Category Archives: TVD Washington, DC

Music fans in the Washington, DC area are always up for a good metal show. That’s what they got Friday night (4/4), when Swedish metalcore outfit Imminence stormed the Fillmore Silver Spring on the band’s Return of the Black tour. The trés international lineup on this tour includes France’s Landmvrks and Japan’s Jiluka.

It was pandemonium right out of the gate when Jiluka hit the stage at 7:30 PM. I’ll admit to being a bit unprepared for the energy from both the band and the already large crowd, despite being given a heads up from both security and a fellow photographer that things would be wild. The foursome took the stage to massive enthusiasm from the crowd and wasted no time serving up its self-proclaimed brand of electro-gothic metal. The band is led by Riko; her death metal vocals were the dark gothic icing on the band’s death metal cake.

While drummer Zyean pounded away at the back of the stage, Riko, along with guitarist Sena and bassist Boogie, towered over the Fillmore crowd on risers situated at the front of the stage while lit garishly. Jiluka’s music is dark, heavy, and brutal, a perfect accompaniment to the raging crowd surfing on the Fillmore’s floor. Jiluka smashed their way through five tracks, which included their newest release “Kvlt.”

Batting second on the tour is Landmvrks (pronounced “Landmarks”). This metalcore band (Florent Salfati, Rudy Purkart, Kevin D’Agostino, Nicholas Exposito, and Paul Cordebard) hail from Marseille, France, and is promoting their upcoming album, The Darkest Place I’ve Ever Been, set for release late this month.

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The cheers went up when Mike Watt loped on stage with his bass and his cane, en route to his chair. The beloved bassist from the Minutemen, Firehose, and endless collaborations, at 67 is a punk rock mainstay and hero, who despite the chronic knee problems that require the cane, still lays it down with verve and force, as he showed with the experimental power trio mssv, at the Pearl Street Warehouse in DC Friday.

The improvisatory outfit is led by bespectacled Knoxville guitarist Mike Baggetta, who first managed to convince Watt and no less than rock drummer Jim Keltner—who worked with Ry Cooder, most of the solo Beatles and was drummer for Traveling Wilburys—to join him for his solo album Wall of Flowers in 2019.

It worked so well, they wanted to tour but because of Keltner’s other studio commitments, he was replaced on the road, and on subsequent group recordings by Stephen Hodges, an accomplished drummer in his own right, who had worked with Watt on his album Contemplating The Engine Room in 1997, and had played on several records behind Tom Waits, Mavis Staples, John Hammond and others.

To open the Pearl Street show, Hodges joined in the spirit of experimentation by dragging chains across his drum kit, adding to the string improvisations conjured up by Baggetta and Watt. It was one of several spots on the setlist that began with space for improv before they settled into any structures of a song. And even then, the tunes took some wild swings in dynamics.

For all the hit-and-miss variations, Baggetta restarted their second song of the set after a false turn. “It’s our first gig in DC,” he explained. He wanted to get it right. Maybe because that song seemed perfect for the nation’s capital: “Hypocrite.”

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Patterson Hood has written hundreds of songs in his life, the best of which he’s performed with his band Drive-By Truckers for nearly three decades.

His latest batch were largely biographical musings, covering his coming of age period in Alabama. Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams, his fourth solo outing, was eventually played in its entirety during the first of two sold out shows Saturday at The Atlantis, the cozy 9:30 Club anteroom in DC.

That it was “hours until” his 61st birthday Monday only seemed to further stoke his giddy nostalgia at his past, telling stories of being raised by grandparents and a great uncle in lieu of his teenage parents, all the parties he used to sneak into, the neighbors and adults he looked up to, the curve of the rural roads, and the general magic of childhood and the promises of adolescence. That he told the essence of his fondly-remembered stories before doing the songs kind of robbed the tunes of any surprise, but the thematic continuity of the show made it feel whole.

Hood sat for the entirety of the 19-song set, mostly playing a vintage Harmony acoustic that in its diminutive size made him look even bigger than he was. As on the album, he wasn’t strictly solo, but surrounded himself with able musicians.

Eschewing by large measure the rocking electric guitar crunch of his primary band, he relied instead on the buzzing drone of synth, a bit of mellotron, some sax and woodwinds, from the four piece touring band he called the Sensurrounders—two of whom were from Drive-By Truckers.

