Old 97's & Honeydogs

With all the exposure the Old 97’s have been getting, including regular rotation on local radio station The Point, this show looked like it would bring together a large and diverse crowd. I expected pomade-laden Fonzi look-alikes, sighing teenage honeys, thirty-something commuter radio fans, maybe even a few punks and cowboys. Rhett Miller’s plaintive wails had echoed frequently enough off the hallowed walls of the Synthesis office for me to know that this show should not be missed.

Minneapolis, Minnesota’s Honey Dogs hit the stage around 9 PM for this early show. Their frontman, a charismatic chap with curly hair and Lennonesque features and eyeglasses, claimed that several of the band’s five members — playing keys, drums, bass and guitars — were Northern Californians: one even from Ball’s Ferry, which I thought was just an I-5 exit near Redding. In their better moments, the Honey Dogs played twangish-pop soaked in harmonies, or "Battle of Evermore"-eerie instrumental passages. They split the singing duties up, and even the drummer sang lead on one number. On an odd note, the George Thorogood-lookalike guitarist sang falsetto lead on a Sly Stone funk number from out of nowhere that raised eyebrows in confusion.

The audience kept a good distance from the stage, with those not upstairs drinking, lurking on stools beyond the dance floor. Only a lonely person or two ventured into the Void.

As soon as the Honey Dogs called it quits — I mean the moment they set down their instruments — two girls rushed to the front, staking out a place right next to the stage. These and other fans made up with enthusiasm for what the crowd lacked in numbers: I saw a dozen people crowding the front of the stage, signing along to all the songs. Two neo-greasers stood next to the girls, their hands in their pockets belying the enthusiasm in their intent stares and bobbing heads.

Old 97’s play a pleasing blend of pop, rock ‘n’ roll and country, held together by spare, snare-heavy backbeats and given urgency by Miller’s unusually evocative voice. Miller, a coltishly handsome hipster, bounced and leapt about, sometimes stepping back from the microphone for a measure to shake his jaw-length hair; Jagger would have been jealous.

The Texas four-piece (standard two guit-fiddles, bass and drums), visiting Chico for the first time, played with great energy for such a small, off-night crowd. They did some songs I recognized and many I didn’t, all with spartan root-note bass lines, up-tempo drum work, clean guitar rhythms and Miller’s wails, like a banshee on heroin, gliding over the top.

Toward the end of their set, the band surprised me a bit with a cover of Merle Haggard’s "Mama Tried," passably pulled off in their own style, and minus the bent-note intro and coda. They left the stage briefly and returned for a five-song encore; to cap it all, the band looked to the audience for requests. "Timebomb!" shouted many, but Miller consulted instead with the aforementioned girls.

"Okay, you know when a kid gets something sweet and he just eats it until he gets sick?" Miller said. "Well, that’s what we’re going to do: either one of these songs would end a set, and we’re gonna play them both," he said as the crowd cheered, before launching into "Four-Leaf Clover" and then straight into "Timebomb" to end the evening.

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