I took a 3+ hour lunch yesterday to go to the Borders on L Street in DC. The star attraction was Mark Olson, formerly of the Jayhawks, who put on a great show a couple years back with his former bandmate. His new CD hasn’t gotten great reviews, but I wanted to see some of it and wasn’t sure I’d make it out to Iota that night (I didn’t, the house is a disaster area, and Jill’s mom and sis arrive tomorrow). Still it was good to get a couple songs, and he did do “Poor Michael’s Boat”, a leftover song he wrote with Gary.
The find was the group who played next (they’re opening on the tour, but Mark needed to go tape a set at XM), The Last Town Chorus. Megan Hickey has a hauntingly sweet voice reminiscent of Margo Timmins from the Cowboy Junkies, but then she bends down and pulls outrageous sounds from her lap steel guitar. Something to hear, and see. The video below is a cover of David Bowie’s “Modern Love”, definitely a good guilty pleasure for the week, recommend picking up their CD.
On my way back, I stopped at Marvelous Market and picked up a ham, brie, and rosemary fig confit that I ate in the car on the way back (after hitting my favorite used CD place, of course). The confit was an excellent sweet counterpoint to the salty brie, itself better after melting slightly in the hot car for a couple minutes.
I knew I had heard that song somewhere, but I had to click on through to YouTube to figure it out.