near me in the line at the stage door express his shock at the seemingly never-ending line around the Pub because "there's never a line for these Pub concerts," and after going out for the Rocky concert, I understood exactly what he meant.

Although my experience at this Pub After Dark concert was very different from the two mind-blowingly AMAZING concerts I attended earlier this month, I was glad to have had the opportunity to go out and check out some new musicians whom I may not have known much about otherwise.