MOG

On day two Twangfest moved to The Duck Room at Blueberry Hill (the venue formerly known at Cicero's and launching pad for Uncle Tupelo).

The night opened with Two Cow Garage bringing the rock. They've just released their third album (III) and their endless touring has honed their performance as well as their songwriting. Moving from 'almost but not quite as good as Slobberbone' to 'sounds kinda like a twangy Soul Asylum.'

I'm not sure what I expected with Carrie Rodriguez, but it wasnt what I expected. The instrumentation led me to believe country / bluegrass (fiddle, mandolin, no drums) but it seemed to veer towards jazz and folk to me. In any case, a solid set but not quite my thing.

Tim Easton played a few songs solo acoustic and then brought back 2CG to back him. Those guys should always play together. 2CG keeps Tim from getting too folky and Tim keeps 2CG from getting too bombastic. As the drummer mentioned, playing with 3 people you're just trying to fill up space - playing with four people allows you to focus on things like tempo. I'm not sure if he was joking or not.

Blue Mountain headlined like they had never broken up. If you are only familiar with their 3 CDs (and you should be) you might expect some mellow alt.country. Live, they rock like crazy. Leaning heavily on their 1st 2 CDs they brought everyone back to the great alt.country scare of 1998. Awesome. I mentioned to the organizers they should book late 90s alt.country reunions each year. What are The Backsliders doing these days?