ROCK REPORT: The Redwalls

I hadn't really heard of the Redwalls before the show, but my friend Hammer suggested we go, and I'm never one to turn down an invitation. So we went.

It was an inauspicious beginning. I came straight from tap, so I was already a little weirdy and irritable. [Apparently I'm not aggressive enough for tap, but that's a whole other and boring story.] Laura was late. It was very, very cold. I sat at the bar on the non-show side for about 10 minutes before either Laura or a bartender showed up. I sat there, sweaty from tap, wearing too many layers from the cold, not drinking, and feeling very middle-aged about it all, with my crankiness and my liquor and my sensible warm clothes.

I am pleased to report that Laura did show up, the liquor did kick in, and the bands did rock. Lorenzo Goetz opened, and I have to say: they really are a very fun band. Considering how laid-back most of their songs are, it's surprising how energetic their show is. The one guy has let his hair grow out, and it looks kind of like what I think my hair would look like if I tried to get a short bob cut, by which I mean kind of crazy. LG is apparently rather popular with the Planet set. That's nice to see.

We moved closer to the stage, just for a minute, but ended up staying there throughout LG and then through the Redwalls. Yay! Many of my friends say they're too old for standing now, so I either end up sitting at the very back, or ditching them.

Lights go up, lights go down, Redwalls take the stage. They look like an MTV2 band--very pale, very bedhead, very leather-jackets-and-cool-shoes. Except...their keyboard player, who looks a whole lot like Scott Ligon. Holy carp, it is! It IS Scott Ligon!

Scott used to be in this fantastic band called the Heatersons we used to see at SOP's in Peoria, then in this fantastic band called the Ligonaires we used to see at the Iron POst, then did a fantastic radio show on the Whip. Robbie Fulks asked him to reunite the Heatersons for his 40th birthday gala in Chicago, and that may have been the last time we saw him. He pops up now and again playing with some Bloodshot band or other. He rocks the organ, loves the Beatles, and always looks like he's have a whale of time. That's neat.

So Scotty's playing pianorgan, or organo, or some hybrid of piano and organ that is most likely known as a "keyboard." The Redwalls--who could practically be Scotty's kids, or at least his substantially younger brothers--commence the rock. It is good. They have kind of a nice Beatles-y garagey sound. (They sound so Beatlesy, in fact, that they eventually busted out "The One After 909." Which was very good.) The show overall was very fun, and the crowd was very bearable--we even made one kind of friend out of the guy standing beside us, though we never got around to asking something so banal as his name. And then the Redwalls Just Said No to encores, and the whole thing was over by 12:30. For a Tuesday, that's fine by me.

I wish I had more to say about them, but that's about all I've got. The end.