Here's the Richmond Times-Dispatch review of the Capital City Barn Dance
show Saturday night featuring Elena Skye and the Demolition String Band,
The Ghostrockets and Honky Tonk Confidential:
Monday, March 1, 1999
BY BILL CRAIG
Special Correspondent
For the past two years, the Capital City Barn Dance has been holding
monthly showcases of local and regional talent recruited from the way
left-hand side of the country music dial.
After beginning its run amid the hyperactivity of Shockoe Bottom, the
Barn Dance recently found a new home in the almost suburban confines of
the Dogtown Lounge.
Similarly, Elena Skye got her professional start in the wild world of
New Jersey and New York punk rock before the rediscovery of bluegrass
music led her to turn down the volume and form her traditional
country-influenced but cowpunk-driven quartet, Elena Skye and the
Demolition String Band.
So it seemed quite appropriate in a honky-tonk kind of way that Skye and
company headlined a Barn Dance lineup Saturday night that they shared
with the Ghost Rockets, fellow New Jersey residents, and Washington's
Honky
Tonk Confidential.
Backed by the slick lead guitar of Bo Reiners, Skye opened the evening
with a bluegrass instrumental and a Jimmie Rodgers cover before sliding
into a sample of hard-core honkabilly.
The hour-long set included a whole bunch of twangy heartache,
highlighted by the big shuffle of "Biggest Piece of Nothing," the
Tex-Mex flavored "I'll Try Not to Cry Tonight" and a juiced-up version
of Loretta Lynn's "Get
What You Got and Go."
As a reminder of just how alternative it is, the quartet followed the
bouncy conventional country pain of "It Still Hurts" with "Are You
Armed," a cool honky-tonk/surf music instrumental hybrid.
The evening's most unadulterated twang was provided by the four men and
one woman of Honky Tonk Confidential.
Carried by the vocals of Diana Quinn, Mike Woods and Geff King and a ton
of sweet string work, the band paid homage to the founding fathers and
mothers of country music with reverent interpretations of tunes by,
among
others, Wanda Jackson, Bob Wills and Johnny Cash, along with a handful
of originals that sounded as if they were written two or three decades
ago.
Quinn and the boys knocked out a nice little survey course in country
music history with songs such as Jim Ed Brown's bouncy "Pop a Top,"
Johnny Paycheck's "A-11" and Cash's classic "Folsom Prison Blues."
Best of the originals included "Down in Washington, " a honky-tonkified
look at the state of the union, the swingin' feel of "(Ain't A) Texas
Gal" and the self-explanatory confessional "Lottery Tickets, Cigarettes
and Booze."
The Ghost Rockets closed out Hoboken Night at the Barn Dance with a song
list that, while featuring a mighty fine Louvin Brothers tune, earned an
A for alternative content.
The five-man band's shades of country ranged from the country/pop of
"This Girl of Mine" and the Southern rock of "Family Tree" to the bluesy
jammin' of "Hard to Get" and the classically hard-core country of
"Sitting Alone in the Moonlight."
The Capital City Barn Dance returns to the Dogtown Lounge on March 27
with the Ex-Husbands, Lancaster County Prison and the Steam Donkeys.
© 1999, Richmond Newspapers
Inc.
