This afternoon the Nasty family travels to the neighboring state of Indiana. I'm going to see the Punch Brothers perform at Hatfield Hall at Rose-Hulman tonight, and then on Saturday we'll head over to Indy to enjoy that city's Children's Museum and then take in Toy Story on Ice at Conseco Fieldhouse.
I featured the Punch Brothers on a Music Friday in late September of '08, so by now they have a second album out titled Antifogmatic.
They're a bluegrass outfit with sometimes a decidedly chamber music feel to them as you might notice from "Sometimes." But they also go the traditional route with songs like "Rye Whiskey," as seen on Letterman.
To Terre Haute and beyond...
4 comments:
So how was the live music experience? (I won't ask about Toy Story on Ice. We all know that Mr. Potato Head rocks.)
It was outstanding. Hatfield is nice venue, which makes sense because of Rose-Hulman's professional focus.
They played a solid mix of tunes from their first two albums and actually parts of two movements from their four-movement "Blind Leaving the Blind" opus (altogether the movements run 40-some minutes).
They mixed in some traditional bluegrass along with covering "Paperback Writer" (which I didn't find all that great, but it was hit with the crowd) and Josh Ritter's "Another New World," which was stunning.
The crowd in my section for the most part was pretty sedate though the band got people going from time to time. The Punch Brothers played as part of a concert series associated with the college, so I'm pretty confident that many people in the audience hadn't heard much or any of the band's music before that night. They might have made some converts.
And I had third-row seats since I ordered tickets pretty early.
Btw, the band's name comes from a Twain story "Punch, Brothers, Punch," and Thile and the banjo player (who went to U of Illinois) are both Cubs fans. Those facts are helping their cause with me.
Also, Thile related a humorous anecdote before they played "New Chance Blues," which is a song that originally didn't make it onto the second album.
Later on, they decided to put five more songs available for download on Antifogmatic via Amazon, and "New Chance Blues" is the song that got them nominated for a Grammy.
It's a funny story, but that kind of stuff has to drive artists crazy.
I knew there was something catchy about these guys, but hadn't realized that part of it was the band's name. I remember reading that story in high school--or was it junior high? Either way, it's apparently pretty memorable.
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