The Nashville by way of Detroit Deadstring Brothers pulled into the East Village club Bowery Electric to play the 100th show of their current tour. These road warriors have surely played to larger crowds though as the Friday night early set time saw only a handful of fans in attendance.
Playing as a scaled back three piece the band showed off their Americana based tunes with ease, if not a great deal of energy. Front man and axe slinger Kurt Marschke was the focus of the band as Nathan Kalish provided the backbeat and backing vocals with Jeremy Mackinder on bass.
The band’s love of the Rolling Stones is well documented and Cannery Row’s “Long Lonely Ride” made mention to it directly with its lyrics and “Dead Flowers” style. When the band played their tune “My Baby Blue” they got the disco ball spinning as Kurt mentioned this was their roller rink song, requesting a ladies choice skate session.
The group showed off some great taste with delicious covers of Leon Russell’s “You Look Like The Devil” and The Band’s “Get Up Jake”. Both tunes were natural fits to the set and the Deadstring Brothers looked to be having a blast playing them.
“Sacred Heart” upped the twanging tempo with its foot tapping rhythm while “Lucille’s Honky Tonk” continued the upbeat mood as the acoustic 12 string that Marschke strummed was confident in front of the slapping snare.
Without the pedal steel guitar and piano that highlight the group’s most recent album (Cannery Row), the outfit sounded sparse and at times it worked with the old-timey tunes. Often though extra instrumentation would have been a benefit. The group has their country swaggering style down and for a whiskey sipping evening the tunes flowed out just fine.