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Michael Shannon is mostly known as actor; one whose intense presence makes for memorable roles in films like Man of Steel and The Iceman. As it turns out, he’s also a musician and R.E.M. superfan. A singer who, along with pal Jason Narducy, takes a love for the original “college rock” band on the road. There, they’re joined by other fans hungry for live performances of early R.E.M work.

After a successful run of sold out shows last year when the pair honored R.E.M.’s debut album Murmur, Michael Shannon, Jason Narducy and Friends are back at it, celebrating the 40th anniversary of R.E.M.’s 1985 album, Fables of the Reconstruction. Tuesday night, the men hit Washington, DC’s famed 9:30 Club for a gig filled to the rafters.

On the road, Shannon and Narducy are joined by “friends”: Wilco’s John Stirratt on bass, drumming powerhouse (and one of my very favorite Instagram follows) Jon Wurster, guitarist Dag Juhlin, and keyboardist Vijay Tellis-Nayak.

The show on this tour is divided into two sets: the first set is the entire Fables album. The band had no problem delivering fantastic performances of Fables tracks such as “Feeling Gravity’s Pull,” “Driver 8,” and “Can’t Get There from Here.” After “Wendell Gee,” the band wrapped up the first set with a cover of the Velvet Underground’s “Femme Fatale.”

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The Faroe Islands are a tiny archipelago located halfway between Norway and Iceland and is a part of the Kingdom of Denmark. The capital city, Tóshavn, receives the fewest recorded hours of sunshine of any city in the world. Known for its rugged, isolated terrain and subpolar climate, it’s from this environment that musician and vocalist Eivør Pálsdóttir, who performs professionally simply as Eivør, comes to us. Sunday night Eivør wrapped up her North American tour in the Washington, DC suburbs, performing to an enraptured crowd.

Norwegian multi-instrumentalist Kathrine Shepard, who performs professionally as Sylvaine, served as support on this tour. Sylvaine is the first woman to receive a Norwegian Grammy nomination for Best Metal Album. At the Fillmore, her music was less “metal” and more electrified Nordic folk (a term I just made up). Others have compared the sound to something from Middle Earth. It’s an apt comparison.

Sylvaine is ethereal and her voice is beautiful. Performing without a backing band, and sometimes without even an instrument, her set was a compact five songs. However, she captivated the (seated) crowd like a headliner would. The last song, “Eg Er Framand” so affected the Fillmore crowd that they were brought to their feet in a standing ovation. It brought her to tears as she waved goodnight. Sylvaine’s latest album is Eg Er Framand.

It’s been great to see Eivør’s fanbase in the DC area grow. She first performed at the Fillmore in 2022, during her very first US tour. Like Sunday night, it was a seated show. But while the crowd in 2022 was on the smaller side, Sunday night was a sellout.

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PHOTOS: RICHIE DOWNS | Last year the DC Record Fair celebrated its 15th anniversary. Initially spawned as an ad hoc event at DC’s now-defunct Civilian Arts Gallery, to our surprise it’s grown to be a venerable DC institution. Gathering steam, the fair has subsequently been hosted by the Warehouse Next Door (RIP), Comet Ping Pong (folks, there’s no basement), the Black Cat, Artisphere, the Fillmore Silver Spring, Penn Social, and the Eaton DC hotel. And yet, another DC institution had proven elusive.

This changed on Sunday in a big way. The DC Record Fair finally made it to the legendary 9:30 Club where a line looped around the block long before the doors swung open. And frankly, the biggest buzz came not from the crowd and vinyl vendors alone, but it swept in a refreshed community spirit that until now had been typified by the Black Cat event right after “Snowmageddon” in 2010 when the club literally had to be dug out of the snow to invite people inside.

We’d like to extend sincere gratitude to the 9:30 Club and its team for opening its doors to us, and for the warm welcome and unyielding support we received. And our thanks to all of you for coming out, including the vendors and DJs. It was quite the day, and TVD’s Richie Downs was on site to capture the event in pixels.

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We’re thrilled to announce the first DC Record Fair for 2025 lands at DC’s legendary 9:30 Club! 

For this event, we’ll have 30+ record dealers from up and down the East Coast with thousands of records, a stellar DJ line up (TBA!), and mimosa specials throughout the day.

