Well, I pride myself on observation, and what I observed at IOTA Friday night at Last Train Home's new CD release was that when your front man/band leader does not work a full-time job, the audience gets a much better show for it. Or maybe it was just all the pomp and circumstance of it being a CD release that kept them on the straight and narrow. Or maybe that the Maker's rounds were held to only 2 on Friday (Soooo, not the case on Saturday.) Kudos to all band members for for making it there through the traffic snarls. Funny thing, if traffic (therefore Metrobus) had not been snarled I probably would have been in G-town at Lady Brain Space Mind Meld, and not at the Friday show. You should go see "Mind Meld" anyway, FYI there's lots of Rockin' DC Lady in it that hold there own in the music scene so go support their work!

On Friday, after a few warm up songs LTH went and played the new CD straight through. In talking to a regular LTH junkie on Saturday he was amazed and thought it was a ballsy thing to do. "Like super confident" were his exact words. Hmmm, I'm not sure what I think about that statement. For a band that doesn't religiously play to a fixed set list, playing this "CD set" didn't bother me. We all know the material. And ever the gents, they mixed it up on Saturday as there were so many repeater audience members.

Beyond that neither show was so structured that on both nites, Chris Watling's accordion couldn't all of a sudden appear, for the first time ever (to my knowledge) on the LTH stage. F-I-N-A-L-L-Y! Man, I have been waiting for a loooooooong time for the accordion to get on the LTH stage. I hope it keeps up.

There's all kind of accordion potential for Eric's songs and arranging. So often in the arranging you've got a sad depressing melodramatic lyric paired with a driving rock & roll rhythm (List of Sorrows, Walls of Time, It Doesn't Matter) or a song you thought was happy go lucky lovey dovey (Angelina or So Long Baby Goodbye), played to pensive, haunting, dirge melody. Perhaps, it's the penchant for this emotional flip-flop that makes me think accordion. You people may disagree, but I think it's a very emotional instrument. It breathes and it's breathy sound can be excited, steamy, exasperated or lonely sounding like no other. This was really one of the super musical highlights for me at both shows. It's a like a scientific theorem, accordion inertia.

On Saturday, though the Makers flowed and there was some flailing, there were two major mentionable moments. One when Alan Brace sang Bob Dylan's "Song for Woody" and really nailed it vocally. Clear, clear, crystal clear. I could hear every syllable of every word (and every word spoken was felt, might I add). Second, three words: "Walls of Time". I love this song and I have for a long time. I love Last Train Home's arrangement, I recognized it the first second I heard it, though the band says Mr. Monroe may be spinning in his grave and the press has agreed it's rockin makes it unrecognizable from the original, I say "pshaw." Well there's always a little sax and trumpet repartee goin' on in the horn section between Chris and Kevin on this song. Well, towards the end of the song on Saturday, holly schmolly, I do not know what got into the two of them, but mother mary it sounded good. I wish I knew more about both their influences right now. They both know soooooooo much music and they rip from everyone in sooooo many genres. The best I can do for you at the moment is describe it in non-music terms. It was as if I was transported to a strange time and place where beatnik horn players duel. The horns played over and through the din of guitars, those string things were demoted to wallflowers and after two plus hours of standing in a crush of like 100 people, I felt like I was living in a Thomas Pynchon novel all of a sudden. Everything else would seem anti-climactic from then on.

And naturally, the most appropriate of anti-climax would occur. The fan known as TEX would redeemed himself in my eyes, with a crazy freestyle lyric to the tune of 'Take This Job & Shove It' during the encore which ended up being a little trib to Johnny Paycheck. It would seem the LTH 'guitar platoon' can unendingly fudge any music written in the past twenty years for their fans if they ask loud enough. Then in a category all it's own, a 'Big Fish' o-gram closed the night. If only you could buy a bottle a Maker's anywhere by whipping out this cheery ditty, the world would be a better place.