Butch

I went and saw Butch Walker over at the Paradise a couple of nights ago. Now my initial annoyance at not being able to find a place to park or eat beacuse Snow Patrol was playing right next door and the entire area was a mob scene was mollified by:

1) The nice Korean meal I had for dinner. Apparently Snow Patrol fans and Korean don't mix, as this place was largely empty.

2) The excellence of a Butch Walker show.

Never mind the first two bands. Rocket was terrible, and the other band was decent but forgettable, as evidinced by the fact that I can't remember their name.

I've seen Walker now a half-dozen times, twice at the Paradise, twice at Axis, once at the House of Blues (R.I.P.) and once in Atlanta. If you count the fact that I saw his previous band once also at Axis, then I've seen him seven times. And he always brings it. It's consistently one of the best shows I've seen (in a "smaller club show" not a "massive concert production" sort of way.) Dude is a natural frontman, with a very good grasp of how to work a crowd. It helps that his fan base does seem pretty devoted, I'm sure. Top that with some great tunes, and it's always money well spent.

I found myself reminiscing as he played "Joan", a sad little piece about reading the letters of a woman that killed herself. It's from the album "Letters", which came out two eyars ago when I was down south for a week. The day it came out was the day I was leaving South Carolina to head up to Nashville. Figuring, "what the hell?", I stopped by one of the local WalMarts on my way to the highway to see if they had it, so I could listen to it while driving. They didn't; no surprise there, really.

So when I pull into Nashville some 8 hours later (I would have gotten there more quickly if not for being pulled over just outside of Atlanta, and the resultant stict speed limit driving that ensued) and got myself checked in to the hotel room, the first thing I did was grab the phone book and look for the nearest record store. I found a Tower not too far away, so I headed over and picked up a copy. I then proceeded to drive aimlessly around Nashville listening to it. "Joan" reminded me of this because it was a song I was particularly struck by upon first listen. But the point of thsi story is something different.

You never really love music as much as you do when you're in your teens to early twenties. I believe that. It doesn't have the impact it does at that age. In fact there have been studies that show that many people's musical tastes stop developing around their mid-twenties, and what they've liked up until that point is largely what they'll continue to like. I've noticed the same in myself. Not that stagnating tastes, but the fact that although I still love music, it's not nearly as powerful as it used to be. Compare it to a relationship. It's hotter and more passionate at the beginning, and tends to mellow as it goes along. But I get excited that I can still sometimes get excited for an album to the point that the only reason I'm driving aimlessly around a new city as in my car as soon as I get there is so that I can listen to it.

Other note: Also at the show Wednesday, Walker played a song I'll call "State Line". I don't know the actual name of it because it's a hidden track on the "Letters" CD and doesn't have one listed. I missed it when I was first listening to the album, but caught it later when I was driving out of Nashville and heading back down to Atlanta (oddly enough to go to the Walker show I saw there). I remember it coming on as I was getting close to the border of Tennessee and Georgia, in a particularly scenic area that has some small "mountains" that you wind between, as well as a nice river, leading into what looks like the equivalent of a mill town. It's not important, just a nice memory of a pretty area.