Friday, December 11, 2009

The Duke and the King at the Bowery Ballroom Dec 9




The Greenshoelace Flickr Page


Notes from Sean at Frankiesgun.com;



Willy had a nice opening set of 10 to 12 songs, and knows how to hold the audience's attention while alone on stage. Nice mellow set that included some chatting with the audience. It was a pretty nice crowd, no problems I could see the whole night.

Once Willy finished up we got to see The Duke and the King do what they do best. Play from the heart and make everything just feel so natural. There was a small bit of technical difficulties when starting the first song. Simone's guitar was plugged in but it didn't seem to be working. They switched it up and the show quickly got under way. I'll have some videos up of this set, as well as a ton of photos soon. Pretty normal setlist that they've been known to play. I was sad because they didn't play "This Place We Call a Home" but we did get a bunch of the classics. Songs included were Union Street, Don't Wake the Scarecrow, The Devil is Real, If you Ever Get Famous, Morning that I get to Hell, Helpless, One More American Song among others. They played Suzanne which I was glad to see.......I love it when Chicken steps up to the mic to take over. The band looked very happy on stage and seemed to be having an amazing time.

Finally, the headlining act came out.....AA Bondy, Macey Taylor (bass) and Ben Lester (drums, slide guitar) took to the stage. I was told by the security not to take any more videos but I snuck a few in that will get uploaded to Youtube. Bondy was amazing in his ability to go from heavy feedback-filled swampy jamming to soft, melodic finger picking. His between-song banter was hilarious as always. Before the song "Oh The Vampire" Bondy began saying "Fuck Twilight.....that stuff is bullshit. I wrote this song before all that Twilight, True Blood bullshit. Here's a song called Oh the Frankenstein". We also got to hear him talk about how he has a funny job and that he's glad for it. One of my favorite talking points was "Fuck Scrappy Do. I never like Scrappy Do, Scooby was way better. Sometimes when I'm watching it i'll say Oh sweet Scooby Do is on.....then I can tell by the animation that he'll be there and then I see Scrappy and say ahhh shit." He also mentioned liking Scooby's cousin Scooby Don't.

Stage banter aside....the show was awesome. Bondy performed the hell out of tunes from both of his albums, as well as beautiful covers of My Funny Valentine and I'm So Lonesome I could Cry where Bondy was on stage alone for some intimate music that was dedicated to different people. I'll update this thread when I get photos and videos up on the site and youtube. Just an awesome night all around.