Dixon Bendejo Trash – Ash Street Saloon – Nov 10, 2009

November 11, 2009 at 3:57 pm (Uncategorized) (Ash Street Saloon, Dixon Bendejo Trash, Music, or, Oregon, Portland, Review)

A serious cold kept me down and out over the weekend, but I was getting a little stir crazy so I decided to head out in search of cheap random music. Tuesdays are usually free at Ash Street so that’s where I headed. When I arrived I was:

1. Surprised at how many people were there on a Tuesday.
2. Uncomfortable with how freshly scrubbed all the faces looked. I think it looked like some sort of weird singles mixer…and I felt a little out-of-place since I haven’t showered for a couple of days because I’ve been in bed sick.

Anyways, the band setting up, Dixon Bendejo Trash, was a trio with 2 acoustic guitars and electric bass. That instrumentation most of the time means some sort of indie / folk thing and that’s pretty much what it was. Singing and strumming. Unfortunately, it just came off as really sloppy and un-rehearsed. It was pretty apparent to me that some of the songs were not known by everyone on stage and even the ones where they were basically all together were essentially solo performances by the leader with a little back-up by the 2nd guitar and bass.

In fact, the 2nd guitar player was playing without a pick up until his hand began to bleed from strumming, at which point they got him a pick and he was still barely audible… Between the weird singles bar vibe and the music I only made it through 1 whiskey before it was time for me to move on.

Overall, I think this band needs to either work on the arrangements and songs to get more involvement from the additional musicians or the lead singer might be better off going in a solo direction. That’s not because I don’t think the other players are good, but rather because I don’t see how they are furthering the songs in a way that couldn’t be done solo. I think they also need to get together and just practice more to get tighter and more familiar with the stuff they are playing. I hope that Dixon Bendejo Trash don’t think “¡El viejo tipo gordo es un bastardo para escribir este!”

http://www.myspace.com/dixonbendejotrash

**I usually don’t to listen to the myspace material before going to a show because I’m trying to evaluate what’s happening live with a clean slate…that said, I like the studio stuff by these guys better than the live performance. I’d love to see them try to create more of the recorded sound and feel live.