CRITICALLY BITTER - Augie, Neko Case and Eric Bachmann

Sometimes things just work out well. This last weekend, the Wife and I were in Burlington, VT to visit some friends. A couple of weeks ago I saw that one of my all-time favourite musicians, Eric Bachmann, would be playing in Burlington opening for Neko Case (one of the Wife's favourites) on Sunday night. Needless to say we decided to extend the journey one more night.

The venue (Higher Ground) was great. They had lots of local Vermont beers to try (Molson rating system stolen from Beernada): Fat Angel - 2.23 Molsons, Rock Art Bock Lager - 3.4 Molsons, Switchback - 3.67 Molsons.

Eric Bachmann was wonderful as always. His solo one man with classic guitar shows are growing on me, though I still prefer him with a full rock band. Neko Case was excellent and her backing band recreated her recorded songs almost perfectly. Actually they may have been a little too accurate, as the songs were seldom noticeably different from their album versions, and I like a little variation. But who I am I to judge, the crowd clearly loved it, and her new songs sounded great. Plus, that voice. However, the highlight of the show for me was definitely Augie -Augie is the dog of Neko's female vocal accompaniment, Kelly Hogan. Kelly brought Augie on stage and put her dog bed right in front of me. About 1/3rd of the way through the show, the dog waddled over so she was laying right in front of me. I tried really hard to resist petting her, but unfortunately I couldn't stop myself. Augie seemed quite pleased, and I continued to rub her belly on and off throughout the show. At one point, I woke Augie up and the Wife was not happy with me.

I must have been to well over 300 rock concerts in my life, and I have never seen a dog onstage with the performers. That I happened to be the person that was standing right in front of Augie made it all the more rockin'.

Here's a live performance of Eric Bachmann's from WNYC -

During the interview section, there's a good story about how failing to score with a woman in Spain led to the Wife's favourite live song, Man 'O War.

Poster at top by Judge.