Last weekend, Part One: Honor By August, The Bigger Lights and The Kin at 9:30 Club

I am slowly catching up with the photos and such from last weekend's 3-Shows-in-3-Nights DC marathon.
A vicious head cold threatened to ruin my weekend, but I fought back, using the time spent on the couch to see some movies ("The Station Agent" is wonderful, "The Matchmaker" not so much) and satisfy my craving for comic punditry (Stewart, Colbert, Maher, etc). More to come, but this to start...

Honor By August, The Bigger Lights and The Kin at 9:30 Club, 9-11-2010 - Washington DC concert photography | Examiner.com

New Favorite Band.

Four Shows in One Week. Not Bad.

One week ago tonight, I was at the lovely Sixth & I Synagogue for a show by Airborne Toxic Event, an LA-based quintet that is in the midst of a short "acoustic" (actually, they were plugged and plenty loud) tour with a string quartet. It was one of the shows I had touted in my weekly column for Citysearch DC - along with Blondie, The Dirty Projectors and others - which led to a pair of tickets from the publicist, which led to attending/greatly enjoying the show, which led to the following photo gallery:
The Airborne Toxic Event at Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, September 7 - Washington DC concert photography | Examiner.com

Hubby and I just got back from a four-night stay at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in DC. He had to work at his annual convention, but I got to play, exploring the city by day and going to shows at night. It became a 3-day weekend of 9:30 Club outings:
Saturday - The Kin, The Bigger Lights, Honor by August
Sunday - The Young Friends, The Drums, Surfer Blood
Monday - Janelle Monae, Of Montreal
and I took pictures at all of them, got set lists from a few.

So, after a period of recovery, mails snail and e-, unpacking, laundry and such, I will be back with more.

The Bigger Lights and I get our hair done.

I will write a real post soon (you've heard that before!) but I think I just discovered that a mere click will send material from my examiner.com site to here.
In which case, you can amuse yourself with this:
The Bigger Lights are coming back to town.

Funny thing is, the reason I was revisiting the article is that I met three members of this band last night, in unusual circumstances.
Because I've been writing for Citysearch DC, I was invited to a party/makeover event (Me Get Pretty One Day) at the Sassoon Salon in Tysons. After all the girly fun, as we were getting ready to leave and the place is way past closing time, in walk three tattooed rock dudes [note: I'm told only one band member actually has tattoos, but he has enough for all of them ]- Christopher "Topher" Talley (singer) Chris McPeters (guitarist) [tattooed guy!] and Ryan Seaman (drummer) - from The Bigger Lights.

Though the band is originally from Northern Virginia, it turns out that Chris is now living in Kentucky Louisiana and makes a point of coming to the salon whenever he's in town to get his hair cut by his favorite stylist. I've heard of secret club gigs before, but not afterhours haircut gigs! I chatted with the guys for a while, told them I'd seen/photographed/written about them and said I'd send a copy of the story.

And that's what sent me to the examiner.com DC Concert Photography Archives this morning.
Anyhoo, the band is playing this Saturday (September 11) at the 9:30 Club with local heroes Honor By August and a fine NYC-based duo called The Kin. I think I'll be there.