SHIT AND STUFF- Dawes, Dave Rawlings Machine & Vivian Girls

So we at Y.R.M really, really wanted to avoid being the-girl-with-the-digital-camera-at-shows, mostly because it brought us back to our humble roots as hurt fourteen year olds who had to leave shows early because our parents didn't want us loitering in the tenderloin past 11 and honked as they dropped us off, watching us join the older, cooler people waiting in line (with that said, though, we really really like looking at the photos other people have taken at shows, and concert photography in general ala Autumn DeWilde, Lauren Dukoff, etc etc etc..)ANYWAYS.

Last friday, Sat 2/6 we saw Dawes & Jason Boesel & some other dude who looked a lot like Simone Felice but with chest tattoos and a penchant for singing songs about girls named after Southern States ( not our schtick but a good musician nonetheless) at the Rickshaw Stop. Beforehand we had the great honor of watching Dawes eat thai food at the cute little restaurant around the corner as we were denied public restroom rights, and proceeded to drink mini bottles of champagne around the corner in a native garden, aptly facing a seedy dark alley and friendly homeless folks.

At the show: Jason Boesel repped his city. What more can we say? Also, we have noticed that no one has yet to make the Jeff Goldblum comparison, so can we observe this for a sec?

J.B. Slayin' it

J.G circa 76 in that supershort scene in

Annie Hall

We were pretty impressed by his singing/gutiar-ing, what with him just having drummer man on his resume. With Dawes as his backing band, he played a good handful- but its a shame that he was the opening opening act, because he weren't really ready for him to stop playing. It was especially cool hearing 'I Got the Reason #1,' because we've watched the progression of that song being tossed around on various Mystic Valley Tours over the past year or so. Plus he & Hannah had pretty much matching shoes on, which is always a plus.

At one point during Dawes' act, a comment was made along the lines of "I mean, don't get me wrong, I love Hotel California..."which summed it up, we think. A little Creendence-y and lots of super funny facial expressions from them raging hard. We had to leave early, which was a bit of a bummer, but in our humble opinion Boesel was what made the $12 worth it.

On the way to the Vivian Girls show at Bottom of the Hill on Tuesday, we stopped at Amoeba to see Dave Rawlings (with Gillian Welch & some of the dudes from OCMS) for the free in store. Holy shit. HOLY SHIT. It just kind of hurt a littttle bit more that the Big Surprise tour (Gillian Welch, Old Crow Medicine Show, Justin Townes Earle, Dave Rawlings, and the Felice Bros, duh) didn't grace the presence of the West Coast when they did that magic couple-week tour in August. It was INSANITY. We were especially into the song he co-wrote with Ryan Adams, 'To be Young (Is to Be Sad, Is to Be High)' and their overall harmonizing/instrument SLAYING. Again, we didn't take any pictures, but check out how lovely Ms.Welch is:

Vivian Girls: Some punk band consisting of 40-somethings opened, and they were super drunk and super funny, and when we went on their myspace there was a bunch of pictures of babies with fake sleeves sharpied on them, which we're into.

BEST COAST played second. B.C consists of Bethany Cosentino who used to be in Pocahaunted and likes getting stoned and watching Seinfeld (according to our extensive reasearch) accompanied by some chiller with long hair named Bob Bruno (who sometimes plays with Imaad Wasif, who we like a lot) they had this whole dreamy reverb-y thing going that we really liked. It was sort of My Bloody Valentine-y but you can tell that she is down with Pet Sounds. AND, their shirts were cool.

Vivian Girls: You can tell they are really smart and sweet and nerdy in real life. They were super good live, and basically, they really made us want to go to a hardcore punk show (none of this Hot Topic bullshit) and get tattoos of kitchen utensils, just like them.