the Mother Hips & the Muses

The Last Day Saloon is one of the coolest places to get down and boogie in San Francisco. It’s unpretentious and the door staff is always really cool and courteous: They say "welcome back" every time you go there; they don’t card you if you look 21; and the guy up the stairs who sells you your ticket always asks how you’re doing and warmly encourages you to enjoy the show.

Upstairs there’s a whole portion of one wall with the names of nearly every band that’s ever played there, from Rick Danko to the Kinetics. The stage is only about two feet tall, elevated enough so everyone can see the band, but not so high that you crick your neck looking up. And there’s no backstage exit so the musicians can be magically whisked on and off the stage; to access it, they must come through the crowd like ordinary mortals.

Saturday was a rainy day all the way down to the Bay, and everybody seemed to have the blues, me included. The Last Day Saloon was the first place I wanted to be, locked in a shoebox with the Mother Hips, shut in to get well with some real sounds while the rain slicked the streets outside.

The Muses were playing when we arrived, slinging some countrified sounds to a noncommittal audience who dared not break the 15-foot semicircle in front of the stage. Their personalized lyrics suit my style, but nothing in the sound really reached out and grabbed my lapels.

Heading to the bar to indulge in a little whiskey drinking, we ran into Tim Bluhm near the back of the place, surveying the scene with his back against the wall. I greeted him and introduced my friend. Mr. Bluhm seemed a little tinged with the same blahs I had, but reading that guy’s tougher than James Joyce.

The song selection for the evening seemed to bear out the observation, though. Mr. Bluhm began by asking the crowd how everyone was doing. No one wants to be a downer at a bar, but when he asked if anyone was having troubles, I managed a weak, "yeah." Heck, I was hoping the show would turn into a blues revival. Opening with their theme song, "Mother Hips," the band worked its way through a litany of new and semi-new numbers—"Later Days," "Stunt Double" and "Gold Plated" showed off their last album’s spare country feel, while the unreleased "Seems to Ease Me" and "Del Mar Station" highlighted their self-styled "Golden Coast Sound" with Beach Boys-style harmonies and bright vibrations.

The really defining songs for this show, though, were the late-coming lonesome tunes. In "KC Southern," a mid-tempo lament, the narrator hears the sound of an outbound train whistle and wishes he were going home, too. "Life in the City" has the singer plaintively crooning to his audience, "How could they think that I’d fade out of sight / Like a bright summer moon…" The "Ballgame" song, an oldie but a goodie, rounded out the feel for the evening, its burgeoning blues bass and slower tempo encouraging catching a deep groove to work your worries away on the dance floor. Lyrically simple, it talks of feeling "so bad, like a ball game on a rainy day" and ends with the singer "rid[ing] away" out of town.

The Hips finished up the evening with "Hey Emilie," a perpetual crowd pleaser, and got the heck outta Dodge without playing an encore. Not that I could blame them; the crowd seemed out for blood. Looking at the set-list on the stage, I noticed they’d cut out a bunch of songs that I would have loved to hear, not least the "Motorhome" and "Can’t Sleep at All," that were penned in for the encore. I fantasized about bailing the bar with the Hips and my friend, going some place nice and cozy and hearing them play the blues until 4AM.

– Matt Meyer

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