Our thanks to YouTube user Abigail Bender for a recap of October 2022’s DC Record Fair at the Eaton Hotel above.

THE WINTER 2025 DJ LINEUP:
11:00 – 12:00 – DJ Soyo
12:00 – 1:00 – Marc Meistro (Sol Power All Stars)
1:00 – 2:00 – Brendan Canty (The Messthetics/Fugazi)
2:00 – 3:00 – StereoFaith
3:00 – 4:00 – Ryan Pieper
4:00 – 5:00 – Crown Vic (Electric Cowbell Records)

Watch this space and mark your calendars! 
THE DC RECORD FAIR
Sunday, February 23, 2025 at the 9:30 Club, 815 V Street, NW DC
11:00AM–5:00PM.
Early-bird entry: $5. Noon to 5PM: $2
Follow via Facebook.

It was an appropriately cold and snowy night Tuesday when Molchat Doma stopped by the Anthem in Washington DC. The post punk trio, from Minsk, Belarus, are in the midst of a North American tour and, despite the inclement weather, DC showed up in force.

Joining Molchat Doma on this tour is Los-Angeles based Sextile. The crowd at the Anthem was already starting to swell when the trio took the stage. Founding members Brady Keehn and Melissa Scaduto (who paced back and forth with a large flag emblazoned with “Sextile”) were joined by a standing drummer for a 40-minute, high energy post-punk/electronic set. Keehn was met with cheers when he gave a shoutout to DC and revealed he once lived in Columbia Heights. The trio were successful in getting the crowd hyped for the headliner. Sextile’s most recent album is 2023’s Push.

The Anthem’s floor was full by the time Molchat Doma took the stage just after 9PM. For the unfamiliar, Molchat Doma (meaning “Houses are Silent” in Russian) formed in 2017, in Minsk, Belarus; the current lineup is Egor Shkutko, Roman Komogortsev, and Pavel Kozlov. Their music is an amalgam of post-punk, new wave, and synth-driven sounds (a drum machine takes the place of a drummer), and is often compared to 1980s work by bands like The Cure, Depeche Mode, and Siouxsie and the Banshees. The men have also said they take influences from 1980s Russian rock bands, such as Kino.

The setlist was taken from across the band’s four LP discography; their latest album is Belaya Polosa, released last September. While their songs are sung exclusively in Russian, Molchat Doma’s modern-yet-retro sound has fueled their rapid ascent and appeal across generations and nations. In Washington, DC, the crowd, while skewing younger overall, featured a lot of Millennial and GenXers alongside the young goths.

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The Fillmore Silver Spring hosted legendary Jerry Cantrell last Friday night; it was a hard rock party with a 1990s flavor. Cantrell is in the middle of his I Want Blood tour, in support of his latest album of the same name. Along for the ride on this tour is Filter, a fellow ’90s powerhouse.

The Fillmore was already quite full when Filter took the stage—many in the crowd were just as stoked to see this Ohio band as they were Cantrell. Hitting the rock scene in the early 1990s, Filter released their first album in ‘95, titled Short Bus. The band has cycled through many personnel changes since then; front man Richard Patrick remains the sole original member. No matter, though—the rest of the band (Jonathan Radtke, Bobby Miller, and Tosh Peterson), provided an energetic dynamic for the nearly 45-minute set, performed in smoke and near darkness. The crowd rocked out to songs including “You Walk Away,” “Welcome to the Fold,” and ’90s bangers, “Take A Picture” and “Hey Man Nice Shot.” Filter’s most recent release is The Algorithm (2023).

“Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!”

The mostly GenX crowd at the Fillmore had swelled by the time Alice in Chains frontman Jerry Cantrell took the stage at 9:15pm. They were anxious to see the legend and chanted and sang along for much of the night. Along with vocalist Greg Puciato and his backing band, Cantrell greeted the crowd and launched into “Psychotic Break,” from 2002’s Degradation Trip. What followed was a setlist that represented the scope of Cantrell’s career, including several very crowd-pleasing Alice in Chains tracks.

But it was I Want Blood that was the centerpiece; the set featured five songs from the album, said to have more of an Alice in Chains influence than other solo work. “Vilified” was performed early in the night; it weaves well with Cantrell’s AIC work. Much of the other solo work in the set was sourced from the southern rock/country tinged Brighten (2021), including “Atone” and “Had to Know.”

