So I’m a Holly Golightly super fan, yes, anything I write about the shows will be hugely biased. I have been listening to her since college. It’s one of my longest runs of listening to a musician’s work.
If you haven’t heard of Holly, I think her career really kicked off when Billy Childish assembled the all-girl version of his band “The Headcoats” and dubbed them “Thee Headcoatees”. Throughout the years she’s worked with Billy Childish, Rocket From the Crypt (“Eye on You”), the Greenhornes, Dan Melchior, and The White Stripes (#14) among others. After the Headcoatees she went solo, put together a band, and put out a good sized catalog, then changed her line up again, whittling the band down to just her and the bassist, Lawyer Dave. Dave’s singing, playing the lead guitar and drums these days, so I guess it’s a bit of Holly on guitar with a one man band filling out the sound? Though that down plays his role too much…
Holly’s sound has gone from 1960′s/garage rock revival to 1920s/30s blues revival and has settled comfortably somewhere between the two.. Brittish Blue Eyed (though I’m pretty sure she’s a brown-eyed girl) Blues Rock I guess? Sometimes she tours with another act, and sometimes she leaves it to the clubs to book the supporting acts. It was on one of her tours that I first heard of Tom Heinl one of the funniest musicians out there today. I’ve come to trust that the opener is going to be awesome, this trip, I learned there’s a caveat to that rule: if she does the WHOLE tour with the same act – it’s going to be awesome (she’d hate that I’m using that word – if you saw her at Iota, you’d know why… nyah!) if she leaves it to the venue to hire an opening act – it’s going to be hit or miss.
The two sets where just totally different, from top to bottom and pretty telling of the clubs.
At Iota, her opening act was Malcolm Holcombe (myspace), he played a solo acoustic set that blew me away. Deep dark voice, jangling bluesy country guitar. Between the way he rocked around in his chair and his bizarre banter I began to question what I was seeing, but within a song or so I realized, the rocking around was him really working his instruments, his voice, the guitar, even the thumping of the chair. The banter, well, let’s just chalk that up to a quirky sense of humor. I couldn’t just jump on an album off the bat because I loved the sound and style of the set and was worried an album would disappoint – be over produced, have too many instruments crowding him out, etc. So to the smart phone/emusic I go! Checked him out between sets, saved his albums to my “Save for later lists” and have downloaded a bunch of tracks in the last couple of days.
I’m really glad I got that separation and didn’t run right home and listen to the albums. They are a little more produced and less raw, but it certainly wasn’t anything heavy handed like I feared.
I wish the friends I saw her with in Baltimore had made it to this show too as they would’ve loved Malcolm. And I hope he plays in the DC area again soon – from his banter and the crowd reaction I get the feeling that it’s been YEARS. not years, but YEARS since the last time.
Holly Golightly & the Brokeoff’s played a quiet set. The Iota put out two or three rows of chairs in front of the stage, which just added to the intimate feel of the show. Holly and Lawyer Dave joked back and forth with eachother about drinking, the pace of the set, getting “kicked out” of Salt Lake City (a couple of their songs may not please the religious among us) and their relationship. The crowd was medium sized, someone in it would jump in on their banter every now and then, it was a great small show/party feel. The last time they played the Iota, the Washington Post did a write up about it and there was a huge crowd, therein we learn the power of the WAPO…
Fast forward two days to the Ottobar.
We got there for the second band, I think there were two opening acts, but driving up to Baltimore on a week night and catching the opener without leaving work early OR managing not to get lost (sheesh) is tricky. After about 3 chords, I could tell the Ottobar picked this opener based on Holly’s past with Thee Headcoatees or just the dart/list of bands on a wall system and not on her more recent music. It may not even have been a great match for the Headcoatees days. Yeah, so, it was 2 for Tuesday at the upstairs bar, that’s where we headed to get a drink, and weren’t informed that we couldn’t come back down with said drinks until it was too late – therefore, we missed that set completely.
We came downstairs just before Holly & Lawyer Dave took the stage and I told my friends, who I didn’t realize were there only on my word that this would be a great show – that I had a feeling I’d need to be close to the front. Next thing I knew, that’s where I was. Basically second row in another small/medium crowd.
This show was totally different, no chairs, just dancing room, the ottobar’s room is probably twice the size of the iota, and as they’re musicians, they play to the size of the room. Iota – intimate, quiet, near acoustic. Ottobar – loud, rocky blues. The energy in the crowd was much more alive, and our favorite banter chimer-inner came out too! haha I thought I recognized him, but when he shouted out to Holly from the crowd it was instant “OH YEAAAAh!” I heard him loudly tell the woman he was with, who was dancing up a STORM something along the lines of “This is SO MUCH BETTER than the Iota show!” but, being an Evergreen Grad, my humble little college where you learn to view things as “not so much better, just different”, I have to say – it’s not that it was better, it was just different. HAHAHA.
I’m glad I went to both shows – I did miss Alejandro Escovedo at the 9:30 on sunday, but I would’ve missed out on finding Malcolm Holcombe if I’d skipped the Iota show.
The boil down is this:
At the Iota the line up was a tighter match. It was a smaller more low-key show, more intimate feeling, and hey, the cafe has yummy food – it’s dinner theater, but… for concerts!
At the Ottobar it was a louder, more energetic show but the opener wasn’t a solid match for the headliner. Personally, I felt like the supporting act at that show was a mismatch, but then again, I only heard like, a chorus from their set, as I told a classmate in college “If you’d done the reading, you’d understand what it had to do with the class” *cough*NERD*cough*. Maybe if I could’ve seen more of their set, I’d understand why it was a good pairing for Holly’s current line up.
PS. The photos are all from Iota – my phone bricked out the night of the Ottobar show… booo.





























