Austinist Giveaway: Josh Rouse at the Cactus Cafe Tonight
We spent the evening last night at the intimate Cactus Café enjoying the stylings of Strays Don't Sleep and Josh Rouse. The songwriters were right at home in the cramped quarters, and the audience - as always at the Cactus - lapped up every last drop. Some a little more over-enthusiastically than others.
Strays Don't Sleep is a new project with a few old faces. Songwriters Matthew Ryan (Pennsylvania) and Nelson Hubbard (Nashville) have combined their disparate styles to create a unique sound that blends well Ryan's whispery growl and Hubbard's angelic falsetto. The band's hybrid sounds left us at times reaching for comparisons - part alt country, part Paul Westerberg, part Blue Nile, part Simply Red - but their sonic landscape created an original sound integrating synth and loops (from guitarist Brian Bequette) and pulsating with the beat of rhythm section Billy Mercer (bass) and Steve Latanation (drums), all accentuated by soulful brooding, lyrics. The band's debut album comes out June 13th (and will include a DVD that has movies on it as companion pieces to the music) and they seemed excited to get the album out to the masses, even if they could not seem to coax a free meal out of Maudie's.
After a short break Josh Rouse took the stage to a thunderous applause (and yelping). We understand the enthusiasm of devotees of certain artists, especially the emotional response one gets from being in such close proximity to an artist for whom they care greatly, but we had the misfortune of having one of Rouse's biggest fans sitting in our right eardrum, singing loudly along with each tune and screaming like a banshee in between each verse and following each song. But her fanaticism was a testament to the power of Rouse's intimate playing style and poetically disarming lyrics. Rouse opened his set by playing a few songs solo, featuring some new tunes that incorporated an unmistakable Latin flavor that could be attributed to his past 18 months spent living in Spain. After warming up the crowd, Rouse brought Bequette, Latanation and Hubbard from Strays up to play as his backing band for much of the gig. Rouse's regular backing band had returned to Nashville to play as part of a rock opera, or Opry, as Latanation pointed out, and the boys from Strays filled in without missing a beat.
Rouse played a wonderful 90-minute set, mixing in some old with some new and even taking a request, though the persistent requester in question had butchered the name of the song. The whole evening took on the feel of a group of friends sitting around a camp fire or living room while their adorable little friend with the guitar (according to our smitten companion) sat around and kept all entertained with his rhythmic picking, jazzy phrasing and affable personality. If someone could have just glued the keg tap to the lips of the backwards-ball cap-wearing frat doofuses at the back of the room who screamed, "Yea, Rouse!!!!......Go Josh!!!" in between every single song and often times during the songs, the night would have been perfect. So it goes. Overly-smitten girls and overly-fueled frat boys tend to gravitate towards said music, but that shouldn't keep you away.
In fact, we're giving away two spots on the list to go see Josh Rouse and Strays Don't Sleep tonight at the Cactus Café. The show is sold-out, so this may be your only chance to get tickets. Enter your information in the spaces provided below and you are officially in the running. But, please, if you win, try to control your pre-teen hormones at the show. Everyone will be able to appreciate the music that much more.
And a note to those of you would-be song-requesters that won't shut up until an artist plays your favorite tune, unless a band has made a living playing set list-free shows (see: Grateful Dead) or specifically asks for requests (see: Nada Surf at SXSW day show this year) they probably already know which tunes they are going to play. And in what order they will play them. Let these folks do their jobs without having to deal with, what amounts to, your heckling. They don't come down to where you work and slap the dick out of your mouth.