{shades of pink}

Great Big Sea

This is one of my favorite bands and we saw them Saturday night for St. Patty's Day in St. Paul. What an amazing show and a perfect band to see of the great Irish holiday! We have seen them three times before, each time in a bar setting where maybe 200-300 people were in attendance. This show was at the O'Shaughnessy Auditorium of St. Catharine's College and was sold out with 1800 seats. It was so awesome to see them in such a large venue and with such a respectful crown.

They are famous for their Celtic Rock/Irish Drinking-type songs and they were in rare form on Saturday night. Even Séan McCann was in a good mood! And to top it off, they played one of my favorite songs that I've never heard live before, Captain Wedderburn. I will admit that they need a girl to do the song justice, but nevertheless, I was very excited!

I have to give a shout-out to my friend, Leigh Ann, who introduced us to Great Big Sea many years ago down in Texas. I still think of her and Matt when I listen to them, and especially when we see them perform the Old Black Rum, I can't help of thinking of Matt and his crazy dancing!

Asylum Street Spankers

This band is from Austin, TX and is probably one of the top things we miss most about Austin. We used to see them play fairly frequently at the Saxon Pub or at Ruta Maya. They are amazingly talented and incredibly fun. I'm not sure exactly how to categorize them, but one concert review said, "[the Spankers] are an acoustic ensemble that plays ragtime, blues, country, jazz, swing and seemingly anything else they can cram into their spirited, genre-defying, multi-instrumental performances." I'd have to go along with that.

We got to see this band again this weekend. We drove down to Madison on Friday night (and hour & a half drive) to see these guys. We were very excited to see them again, a little bit of Austin brought up here to us. I was extremely saddened to see that my favorite Spanker, Sick, was not along for the tour. Hopefully all is well with him. Additionally, the incredibly talented lead singer, Christina Mars, was in one of her famous bad moods, which made her completely unapproachable before the show and at the merchandise table, and fairly crabby on stage, but she does seem to put out an amazing performance when she's crabby. I've never heard her perform Breathin', one of her best songs, as well as Friday night - spine-tingling! She also belted out a couple of new ones which were a treat.

All in all, a really great show, even though we didn't get home until 2:30 a.m. I highly recommend checking this band out. They also have a great video on UTube that you should check out to get a taste of what they are like. Enjoy!

Weekend Getaway

Cody and I had a really nice weekend getaway, which, I think was desperately needed. We went to Madison for the weekend and watched the last home Badger football game — we killed Buffalo 35-3 — then we saw the Barenaked Ladies concert, which was good. I can't say it was great because I've seen them twice before and Cody has seen them 4 times before and this was by far their most low key performance. It seemed that they were just kind of tired. Of course, they are always fun and they are amazing live, but overall, I'd only give this show a B.

Then on Sunday, we stopped to see Casino Royale, the new James Bond movie. Excellent! That's really all there is to say. Nonstop action and Daniel Craig is a fantastic Bond.

Carbon Leaf

Carbon Leaf really is one of my favorite bands. We saw them last night in Madison and it was definitely the best of the three shows we've seen by them. We almost didn't go because we were both feeling a bit under the weather, but I'm so glad we went.

I highly recommend checking them out if you don't know them. Their best album by far in Indian Summer, but their new album (the release party just happened to be last night), Love, Loss, Hope, Repeat is a really great follow up.

They co-headlined last night with Matt Nathanson and thankfully, CL played first so we didn't have to stay too late. We ended up sharing a table with some people who were Matt Nathanson fans and had never heard CL. We told them how great they were, and after their set, the guy bought 3 of their albums. Fabulous!