Gonna show I’m not effing around this time and get this train a rollin’. First let me talk about this show a bit, see I was at this show…I actually recorded this. Yes, this is my first attempt at being a “taper” (don’t think they make quotation marks big enough) so please bear with me, I’m still a little rusty at this (and I have no idea what that brief weird ass shaking noise at the beginning is).
Now, American Aquarium were a band I wasn’t overly familiar with but I knew them and I knew they were good. They were a band that on more than one occasion I found myself looking at my player when one of their songs would come up on shuffle. So I decided to drive up to Roanoke for this weeknight show, which I wouldn’t normally do, having to work for a living and all, but luckily it was also a relatively early show with a showtime starting at 7pm. This was part of Roanoke’s unfortunately named but wonderful Down By Downtown festival and took place at the crown jewel of the Star City’s music venues, Kirk Avenue Music Hall.
Kirk Avenue is by far the finest music venue in the greater Roanoke valley, yes better than Jefferson Center (it’s more intimate). The sound is always great, the crowd is always great, and they do a damn good job of pulling in great artists night after night.
So back to this show, these guys blew me away. Fantastic band, and lead singer B.J. Barnham is quite the songwriter and frontman. He writes in truth, as a matter of fact about midway through the set I was thinking to myself, “damn…some girl must have really shit on this guy.” Later in the show, while introducing the song “I Hope He Breaks Your Heart”, we find out it was a former fiance named Teresa Nicole Plank. You can probably guess where that relationship went, but I think we should all thank Teresa for providing the inspiration for such an amazing song as Tennessee (track 4).
The band is getting ready to release a brand new album in August and it’s produced by a guy you may have heard of named Jason Isbell. That should give these guys a pretty good bump, and if the new songs they played this night (including a kickin’ cover of Abe Lincoln) are any indication, they may not even need it.
If you want to get an idea of what this show was like, I urge you to watch the video below. Where lead singer B. J. Barnham goes on a nice little rant about Levon Helm’s death, Toby Keith, shitty country music, the dangers of cocaine, and the joys of adderall before playing Road To Nowhere. Just beautiful.
Click the cover image to download the audio. American Aquarium are currently on tour in the southeast so be sure to catch them.
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Oh, one more thing…I uploaded this to Mediafire, which is not my preference but there is no better option right now. Just make sure you click on the big Download button in the middle of the screen under the filename and not the stupid spammy one in the upper right. Enter the captcha and go, hopefully not too annoying.