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Myles Kennedy, the golden-throated vocalist of Alter Bridge and Slash collaborator, is in the middle of his solo The Art of Letting Go tour. Along with openers Tim Montana and Sons of Silver, Kennedy conquered Baltimore Soundstage last Thursday night. It was—as always—a fun hang and a bright spot in what was a dreary January.

Sons of Silver got the festivities started in Baltimore, setting the tone for a night of rock and roll. Coming to us from Los Angeles, Sons of Silver are Pete Argyropoulos (vocals, guitar), Marc Slutsky (drums), Brina Kabler (keyboards), Kevin Haaland (guitar), and Adam Kury (bass). This band are veteran musicians and include former members of Candlebox (Kury) and Skillet (Haaland). As a lover of guitar-driven, bluesy rock music, Sons of Silver were a welcome addition to this tour. Their latest album is Runaway Emotions, praised for its energy and fun rock riffs.

Occupying the middle slot on the Art of Letting Go tour is Tim Montana. As the name suggests, Montana is from Montana—Butte to be exact. Growing up in a mobile home, Montana had no electricity and learned to play guitar by candlelight. It’s a past Montana refers to during his performance—he clearly comes across as a dude who has worked hard to overcome his underprivileged upbringing and is grateful for his successes. His notable friends include Billy Gibbons himself; the men are past collaborators on a few songs. In Baltimore, Montana blasted the audience with a grungey, southern rock sound pulled mostly from Savage, his latest album. “Devil You Know” and “Savage” were the standouts from his set.

Finally, the main event—Myles Kennedy, my favorite rock vocalist, the one who stands above all others. This tour supports his latest solo album, The Art of Letting Go, released last October.

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We’re thrilled to announce the first DC Record Fair for 2025 lands at DC’s legendary 9:30 Club! 

For this event, we’ll have 30+ record dealers from up and down the East Coast with thousands of records, a stellar DJ line up (TBA!), and mimosa specials throughout the day.

Our thanks to YouTube user Abigail Bender for a recap of October 2022’s DC Record Fair at the Eaton Hotel above.

THE WINTER 2025 DJ LINEUP:
11:00 – 12:00 – DJ Soyo
12:00 – 1:00 – Marc Meistro (Sol Power All Stars)
1:00 – 2:00 – Brendan Canty (The Messthetics/Fugazi)
2:00 – 3:00 – StereoFaith
3:00 – 4:00 – Ryan Pieper
4:00 – 5:00 – Crown Vic (Electric Cowbell Records)

Watch this space and mark your calendars! 
THE DC RECORD FAIR
Sunday, February 23, 2025 at the 9:30 Club, 815 V Street, NW DC
11:00AM–5:00PM.
Early-bird entry: $5. Noon to 5PM: $2
Follow via Facebook.

Washington, DC’s Anthem hosted a packed house Sunday night, welcoming British singer-songwriter David Gray on a cold winter evening. Touring in support of his latest album, Dear Life, Gray has singer-songwriter Sierra Spirit along as support.

Gray and his sizable backing band took the Anthem’s stage in near darkness. The venue’s ambient lighting—including lights around the concession stands and extra stage lighting—were turned off in order eliminate distractions for the artists and create a more intimate setting for the seated audience.

Dear Life is Gray’s thirteenth studio album, having released his very first back in 1993 (A Century Ends). However, it was 1998’s White Ladder (rereleased in 2000) which put Gray on the map. That album featured his now-trademark “folktronic” sound and the hugely successful single “Babylon.”

Sunday’s show featured “Babylon” as the final performance of the night—Gray packed a whopping 23 songs into the set list. Drawing from several albums including A New Day at Midnight and Life in Slow Motion, much of the material came from his breakthrough album White Ladder. Gray also threw in a few covers in to mix things up and get the crowd up and dancing. While they were mostly shrouded in shadows, Gray’s backing band was top shelf—tight and highly skilled, they worked to keep the crowd on its feet.

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Long-running rocker Chuck Prophet never lost his capacity for writing engaging tunes or shaking up his style as he does it. For his latest venture, Wake the Dead, he’s wedded his laconic lyric observations with the bright rhythms of cumbia, the Latin American musical style that originated from Colombia. With baselines not so far from reggae and stinging guitar that could be a kin to surf, fueled by a percussion-assisted beat, it’s a thoroughly pleasing, danceable sound to frame his familiar voice.

But with his show at The Hamilton in Washington on a frigid winter night last week, dancing was not possible. The space in front of the bandstand where fans have bopped for previous shows by Prophet and the Mission Express was blocked by gold circle tables extending all the way to the stage. Which may have made it more comfortable for the frankly older crowd on hand. But, like the all-seated duo show with his wife Stephanie Finch at the Kennedy Center last year, it kept the show from reaching quite the celebratory heights his band shows usually hit.

Nonetheless, the rock-cumbia connection bookended the set through some tasty covers—a bilingual blast of Eddie Cochran’s “C’mon Everybody” to open, and a can’t miss closer of Sam the Sham’s “Woolly Bully” as the final encore. The latter best employed the keening electronic organ and raspy vocals of Mario Cortez, amid his myriad percussive instruments.

As on the Wake the Dead album, he and two members of his usual band Mission Express, guitarist James DePrado and drummer Vincente Rodriguez, are augmented by a couple members from the Salinas, Calif., cumbia band ¿Quiensalve?—guitarist and keyboardist Alejandro Gomez and the multiinstrumental Cortez. And with the newly added bassist for the tour Mike Anderson, they’re touring as Chuck Prophet and His Cumbia Shoes.

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The first surprise in Gillian Welch and David Rawlings’ current tour is the stage: bare, with just a couple sets of microphones for guitar and voice, and a table between them for water. Rather than rely on a band or other equipment, they’ve stripped everything down to honest voice and guitar—and their show, which played the Capital One Hall in Tysons Corner, VA Sunday, was all the stronger for it.

Already, Welch’s alluring song craft and plaintive, melodic voice that’s produced a handful of great albums, her harmonies with her partner Rawlings enhance the songs, but they rise to a new dimension when he begins soloing on his trusty 1935 Epiphone Olympic, which has a small wooden body but a big, bright sound.

It approaches the sound of a mandolin when he’s playing fast, but more often he’s taking time to invent strikingly original solos and runs within the confines of songs that may not have come directly from classic string bands but sounds as if they could have.

He’ll shake the guitar as if to wring the right sound out of it, or wag his head when he isn’t shaking his instrument. Almost like magic, he never touched another guitar all night, using the mahogany and pine fronted arch top from beginning to end, playing to a microphone instead of being plugged in and never even stopping to tune very often.

Welch was doing her part with rhythms and more than once pulled out a banjo to some unnecessary acclaim. They concentrated on the songs from their recent album together Woodland, but had more than enough songs from their catalogs, together and apart, to fill two sets and two sets of encores.

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The Fillmore Silver Spring hosted a night of hair metal and laughs as Steel Panther made a stop on their Feel the Steel 15th anniversary tour. It was a fun weeknight gig, and the venue was packed with fans ready to let their hair down and let loose for a night. 

Maryland’s very own Stone Horses are support on this tour. The band kicked off the festivities with an energetic performance showcasing their raw take on classic rock sounds, influenced by giants like Led Zeppelin and Robert Johnson. Led by vocalist John Allen, Stone Horses (with drummer John Heiser, guitarist Teddy Merrill, and bassist Dylan Howes) got the crowd amped with songs like “Reckless Ways,” “Free,” and even a cover of a Black Keys song (“I Got Mine”). The set was a tight thirty minutes but packed a punch for the home state crowd.

For the uninitiated, Steel Panther is a “comedic” glam metal band, hailing from Los Angeles. The band (vocalist Michael Starr, guitarist Satchel, drummer Stix Zadinia, and bassist Spyder) provide their fans with an often hilarious parody of the 1980s glam metal experience. The songs are debauched and profane and defenestrate any idea of political correctness, all in the name of some naughty, tongue in cheek fun. I found myself laughing quite a bit. So did everyone else.

This tour commemorates the 15th anniversary of the release of Steel Panther’s first album, Feel the Steel. That album introduced the world to songs like “Asian Hooker,” “Community Property,” and “Eatin Ain’t Cheatin’,” all of which were in the set Thursday night. You can use your imagination to figure out what those songs are about. Steel Panther look like the prototypical glam metal band, too—with neon, big hair, spandex, a dash of leopard print, and wind machines. It’s a hoot.

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